SLA-TSG Event Report: Alternative Careers Panel (March 19th)

This past Thursday the SLA Toronto Student Group, jointly with the TALL student representative, hosted a panel of information professionals employed in some of the alternative (meaning non-library) career paths available to iSchool graduates. The turnout was significantly higher than that of our other recent panel, with a head-count, this time, of somewhere between 35 and 40. There were enough attendees that the TALL rep actually had to go drag chairs in from a nearby student lounge to accommodate the extra bodies. Evidently iSchool students (many of whom will be graduating this Spring) are very interested in finding less-than-obvious uses for their degrees. It would be trite of me to pin this on the state of the economy, but it's a tempting conclusion to draw, nevertheless.

We had five panelists this time around. They were (from left to right):

Alison Colvin: An FI graduate from the early '80s, now working as Director of Information Services for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal.

Eileen Lewis - An FI graduate from just last year, now working as an information officer for United Way Toronto.

Jennifer Toews: An FI graduate from 1998, who for the past nine years has worked at the Fisher Rare Book Library at U of T, arranging and describing author papers.

Sophia Apostol: A Western graduate (and recent Professional Profile), now working for Coutts Information Services.

Jennifer Zhang: An FI graduate from 1995, now working as a researcher for the Sunnybrook Foundation.

The positions held by these five panelists fell broadly into a few major classes. Jennifer Zhang and Eileen Lewis said they were involved, for the most part, in what's known in the non-profit world as “prospect research.” Prospect research, as these two explained it, is essentially the art of leveraging information to actively locate and solicit donations from wealthy individuals whose backgrounds and interests suggest they might be willing to donate sizeable amounts of money to whatever specific cause or organization is paying for the research. Jennifer put it most succinctly: “It's all about making the right ask, at the right time, for the right program,” she said. Eileen added that “there really is an impact” associated with this type of research; United Way studies have shown that well-researched donation requests always produce better donations than more passive methods of soliciting contributions. “It's a really nice sector to work in,” Eileen added, perhaps alluding to the fact that this kind of activity, while competitive, isn't exactly crass or corporate, either. To work in prospect research is to serve humanitarian causes. Jennifer and Eileen mentioned that the salary is great, as well.

Sopia Apostol and Alison Colvin both had positions that defied easy description. Their actual job duties sounded malleable, as though they could change at any time according to the dictates of whatever data and human resources requirements happened to arise. Sophia's job was mutable to the extent that she was actually able to mold its description to suit her own tastes—she made it up from scratch with input from a contact at Coutts. “I wrote out, like, this dream job description,” she said, which then became a working reality. Her job now consists, she said, of “a lot of train-the-trainer” duties. She's also involved in creating a wiki-driven knowledge base.

Alison said she was likewise involved in building a knowledge base for her employer, using Microsoft's Sharepoint product. Aside from the informational aspects of the task, which her years as a legal librarian had left her well prepared for, she said there was a pronounced human aspect to her work at the Tribunal. For instance, to convince Tribunal members, most of whom were in their seventies, to contribute to the knowledge base, Alison and her team hit upon the idea of moving payroll functions onto Sharepoint, to serve as an irresistible enticement to participation. In other words, no Sharepoint, no paycheck. Alison said that she looks to hire new employees who possess the “relationship-building skills” necessary to work and navigate in this highly social information environment.

Sophia and Alison were also in agreement on another very important point: being an information professional means finding ways to make oneself invaluable to an employer. “You want to be part of the solution,” said Alison. This means getting close to decision-makers and finding out what problems are facing an organization, then devising ways of using information practices to alleviate those problems. In Alison's case, this involved attending lots of board meetings and listening very closely to all that was being said. “I'm a nosy person,” she said. Her natural curiosity seems to have paid off.

Jennifer Toews was the member of the panel with the closest thing to what could be considered a traditional library job. Her primary job function at Fisher, she said, is arranging and describing personal papers of authors and poets, but she's also responsible for negotiating directly with some of those authors and poets for donations of new material. This aspect of her work coincides with some of the social competencies touted by Sophia and Alison. “Building interpersonal relationships is very important,” Jennifer said.

In general, it seems as though pursuing a career in any of the “alternative” areas of information professionalism requires a combination of talent, drive, and political acumen. It seems as though there's plenty of opportunity for the quick and the clever to find their place in some of the information world's interstices, recession or no recession. Oh, right--we weren't going to talk about the economy. Sorry.

Jennifer Zhang and Sophia Apostol left behind lots of business cards, many of which are still in the possession of the SLA-TSG. If anyone who attended the panel would like to get in touch with Jennifer or Sophia, they should not hesitate to contact us.

Professional Profile: Juanita Richardson - Richardson Jalakas & Associates, CEDROM SNi

I met with Juanita to discuss her more than twenty year career as an information professional in both financial services institution information centres and as an independent consultant primarily responsible for sales and business development for an online vendor. CEDROM-SNi is headquartered in Montreal with offices in Toronto, Halifax, Ottawa and Paris. CEDROM-SNi collects information from newspapers, trade publications, databases, newswires and radio and TV transcripts. Subscription to their website allows an organization to easily monitor the news, search the extensive archives, distribute information to user groups and post articles to the Internet or an intranet.

Question: Describe your job.

Juanita is the founder and managing principal of Richardson Jalakas & Associates, an information strategy consultant firm. She is also a Business Development Consultant for CEDROM-SNi in Toronto. Juanita has worked with CEDROM-SNi for seven years. Initially, she was responsible for negotiating licenses with publishers and broadcasters. Today, her emphasis is on developing and maintaining client relationships in order to develop new business in the Toronto market as well as ensure current clients are satisfied with the product. Many of her clients are corporate librarians. Juanita estimates that she spends approximately 70% of her time maintaining current clients and 30% of her time on business development.

Question: Describe your first job in libraries and subsequent career path.

Juanita has held a number of interesting positions over the course of her twenty year career as a librarian. She started her career as a Research Librarian in the ScotiaMcLeod information centre in Toronto in 1987. She supported her clients need for information about various public companies and business sectors at ScotiaMcLeod for two years. Juanita’s second permanent position was for one year in the research library at CIBC Wood Gundy. Juanita capitalized on her experience at Scotia and CIBC to manage the information centre at Deloitte & Touche for six years.

Following ten years working in financial services information centres, Juanita was compelled to move away from serving internal clients to contributing more directly to a corporation’s bottom line by dealing with external clients. Juanita worked as the Manager of Licensing and Project Strategy at Infomart Dialog for two years. Juanita started her own information consulting company in 1998 with a focus on information auditing, knowledge management consulting and vendor marketing development and licensing. In 2002, CEDROM-SNi became Juanita’s primary client.

Question: Describe your educational background.

Juanita has a B.A. from the University of Ottawa in Modern Languages and an MLIS from McGill University. Developing a proficiency in French while at the University of Ottawa and completing her library degree at McGill has been extremely helpful in her career at CEDROM-SNi. Following ten years of experience in corporate libraries and two years employed on the vendor side of the business, Juanita made the decision to start her executive MBA at Athabasca University. Completing an executive MBA built on the foundations she had established in information centres.

Question: What advice do you have for new information professionals?

Juanita provided a passionate perspective on the information profession today. She has really enjoyed her career as a librarian and feels that students graduating from information programs today have a very marketable set of skills. She emphasizes that students need to think of the term “librarian” in the broadest sense and not confine themselves to the “four walls of the library”. It is important that information professionals have a sense of what skills and value they bring to the company. She concedes that it is frequently difficult for the information professional to quantify their contribution to a corporation. Juanita emphasizes that new graduates need to be flexible and open-minded in order to be successful and that many exciting opportunities exist outside of the traditional library building.

For further information about CEDROM-SNi, please refer to the company website at www.cedrom-sni.com. Juanita encourages interested students to stop by the CEDROM-SNi booth at the CLA Conference or contact her directly via email at juanita DOT richardson AT cedrom-sni DOT com.

Interview by Alice Desrocher