Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Remember when you were in school and asked a question, and the teacher said, “Look it up”? Now, thanks to the overwhelming availability of online research resources—free and premium— that is what your customers are doing: looking things up themselves. So how do librarians remain vital in this self-service world? This presentation explores the ways in which 21st-century librarians must reinvent themselves, from providing quick, transactional answers to developing deep, ongoing partnerships with their customers. As trusted consultants, librarians combine research and relationship-building expertise to shape and develop their customers’ projects from inception to completion, and do not simply react to requests for specific information. Using the “relationship pyramid” as a model, the presentation will use case studies to illustrate how corporate librarians can remain essential to their organizations by developing nontraditional librarian skills—and an entirely new mindset for their work.