The information management express and one accidental librarians journey on a parallel line

Hi, my name is Jacinta and I'm a librarian.

I never intended that I would end up this way it just happened. I honestly didn't even read a book until I was in secondary school but then everything just seemed to conspire to make me end up here. My parents say I always had symptoms, even from an early age I liked things to make sense, to be logical and I liked to follow up on things, to be thorough and to plan things in order to make what I wanted to happen. I apparently made regular calls for increased funding even before I read my first book and just like in adult life they where mostly refused. Even now in the great library of scissors and pens that is our family home I'm the only one who knows where everything is!

But seriously - my career as a librarian has been a journey that began accidentally and has continued to unfold as a fortuitous series of happenings and synchronicities in which I get paid to participate. (I know I'm meant to be more driven than that but I find it really difficult when I've often just been in the right place at the right time) I would like to share with you some of the stopovers and adventures I've had on the information profession main line and the baggage I've collected at each stop.

This train has a sleeper carriage so if I get to be too boring feel free to nod off!

Inspired by an incredible teacher, who had unlocked the world of reading for me through the use of poetry in my early high school years, I decided that when I finished high school, I wanted to be a teacher and applied to Melbourne State College to study a Bachelor of Education - secondary. Knowing that my father thought very little of teachers I determined that it would be politic to lessen the blow of my defection to their ranks by including librarianship in my studies. Four years later I emerged a teacher librarian and my study in humility began.

Teacher/librarians at that time were seen to be neither part of the teaching staff nor mission critical to the school - we were just kind of there. My campaign to appear useful and relevant began. Book talks, action learning support, lunchtime readers groups, curriculum scaffolding, crisis counselling, multi media equipment management and learning facilitation, parent teacher night ambassadorship, literary advice and program budget juggling. I think I survived this first two years by virtue of the robust skills that were encouraged through the curriculum offered in the librarianship course that included everything from media arts to financial management. The first leg of my journey on the information profession main line had given me some additional practical baggage - be flexible, be visible and innovate.

After a year spent travelling and enjoying a brief but notorious career as an agricultural labourer (during which I learnt that the growth star on a tomato is not the same as the ripened star and contributed substantially to the increased production of green tomato chutney), I arrived in Darwin to discover that there was a shortage of qualified librarians and my qualifications were valuable. I doubt I would have had the confidence to attempt the transition from teacher librarian to public librarian had the opportunities not been so abundant and yet it was probably one of the best things that happened to me. I thoroughly enjoyed being out of school. I often tell people that this was the job I have enjoyed most in my life. Personally it was an opportunity to give people something for free, to be helpful, to buy beautiful children's books, to solve mysteries by running facts to ground at the reference desk and to innovate to get the best bang for our buck. Professionally it was an opportunity to increase my practical baggage classification, selection, financial management, marketing and promotion, people management, client service, mediation, negotiation, disaster planning and strategic planning.

But I will remember my time as a public librarian mostly for two things:

Firstly, I met and worked with a really professional chief librarian, Diana Leeder. Through this association I learnt about the development of sound public policy, and the need to consider equity in delivering public service. The need to make workplace culture explicit, to provide candid feedback and to tackle the uncomfortable as conscientiously as we capitalise on the enjoyable.

Secondly, my time with public libraries provided me with a valuable lesson in mind space management. I found that after some years in the job I began to invest more and more mind space in the microcosm that is organisational politics. I think this is unfortunately an easy trap for librarians to fall into as we are constantly forced by funding restraints to look inward for efficiencies and so become very organisationally bound. It often seems that we are the only ones who truly appreciate how important librarians are and we feel compelled to stand on our dignity until everyone else finally concedes and allows us to rule the world.

It took the birth of my second son and the death of a colleague to make me realise that at some point I had become 'precious', basically petty things had begun to matter and my capacity to innovate had been reduced. It was time to move on, to find something new.

So I added the best piece of baggage yet to my collection and that was the capacity to be honest about my performance and I cut loose and launched myself on the flexible worker market.

I enjoyed the freedom of casual work and picked up some reference shifts in the Northern Territory library and also worked as a relief teacher. I needed to be not connected to things for a while in order to get my perspective back.

However, economic reality dictated that something more substantial in the income line was required so I applied for a project position with NTLIS as a data checker on the Virtua project. I spent days doing bibliographic holdings checking, a fate that was redeemed only by the fact that it provided me with opportunity to network within NTLIS and hear about other opportunities. I heard tell of a librarian in a special library who was looking to job share and, part time work being my preference, this sounded to me like a great opportunity not least because the position also managed the technical drawings and corporate records sections of the Department of Transport and Works. I applied and was successful but by the time I started in the position the government had restructured to the point that the position no longer managed the library. I was a librarian without a library but with no end of corporate records. I had jumped tracks and was barrelling down what seemed to be a very different line.

However, when I took stock I realised that my librarianship training and career had provided me with the necessary baggage to do this job. It was just another branch of the same line. I was still going to be delivering information, organising and classifying information, researching and synthesising information, managing resources (people and money) storing information, conducting reference interviews, serving multiple publics, administering systems I was just going to be applying these skills in a different way. My timing for this change coincided with the introduction of the new records management regime in NTG and so I was fortunate in that it was a bit like managing new business. I had to find ways of implementing the new information management mandates of the NTG as opposed to inventing new mandates.

Some of the key challenges in making the transition from librarian to information manager were:

• Working with live information, instead of working with static information which held its meaning as an implement of fact or leisure which was published and packaged, I was now working with information morphed its form and content daily and information which could change from asset to liability in the space of 24 hours.
• Instead of maximising the availability of information I was now often protecting it from access. Security classifications and caveats became my stock in trade. Not all clients had the same rights in relation to the collection their rights where dictated by their status in relation to particular characteristic of the information such as:
  
  • Privacy
  • Policy sensitivity
  • Time criticality
  • Commercial sensitivity
  • Cultural sensitivity
  • Law enforcement and security sensitivities
• Instead of working in an environment that preserved information for its subject value I was now working in an environment which valued information for its legal or business value. This was a critical difference in the drivers for managing the information because instead of keeping it because we could we had to look at why we would keep it. The function of the information is far more critical than the subject of the information in the world of records.
• Instead of working in an environment where we had discretion to 'weed' I was now in an environment where we had to ensure that destruction or disposal of information was legally authorised. Those of you who are familiar with the recent case against British tobacco will be familiar with this concept. Governments have even greater responsibilities in this regard because of the need to maintain evidence of the accountability chain and to be able to demonstrate probity and impartiality.
• Instead of working established classification rules and systems I was working in an environment that required innovation and system design. No Dewy or SEARS no AACR2. Records was a frontier characterised by idiosyncratic classification and numbering schemes which were changed and amended in an adhoc manner to accommodate the latest wind direction. Although there were some local conventions and emerging national standards there was no requirement to comply and so no incentive for organisations to submit to the overheads associated with the adoption of new systems.
• Instead of working with staff in an organised professional architecture I was working with a team of people who undervalued themselves only slightly less than the organisation they worked for undervalued them. Although there where records management competency standards they had not seen much light of day in management circles in the NTG public service.
• Aside from all these challenges two enormous shadows hung over my time in information management in NTG. The change in work practice from manual and paper based systems to the electronic world meant that whole issue of managing information created by people on a daily basis was becoming more and more difficult. The speed with which information could be created and disseminated was outstripping the manual tracking and accountability protocols. The second shadow was from the stockpile of information that had for years been kept in sheds and storage rooms throughout the NT. No one game to throw it out because it might one day be needed but at the same time no one with the time to manage it properly or store it effectively. To put it bluntly there are a lot of very well informed rats and cockroaches in Darwin.

Addressing these challenges and legacies has been my stock in trade for the last five years. First with Department of Corporate and Information Services delivering services to Department of Transport and Works, PAWA, Office of Science Communication and Advanced Technology and then with Department of Community Development Sports and Cultural Affairs. Needless to say I was delighted when the NTG introduced a legislative framework for the management of and access to the records of government business. This framework provided all information managers in NTG with teeth and we seized them.

It also provided me with my next stop on my parallel line. I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity to work with two other people within government to prepare the way for this new regime. The information act implementation team was based in the Department of Justice and incorporated a risk management specialist, a solicitor and myself. We worked with officers from all NTG agencies and the information commissioner to prepare for the introduction of Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection in the Northern Territory. The collective skills of this team are reflective of the balance that had to be achieved in implementing the act. Agencies needed to adopt a pragmatic approach to legal issues raised by the management of their business information.

My role in the team was to develop tools and systems to quantify current information holdings and liabilities, to prepare for the reporting requirements of the act and to assist agencies in developing policy and procedure necessary to respond to request for information without breaching privacy or confidentiality requirements or compromising NTG's standing in relation to the information. It was a brilliant experience and one that I enjoyed thoroughly. New skills I developed through this project included business analysis and system design. The project also provided me with an overview of government agencies and their business and enabled me to actually see the value that could be added if these agencies where to cooperate. I was given a first class view of how government could be 'joined up'.

At the conclusion of the project I returned to my now home agency DCDSCA and resumed my role as information manager with the new elements of privacy and freedom of information added in. I am now knee deep in FOI requests and am continuing to promulgate the new privacy regime throughout the agency.

Despite my status as a recovering librarian I believe I daily face the same issues as many of you face.

• The need to deal with quality issues created by the 'quick and dirty' side of IT solutions to information management needs and problems.
• The need to deal with the proliferation of information that the global changes in information architecture have facilitated.
• The need to deliver services in new and innovative ways in order to add value for the clients and stay relevant to a fastly changing environment.
• The need to be able to keep dancing on our toes. To stay motivated and positive in an often ungrateful world.

I think that we as librarians can be confident that we have a robust generic tool kit and capacity that enables us consider and adapt strategically to most of the issues we as a profession are encountering and by far our greatest challenge is the dancing on our toes routine.

Jacinta Stanford

Biography

Jacinta grew up in country Victoria and studied teacher librarianship at Melbourne College of Advanced Education. She arrived in Darwin in 1989 and has been pretty well flat out in the information industry ever since! She has worked as a teacher librarian, public librarian and information manager.

Her career highlights include founding the Young Territory Authors Award and the NT chapter of the Children's Book Council of Australia and most recently working on the whole of government implementation team for the information act. She has two sons and lives in a jungle. When she grows up she wants to be an expert in something quite esoteric and travel the world commenting on whatever it is she's an expert in.

She is currently the information manager with Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs with NT Government. She handles the FOI and privacy and information management policy - she is not currently in the library.