What defines the culture of the info pro?
Sharing? Sure. Info pros happily offer high levels of service to clients and customers needing guidance in finding and using information.
Learning? Definitely. Info pros generally learn something new every day while going about the business.
Embracing change? Not so much. Info pros have a reputation for liking things just the way they are, thank you very much.
How does our culture work for or against us? The culture of sharing makes us good at delivering valuable information, providing useful training to our constituencies, and mentoring new info pros. At the same time, the propensity to "give it away" makes it hard to monitor return on investment or charge sustainable rates for our services.
The willingness to learn helps us improve our skills and fosters the curiosity we need to help our clients and customers. Could learning ever work against us? I can't see how, but maybe you can.
The tendency to resist change has proven useful to info pros over time, as we carefully and systemically develop the cataloging and classification systems that make information findable. By the same token, we may have missed opportunities to better connect with users by holding on to the "we've always done it this way" approach.
What else defines the culture of the info pro?
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
