A Diverse Universe: Exploring the World of Intelligence Analysts

By Dr.  Edna Reid

What do intelligence analysts (IA) do? How can I participate in a red cell exercise* about the use of social media in the Middle East uprisings? What are the current issues in intelligence analysis in the U.S. and overseas? How can I identify recent books about these issues and meet the authors? Are these authors available to speak at my institution? What certificate programs are available in intelligence analysis and where can I meet their representatives? If any of these questions spark your interest then register to attend a D.C. conference (June 2011) on intelligence analysis or check out intelligence.gov!

Yes, the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) is having its seventh annual conference in Washington, D.C., June 6-9, 2011. The mission of IAFIE is to advance research, knowledge, and professional development in intelligence education (http://www.iafie.org). Members of IAFIE are involved in various intelligence disciplines such as intelligence analysis, national security, and competitive intelligence. Members are active in developing and diffusing intelligence studies and programs that emphasize the need for intelligence professionals (e.g., intelligence analysts, collection specialists, cyber threat specialists, staff operation specialists).

CNNMoney.com, in 2009, identified intelligence analyst (IA) as among the ten best jobs in America. Intelligence analysts are involved in identifying, evaluating, and analyzing information for decision makers in the intelligence community (IC). It is a challenging yet almost invisible career field that has some overlapping specialization and expertise requirements like those in library and information science, e.g., the emphasis on identification, evaluation, and analysis of information.

However many information professionals overlook intelligence analysis as an alternate career path! Reid’s article on Information Professionals as Intelligence Analysts describes the analytical skills required of intelligence analysts as somewhat similar to those of open source (publicly available information such as news) researchers and/or political analysts. Additionally, the article posits that intelligence analysts come from diverse formal education backgrounds such as degrees in social sciences, engineering, psychology, economics, library science, history, business, computer science, or political science.

In order for information specialists to become intelligence analysts, they will need to hone their analytical skills and enhance their knowledge about IC agencies (e.g., DHS, CIA, NSA). Those who intend to explore this alternate path or just seek additional insights can check out the IAFIE conference or intelligence.gov because they will open their eyes to other ways of framing (packaging) library/information science competencies.

An important aspect of framing competencies for intelligence analyst positions is being able to translate your industry’s jargon into that which is used in the IC so that you can be effective in communicating your interests. Toward this end, Reid’s article provides a useful comparison of terminologies used in library/information science with those used by the U.S. intelligence community. For example, unclassified information is Open Source INTelligence (OSINT), cataloging is metadata tagging, and spying is Human INTelligence (HUMINT).

So consider exploring the world of intelligence analysts or just pass this information to a friend or family member who may want to consider a nontraditional career path that has many opportunities and challenges that can lead to a global adventure!

*Red cell exercise is an analytical technique for pretending that the analyst is the bad guy.

Dr. Edna Reid is an Intelligence Analyst with the DOJ.

References

Careers in the Intelligence Community (We Have Thousands of Positions in All Types of Fields), Accessed May 19, 2011. http://www.intelligence.gov/careers-in-intelligence

CNNMoney.com Best Jobs in America 2009. Accessed May 19, 2011. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2009/snapshots/9.html

Intelligence.gov, Accessed May 19, 2011. http://www.intelligence.gov/about-the-intelligence-community

Reid, E. Information Professionals as Intelligence Analysts: Making the Transition. Best Practices …, 2009. Accessed May 19, 2011. http://www.governmentinfopro.com/federal_info_pro/2010/01/information-professionals-as-intelligence-analysts-making-the-transition.html

A Diverse Universe: Managing a Library and Business Information Center

By Lois Ireland

My official title is Library & Business Information Services Manager.  The library part people get – it’s more or less typical corporate library services – research, ILL, acquisitions.  The business information services part causes some confusion.  Frequently people call me saying “I was referred to you about this, but that can’t be right – you’re the librarian!”

Like many librarians across SLA, my library staff builds websites.  We are the intranet gateway for colleagues within our division, which includes buildings & grounds, security, food & fitness and conference center operations.  We work with our co-workers within those areas – who know their stuff but don’t always consider the many ways other employees might be looking for them – to help them better serve their clientele by creating logical, easily navigated webpages with well-written, relevant content. 

Copyright questions are pretty standard for librarians to handle, but we also have responsibility for music and video licensing.  This covers including clips in presentations as well as playing background music as meetings get started.  Employees contact us to make sure the company stays in compliance with any restrictions.

A few years after I started at the company, I was asked to take over the corporate switchboard.  The logic was the library provides information to employees and the switchboard provides information to external callers.  Eventually, I got to design an automated phone attendant, one of those technologies we all love to hate.  Be assured, there is a true art to this design process.  I had to think about user behavior, taxonomy and synonyms while creating the menus and options that direct callers to the proper number.  Any calls that stump the system are routed to live operators during business hours.  In turn, if they’re stumped, they route the call to the library; we draw on our knowledge of the company to help callers get connected.

My videography/streaming team creates video files of meetings and programs, at the request of the business areas.  I worked with them to create a records management process which formalizes the retention and destruction of these video corporate records.  Video files are tagged with metadata to help them quickly identify and retrieve files.

My latest acquisition was the audio-visual team – the ones who set up the microphones, test the sound levels, bring in the projectors, start up the presentations and dial up the video conference.    I’m learning a lot about this set of technology!   Oh, and did I mention I handle the web conferencing service contract?

It can get hectic at times, when my day jumps from fielding a research request to checking on the status of A-V equipment to answering questions about web conferencing functionality.  But by taking on this seeming hodgepodge of roles, I’ve cemented my reputation with management for being curious, flexible and adaptive.

Lois Ireland is DC/SLA’s 2011 President-Elect.

A Diverse Universe: Working for the State Department’s Office of Information Resources

By Chris Zammarelli

After I landed my first library job working as a cataloging librarian assistant at College of the Holy Cross, I dreamed of having the chance to build a library from the ground up. I figured it was more of a fantasy than a goal, but recently I had a chance to do just that.

Last October, I began work on behalf of ATSG as a contract cataloger at the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs' (IIP) Office of Information Resources (IR). One of the main tasks of IR is to administer the Information Resources Centers (IRC) located in over 185 U.S. embassies. This includes hiring, training, and supporting Information Resource Officers (IROs). Think of them as foreign service librarians. They oversee the operation of IRCs and other American information spaces located around the world.

My main job as a contract cataloger is to catalog materials for IR’s virtual library. This virtual library is available to patrons of our information centers worldwide, and provides them with access to such resources as English as a second language materials, information on studying in the U.S., and resources on business and entrepreneurship.

As part of my work, I have created a collection development plan, worked with our vendors on designing and implementing our ILS and OPAC systems, developed a cataloging style manual, and, well, just cataloged materials like crazy. I hadn’t envisioned that the library I would get to build would be completely online, but it’s certainly nice not to have to make any decisions on carpeting and carrels.

Chris Zammarelli is a contract cataloger on behalf of ATSG at the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs' Office of Information Resources. He is also a 2011 candidate for the SLA Board of Directors.

A Diverse Universe – Working in the BNA Library

By Marilyn Bromley

In February, Larry Lempert, one of my BNA colleagues, wrote a Diverse Universe blog post on how he became Director of Product Research and Planning after years in the editorial side of the company, during which he earned an MLS from the University of Maryland.  Giselle Caruso, another MLSer here at BNA, participated with Larry in last year’s DC/SLA “Cinco de Mayo” session on alternative careers for MLS graduates; Giselle is a senior project manager in our business systems group.  BNA also has MLS grads serving as indexers, senior-level trainers and legal market sales professionals.  

So BNA’s a pretty diverse place for LIS professionals, right?  Yup, and even in the Library.   With a professional staff of 6 librarians, there is a lot of non-traditional work going on.

To begin with, the Library is responsible for the company intranet, thanks to our late colleague Rhonda Oziel, who got interested in HTML in the mid-1990s, developed some webpages, and before IT knew what was happening, created the BNA intranet.  Laura Gordon-Murnane is our current intranet webmaster.  Catherine Kitchell, reference librarian and treasurer of the News Division, manages the process of updating and publishing the annual BNA Court Directory, a BNA Books bestseller.  Four of us, including librarians Lan Choi and Clare Bailey, handle over 500 permission requests a year, with an industry-leading turnaround time of 24 hours.  Our competitive intelligence service is delivered to over 100 top BNA executives and movers and shakers every day.  I work closely with our general counsel on copyright matters, an important issue for every publisher.  Cataloger Matthew Newton applies for ISSNs for all our products, and assigns ISBNs to our monographs.  He also prepares “official” MARC records of our publications for our law school customers.  As in-house consultants in the product development process, the Library staff is involved in creating high quality value-added products for BNA customers and especially for you, our colleagues.  We take great pride in seeing that everything BNA produces not only delivers the best information, insights and analysis, but makes your job easier.  And that’s a win-win proposition for everyone!

Marilyn Bromley is Library Director at BNA and a 2011 candidate for the SLA Board of Directors

A Diverse Universe: Working in the White Spaces

By Eileen Boswell

Local library hero Karen Huffman said something that changed my life. During a Fall 2007 presentation to my information systems class at the Catholic University of America, Karen commented that, “Special librarians work in the white spaces of the organizational chart.” The next day, during an interview with a small non-profit organization, I was asked, “And what do you think the role of a special librarian is in an organization such as ours?” Without missing a beat I replied, “Special librarians work in the white spaces of the organizational chart.” 

Judging by the reaction I got, I may have been the first applicant to deliver a concise answer to that question. I was offered the job, accepted, and immediately contacted Karen to ask, “Who said that?” She told me that Susan Fifer Canby, retired Director of Libraries & Information Services at National Geographic, would often urge library staff to “get into the white spaces.” I later found the reference in a commencement speech Susan gave at the University of Maryland, and in a 2004 Information Outlook article. It is the single bit of wisdom I needed to focus my work in an unstructured, choose-your-own-adventure library position.

While I do a bit of cataloging, some web development, and the occasional research project, my real work has been to get comfortable with a very broad concept of “user needs” and “librarian response.” Sometimes I walk around the office asking people what they are working on so I can plan my next foray into the white spaces. Recently a colleague was lamenting the fact that we never catch things like Distracted Driving Awareness Month (April) or Disability Awareness Month (October) before it’s too late, so I created an “Opportunities Calendar” for staff to share. Our white spaces have also allowed me to draw up a marketing timeline for a website re-launch, draft a Twitter style guide, notarize documents, and plan a national conference session on what census data means for rural transportation. In another organization, the white spaces would look very different, but this is where I am right now.

I loved the day when one of my coworkers needed my library skills to determine how many paratransit trips in Florida last year were rural. But just as satisfying was the day I taught someone how to find the R/G/B values on a project logo so we could reproduce it in web-safe colors. What do your users need?

Eileen Boswell works as Information Specialist at the Community Transportation Association of America. This summer she will be part of the Success Stories of Solos panel at SLA 2011.

A Diverse Universe: Creating a Patent Reference Librarian Position with Intellogist

By Kristin Whitman

I came to a librarianship in a very backwards way.  I worked in patent searching, which is a small, niche industry where almost no one has an MLIS.   Patent searchers need advanced technical degrees and an understanding of patent law; most have master’s degrees in technical fields such as mechanical engineering and biochemistry, and some even have JDs or have passed the patent bar exam.  With all that necessary education, patent searching librarians are a rarity.

I was hired from within my patent searching company to write cParitical reviews about patent search systems, and to create comparison tables and reports to publish on our website.  I spent the next several years working steadily to product Intellogist (http://www.intellogist.com/), an online review site for that patent searching industry.  As you’ve probably already guessed, evaluating patent search tools requires the skills, background and knowledge of a librarian – and I had no idea!  I was deep in the weeds grappling with concepts like collection domain and scope, interface design, and controlled indexing before I finally realized that this was a degree I needed to have. 

From that point forward I felt that it would be almost irresponsible of me to continue doing my job without the proper training.  Location was a problem – there was no accredited library school in Virginia, and Catholic and Maryland would have presented too much of a commuting burden.  When I finally stumbled across my first fully online degree program, I was thrilled. The flexibility of asynchronous, fully online scheduling meant I could do my coursework whenever and wherever I needed.  I enrolled at Rutgers, and the faculty there has been a blessing in so many ways – the program is thriving, and everyone there is really dedicated to preparing the students to jump right into the real world of librarianship and get our hands dirty.  

Thanks to my education, I was able to provide the highest possible quality work on Intellogist.  In addition, people within the company started to see me as an unofficial reference resource, and come to me to discuss their search problems.  I already knew that I would love reference work from my past days in a customer service position: helping people gives me a natural high.  Because I was seeing a need within the company, I worked with my boss to design a new job for myself as a librarian.  We envisioned the rollout of a Landon IP Reference Desk, and worked for months to bring our idea to fruition.  I knew the company needed this kind of support, but my challenge was bringing the message to everyone else!  

When we finally rolled out our Reference Desk service, I immediately received over 170 reference requests in the first month.  We’re still going strong, and I am so proud and so happy to have created my dream job within the company by showing them what I can really do for them.  It seems to me to be an instance of librarians proving their value by addressing underlying information needs that no one else at an organization can see.  In my opinion, I would not have had the courage to do this had I not been involved in SLA since 2009, and heard the underlying message: show your employers what you can do.  Show them what librarianship can mean to them.  My very great thanks to all the SLA members who are making the organization a source of support and professional development.

Kristin Whitman is a new reference librarian and a co-creator of Intellogist.com.  She is currently in her last semester at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University.

A Diverse Universe: Knowledge Management at the US Institute of Peace

By Gretchen Sauvey

When I started library school, I don’t think that I could have defined the phrase “knowledge management” without guessing wildly. Even now, having worked in knowledge management for several years, I still find it difficult to succinctly explain my job to people. At work I’m part database administrator, part tech support, part taxonomist, part researcher, and part teacher. It’s not quite what I envisioned when I started on this path, and certainly not the academic library reference desk job I fantasized about when applying to grad school.

Luckily for me, despite its non-traditional nature, my job still lets me do all of the things that made me excited to become a librarian in the first place:

• Education – I teach technology training classes to Institute staff and create learning materials such as video tutorials and instructional guides.
• Web design – I’ve spent many hours recently on creating mock-ups for a redesign of our intranet wiki’s main page and experimenting with new widgets and extensions to make our content more dynamic.
• Information organization – A large part of my time is spent managing custom databases, a document management system, and internal taxonomies, all with the goal of helping staff find what they need when they need it.

I even get to do research, combing our own extensive projects database and commercial citation databases to track the Institute’s activities and impact. Best of all, I get to do all these things at the same time, which perfectly suits my jack-of-all-trades nature.

I can’t say that my job is perfect, because there are some demanding challenges. Unlike a more traditional library, where the world of information to be organized has some recognizable boundaries, in knowledge management the scope and focus of our work is constantly shifting. In addition, my department is often the public face of major technological changes for staff at the Institute, which can make us the least-liked people in the office some days. And we operate on a shoestring budget, with our own time frequently the only resource at our disposal.

Details aside, ultimately my role is to help my colleagues capture and share what they know so that the work of the Institute can be done more effectively. It’s the rare job that lets you literally advance world peace, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to do exactly that.

Gretchen Sauvey is a Knowledge Management Specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, an independent national institution established and funded by Congress. She also blogs at http://gretchens-world.blogspot.com.

A Diverse Universe: Information Architecture at BNA

By Larry Lempert

It feels appropriate that images of the Egyptian revolution are swirling in the media as I sit down to write about working in publishing with a focus on information architecture. To be an IA in recent years has been to witness and participate in history in the making, with all the excitement, confusion, leaps forward, and pratfalls that can be expected in the midst of ferment. 

I have a job description that talks about creating content and user experience design for prototypes and emerging products. What I really have, though, is a mission to wave the flag of order and findability in the battle to create information services that professionals will pay good money for. The free Web with its massive amounts of “good enough” information has given my company’s niche—legal, tax, and regulatory publishing—a swift kick in the shins. We wrestle to figure out what makes for added value when so much is available for free. It’s a complicated question, but I’m convinced that order and findability are somewhere in the answer. 

An MLS from the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies (2006) didn’t get me the job I have now. I grew into the job after years on the strictly editorial side of the company, years that gave me experience in molding new products. But the MLS program, which offered a concentration in information architecture, was valuable in the way it firmed up the conceptual ground I was standing on. In a variety of special projects on cross-functional teams, I find myself calling all the time on the principles I learned about. Projects such as: 

• Designing an efficient system to bring highly related content to the user’s attention when he or she is viewing a particular document. Some publishers’ sites rely on purely programmatic solutions, but we’re trying to add value with expert judgment.
• Developing a methodology for flexible querying of specialized data sets to support charts built dynamically based on a user’s selection of criteria.
• Adding taxonomy-based browsing and searching features on comprehensive legal practice area resource centers.
• Exploring the potential for text analytics to provide advanced legal research tools.

The job offers variety, interaction with emerging technology, and problem-solving challenges to the nth degree. The biggest challenge for me, not an IT person by any stretch, is understanding the technology well enough to serve as an effective bridge between the real IT people and the business and editorial sides of the company.

On tough days I feel the curse of living in such interesting times. But there are good days when I feel the thrill of being present at the very dawn of a new age, doing my own bit, however small, to help manage the digital revolution.    

Larry Lempert is Director of Product Research and Planning at BNA, a publishing company in Crystal City, VA, specializing in legal, tax, and regulatory information services for professionals.