Special Libraries Association

Connecting People and Information

Creating the Future:

Five Global Trends Information Professionals Should Understand

Anne Caputo
President, SLA
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

“There are
some things
you learn best
in calm, and
some in
storm.”
~Willa Cather
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

“If you don't

know where you
are going, any
road will get you
there.”
~Lewis Carroll
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

“Just lie down

on the floor
and keep
calm.”
~John Dillinger
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

We live in a time of….

Information
and
Knowledge
Explosion
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Connecting People and Information

Did You Know?

• There are 31 billion searches in Google every month, in 2006 this
number was 2.7 billion
• Time it took to reach a market audience of 50 million
• Radio – 38 years
• Television – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• iPod – 3 years
• Facebook – 2 years
Source: Media Convergence Forum
Rome in 2008 and New York in 2009
 Special Libraries Association
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Did you Know?

The computer in your cell phone today is
 1 million times cheaper
 1 thousand times more powerful
 100 thousand times smaller
Than MIT’s most powerful computer in 1965

What used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket.

What used to fit in your pocket will fit inside a blood cell in
25 years
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

Did You Know?

• Number of Internet devices in use
• 1984 – 1,000
• 1992 – 1,000,000
• 2009 – 1,000,000,000
• One week’s worth of content in The New York Times
contains more information than a person was likely to
come across in a lifetime in the 18th century
• There were more video uploads to YouTube in the last 2
months than content on ALL network television since 1948
 Special Libraries Association
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Did You Know?

• Last year Americans had access to
• 1,000,000,000,000 web pages
• 1,000,000+ new books
• 65,000 iPhone apps
• 10,500 radio stations
• 5,500 magazines
• 200+ cable television networks
• 240,000,000 televisions
• Of which 2,000,000 are in bathrooms
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What does this mean?

• Snap out of it!
• We live in a time when
– Change is constant
– Flexibility matters
– Attitude is everything
• We need to be
• Positive
• Interesting
• Inventive
• Persistent
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

Five global trends information

professionals should understand
• Globalization
• Distressed Markets
• Disintermediation
• Disruptive technologies
• Competition
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

Globalization – What does it mean?

• Globalization is the trend of countries and cultures
becoming more connected through business,
governmental cooperation, mass media and
other sectors.
– People - Business
– Governments - Information
– Culture - Technology
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Globalization - Challenges
• Clashing world views and values
• Economic concerns
• Homogeneity of cultures
• National identity

When two cultures trade with each other they tend to expand the
opportunities available to individuals”
Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction, 2004
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Globalization and Community

• Interconnected personal
networks and sites
• 350 million+ active
Facebook members
– 70% outside the US

• Multimedia formats
• Digital word of mouth
• Recommendation,
referral, review
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Globalization and the Knowledge Professional

• Off-shoring of information functions

• Global business culture
• Alignment – a global view of knowledge
professionals
• And……
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Distressed Markets
• The global economy is in uncharted
territory, with world trade declining by
more in 2009 than it has in the entire
post-World War II period.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010

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Distressed Markets – How much?

• Collapse of the global housing bubble
• Bank solvency
• Global stock market declines
• Unemployment and underemployment
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Distressed Markets and the Knowledge Professional

• Outsourcing services
• Downsizing staff
• Closing Information Centers
• Struggle to demonstrate value
• And…….
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 Special Libraries Association
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Disintermediation

Definition
The elimination of intermediaries in the
supply chain, also referred to as in
"cutting out the middlemen."
MarketingTerms.com
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Disintermediation – Rise of the Individual

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Invasion of the Millennials

• Born after 1978
• Digital natives, Generation Y
• Always connected
• Multitasks… fast
• All information is good
• Lives virtually
• Setting digital trends for
everyone
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Disintermediation
• "...executives at most firms admit that their ability to make good
decisions needs improvement:
• Only 3% describe their companies as 'experts' in
using business data to drive better decisions
• Fewer than one-quarter (24%) rank their firms as
'advanced practitioners'.“
The Intelligent Enterprise: Creating a culture of speedy and efficient decision-making
A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit
December 2009
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Disintermediation and the Knowledge Professional

• Do it yourself mentality
• Struggle to show and prove value
• Leads to – or follows from – disruptive
technologies
• And….
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EIU - Intelligent Enterprise

Recommendations
• Develop a more collaborative business
environment. Bottlenecks can be
removed by simplifying corporate
structures and fostering the flow of
information among departments.
 Special Libraries Association
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EIU - Intelligent Enterprise

Recommendations
• Emphasize information governance as a
way to ensure the consistency, integrity and
accuracy of data. If resources or personnel
are not sufficient to create a dedicated data
governance function, then managers should
focus on implementing policies and
procedures.
 Special Libraries Association
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EIU - Intelligent Enterprise

Recommendations
• Improve the quality of insights gleaned
from the customer service and support
functions, particularly in a weakened
economy when customer loyalty is
paramount.
 Special Libraries Association
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EIU - Intelligent Enterprise

Recommendations
• Foster a culture of speedy and efficient
decision-making throughout the enterprise.
This can be done by encouraging all
corporate functions to use accurate and
timely data from all parts of the business
through the adoption of appropriate tools
and processes.
 Special Libraries Association
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Disruptive Technologies
• Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are
terms used in business and technology literature to
describe innovations that improve a product or service in
ways that the market does not expect…. [they] are
particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing
market, because they are competition coming from an
unexpected direction.
Wikipedia
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Disruptive
Technologies
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90-9-1 Principle: The Inequality of

the Web

Source: Jakob Nielsen - Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

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Disruptive Technologies and Knowledge Professionals

• Leads to and results from

disintermediation
• Change in entire service model
• And….
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Competition
• Who are our competitors?
• What are their attributes?
• Why are they succeeding?
Special Libraries Association
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 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

Competition
• We are all in the process of
taking the web and social
media to our hearts and
reshaping it to meet our
needs
• You did all this before – the
only new thing is that you
are now doing it
automatically via the Internet

Technology changes the way we operate every day….

Source: TNS; SocialCorp – Social Media Goes Corporate, Joel Postman

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What does this mean?

What we call it What others might call it

• Acquisitions • Purchasing
• Selection
• Collection Development
• Organization
• Cataloging • Classification
• Taxonomy & Metadata • Customer assistance
• Reference • Teaching/Training
• Research
• Library Instruction Market Intelligence
•
• Online Searching
• Information Analysis
 Special Libraries Association
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Monster.com Job Description

Qualifications:

Research experience with merchants, payments, financial services, and internet services
Demonstrated ability to formulate and deliver insights that have importantly impacted business
results
Ability to quickly understand and use a variety of data to uncover a cohesive "story" that will help decision-makers take action; ability to
summarize and "bottom line" research results in crisp executive summaries and
recommendations
Demonstrated experience and success managing large international research projects.
Deep experience doing research to support marketing organizations and/or agencies
Strong written, presentation and oral communication skills.
Strong vendor management skills and demonstrated experience

MA, MBA, in business, marketing, psychology or related field; BS considered with very strong experience. Ph.D. is a strong plus

•
 Special Libraries Association
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Monster.com Job Description

• What company? • EBay-PayPal

• What heading? • Research

• What price? • $115,000

 Special Libraries Association
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Competition and the Knowledge Professional

• Good enough world

• Low barriers to entry
• Educated global society
• Quality information anywhere
• And…..
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

What next?
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

What next?
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

What next?
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

What next?
 Special Libraries Association
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What next?
 Special Libraries Association
Connecting People and Information

THANK YOU
ANNE CAPUTO
ANNE.CAPUTO@DOWJONES.COM