Over on 3 Geeks and a Law Library, Greg Lambert makes note that yesterday at the Law Marketing Association conference, Joe Calve, the new CMO of Morrison Foerster mentioned he had moved their Library department into the Marketing department. Lambert questions the change, but does say, "From what I'm hearing from the Librarians at MoFo, they are excited about the change and are looking forward to the transition." MoFo is known for doing things a bit differently than everyone else, after all.
I do think it odd, but perhaps no odder than having the Library report to IT as in some organizations. I see the Library ideally as a parallel department supporting Marketing as well as other departments. But it likely depends on the organization and culture of the firm as well as its overall strategy. What I can think of to support this move:
- if the Library is doing competitive intelligence as a major initiative
- if the Library is doing a lot of proactive business intelligence research to support business development
- if the Library is involved in website development and maintenance
- if the Library contributes substantially to the extensive Client Alerts and Newsletters put out by the firm
- Marketing often has better financial support in a firm than the Library or even IT so it can help secure better resources for the Library
Embedding a librarian or two in the Marketing department would be ideal, but I'm not sure about moving the whole department there. What happens to the whole research function and the administration of resources to support areas other than Marketing?
Greg Lambert is going to try to find out more about the change to help flesh out the reasoning. My question for Slaw readers: does this change make sense to you? What other reasons can you think of for/against this move? I still need some convincing.
Photo: Explore by Kevin Dooley – made available on Flickr under Creative Commons.
First, let me express my extreme love of this firm's abbreviated name. It's hilarious. Second, I thought I would chime in with my experience working in a professional services firm, in which the research division was located within the broader Marketing and Communications division. It was an interesting fit, though sadly the division endured some serious downsizing in light of the economic downturn. I wonder whether the organizational structure had an impact on their ability to prove their worth or not…?
Hi Meghan:
Thank you for sharing your experience. It does make you wonder, doesn't it?
I'm not sure what the best solution is for the org structure of a law library within the broader firm… However it appears that Steve Matthews of the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog does!
From a posting entitled, Law Libraries Should Be Their OWN Department,:
"I find it disrespectful of the firm's work product. Legal research is the front end of creating a quality deliverable – and working directly with firm lawyers to support their creation of that product is absolutely essential…
Moving the library under the mandate of another department (Marketing, IT, … doesn't matter) creates a huge hurdle to Librarians trying to deliver that service."
So, an interesting perspective (and from someone far better qualified than me to make such judgments :D ).
I am working on a master's research project – a literature review of knowledge management. KM, business or competitive intelligence, IT, marketing – these specialized departments often overlap in purpose within an organization. These functions might best be served under a broad title: Research Services. Research is what librarians, marketers, business developers, and knowledge managers do. When law firms are in the process of restructuring (and strategically they should be doing it for efficiency and effectiveness, not merely downsizing,) it makes greater sense to think about improving organizational architecture, and how to orchestrate these specialists to serve the whole.
SydneyPLUS International conducted an anonymous survey of 150 prospects and clients on the topic of competitive intelligence (CI). Approximately 40 percent of respondents answered that their CI department, staff, or operation “fit” in a combined Marketing / Library department. It is possible that the Library and Marketing departments were separate, but when it came to the role of CI in serving the organization, the CI function was clearly shared. Another 45 percent defined the CI function in the domain of the Library or Information Center exclusively. Your observation about moving the Library to the Marketing Department to support a CI initiative seems spot on. As SydneyPLUS staff has recently returned from the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) conference in Washington, DC, we can anecdotally tell you that organizations have aligned the library to support CI research under the direction of the Marketing Department. The full results of our survey conducted February 2010 will be shared on the SydneyPLUS blog soon.
Mark, thank you for sharing what you learned. While I still believe they should be separate departments, the joint interest in CI can be quite compelling. If an organization has a strong focus on this area, joining the two departments might make sense. Again, it comes back to the organization's overall strategy and does sublimate the other functions of the library.
I think this is a great idea! I am constantly telling clients they need to market the library services in order to increase their visibility so this makes perfect sense. BRAVO MOFO!!!