This article is one in a series of interviews BITS is conducting with CIC managers to get their views of the "big picture" as it relates to their work and the Laboratory mission. These people have also been asked to do a little forecasting as it applies to their business. BITS invites readers to join in the spirit of these interviews, treating the forecasts as a sort of informed speculation without holding anyone's "feet to the fire" to make the predictions come true.
The designation "The Library Group" hardly fits anymore. Yes, CIC-14 still operates a library; people can come in and browse the stacks, but the group's organization and focus have changed in response to customer needs. As a result of discussions with customers as well as frequent surveys, the group is now organized around product teams. "Product output teams" include the books and journals team, including electronic books and journals; electronic databases (the newest); reports team; customer services; and the Library Without Walls (LWW) team. The business support and resource team sustains the product teams.
Group Leader Rick Luce explains why the library focuses on customers:
"We must be user-centered to serve our customers best. Our viability as
a group and as an institution is a function of customer loyalty. Customer
loyalty is not just a result of satisfaction-it's a function of delight.
Otherwise, today's customers could just as well go elsewhere." The group
formally surveys one fourth of its customers quarterly; thus, each library
customer has an opportunity to collaborate with the library on its future
directions at least once each year.
To manage knowledge effectively, we need to tap our "corporate
intelligence," which includes the following components and related tasks:
When asked what are the impediments to getting more journals on-line, Luce explains that publishers are still learning how to make a paradigm shift from paper presses. They understood how to make money in the paper world, and they are relatively slow to adopt new technologies. Many see a threat to their business, including concerns about pirating, lost profits, and copyright issues. There are some innovative, although user unfriendly, solutions being tried or in the development stages: pay-per-view schemes and software for read-only documents so that they cannot be saved or copied.
Being proactive about future directions involves training library staff to have a far greater depth of knowledge of customer needs as well as more comprehensive knowledge about information technology as it develops. The staff, in turn, helps users to increase their understanding; an example might be explaining what a database such as SciSearch at LANL is optimized to do as well as how to use it. In addition, the library recognizes that LANL users have a wide variety of skill levels and sophistication. The group takes responsibility for raising these levels by providing classes.
The Research Library's vision of itself has changed from that of the "knowledge archive" to one of being a vital partner with its customers in managing knowledge. The group carries out its end of the partnership by keeping in close touch with customers' present needs and keeping an eye on the future of technology and innovations in information management that will maximize the benefits of this partnership.
Luce is the Research Library Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Project Leader of the Library Without Walls. He received a 1996 LANL Distinguished Performance Award for contributions supporting science and technology through the transformation of the Research Library. He is known nationally for his work in linking heterogeneous library systems. He is an avid road cyclist and likes to spend time with his family exploring the Southwest.
Rick Luce, rick.luce@lanl.gov,
(505) 667-4448
Research Library (CIC-14)
Ann Mauzy, mauzy@lanl.gov,
(505) 667-5387
Communications Arts and Services (CIC-1)