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Developing a business researcher

from Julie Reynolds, Friday, June 12, 2009

Julie pictured as Fabiola

I recently had a meeting with Len Reilly, Library and Archives Manager of Lambeth Archives. This turned out to really follow on from Ellen’s blog on Librarian 2.0, which highlighted the importance of the relationship with a human librarian. Len said that the attitudes of the researchers that cross through his library’s doors has opened up the debate on how to develop a relationship with a business researcher – someone who may rely on the quickness of the Google search to retrieve knowledge, which is lacking depth or substance, rather than approach the librarian to ask for informed and concise direction.

I asked Len, how do people search for knowledge when they arrive at the archive and library?

Communities look for information in differing ways. Researchers, the public, are happy to be mediated by staff and use index finders, whereas academic researchers prefer to look at catalogues, and see the links that can’t be seen. This is why putting information and catalogues on a website is difficult as it doesn’t cater for both communities. Business use is primarily developers looking for street names and builders looking for drainage plans.

As is evident, Lambeth Library and Archives is used by business but primarily for statistical and topography data and the academic and the local community use the services provided through interaction with a librarian, in differing ways that are appropriate and personal to their individual enquiry. Each user has a different need, and the librarian has to be aware of these and tailor their knowledge transfer response to each researcher. The more that the user communicates with the librarian, the more the knowledge transfer relationship results in the user collating and interpreting information.

It moves me inevitably on to how artists use many techniques of information gathering and enquiry that help with the knowledge transfer of their art practice. In the exhibition Francis Alys: In search of a Saint at the National Portrait Gallery, the artist displays multiple portraits of "Fabiola ":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Fabiolathat he has accrued as his first art collection on a budget.

The Fabiola project began in the early 90s. Alys became attracted by the repeated appearance of a woman in profile. These turned out to be Fabiola, who left her abusive husband and took a lover at a time when that was legal but prohibited by the church. When her lover died she gave her wealth to the poor, pledged herself to the church and became a model of pentinent value. The portraits that Alys consistently came across were derived from a definitive, albeit fictional, 1895 portrait by the French academician Jean-Jacques Henner.

Alys has continued to gather images of Fabiola, mostly from flea markets across the world. The collection now consists of some 300 “portraits” in all materials and styles of production – and the results vary enormously despite their common origin.

Questions about authorship are, however, at the centre of Alys’ other major installation of paintings, the Sign Painting Project (1993-1997), which he sees as quite distinct conceptually from the Fabiola collection. He painted small canvases showing people and objects in the flat, bright colours of billboard advertisements, and asked Mexican sign painters, Juan Garcia, Enrique Huerta and Emilio Rivera to copy, enlarge and enhance them as they wished. He then further developed the sign painters’ response himself. ‘After a year or so the new models naturally came out of the group,” he explains, “I was trying to confuse the notion of who was the instigator. The protagonist had been introduced by me, but multiple ways emerged to play with those simple elements."’ Art World Magazine June/July 2009; Francis Alys: In search of a saint article page 110/113 interview by Paul Carey-Kent.

I use Francis Alys as an example of information gathering because his work highlights how individual interpretations of information differ. Every portrait of Fabiola changes from one to the next, not just in terms of media but size of the nose, eyes, colour – see, for example, my own interpretation of the subject above. Again, in Alys’ ‘Sign Painting Project’ one image recreated by different people changed over the years to such a degree that a ‘new model’ image was created. A business researcher using Google or "WolframAlpha ":http://www.wolframalpha.com/ (illustrated in Ellen’s blog) would be retrieving information that is static. Who is inputting this data? Is it correct? My argument is that the dialogue with a librarian will involve knowledge exchange and enquiry. The business researcher will have to reach their own opinion on the information gathered, rather than quoting information retrieved from that desk Google search.

’The Infinite Library project by artists Daniel Gustav Cramer and Haris Epaminonda is a further example of interpretation of knowledge and the intelligence of the researcher to unpick knowledge transfer. The artists embarked on The Infinite Library in 2008. Turning to their libraries for inspiration, they dismantled two books and reassembled them intuitively “trying to make sense out of the endless possibilities that such a process seemed to offer” as Cramer described it.

The books have been shown inside vitrines; a gallery assistant has leafed through a volume for the public’s benefit; and recent showings further explore the concept of each book; including other material such as found objects and photography.’ Art World Magazine July 2009; The Infinite Library article page 116-117 Interview Aoife Rosenmeyer.

This project is an exciting example of how the physical contact with objects in the library, the books themselves and the display, creates an inspiring and contemplative environment to explore knowledge contained in order to create a new knowledge product. One of our participants of the exchange programme is the director of a graphic design company, and in the first session talked about how he would like his graphic designers to use the library in the process of their research for their brief. Looking at the Infinite Library project as a case study, can you imagine the potential this kind of process of knowledge transfer would unlock for graphic designers?

Finally, quotes from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s book collaboration Freakonomics to me say it all.

‘The answer lies in finding the right data, and the secret to finding the right data usually means finding the right person – which is more easily said than done’.

As an economist, Levitt

‘approached economics in a notably unorthodox way. He seemed to look at the world not so much as an academic but as a very smart and curious explorer – a documentary filmmaker, perhaps, or a forensic investigator or a bookie whose markets ranged from sports to crime to pop culture’.

Why can’t every business researcher become an explorer of knowledge? We are seeing over and over in this programme that businesses are open to dialogue with libraries and archives. The Information Literacy Training Programme is seeking to address this, and is asking for a training company to design a course for librarians on ‘teaching information literacy in a business setting’. More information is available on the MLA London website, but the tender deadline is noon on 10 July 2009. We are all looking forward to seeing this pilot create a business researcher through a librarian’s expertise and hopefully the Google desk researcher will slowly fade away. We’ll keep you posted…