BOOK AND SOFTWARE REVIEWS
Schopflin, Katharine (ed.). A handbook for coporate information professionals. London: Facet Publishing, 2015. viii, 184 p. £59.95. ISBN 978-1-85604-968-9.
This new handbook for information professionals working in corporate environments was published by Facet using the experience acquired from work on other similar handbooks. A number of assorted authors, mainly information professionals, working in the UK organizations, but with some input from Canada, the USA and Australia have provided ten chapters on different aspects of the organizational information work.
I could not be entirely sure what was the overall aim of the collection and there is no preface or introduction to explain it. However, one can extrapolate it from the authors' background and the first chapter, which introduces not only the history of corporate informaton service (or rather a short overview of the development of special libraries) but also outlines the features of information landscape in morden organizations. So, I would formulate the aim of the Handbook as providing access to good professional practice of information specialists working in various corporations with a number of information functions.
Most of the chapters seem to fall into this definition. I think that the chapters on Managing the corporate intranet (chapter 2), Building a corporate taxonomy (chapter 5), Working with suppliers and licencing for e-librarian (chapter 9), or Training end users in the workplace (chapter 10) can be useful for many information specialists working not only in private corporations, but also in public organizations. They are down to earth and some of them rather instrumental and instructional.
Some chapters address broader issues. A chapter on internal and external marketing (chapter 3) of information services in organizations maps the ways of reaching audiences and gaining recognition not only of employees in organizations, but also of the top managers who are not usual users of these services. I also liked the idea that internal information services can be marketed to external partners, and the author provides quite interesting examples of strategic sharing as well as proving the value of partnerships.
Chapter 4 on librarian-informtion-technology-expert situation in modern organizations and the difficult situation of negotiating one's role with the information technology support units is maybe less instrumental; however, it highlights one of the problematic areas in information management. There are some examples of tasks that can benefit from mutual cooperation of information specialists librarians and technology support staff. The problem related to the recognition of the information and technology skills of modern librarians is also addressed. Together with chapter 7 (Successfully managing your team through change and transition) these two chapters may be regarded as addressing strategic issues of managing the information service provision within a complex corporate environment that is also quite competitive. Chapter 7 looks into the causes and reasons of chages involving information services and also can be linked to chapter 3 on marketing as it includes marketing strategies among the means of change management .
Two remaining chapters on Practical knowledge management (chapter 6) and Successful management of insight, intelligence and information functions in a global organization (chapter 8) suggest that everything, from marketing, through people management to general management must be done throughout the organiztion by the information professional. I suspect that this is too wide a remit to be of great help to practitioners, and how "insight" might be managed seems problematical! Chapter 6 is written well with interesting examples and good humour. Though I can say that the author is committing the same fault as anyone writing about knowledge management: promises to emphasize management and forget knowledge, then forgets the promise and defines data, information, knowledge, intelligence and the forms of intellligence, then forgets all this and provides some useful material on information and communication management, work with human resources and organizational development. I would recommend this chapter to those information professionals who are looking for new ideas to develop their activities. Chapter 8 may be useful for top managers of big global corporations, but frankly, I had difficulty to relate it directly to the tasks of information professionals. Nevertheless, some might find it challenging and use for achieving ambitious goals.
This collection will mainly benefit information professionals and managers in various organizations. Its practical bias is also emphasized by the title.
