Blog Series on How to Increase Your Value in Your Workplace

The SLA Blog has started a series called Alignment Steps that contains advice on how librarians and information professionals can prove and increase their value in their workplace.

So far, the blog has published 3 posts:

• Seek and Destroy Jargon (October 8, 2009): "Using language that people important to your career will understand is not 'dumbing down.' It is smartening up to the reality that we become our own worst enemies when we put barriers between ourselves and the people we serve. Look at your Web site, job description, and any materials used to market or inform people about your services. Find every word that would not be immediately understood by a person outside of the library profession. Replace it or explain it."
• Compare Strategies (December 9, 2009): "Start by obtaining a copy of your organization’s latest strategic plan. Don’t settle for whatever is posted on your Web site; ask the appropriate office, department or executive if it is up to date or under revision (...) Now compare your organization’s strategic plan with that of your library or information center. (If you do not have your own strategic plan, this is where to start.) Are there disconnects? Does your strategy do the best possible job in supporting your organization’s priorities? What can you do now to change that? "
• Align With Other Departments (March 3, 2010): "Set up meetings with other departments to learn more about their current and upcoming priorities and the information they will need to be successful (...) Tell them about the internal and external information resources that you can make available to them."
  

SLA, or Special Library Association, is an international organization of information professionals in over eighty countries worldwide. It has a very active Legal Division whose past chair is a Canadian law librarian.