A primer for corporate librarianship and information management.

• Author: Sucha, Melanie
• Position: Book review

A Handbook for Corporate Information Professionals

Editor: Katharine Schopflin

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Publication Date: 2015

Length: 184 pages

Price: $125 (No. America); 59.95 [pounds sterling]

ISBN: 978-1-85604-968-9

Source: www.alastore.ala.org

(No. America); www.facet publishing.co.uk

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A Handbook for Corporate Information Professionals is a concise, but thorough, compilation of contemporary topics in corporate librarianship. It covers practice areas such as corporate intranets, marketing, taxonomies, knowledge management, market analysis, electronic licensing, and end-user training.

Aimed at Corporate Librarians

While the broad term "information professional" is used in the title and by the various authors throughout the text, the content is presented from the corporate librarianship standpoint as opposed to the standpoint of other information management (IM) domains, such as records management.

The primary audience becomes readily apparent in Katharine Schopflin's introduction, which is an articulate description on the history of corporate librarianship and discussion of the discipline today. Many of the topics in the book pertain to corporate library processes--that is, the management and dissemination of acquired published resources to support the business.

Linda-Jean Schneider and Simon Barron's chapter, "The hybrid librarian-IT expert," is focused solely on the librarian perspective. This chapter takes a traditionalist view of both the librarianship and IT disciplines, perhaps unfairly criticizing IT departments as being overly imposing, and it lacks discussion on more contemporary topics, such as the need for information governance and the skills that both IT and IM professionals have to offer in the governance domain.

Anneli Sarkanen and Katy Stoddard's chapter, "Training end-users in the workplace," is focused on the search and usage of library resources, without addressing use of internal document management systems or line-of-business information technologies.

This chapter demonstrates some outdated views, painting vendors simply as salespeople and discouraging vendor collaboration for training assistance--a point that runs contradictory to Tina Reynolds, Schneider, and Fiona Fogden's more progressive arguments in favor of a collaborative approach with vendors in their chapter, "Working with suppliers and licensing for e-libraries."

A Focus on Growth, Exploration

Other chapters are focused on growing...