Open Password – Wednesday June 15, 2022
#1088
Working Group of Special Libraries (ASpB) – Specialist conferences – Kerstin Schoof – Monika Sommerer – Karin Schmidgall – Thomas Arndt – Special libraries – Specialist conferences – Workshops – Analogue and virtual offers – Scholarships – IFLA World Congress – Website – Twitter account – Virtuality as a conference format – Hybrid – Corona – Mobile working – Acceleration – Zoom Fatique – Video connections – Martin Buber – Institutional memberships – Personal memberships – Company libraries – Collecting priorities – Member potential – Further training events – Networking – Face-to-face and online formats – International exchange – Public relations – Corinna Haas – Annette Krause – Member participation – Library associations – Contribution to education and democracy – National research data infrastructure – Open science – Machine learning – Shortage of young talent – Internal documentation – Willi Bredemeier
Outsell – Reforming Big Events – Hybrid Show – Sponsors – Planning Mode in a Time of Uncertainty – Proactivity Rather than Reactivity
Internet use – intensity of use – Postbank digital study 2022 – Thomas Brosch – Corona crisis – parents role model? – Smartphone – Tablet – Digital contact maintenance – Convenience
- Title
Working Group of Special Libraries (ASpB)
75 years of changing challenges have passed and the spirit and solidarity of the first years are still there – the prospects for the coming years
II.
Outsells listens to the customer
Reforming Big Events – Proactivity Needed in a Time of Uncertainty
III.
Postbank digital study
Internet use: Parents see themselves as role models when it comes to the Internet, even though they surf a lot –
Three quarters of Germans consider their Internet consumption to be appropriate – women use digital services to maintain contacts, men for convenience
Working Group of Special Libraries (ASpB)
75 years of changing challenges have been faced
and the spirit and solidarity of the first year are still there
The prospects for the coming years
The Special Libraries Working Group is 75 years old and has held 38 specialist conferences during this time. Open Password saw this as a good opportunity to conduct a written interview with the outgoing chairwoman Kerstin Schoof and the current board members Monika Sommerer, Karin Schmidgall and Thomas Arndt and to look back with them at the current challenges and forward.
third part
Monika Sommerer
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Compact, clear and rich in content, that’s how it should stay.
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What are the ASpB’s most important offerings currently? How does the exchange of knowledge and experience take place?
Monika Sommerer: The first priority here is of course the conference, which takes place every two years at other locations and in other institutions – with lectures, panel discussions, the participation of library-related companies as well as an evening lecture, a festive evening and a supporting program.
During the conference-free years, we offer our members workshops on a wide variety of topics. In addition to analog training courses in various cities, these now also include virtual offerings.
In addition, for a few years now we have been awarding a scholarship for participation in the IFLA World Congress and supporting a specialist exchange between members and colleagues from other institutions at home and abroad, which is organized individually.
All of our offers can be found on our new website, which we launched in 2021 and into which additional content will gradually be added, as well as the contact persons from the board, office and advisory board. In the ‘Members’ section you can find out about the ASpB’s approximately 400 special libraries and network with each other.
We send information about our offers via our mailing list. Registration for this list will soon also be possible via our website. There is also our Twitter account. Whether we will use additional channels in the future is currently being discussed. It should remain compact, clear and full of content – that is our goal!
Karin Schmidgall
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We cannot imagine virtuality as a future conference format. With hybrid you have to see.
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How has Corona changed your work? Presence, virtual, hybrid – which formats do you want to maintain after the pandemic?
Karin Schmidgall: To be honest, after two years we would all like to get out of the tile world. The forced technical innovation push certainly makes mobile working possible or switching from one video conference to the next without a break. Work has sped up even more, train journeys to conferences and meetings that could be used to prepare in peace have been eliminated. You take part in a conference and at the same time you are involved in your normal working life. This is very tiring in the long run – it’s not for nothing that there are already studies on “Zoom Fatique”.
Of course there are also advantages. Monika Sommerer reported on the very successful virtual conference, in which colleagues from abroad were also able to take part without any travel effort or costs. We made the best of the situation.
We cannot imagine the virtual event as a future format for ASpB conferences. It remains to be seen whether hybrid will prevail, the organizational effort doubles, perhaps suitable for a virtually connected lecture, but not as a format for participation in the evening. What will remain are video connections between our places of work in Berlin, Jülich and Marbach at shorter intervals. An annual board and advisory board meeting in physical form will remain, because “All real life is encounters,” as Martin Buber once said.
Thomas Arndt
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Retain institutional memberships through value-added events. Make personal memberships more attractive.
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How many members does the ASpB have? For example, can your membership base be differentiated by industry, region, age and function?
Thomas Arndt: We currently have just over 400 members. Institutional memberships make up a clear majority. There are only a few left today from the early years. Many scientific and technical company libraries no longer exist. Their sponsors have changed, they have been taken over several times or have not been able to maintain their independence within the company. We are proud that many specialist libraries from other areas, especially publicly owned institutions, have supported our network for many years. Although institutions and libraries are joining forces here, we have been able to slightly but continuously increase the number of members in recent years with our offerings.
It is currently possible to differentiate our membership base by region and collection focus. We strive to collect more precise data about our members so that we can exchange information on current issues with greater precision.
Where do you see further potential for membership? How have you tried to win them so far? What else do you want to do to achieve this?
Thomas Arndt: As ASpB, we focus on doing good work and making relevant offerings for special libraries and thus maintaining the number of our members. For me, gaining new members is a second step. There has been no ASpB advertising campaign in recent years. We will not be able to reach the high number of members that the ASpB had before the introduction of membership fees any time soon.
Nevertheless, after this drastic change, we see good potential for gaining additional members in two areas in particular. The ASpB conferences and the workshops conducted by the ASpB are intended to provide the participating employees of special libraries with added value and to be remembered so well that they report on this experience in their professional environment. If the employees’ institutions are not yet members of the ASpB, these ongoing offers from the ASpB are a good reason to change this.
Not everyone is aware that the ASpB also offers the option of personal membership. As treasurer, I see an opportunity here that we can make this option more attractive in the future and address it more clearly.
How will further training in general and specifically that of the ASpB change in the coming years?
Karin Schmidgall: The number and range of training events in the last two years – almost all online – has multiplied. Whether this trend continues remains to be seen. Online formats are certainly still suitable for further training courses in lecture format, as many colleagues can take part without the hassle or expense of travel. For practice-oriented workshops with exercise parts, face-to-face events will continue to be the format of choice.
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Together with other library associations, a strong voice on education and democracy.
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What does the ASpB board have planned for 2022?
Monika Sommerer: We would like to offer our members a wide range of further training despite all the restrictions that the pandemic continues to impose on us. In addition, we will continue to work on the content of the new website and on networking our member libraries. International exchange is also on our agenda for 2022 – analogue and/or virtual, that remains to be seen.
Karin Schmidgall : We are currently preparing four workshops on the topics of inventory protection, English for library tours, Kanban as a method of agile project management and OpenRefine as a tool for preparing data. It remains to be seen when we will be able to apply for scholarships at home and abroad again with a good feeling. Through public relations work we want to draw attention to the offers for special libraries.
At the beginning of the year, the management of the ASpB changed: We say goodbye to Corinna Haas, who has managed the business with great commitment since the beginning of 2019 and was the fourth board member for us, and we look forward to working with Annette Krause.
Thomas Arndt : 2022 will be a year without an ASpB conference. We as the board want to invest the time and energy that is otherwise reserved for preparing the conference in the development of central projects. These will focus on improving the website and connecting our members. The participation of our members in the planning and implementation of projects is particularly important to us.
And for the next two three years?
Monika Sommerer : Exchange and collaboration with other library associations, including beyond the spectrum of special libraries, will be particularly important in the coming years. As a common voice, we are perceived much more strongly in public and in politics with all of our offers and our multi-faceted contribution to education and democracy.
Karin Schmidgall : We want to continue to keep our finger on the pulse with our activities and offers. With their unique collections, special libraries are stakeholders in building the national research data infrastructure and in open science activities. New skills and fields of work such as data literacy and machine learning methods (artificial intelligence) are added as central topics. At the same time, we have retained issues that have concerned us since 1946, such as creating attractive workplaces and the possibilities of working together to address the shortage of young talent.
Thomas Arndt: During our three-year term in office, we also want to make our internal documentation, which we have collected over decades, more usable. With the organization of the ASpB’s activities and offerings, increased networking within and outside the working group and the improvement of internal documentation, the to-do list for us as a three-person board is full to the brim.
Willi Bredemeier : Ms. Schoof, Ms. Schmidgall, Ms. Sommerer, Mr. Arndt, thank you for the compact, comprehensive and open conversation. I see our interview as a highlight in Open Password’s reporting.
Outsells listens to the customer*
Reforming Big Events
Proactivity Needed in a Time of Uncertainty
Outsell recently spoke with a CEO who mentioned cutting back on the number of events his company runs this year to focus on quality rather than quantity. The move has helped the firm refocus its content, speakers, and the event’s overall experience, leading to happier attendees (higher NPS scores), sponsors, and staff. Attendance has also been higher for these shows than ever before — it broke new records.
The organization is also looking at doing a hybrid show but in a different way. Instead of a single, multi-day event with a livestream for online attendees, it is organized with the first day as an online show and the second as a smaller gathering in person: a half-day of programming with a dinner and heavy sponsor involvement .
This CEO made the essential point that even if you have 4,000 attendees in person, sponsors still only want to meet with about 200, so focus the in-person programming on that 200.
*
Outsell is hearing that companies are trying to get ahead of the planning game this year. Some are entering annual planning mode even as early as right now — with so many team members planning vacations this summer to make up for time lost to the pandemic, companies may be trying to get the ball rolling in advance.
Along a similar vein, we have been hearing that Outsell Leadership Community members are being asked by corporate parents (those that have them) to start annual planning sooner due to ongoing concerns about inflation and the economy. They are also being asked to conduct scenario planning: What happens if we go into a recession? How do we adapt if high inflation continues? How can we respond to continuing supply chain problems? These questions and more demand proactivity rather than reactivity.
*Outsell is the international partner of Open Password
Internet usage
Parents see themselves as role models when it comes to the Internet – even though they surf a lot
Three quarters of Germans consider their Internet consumption to be appropriate
Women use digital services to maintain contacts, men for convenience
(Postbank) On average, Germans are online for more than nine hours a day, of which only around 3.5 hours are for work purposes. Is that too much private online time? No, say 78 percent: They are satisfied with how intensively they use the Internet. Only eleven percent want to restrict themselves – the year before there were more. Just as many people even want to use the web more in the future. These are the results of the representative Postbank digital study 2022.
“There’s no question that we live in a society that has no problem doing more and more everyday activities online – from booking a trip to reading a newspaper to a loan agreement,” says Thomas Brosch, Head of Digital Sales at Postbank. “The Germans tried out new options during the Corona crisis and will continue to use them in the future. This opens up many options for companies for useful products and services – regardless of opening times and physical distance.”
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Too much time with the smartphone
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Of the parents surveyed, 78 percent see themselves as a good role model for their children when it comes to using computers and smartphones. 20 percent admit that they sometimes do not set a good example, two percent consider themselves to be a bad role model.
Younger and older people in particular express self-criticism: a third of 18 to 29-year-olds say they do not set a good example when using the Internet, while among those over 65 the figure is 27 percent. An above-average number of seniors also think that they spend too much time on the Internet.
The guilty conscience mainly applies to mobile devices. 44 percent of those who see themselves as a bad role model use smartphones and tablets far too often in their opinion; another 53 percent use it at least a little too much. Only three percent consider themselves to be a bad role model because they don’t use mobile devices enough to be able to give their children advice on this.
“During the Corona crisis, digital devices were important contact options and a lifeline in the business world,” says Thomas Brosch. “They have made our everyday lives easier, online courses and contactless payments have experienced a boom. However, the intensive use of smartphones and the Internet has also raised the question of what we want to do online in the future and for which personal contact is essential. The right amount Finding it is often difficult even for adults.”
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One tenth isn’t enough.
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One in ten respondents would like to spend even more time online in the future: 59 percent of the more users want to buy products or services online regardless of business hours or Corona proof. 43 percent would like to continue to avoid personal contact, 36 percent use social media and other Internet services as a replacement for personal meetings. Women in particular are online more due to the pandemic: 39 percent are moving their contacts to WhatsApp etc., compared to 34 percent of men.
Other reasons also play a role, especially for men: 49 percent surf more for convenience, for example because they save travel distances when shopping. Only 29 percent of women say this. 44 percent of men, but only 37 percent of women, blame better technical equipment for their increased Internet consumption. 36 percent of men and 24 percent of women want to try out their newly acquired or increased Internet skills.
For the “Postbank Digital Study 2022 – The Digital Germans” 3,050 Germans were surveyed representatively in January and February of this year. With this study, Postbank is examining for the eighth year in a row what developments are emerging in the various areas of life of German citizens with a view to digitalization in general and particularly on financial topics.
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