More than Keeping Pace: Finding Your Competitive Edge

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More than Keeping Pace Finding Your Competitive
Edge

• Susan Fifer Canby
• VP Libraries Information Services
• National Geographic Society
• Washington, DC
• Croatian Library Association
• April 27-29, 2006

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National Geographic HRVATSKA
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Its About Position and Leadership
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1 Assets and Skills ? Products and Strategies

• Corporate Knowledge earn entrepreneurial income
  
• Information and filtering provide competitive
  intelligence
• Negotiation enterprise information access
• Management rights, contracts, records,
  projects, costs, metrics, people
• Collaboration facilitate knowledge sharing

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2 Redefine Customers - WIFM?

• Off-site staff
• Headquarters staff
• business staff (marketing, finance, licensing)
• senior managers
• editorial staff (photographers,
• writers, producers, map makers)
• senior editors

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3 Link LIS Goals to Needs
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4 Deliver 5 Evaluate Impact
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Put the Past to Work
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Apply Heritage
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Able Interns Save Money
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Provide Competitive Intelligence
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Its All About Us
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Aggregate Science News
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Identify the Patterns
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Compile Internal Information
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Identify and Report Trends

• Trend BBC on iPods
• Details
• Listeners download BBC radio shows and listen to
  them at their convenience.
• Podcasting is part of a trial to gauge the
  appetite radio programs on demand via iPods or
  other MP3 players.
• Initial tests have prompted extending the trial
  to include extracts from 20 radio programs,
  including World Service documentaries.
• Implications NGS should publish an enterprise
  podcast.

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Listen Up
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Organize/Discovery Internal Information
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Manage External Information
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Create Web Discovery Tools
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Surface Women Explorers
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Deliver It Their Way
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Geo-referencing Content
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Teaching/Learning
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Measure Impact

• Earned revenue
• Cost savings
• Stimulated innovation
• Improved decision making
• Increased productivity
• Facilitated knowledge sharing

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Report Results
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Develop Leaders
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Tips on Strategy

• Explore the white space
• Build strategic alliances
• Look for extensions
• Custom-focus for content
• Redundancies ? Streamline
• Balance in all things avoid danger zones,
  mission drift

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Call to Action

• Competitive environment for both our parent
  organizations and libraries
• Its about saving our organizations
• Opportunities for leadership
• Stay alert to change
• Do not wait initiate
• Perseverance pays off
• Remember Position and leadership

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Questions?

• Susan Fifer Canby
• National Geographic Society
• 1145 17th Street NW
• Washington DC 20036, USA
• sfiferca_at_ngs.org

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Bibliography

• Bellman, Geoffrey M. Getting Things Done When
  you are not in Charge. BK. www.bkconnection.com
• Burlingame, Dwight R., ed. Library Fundraising,
  Chicago, ALA, 1995.
• Hall, Margarete Rooney. Fundraising and Public
  Relations International Journal of Nonprofit and
  Voluntary Sector Marketing 7, no 4 (Nov 2002), p
  368-381.
• IML The Future of Librarians in the Workforce.
  12/15/2005 http//imlsworkforce.org/
• Kelley, Tom. The Ten Faces of Innovation.
  Doubleday, 2005.
• OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information
  Resources a report to the OCLC Membership, 2005.
• SLA Annual Salary Survey and Workplace Study
  2005, Alexandria, Va. Special Libraries
  Association (SLA), 2005.
• Stuhlman Think like a Business, Act Like a
  Library SLA, Information Outlook 7, no 9
  (9/2003).