How to Approach a Library Vendor

As library technicians and graduate students near the end of a term, many of them are working on their final projects.

As a matter of becoming a library technician or librarian, there is always at least one course that requires students to approach a library vendor.

The assignment typically involves asking a group of students to approach more than one library vendor with a scenario, such as a law firm library seeking a library system.

As library and knowledge management vendors, we collectively have a responsibility to assist these students for many reasons:

(a) These students will be our future clients.
(b) These students may be our future employees.
(c) These projects are an opportunity for us to see requests for future features

Students should not feel intimidated about contacting a library vendor for the reasons above, since you are doing us a favour. As major vendors employ several consultant librarians and library technicians, you will find a friendly voice on the other end.

For instructors and students, we have the following suggestions to make the most of your assignment.

• Instruct students to contact us as soon as possible

Here is what we eventually want to see in our e-mail correspondence:

o Your contact information
o Your school, course, and instructor
o The due date for a response
o Some key facts about your library
o Your reason for approaching us

The last point – your reason for approaching us – is the most often overlooked item, but it has the most impact on how responsive the vendor will be to assisting you.

Whether it is a student project involving a library vendor, or walking into a job interview with a library, we all want to know why you have approached us.

• Contact us as soon as possible

Most students approach vendors through a sales or support phone numbers, and it will take time for your request to find its way to the best staff person.

• Instructors should compile a list of contacts for the students

One of the best approaches we have seen to helping students with these projects is where the instructor has already screened the vendors that are willing to help. Generally, every major vendor has a designated staff person(s) for these types of student outreach projects.

• Instructors should try to time the assignments where there is a lull for vendors

While this will vary, the major vendors will be busier during conference season, particularly major conferences, such as SLA, ALA (e.g. June).

Some vendors will disagree with the following statement, but in our experience serving special libraries, there is a lull during September, October, and January.

• Follow up with your library vendor after the project

We understand that for many students, the assignment to approach a vendor may be the “final project,” and the last item on your agenda is more work. You are probably tired from your studies and need a break, but similar to any job interview you will leave a lasting impression for yourself and your school, if you send us a quick update.

• Send us a list of questions

For many libraries searching for systems, there is a RFI or RFP (Request For Information/Proposal), which is a formal document asking for detailed information.

While you would not want to send something that expansive to a vendor for a student assignment, sending us a form with a few questions (e.g. 10 questions) is fine.

Vendors are less responsive when you send us a general request for “brochures and marketing literature” because many of us now support numerous products and platforms.

• Consider scheduling a demonstration for the class

In the past, we have had students ask for a tour of our facilities, which required a lot of planning in advance. We have even sent our consultant librarians to the school for a demonstration. Nonetheless, the library vendor may not be able to provide a demo in response to every request from a student group. Consider a demo for your whole class.

Best of luck to the students that SydneyPLUS International has assisted this year!

SydneyPLUS Thanks for Thanksgiving (US)

SydneyPLUS staff librarians working in our headquarters in Vancouver, BC, Canada are fortunate to live in such a beautiful place, which is evident by this photograph from Jeff Xerri, SydneyPLUS Implementation Consultant Librarian on his way to work. We wish all our US-based clients who wish to celebrate Thanksgiving a Happy Thanksgiving! Hopefully many of you will have the opportunity to visit us during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, or perhaps you will see a rainbow when visiting us at the SLA 2014 conference to be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Selling Your Library

On Monday, November 16th, some of the staff attended a workshop on “Developing & Presenting the Value Proposition” by Maggie Weaver. The session was intended to help library management develop a presentation and demonstrate the value of their services.

The workshop provided the reason for developing value propositions, a formula for developing the propositions, and specific steps for presenting the pitch.

Some of the recommendations may appear obvious, such as focus on how your library service is going to “accelerate or increase gains” instead of “reducing costs.”

Other suggestions, such as “small samples” being acceptable for making conclusions, and how to measure anything, particularly services, may be new to many librarians.

If you want to know whether or not to use a pie chart or bar graph, then this workshop is right for you; it gets to this detailed level near the end.

Another upcoming workshop some of the SydneyPLUS staff librarians will be attending, if you happen to be in the area of Vancouver, BC:

Sales Techniques for Non-Sales People Seminar offered by the Simon Fraser University (SFU).

As librarians, taking courses on marketing and sales techniques can only better serve our profession. Marketing our library services has never been more important.

LawPort Website Launched

LawPort originated under the San Francisco based company SV Technology, Inc., when it formed in 1999 in response to the emerging demand for knowledge management products and services for the field of law.

Over the years, LawPort has become the legal industry's leading Web foundation, portal and knowledge management applications suite. At its core, LawPort® provides a complete Web infrastructure, integrating the Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites to unleash and organize critical information previously locked in the firm's back office systems. LawPort's® comprehensive suite of legal applications, including Matter Centricity, Knowledge Management, Proposal & Bio Management, Experience Tracking, SharePoint/.Net Collaboration, and Financial Modeling, provide unique and out-of-the-box value to law firms.

In 2007 the company was purchased by SydneyPLUS International, a leading developer of KM solutions for numerous Fortune 1000 companies. Headquartered in Vancouver B.C. Canada, LawPort continues under the name of SydneyPLUS | LawPort.

Prevent Pollution With SydneyPLUS

As autumn has arrived at our headquarters, in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, and the falling leaves has made us reflect on how nature is constantly “recycling.”

At SydneyPLUS International, we practice Pollution Prevention (P2) year round, which has us not only recycling, but minimizing pollution.

Environment Canada defines Pollution Prevention as a movement:

“…when people change their plans, practices and habits in order to reduce the generation of pollution and waste at the source….”

While there are many examples of P2, and Environment Canada has a “tip sheet” for your business, we want to share with you a couple of stories involving SydneyPLUS staff.

SydneyPLUS encourages staff to bicycle to work because Richmond, BC is relatively flat and the maritime climate makes the weather the same from day to day, if a bit rainy. “I bike to work every day,” says R&D staff person Gordon Tisher. “It prevents pollution and improves my health…” With showers provided on site and secure storage, SydneyPLUS makes it easy for staff to bicycle to work, and it helps to be part of a community that promotes cycling, such as the convenience of taking a bicycle on public transit.

Turning off the lights is a simple step to preventing pollution. If you have visited our headquarters for training, then you may have found yourself briefly in the dark. “While not our intention,” chuckles Mark Maslowski, Manager of Marketing, “we have had staff turn off the lights in our conference room with the clients still in it when leaving the room… it is part of our routine for staff to finds ways to conserve energy.”

Every Month is Library Month

How many months, weeks, and days are celebrated by libraries? A lot. Here is a chronological list of "library months" with a bias for Canadian and US activities to limit the number:

If you feel your month is not represented in this list, which is not intended to be exhaustive, then post a comment. Clearly, we have a lot to celebrate as librarians.

With some regret, we could not find a Library Vendors' Month. Perhaps that month exists, and we simply could not find it at the top of the search results.

Has anyone created a calendar with every library month, week, and day on it?

FEBRUARY

Library Lovers' Month [Friends & Foundations of California Libraries]

There are several public libraries that seem to have a "library month in February."


APRIL

National Library Week [ALA]

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School Library Media Month

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April 13

National Library Workers Day [ALA-APA]

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April 14

National Bookmobile Day

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Banned Books Week [ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom]

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April 15

Teen Literature Day [YALSA]


SEPTEMBER

Library Card Sign-Up Month [ALA]


September 8

International Literacy Day [UNESCO]


OCTOBER

Canadian Library Month

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International School Library Month

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National Medical Librarians Month

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Fourth Monday in October

National School Library Day [e.g. British Columbia Teacher-Librarians'Association]

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Theological Libraries Month [American Theological Library Association]

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National Information Literacy Awareness Month

There are many, many more library months, weeks, and days to celebrate.

Change SLA to ASKPro

You may have already heard that the Special Libraries Association (SLA) is proposing to change its name to the the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKPro).

We think a change to the name of the Special Libraries Association is overdue.

As a vendor that serves special libraries, we changed our approach to marketing to special libraries many years ago to reflect how senior management comes to know the library.

Whether it is stopping an attorney on the tradeshow floor at LegalTech, or a CIO at the ILTA conference, the term "library" may make the person reach for the dictionary.

The Special Libraries Association is correct in its letter to members explaining the need for the change:

"...executives who make hiring decisions and allocate budget dollars do not understand what it means."

Of course, senior management knows what the term means, but that can be the problem when we are trying to describe how library professionals support intranets, cost recovery, databases design, competitive intelligence, etc. SLA has shown restraint in coming up with ASKPro.

What's in a name? We have found so many derivations that it must be a difficult task for SLA to have arrived at a proposal.

Whether it is a knowledge management division, information resource centres, research support centres, etc., we have found that "library" is not enough to convey where our services and products fit in with the strategic goals of the parent organization being served by the library.

Even if the final name does not incorporate "strategic knowledge," it is a step in the right direction. While our staff will continue to use "librarian" on their business cards, it makes sense for the professional body advocating their expertise - SLA - to speak to a broader audience.

Whether it is SydneyPLUS International, or any other major vendor supporting library systems, it is interesting to note that vendors do not have "libraries" in their names.

In part, these vendors have known for a long time that there is a wider audience to be marketing their services and products too. And the library director or manager knows that too.

On the lighter side, here are some random thoughts on the matter:

• The domain for askpro.org and askpro.com is already taken. Whether or not it has been registered by SLA, we do not know. At least one of these domains appears to be owned by an individual. We wonder whether or not SLA will also register for .com

• Wonder if the proposed name change will cascade to other professional organizations, such as AALL and MLA? It is probably a matter of time.

SydneyPLUS Thanks for Thanksgiving (Canada)

With the (Canadian) Thanksgiving Day on Monday, October 12th, we thought our members may want to take a break from reading about SydneyPLUS products and services, and reflect on an inspiring story about a William Kamkwamba, a windmill, and the positive role of libraries.

Here is the inspiring story:

William Kamkwamba was born August 5, 1987, in Malawi, Africa. Something remarkable happened to him at the age of 14. While poverty made him drop out of school at that age, he built a windmill to generate electricity for his home in a country where only two percent of the population can afford it. Where did he learn to build a windmill? A nearby library.

Movingwindmills.org, an official site with more information, affirms the role of the library:

"Armed with curiosity, determination and a library book he discovered in a nearby library, he embarked on a daring plan—to build a windmill that could bring his family the electricity only two percent of Malawians could afford."

You can read William's autobiography this Thanksgiving as it was recently released worldwide on September 29, 2009.

Cost Recovery Must Be On the Radar

Recently finished reading the posting "Using Technology to Manage Costs" on the blog Above and Beyond KM, but we were surprised that there was no mention of using a Cost Recovery system to track the usage of legal research despite law firms spending over $1 million on online resources.

"...costs for electronic re­sources other than LexisNexis and Westlaw rose in 2008, with the average firm spending just over $1 million, compared to some $929,000 in 2007."
Source: http://tinyurl.com/y98l3ly

Making the Case for Cost Recovery

Here are two relevant articles that make the case that Cost Recovery should be part of your strategy:

Law Firm Cost Recovery Is Here to Stay
http://tinyurl.com/kqabdh

By Robert C. Mattern
Special to Law.com
July 6, 2009

Law Librarians: 'No More Sacred Cows'
http://tinyurl.com/y98l3ly

By Alan Cohen
The American Lawyer
September 3, 2009

SydneyPLUS New York Office Moves: New location to improve service infrastructure

(Vancouver, Canada – September 25, 2009) SydneyPLUS International, producer of innovative km solutions for Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies around the world, has moved their New York offices to a new midtown location.

When Dedicated Account Representative and office manager Andrea Specchialo wanted to upgrade office network and telephone lines to better serve customers, she discovered they would have to change location: The office just did not have the needed service infrastructure – and so began the search for a new office.

After a thorough survey of the New York area, Andrea found an excellent centrally located space at 230 Park Avenue, formerly known as the Helmsley Building at 46th Street. “Like all good New Yorkers we are concerned about location, location, location, so what could be better than to move into a premier landmark building everyone recognizes,” says Andrea. “Especially if it turns out that the location has both the full service infrastructure we need, along with an excellent rental proposition.”
“When Andrea brought me her proposal” says Neil Corris, Operations Director at SydneyPLUS, “I realized we had to act: Here was an opportunity to serve our customers better while still being able to exercise the type of fiscal prudence all companies are compelled to these days.”

The new office has:

• the service infrastructure needed to enhance our telephone and networking capabilities with clients
• a midtown address that both New Yorkers and visitors will find easy to locate
  

“When visiting our city or, if you are a local and simply have the opportunity, we invite our clients to drop by and see us in our new building,” says Joe Phillips, veteran SydneyPLUS Technical Support Representative / Dedicated Account Representative.

Completely modernized and a full service building, the historic tower originally served as headquarters of the New York Central railroad companies. Above the elevator doors, bronze reliefs depict a winged helmet surrounding a globe, symbolizing the American empire's global reach. Today the building is making headway into how historic properties can meet the needs of the next century.

SydneyPLUS New York is located at 230 Park Ave, 10th Floor, New York, New York.

About SydneyPLUS International
As a leading developer of Knowledge Management solutions since 1977, SydneyPLUS has partnered with some of the world’s leading businesses — including Fortune 1000 companies and law firms — to provide increased financial and organizational returns through improved access to information.
Whether the goal is to manage a single database of experts within a pharmaceutical company, the digitized special effects collection of a film production company, or all the corporate libraries within a multinational law firm, any organization will achieve increased benefits from more efficient access to their high-value knowledge assets, while enhancing revenues, dramatically increasing efficiency, and reducing costs. SydneyPLUS International is available online at http://www.sydneyplus.com.

SydneyPLUS SNUG 2009 goes virtual

Press Release:

SydneyPLUS SNUG 2009 goes virtual (Vancouver, Canada - September 17, 2009). This year's SNUG (SydneyPLUS National Users Group) meeting, held on September 15, 2009, was an unqualified success - perhaps the best so far. Surprisingly, this meeting almost didn't happen. With the economic downturn, many companies had reduced their travel budgets, making it hard for users to get to the proposed annual SNUG meeting in Chicago. Undaunted, this year's SNUG client committee decided to turn the situation into an opportunity and host a virtual meeting over the internet. Originally aimed at SydneyPLUS clients in North America, SNUG 2009 would now be open to the world.

Being new to a venture on this scale, client committee members, with the assistance of SydneyPLUS, worked over the summer to plan, organize and test the technology necessary to make it all happen. In the end, the careful planning paid off and the meeting went smoothly. The topics were timely and the sessions were packed to a "virtual" capacity. This year's sessions focused on best practices in managing e-journals, SharePoint integration and new product development - such as the SydneyPLUS cost Recovery Module. All sessions were well-attended and enthusiastically received. So much so, that the SNUG09 Twitter page, provided to ensure clients could post feedback during the sessions, hummed with comments like, "Wow, we just finished the first session. This was an awesome experience. Thanks to all who presented and participated." and "We just completed a very successful meeting. It was EXCELLENT!"

This year's SNUG had a number of firsts:

• Due to its online nature, SNUG 2009 was open to clients around the world.
• Best practices sessions were recorded, allowing clients unable to attend to learn from other clients.
• The use of Twitter to post feedback about the conference helped ensure the meeting kept on track.
• Special effort was focused toward making clients from the diverse industries SydneyPLUS supports, feel represented. To that end, presentations were kept short, providing opportunity for interests to be heard from all industries.

With such a positive reception, it's likely the client committee will consider continuing this approach in future SNUG meetings. In the meantime, SydneyPLUS clients can further network by visiting the client supported SNUG wiki at https://snug.pbworks.com. They are also welcome to follow SydneyPLUS at http://twitter.com/sydneyplus.