Jennifer Keohane is a business outreach librarian at the Simsbury Public Library in Simsbury Connecticut.  In addition to a Masters in Library Science she also holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and International Business and has over 12 years of business experience. An enthusiastic promoter of library services, Jennifer enjoys teaching and is a certified School Library Media Specialist.  

T/D:    What kind of services can a library with a Business Resource Librarian provide?  If a trainer comes to you and they need to start a new program, how can a business librarian help them? 

Keohane:  We can help by providing them with some solid books and tools.  These are in the ‘how to’ department, you know ‘best practices’.  We can help do a literature search.  Many times when people are thrown a topic, they Google it and get all kinds of stuff but it’s not on topic.  I know what a controlled language is; I know how to crack the code on how to find articles within the databases because they might use a terminology that isn’t one that we typically use as trainers or as in regular English.  \

For instance, in The Library of Congress cataloguing, if you wanted to find all the cookbooks you would have to look under the term cookery. You can imagine, if you take that simple idea and expand it to some of the buzz words that are going on today, you’ve got to juggle around, squeeze and hunt to try to get articles that you know are out there.  

A librarian can help with this, we can help shape your search strategy, so that you get better results.  I encourage people, don’t bang your head against the wall, don’t spend a lot of time trying to find articles that you know are out there and failing.  Give us a call, maybe I can suggest some terms or help refine the search strategy so that you get more targeted information. 

T/D:    That is such valuable information for trainers. What type of businesses do you see using the resource libraries or the resources at the library? Is there a typical kind of business? 

Keohane:  Traditionally I see many consultants.  I see many people that are in service businesses because we’ve got a wide range of services here. People in the service industry like to come to the library.  I work with businesses of all types and sizes.

T/D:    Do you have any last tidbits you’d like to share with trainers on how they can utilize their local library in their training efforts? 

Keohane: Yes, I think one of the first things they should do is go in and talk to the people at the reference desk at their local library. Find out who they are. You may be surprised at some of the skills sets of the people that are sitting behind the desk. In our library alone, I have a business background, we have a librarian who’s got her law degree and works full time at a law library and then works part-time here; we have someone that comes from the UCONN Health Center;  someone who comes from a school setting.  There are a lot of different skills sets. Librarians are very much a second career, kind of career move.  So there’s possibly those who have expertise in areas that you might be able to tap into.I think people should ask what we have and how they might obtain the information..

If you don’t want to walk into a library, check out the library’s webpage.  As libraries we’ve really tried to get as much of our information out there, online, to make us a  24/7 kind of information access.  That being said, many libraries also have 24/7 contracted reference service. You can actually chat with a librarian 24/7.  You might check  to see if your library has that option. It’s a great resource to have all hours of the day or night, to be able to talk via email to a real librarian and have someone working on your question even when physically your own public library might be closed.