Once upon a time, when I was a young naïve Assistant Librarian, a colleague was telling me about a ‘Knowledge Manager’ role he had heard about. I distinctly remember laughing and asking, “what on earth is that?”. When he explained the concept I just thought it seemed strange as surely it was any manager’s job to make sure their work (and their team’s work) was organised, in order and retrievable – why would you need to hire other people to make that happen? As I now find myself with that job title I suppose I had best justify my existence…
I think the reason my stance on this has now changed is twofold. Firstly, I grossly underestimated just how much data there was in any organisation. This is only growing over time, and I think it is unrealistic to think people can be specialists in their area (whether that’s policy, law or accountancy) as well as have time to be experts in organising the company’s information depositories and making sure it fits together in a coherent way.
Secondly, I now see it is a specialist skillset.
As my mind naturally gravitates to ordering things with consistent labels and thinking about links in information, it didn’t occur to me that not everybody thinks that way (ah the arrogance of youth!).
Equally though I don’t have all the skills it takes to be a lawyer and that’s why firms need both lawyers and business services teams to work together for the good of the firm.
My segue into Knowledge as opposed to pure Library happened gradually. I was recruited to Howard Kennedy as a Research Librarian in order to boost the enquiry service offering. However, my manager at the time was Head of Knowledge and he was responsible for the knowledge precedent system as well as looking at proofreading tools and automation. As there were only two of us, I was required to deputise, and this is how I came to learn initially what was needed in the law firm environment. When he retired the team was rearranged and now reports into a Director of Knowledge, who is a former partner; however I continued to manage the day to day vendor relationships with information providers and as I was still to be involved giving input into knowledge projects my job was renamed to Knowledge and Information Manager.
More recently we’ve added ‘Systems’ specifically to my title. Throughout my career it’s fair to say I have found myself gravitating towards technology and acting as the systems person in my library environment. After I gained my information qualification, my first professional role was at the Department of Constitutional Affairs. We had an extremely old Library Management System which still had an onsite server. I really am old enough that somebody had to go down to the server room and change the backup tapes (what cloud?). When the person who had been responsible for that left, I was asked to takeover mostly as I’d shown an interest in doing so. I later became eServices Librarian as I always had an interest in the research platforms and helping people overcome problems. I enjoy being a go between for non-technical people and those in IT teams. I don’t have IT qualifications, but I’ve never been intimidated by technical language. As knowledge and retrieval is so heavily dependent on systems these days I work ever closer with our IT department to deliver the required projects.
After saying all of that I might be about to contradict myself by saying I think we can get too hung up on job titles. I once went to a library networking event where a law firm librarian was concerned that she was being asked to do things outside of what she considered librarianship to be. I remember the words “I’m just a librarian”.
I think for organisations to work at their most efficient it is a positive thing to be curious about the business as a whole and how your transferable skills can be used in other areas.
Obviously if you are being asked to sign off on decisions above your pay grade that might be cause for concern. On the other hand, I have seen that working in silos and taking a narrow view on where your input can be key is frequently what goes wrong in projects that affect the whole firm. I believe everyone would benefit from thinking outside the box and making the most of your skills wherever that might be applicable. At the end of our day our goal is usually the same – to make our law firm (or business) the best and most profitable it can be. The organisations that I perceive as most successful are those that take this kind of collaborative approach.
Katy Snell