Peter Drucker's at it Again!


What He REALLY Thinks about Libraries and Librarians

Source for the following:

Why is a guy of this caliber, a BUSINESS guy, bothering with librarians and libraries? Read on.

As usual, Drucker comes right out and hits us right between the eyes with his on target observations:

[Public libraries] contain data. The customer decides what is information ... [T]he general library is just a store, although librarians can -- and do -- make a difference.

Drucker points to where the knowledge in libraries lives - in the librarians:

In a special library, the librarians have the knowledge that enables them to convert the data in the library into information for the clients. I am always amazed how much topical knowledge special librarians have about the international trade that is the business of their customers.

Librarians in a special library know what their customers need and often they know it much better than their customers in the organization do. They can -- and do -- anticipate the customer's information needs. They can -- and do -- reach out to the customer and point him or her in the right information direction. They can -- and do know what new data is in their customer's field or sphere of interest.

When asked what librarians should be paying attention to, Drucker turns to business basics. One of the most critical business trends that Drucker points out is something near and dear to knowledge management (KM), the need for organizations to have information about the outside world.

Yes, we are talking about competitive intelligence. Drucker is adamant on this point:

Companies may know a good deal about their customers. They know nothing, as a rule, about their non-customers -- the people who should be our customers but buy from someone else. Why do they do that? And yet it is the non-customer where important changes always start first.

He goes on to say that the same is true of technology; that technological advances happen outside the organizations that are impacted the most.

Another business trend that Drucker tells librarians to watch and learn about has to do with recognizing the difference between managing employees and managing people. Again, an issue KM wrestles with constantly.

Drucker states that there is a split happening, as managing employees deals more with regulations and rules, avoiding trouble, while managing people focuses in on developing individuals and their strengths.

As for finding information on the web, Drucker has nothing good to say about it. He sticks to his guns, telling us that the web does not have a librarian who can say to us:

This is what you are looking for, and this is where you'll find it.

The code and the librarian convert the chaotic and unlimited universe of data into information and no web will ever be able to do this, if only because there is no way to classify the universe. You first have to codify it.

To let you in on a secret, when I had a new client in a field of which I knew nothing ...

... I would first go to the librarian in the company's special library and say, 'I know absolutely nothing about this field. What do I need to read and know that will enable me to understand what the client is talking about?'

Not once have I been let down.

If Peter Drucker can admit that he does not know something, then anyone should be able to. But, that is not the case. One of the leading causes of people NOT approaching a reference librarian to ask a question is precisely this: they do not want to appear to be stupid. A sort of vicious cycle, since just by being in a library, you are most likely looking for an answer.

Posted: Sat - February 5, 2005 at 02:38 PM          

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