New Buzzword in Libraries: CI

Yesterday DALL members had the pleasure of hearing Greg Lambert, Library and Records Manager from King & Spaulding, on the topic of Competitive Intelligence. Currently Greg is utilizing his programming skills, combined with the K&S librarians’ research skills, to create some cool CI materials for K&S. His presentation is on the DALL website at http://www.dallnet.org/.

Here are a few buzzwords I liked from Greg’s session:

1.Analysis! Librarians are great at research and repackaging but stop at analyzing the data needed for CI. Analysis is not practicing law.
2.Break down the “Silos’ of Library and Marketing departments. Work together!

Continuing on this subject…
Today, I attended HALL’s half day seminar on the same subject. Speakers included Greg plus Laura Walters, Client Development Specialist at Bracewell & Giuliani and Mark Gediman, Director of Information Services at Best Best & Krieger.

Their presentations can be found on the HALL website at http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/hall. The sessions were also created as a podcast. To access the podcast, non-members must pay a small fee. Watch for the link on the HALL’s website.

There were a few points that I liked from the HALL session:

1.Teamwork with Marketing: What is CI? Where Marketing and Research Center (Library) meet as a hybrid process of strategic planning and research activities.

2. Technology should be used as a tool, not as a strategy.

3. Be proactive!

Keep your ears open. Ask questions.