Lucidea’s Virtual Libraries Focus Group – Will You Join Us?

July 30, 2019

As we interact with special librarians, we observe a trend toward the virtual library—where librarians do not have a central, physical department, yet exercise a broad sphere of influence within their organizations—and serve clients remotely, with content, products and services.

We see this trend as presenting significant opportunities and challenges for special librarians, and are launching a focus group as a means to discuss and share proven practices for virtual library success, and strategies for overcoming obstacles.

The focus group also presents an opportunity for us learn more about virtual library trends, success factors (and challenges) from practitioners—resulting in a better understanding of the capabilities, features and functionality most important to you. In this way, we can continue developing products that contribute to virtual library success and help overcome constraints.

Deliverables resulting from this initiative will include a white paper, a series of blog posts, and possibly an eBook, all promoting the focus group and its work. Ideally, the process will lead to a Hot Topics session at next year’s SLA conference.

Approach

We have developed a preliminary list of 10 topics, and we propose a series of virtual meetings that will take place between now and the end of October. There will be an introductory session with all members, a final meeting with all members, and several smaller meetings, each with a focus on 2-3 topics.

Preliminary Discussion Topics

Our list is below; we anticipate that the introductory session will result in additions to this.

Context

Define Virtual Library
Drivers of Going Virtual
What are the Pillars that Support a Successful Virtual Library?

Benefits and Challenges

Upsides of Virtual Library
Challenges of Virtual Library
Success Factors

Fundamentals

Supporting Processes
Supporting Technologies

Professional Development

Skill Building
Embedded Librarians in the Virtual Library

The Future

What services/products/processes are you currently unable to provide, that you want/need to provide?

Happily, a number of people immediately signed up to the focus group when we announced it at SLA in Cleveland, but we want to make sure that everyone who is interested has the opportunity to participate. Will you join us in this important effort?

If you would like to join the focus group, please confirm your interest with an email to Lara, at labouelsaad@lucidea.com, by Friday, August 9th. We will follow up with more detail shortly thereafter. Thank you!

Lucidea is a knowledge management software and solutions company that provides the infrastructure and business process know-how to help information-intensive organizations easily collect, organize, and leverage their corporate knowledge. With a global customer base of more than 2,300 active clients in more than 50 countries, Lucidea is the largest provider of knowledge management solutions to corporations, law firms, non-profits, government agencies, museums, and archives worldwide.