Colleague.biz

This article in Searcher Magazine discusses the changes taking place in Library and Information Science education and a study of current curricula at accredited institutions. It's written by a professor of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee.

By 2017, some 68 percent of today's librarians will have retired, according to recent estimates in the news (Lynch). President and Mrs. Bush have launched an initiative through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to recruit "a generation of librarians." Since schools of library and information science traditionally attract second or third career professionals, the aging of the information professions is a cause for concern. In addition, many new information-related jobs outside libraries now attract LIS graduates and compete with libraries as employers.
This poses several key challenges for the 56 ALA-accredited schools in North America. (For a list, check out the ALISE site at http://www.alise.org.) These schools must keep curricula vital for new professionals in a variety of settings, attract enough young recruits to fill the vacancies caused by retirements and to fill new types of jobs, and provide choices and flexibility in scheduling that appeal to full- and part-time students, both those pursuing a first career and those changing careers. It is a great time to enter the information professions, but one that poses challenges for LIS schools and employers, as a new generation of information professionals comes on the scene and prepares to tackle jobs in a variety of environments. [...]

I've been looking for a grad student in LIS to help me think through some business information flow issues, so this caught my eye. I know most small businesses don't have the resources to hire an information professional but, from my experience, small businesses need information help more than anyone. And the article discusses how LIS programs are more frequently showing students all the possible career paths they can take.

The careers that attract students to LIS programs aren't always what they end up pursuing. In fact, many of them come into the program without realizing all the career possibilities. One current student told me he started with an interest in special libraries, but, "as I have progressed, I realized that the skills that librarians have of analyzing information sources, or organizing information, and in researching are vital not only in libraries but in government and private business." His new goals are "to use the skills I have acquired to begin a career in knowledge management or competitive intelligence," with the ultimate goal of being in a position that will "have an effect on strategic planning."

Now that's the kind of person I'm looking for.

Can Small Business Use Web Services

8:18:00 PM

comment []

If you have any experience with the printing and publishing industries you know that, outside of a small handful of billion-dollar companies, business automation is a pipe dream. The print industry is largely made up of companies $20 million and smaller -- with net profits as low as 1 percent -- and the idea of EDI-based supply chain operations, electronic invoicing, and real-time inventory management is just beginning to occur to most of them.

Even when it does occur, the implementation is most often a straight routinization of their old manual process -- it is exceedingly rare for a printer or publisher to completely re-engineer a process to take advantge of the inherent a nature of EDI and B2B e-commerce.

I don't know whether these initiatives will lead directly to services that the average small enterprise can use -- BEA and IBM tend to focus on gargantuan implemenations no small business can afford. But if they can get the groundwork right, and seed the tide of easily accessible services for things like invoicing, POs, order confirmations, etc., it could make a major difference in the way the print industry operates in the future.

WEB SERVICES FOR SMALL BUSINESS AUTOMATION
For years it has been extremely expensive for a small business to automate key aspects of its supply chain. Unless driven by a large customer (Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble mind) small businesses seldom took advantage of EDI feeds of order acknowledgements, accounts payable invoices, etc. Instead, many well run small businesses printed purchase orders and faxed them, hand-entered receipts of goods and manually keyed in invoices for supplier shipments.

Web services has the potential to bring on dramatic change. With today's generation of accounting and business management software, small businesses are prepared to remove much of the human intervention that was required in the supply chain. This article shows that the trend starts in the BigCo's, but the prospects for the Forgotten 5000 are clear.
Tech giants back new Web services. Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications that they hope will spur use of emerging software designed to foster business interaction over the Internet. [CNET News.com] [Rodent Regatta]

Playing With Wireless

4:13:14 PM

comment []

I'm just fooling around with my new wireless toys and Radio Remote Access -- sitting in the TV room watching NASCAR at Watkins Glen while blogging. The D-Link AirPlus hub is really cool. I can't tell any difference in performace vs sitting on my local desktop.

I should have done this months ago.