11/30/2005
print vs. electronic
Today, one of our consultants from our oil and gas practice came to me to ask me to order an updated version of the IEA’s Energy Prices and Taxes. This isn’t surprising; this consultant is one of my most frequent clients, and often has me order reference books for him.
What was unusual was that he asked me if we should get the book electronically - he’s one of our most print-centric VPs.
Even more unusual than that, I said no.
I almost feel guilty about it; getting these guys to consider electronic as a viable alternative is a bit of a battle, but frankly, I have an overriding reason for it: our network is a librarian’s nightmare. Articles, pdf books, excel sheets of statistical data are all saved anywhere and anyway a particular person wants to; there are no naming conventions, and the network drives, while organized broadly according to business practice or individual practice, are not conducive to finding efficiently and accurately. We do not yet have enterprise searching of the sort provided by Google, Northern Light, Thunderstone, or Vivisimo.
At the moment, with the state of organization being how it is at MPOW, I’d rather have a frequently used item available where I can find it instead of disappearing into the network ether. And getting all that information that’s already available on the network in a state where its locatable (a word?) is a high priority for myself and the knowledge management task force I’m on.
Filed under: Librarianship, Work
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