“In my opinion . . .”

“My experience tells me that . . .”

“My best advice is . . .”

“My considered opinion is . . .”

“If I had to choose . . ."

"My research tells me that . . .”

Professionals start sentences like this. Professionals are respected for their opinions because they have the education and experience to make better and informed judgments. They are thoughtful, authoritative, respected, and trusted. All of these qualities can be lost in an instant with our users if we play loose with our opinions. It’s a quandary we face. Some librarians and information professionals seem to still struggle with having the confidence of our opinions. That’s sad. We must, however, take a few risks to position ourselves better in the knowledge-based economy.

As technology and content choices are an increasing dimension of our users’ life decisions, and information becomes an even more essential part of our enterprise’s DNA and decision-making workflows, we, as our organizations’ information experts, must step up to the plate and offer a professional opinion. It’s an even more exciting time in our professional lives that we can more strongly position ourselves for our expertise, as opposed to just our collections and databases. Expertise isn’t just our information skills. It’s also about the role we play in advising our enterprises about content, technology, and what the best choices are for our environments and our users’ needs.

Are we ready? I don’t know. I have had many conversations about this topic in the past few years and followed many conversations on discussion lists, conference panels, blogs, etc. I worry when I see statements that some new technologies have no place in libraries. I’ve seen and heard folks make blanket statements about this. I heard these sorts of blanket opinions, expressed by working information professionals, in the early days of AltaVista vs. online, and I’m seeing similar opinions being expressed about social networking technologies and instant messaging communication tools. I am not truly appalled until I ask them about their experience with these technologies. Too often, and actually the majority of the time, they have little to no actual experience with the technology they are criticizing. It’s just an opinion or gut feeling. I try not to let my jaw drop. So, jaw firmly clamped, I ask why they feel as they do. Often it’s driven by media hype, experience in observing a few children, or some other information process that resembles hearsay more than research. It’s not what I would define as an “informed opinion.”

(On a slight tangent, I hear many colleagues often comment on the quality of library schools and their graduates. Again, I ask when they were last there, saw a class, or met a student. Too often their opinions are informed by their own experience decades ago, and they’ve often rarely returned or even seen a range of library education programs. Again, I find too often that they have an uninformed opinion, but still feel very strongly that they are right. That’s interesting and sad. Having actually visited dozens of schools, taught in a few programs, and met so many student CLA, ALA, and SLA members, I can only say I am impressed. I trust my own experiences. I trust research more like the 8R’s or IMLS studies.)

So, if you’re a regular reader of this column, now entering its third year, you’ll know that I am a big fan of experience-based learning. While this column is sponsored by my employer, I also say or write nothing that I don’t personally stand by as well. No one at SirsiDynix has ever told me not to say or write anything. Conversely, I have never been asked to write anything just for corporate need. I also believe that experience trumps book learning every time, although reading is a fundamental and essential part of the process. If we want to be perceived as thoughtful, authoritative, respected, and trusted, we need to have the "bona fides." That means that we should at least have played with many of the most interesting and leading-edge new technologies. We don’t need to adopt them all into our regular work lives – not at all. We don’t need to bet the enterprise on transient or in-development technologies either. We just need to have a better informed opinion than our users and clients, as well as our host institutions and communities. They have a right to get the best opinion possible from their information professionals. So, I've outlined below a few things that I think we need to be experts in. This is a great place to start to position ourselves as experts. (We could even play with each and blog it or offer our balanced insights and informed opinions on our library’s Web sites, blogs, or newsletters – or our library intranet presence.)

So, let’s think about how we inform our opinions in the best way about the critical areas on which we have a perspective worth seeking.

Content

Our users are challenged by making important decisions about what content they should choose and how they should search and filter it. Many falsely think that the Web might be enough. Arrghhh! We need to differentiate for them advertising-based search engine ranking from non-partisan library results. We make great collection development choices for our enterprises, and still free Web search engine bullies have major mindshare, even with target groups we have special access to. We need to get more comfortable in presenting and positioning best choices in both print and e-content, including all media. We, as librarians, need to make sure that we’re positioned as format- and container-agnostic and as the best place to ask for advice on podcasts, wikis, streaming media, blog searches, YouTube, Technorati, Podscope, ODEO, iTunes, and more. This space is emerging as one of the most exciting places to play with content right now. We need to get much better at federated search display and visualization.

Instant Messaging

Conversations are one way that information and knowledge transfers very effectively. Telephone conversations and our in-person reference interviews and research conversations are excellent examples of how we have great competencies here. In the Treo/Blackberry world, text messaging is becoming the equal of actual voice calls. In the PC/Mac world, instant messaging is the norm for under 30s. IM clients like AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and ICQ are "must haves" for people who give advice and service. Their evolution into what virtual reference ultimately will be is exciting. Are we ready to use these and add voice, links, and video? Are we ready to handle conversations with everyone using easy aggregators for IM conversations like Meebo, GAIM, and Trillian? There’s a new presence in this space called Twitter. I am not really impressed that it’s a great new tool, but I have played with it. I can see enterprise use for keeping in touch in the short term, during corporate events, conferences, or special work teams. You never know. It’s easy to play with these tools with friends and colleagues just to learn and inform our opinions.

Gaming

I am surprised at the vehemence of opinions among adults, and fellow librarians, about gaming. Even with the average gamer now running about 32 years old and with a fairly even gender balance, many folks still see this technology as merely boy’s play. It appears that the world can be divided into those who “get” gaming and those who despise it. One SLA discussion list recently discussed gaming, and several expressed the opinion that gaming and virtual worlds have no role ever in special libraries, but maybe games could find a place in public libraries. I was distressed at the lack of understanding here. Gaming is one of the largest revenue generators in the publishing space. That alone makes it worthy of further investigation. Games have found great success in the training and development arena. If your library supports employees, there may be a role here for your skills in ensuring identification and access to these collections. Games are a major key to the training and development of the military worldwide, with many of the major consumer titles developed for military purposes first. Many advertisers are working on understanding how to add game play to their marketing strategies. The point with gaming and libraries is to understand them enough to advise and imagine a potential role. Imagination is the key. Closed minds aren’t.

Virtual Worlds

Often confused with gaming environments are virtual world ecologies like Second Life and Active Worlds. Again, these are just in their earliest days. Eastern University in Pennsylvania has built its library services in Active Worlds. As I’ve discussed in previous columns, it’s an amazing environment that shows how far the envelope could be pushed by imaginative library workers. Second Life has a few special librarians (like law and medicine), and public libraries and academic libraries being built out. All told, we don’t know what fruit these virtual worlds will bear, but they surely offer great promise. I still remember the early days of online searching and Web searching. I also remember a few very high profile library pundits of the time (who shall remain nameless) offering their opinion that these were fads and could never survive or compete with “real” librarians or “real” online dial-up services. Yes, some of the original brands of those days (hello AltaVista) are not with us anymore. The trend did inexorably develop. I’d hate to see us make the same mistake again. Will Second Life be with us five years from now? Maybe; maybe not. Will virtual worlds? Indubitably.

Social Networking

It seems a few folks read about social networking sites and hear that these are just for kids (or students). They read an excitable press and think they’re littered with porn, stalkers, and pulchritude. I know they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s a personal and professional opinion formed by experience in these networks. Facebook and MySpace are the market leaders now, with Bebo and Orkut doing well outside of North America. There are dozens of others. I thought I knew about how these worked, but I was surprised to find that my knowledge was wrong or wildly incomplete. When I signed up and committed, the experience was much different from what I believed it would be. I can’t really explain adequately how different the networking relationships are in these sites. They’re meaningful, fun, educational, and more. The continuing development of new circles of interested friends and groups was my personal surprise. I know that you can’t understand it truly without getting in there, experiencing it, and learning the new models. Then your opinion will be informed by experience.

Recently, Bill Drew set up a new special social network about Library 2.0 in Ning, a free place where private social networks can be created and nurtured. This one went from one to more than 1,000 members in less than five weeks and is still growing and developing! I’ve seen other Ning networks on School Library 2.0, Academic Library 2.0, and Classroom 2.0. I was contacted by a student who told me there is a nascent LIS student Ning network. I was amazed, as an association junkie, how quickly folks could coalesce, share, and collaborate. This is only limited by our own collective imaginations.

Workflow Tools

Our users are looking for the tools that let them be more effective in a mobile, nomadic workplace. Are we ready to advise? Are we offering the tools that help research workflows? New tools like Zotero, an Internet scrapbooking software, are great options to complement our traditional offerings of online citation tools to make the creation of footnotes and bibliographies easier. It’s also interesting to watch the building up of the Google offerings to compete with MS Office. Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, gMail, and the rest are viable options now. Services like Zoho allow you to use Web-based email, calendars, phone systems, CRM, file storage and transfer, documents, spreadsheets, database and forms, design, project management, presentations, meetings, accounting and billing, collaboration, and office sites – often for free. Creating a PDF on the fly for free on the Web is a common application. There are dozens of free tools that support the mobile workplace now. We need to be there to advise our users. What was once unaffordable and hard to offer for public sector institutions is now easy. Are we there for our users? Or do we block access to these where the image of library offerings is that we’re somehow second- or third-class access points?

There are loads of other areas we might plan to try as well. The above are just a few examples. But, if you’re interested, the technologies mentioned above are easily learned, mostly free, and, with an investment of 15 minutes a day, should buy you the authority to inform your users. You have an excellent foundation for personal and professional positioning. It can be grown and developed. It could even result in higher value, compensation, respect, and sustainability for your library and career.

Part of this professional positioning is having the confidence of our opinions. It also means signing our work and tying it to our personal and professional brand. Not positioning our skills, experience, and talents on sites that make us discoverable is unwise. Blogging anonymously or as a group without signing a name is again not in our personal, institutional, or professional best interests. Are you ready to step up to the plate to increase our role in providing professional and informed opinions? It’s a critical time for our profession now.

We earn the right to have an opinion by being the expert. When we have the experience and informed perspective, we earn that right and increase our value to the enterprises where we are employed. We have a duty to ensure our users are informed. We also have a duty to make sure that our opinions are informed, too.

An informed opinion will take you far.

Stephen Abram, MLS, is vice president, Innovation, for SirsiDynix. He is the chief strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute (http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/ ). He is an SLA Fellow, president-elect of SLA, and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the Canadian Library Association. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@sirsidynix.com.