Written By: Guy St. Clair of SMR International
Managing Library Transformation.
Our company – SMR International – has for nearly twenty years enjoyed a strategic business alliance with Soutron Global. Now, with a recently renewed connection between our two organizations, I am pleased to share the news that Tony Saadat and the Soutron Global team have invited me to share with you my thoughts about knowledge services on a regular basis.
And if you are reading this, you know that Soutron Global has a single professional purpose, one that is clearly stated and singularly directed: to work with you to ensure that you are enabled to manage library transformation. As a library manager, knowledge strategist, or any other knowledge professional dealing with anything having to do with any form of research management, you have a few challenges in front of you. To meet those challenges, you must transform your library or, at the very least, move yourself forward so you can manage the library’s transformation.
Regardless of the environment in which you are employed or the focus of the company or institution where you work, you know by now that keeping up with the latest management, leadership, technological, and/or service delivery demands that fall in your lap requires specific tools. Soutron Global has the tools, for Soutron exists as a cloud-based solutions provider dedicated to helping you, ensuring that you are enabled to meet those demands.
And don’t let there be any confusion. Those demands define your job, a job I characterize as “knowledge strategist.” It’s the one job that gives you the authority, the responsibility, and, yes, the accountability for providing the highest levels of knowledge development, knowledge sharing, and knowledge utilization in the organization. [And just for fun, we usually use the acronym KD/KS/KU when we speak about these tasks – it’s helpful for continuing the conversation when someone asks, “What do you do?”]
At this point, you may be asking yourself, “How do I do it?” Or more specifically: “How do I, as a specialist librarian, research manager, technology services leader (or whatever job title I use) transition myself to such a critical – and demanding – role in the organization?”
That’s where I come in. And the many other people today who are taking knowledge-sharing to its next – and in my opinion, its best – service-delivery level. We build what we’re doing (or seeking to do) on the concept we refer to as knowledge services. It’s a relatively new concept as we think about the concept of knowledge-sharing, and it’s a subject I work with a lot. I write about knowledge services, I teach knowledge services, I talk about it, and with my colleagues and friends, I evangelize (yes, that’s the word we use). The whole idea is to get the people who want to provide the best knowledge sharing they can provide for their organizations to move into knowledge services. And to use knowledge services as the foundation for their work as knowledge strategists.
Join me next time and we’ll get specific about knowledge services, about what it is, what it does, and how knowledge services supports you when you work together with Soutron Global to manage your library’s transformation.
“Guy St. Clair is President, Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Strategy, and Knowledge Services Evangelist for SMR International. In his professional work, Guy is recognized as an expert adviser in knowledge services and in building the organizational knowledge culture, with a special emphasis on knowledge strategy development.”
Guy was awarded SLA’s top honor, the John Cotton Dana award, at the 2019 SLA Annual Conference. Learn more about Guy St. Clair’s accolades and his life time of achievements here.
