Organizational placement of librarians

[Michael Squires (michael)]

(Background - Sequent is a computer hardware and services company with
about 3,000 employees around the world. This may help calibrate how
relevant our experience has been.)

We have a Chief Information Officer (CIO) over all of IS, much the same
as other companies. We also have a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), who
has responsibility for all the "knowledge assets" of the company (much
like the CFO has responsibility for all of the financial assets.) The
CKO has things like: corporate library (paper and electronic), patents /
trademarks, and internal knowledge transfer and management. Both the CIO
and CKO report directly to the President.

For our Corporate Digital Library (CDL), we divided the responsibilities
into three buckets: IS is responsible for all the \machinery/ (system,
backup, publishing tool, web server, database layout, etc.); the CKO is
responsible for the knowledge framework and direction of the
environment; and individual orgranizations are responsible for
organizing and publishing their material.

My sense is that the essence of your value to the company is in your
role of organizing and motivating content in the corporate intranet, and
articulating functional requirements for the technologies necessary to
provide service to your user community. I'm not sure that you should ask
so much "where would I fit in, professionally" as "which organization is
more likely - by charter or personal inclination - to appreciate, value,
and support my role in managing the knowledge flow inside the company?"

Hope this give you food for thought, and/or fodder for discussion by the
list.

Michael Lee Squires
Digital Library Champion
Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Janet Kaul [SMTP:jmk at synopsys.com]
	Sent:	Monday, June 16, 1997 4:38 PM
	To:	Multiple recipients of list
	Subject:	Organizational placement of librarians

	Folks,

	I need your help here. My company is having a re-org of
information
	services, and I've been asked where I wish to be placed.

	We do not have a Corporate Library here.

	Currently, I am in Information Systems, in a group called
Electronic
	Connectivity, in a Business Programs subset.

	Now, the Business Programs people are being moved into Marketing
	Communications, and I have a choice to go with them, or to be
	in the Engineering section of IS.

	I am not a programmer.

	I am the program manager and content organizer for the company
intranet,
	and I also manage bringing in tools such as document management
and
	search technologies, again, with the help of engineers.

	So...

	My question is, if any of you have similar responsibilities,
where
	are you placed in your organizations, and how well does it work
for
	you?

	Looking forward to any advice/info. Please email me directly at
	jmk at synopsys.com.

	Thanks.

	-Janet