1997 - Advanced Information Management - Linda McKell

Linda McKell
Advanced Information Management
Mountain View, California

Interviewed by Doreen Cohen, March 7, 1997

This is Doreen Cohen interviewing Linda McKell. This is March 7, 1997, and we’re at AIM, Advanced Information Management, in Mountain View, California. Thank you, Linda.

Well, thank you for inviting me to do this. I’m excited. I think it’s a great project.

Well, let’s get started then. What would you say to the person who is entering a program in library and information science today?

I’d say, this is really an exciting time to be entering the field with all of the things that are happening with information becoming visible in the world. The Internet and the intranets that are being worked on at this point offer a lot of potential for people with library and information science backgrounds. So, it’s a great time.

Would you say anything different to the June graduates?

Coming up?

Right. They’ve been through two years, three years—now they’re graduating. What’s your advice to them?

Well, I would still comment the same thing. I started Advanced Information Management, AIM, because I felt that people with backgrounds in library and information science have a lot to offer to the world of business. And to the world of public and academic libraries as well…non-profit organizations. There is a lot of opportunity out there. It isn’t as traditional as it used to be twenty or so years ago, but that’s what makes it exciting. And I hope that the library and information science programs, the graduate programs themselves have taken advantage of introducing a lot of these exciting developments to the students. So that they’re more prepared to come out and meet these newer challenges. Not just focused on getting traditional jobs, which they focused on when I got out of library school in about 1974. I had no idea about special libraries at all. Special Libraries was a whole new world to me. And, I think that things have changed in library school significantly. So, hopefully, they’re more prepared for this kind of thing. The best thing that new graduates can do is to to be flexible and creative in coming up with new ways in which they might be able to apply their skills.

What do you see in Silicon Valley today as far as the job market goes? Is there more opportunity? Is it still difficult to get a job?

It’s been interesting being involved in the staffing industry, which is what I consider myself to be in at this point. And we service the library field and the library profession, but we’re really part of the staffing industry. What I’ve learned over the years is that there are cycles for the staffing industry based on the economy. It starts off with organizations doing very well and having a lot of permanent employees and hiring in a number of temporary or contract employees to staff them at what they’re doing. And then when the economy isn’t doing well, the first people let go are the temporaries, and then as it continues to not do well, they let go and downsize the permanent people. Then as things build back, they add on temporary people, and then after that as things get even better, they hire those people or they hire other people in a permanent mode. So, the cycle that we’re in right now in 1997 is that we’re right in the middle of where organizations are hiring people again in a permanent mode. We’ve actually seen really a large increase in the past year, the past twelve months, in placements of people in permanent positions. And support staff being hired in permanent modes where employers have actually sought out our services to help them. Which is also a good sign, I think, of the economy when employers are seeking people with library skills or highly skilled employees, and that they recognize that these people are worth paying recruitment fees for. So, it’s actually a good time at this point. And, yet, I would encourage people…a lot of times we see people who sign up with us, they only want a permanent job. And they really don’t want to be open to the idea of a temporary position. We always encourage people and still encourage people to be available for temporary positions because it does offer a way to get your foot in the door and gain experience and exposure until that permanent job comes along. So, don’t look at it like it’s something that is not desirable. To look at it as one method of job searching.

Can you tell us about getting started with AIM? Where were you? Where did you get the idea?

I was just over in Oakland a couple of evenings ago to an information professionals networking meeting that Sue Rugge sponsors. And I was sharing with the group there that Sue Rugge and Georgia Finnegan, who started Information Unlimited in the Oakland-Berkeley area—they were very strong role models for me as a new graduate coming out of school in 1974. I got a job within that first year out of library school as an engineering librarian for a company that didn’t have a professional librarian with a degree. They had a clerk who had been operating this library for awhile. So, I took it over. And during the first couple of years of operating that library, I met Sue and Georgia. In fact, my company had used their services to do research at various times. I was totally fascinated with the fact that two librarians went into business and hung out their sign, "librarian for rent" you know—it was totally exciting. I think the first year that I was working as a librarian, I had in my mind that someday I wanted to start a business, too. And I wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be. I didn’t know whether it was going to be information broker work or possibly an information engineering service kind of on the side of my full-time job. For about a year I did research out at Stanford and decided during that time that that wasn’t what I wanted to do. So, then I left my engineering library and went to a computer manufacturing company in Cupertino and actually set up a library from scratch. They were a company of about three thousand people, growing very rapidly, and they had never had a library. So I went in and created something out of nothing, and was there for about six years. But that whole time, I actually was working on my idea of how I would be in business. I was trying to understand what it was that organizations needed, how they operated, and how information could be relevant to them. And how they would be able to and willing to pay for someone’s time. I came up with the idea and actually the recognition that there are so many companies out there that don’t have libraries or an official librarian. I came up with the idea of actually supplying consultants to go in and set up and develop libraries. Since I had done that—that was my whole experience—going in and setting up libraries from scratch. But along the way, I took some small business classes. And I decided that I had done everything that I could possibly do to prepare to be in business except that I hadn’t quit my job yet. Unlike Georgia and Sue—I believe they were downsized or they were out of a job when they actually started their business. That was a positive step for me because it really showed me that I had the ability to take charge of making big changes in my life. So, I started off. And I really intended to recruit people who had library backgrounds. But I kept having people ask me, how did you get involved in special libraries. But since I had been interviewing librarians with computer science and science degrees. And, of course, I had a humanities undergraduate degree with an art minor. So, of course, I had no science background whatsoever. But, I had fallen into these situations. And I felt totally confident working with these technical people. My skills were specialized in getting information, and they had no understanding or little understanding of how to work with either doing research or organizing and retrieving the information that they had even created. I felt fully confident during all those years of being able to set up any kind of library whenever I was given the opportunity to do so. To encourage them to go out and approach companies. So many people were so hesitant. My idea was, that I was actually going to go out and find the client, and do the sales part of the effort of convincing them that I was going to do the recruitment and find people who had all kinds of library skills and abilities that could apply the skills in many areas. Also, early on in that time, because of my involvement in the chapter of the Special Libraries Association, I had gotten to know a lot of people—about three or four years especially—that many people knew that I had been recruiting a lot of people to go out [on various consulting jobs]. I had several people call me up early on saying I know that you’re doing this consulting, could you possibly supply someone to help us. It occurred to me that there was a huge need in the library field for a place that clients could actually call and who actually had library backgrounds. And find some way of having some immediate help from some trained and skilled people. So, I ended up forming the temporary help side [of the business]. But what I had really wanted to do, in the first place, was to help people find jobs. And that’s exactly the focus of my organization became continuous recruitment, to have them in our files already, or we know someone who might know someone. So it has been a process of really finding…[building on] what Georgia and Sue did, and I hung out my shingle and believed that I had something to sell to the marketplace out here and putting it into a different focus. And moving forward.

Did you do this out of your home, or did you go cold turkey?

Well, you know, it does take a lot of preparation to go into business. And I had no idea at the time the amount of cash that was required for working in the personnel business. We had to have enough money to pay the payroll for everyone out there and then be able to wait sometimes ninety days to be paid. So it does take a lot of cash. But what I had done, fortunately, because I’d taken business courses before I started this and was aware of some of these things. Because I am from this area—I was born in Palo Alto. About two years before I started this business, I had rented out my condo and moved home with my parents. Nice to be able to do that. So I had saved up enough money to at least bootstrap myself about a year without having to really worry. Because I was already living with my parents, I couldn’t quite see starting a business out of my home. And my father was an insurance agent on Castro Street here in Mountain View. He knew that I was wanting to get an office of my own. He told me about an office in this building at 444 Castro Street. We actually started in the executive office space on the fourth floor. And so, my father had found this out, and he told me, and I rented an office on the fourth floor of this building. We moved around about three times in the building until we got into our space right now. What I like—I’ve worked in various places where we were far away from basic services. One company was out in the hills with all the horses, which was beautiful, but you couldn’t walk out and get a sandwich very easily or walk down and go to the bank. So, being in the heart of the downtown area is great—it’s even close to the train. Early on, we used to have people from San Francisco. People up in the city often don’t have their own transportation, and they could take the train down to our office and walk the four or five blocks. It’s been important for us in this business to be in a location where our applicants could get to us. We do serve people in the North Bay area, that are on file with us. Now we go up to the city once a week or so and we interview people up there. So, we’ve been in Mountain View, and it’s been a great location to serve the Valley—all these entrepreneurs. In fact, a lot of companies start in this building and then get to a certain size and move out. And then we’ve kind of made some connections with a few of them.

You’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but what would you say excites you about your work?

That’s a good question. You’ve got some great questions here. I am excited about helping people find jobs. I think that—although I personally don’t do a lot of placements—I occasionally get involved with a placement—I never get tired of really hearing about what it is that someone wants to do…and then putting it together. I am still a 100% believer in the usefulness and pertinence and relevance of people with library and information skills. I have been saying for probably the last fifteen years at least, that people with information and library skills…when they do recognize them, we are going to be perceived as being a very hot commodity. Especially with the information….So, the need for people with skills in not only how to research, but people who can organize things where they can be found [is important in the busisness world]. I went to a breakfast meeting with some entrepreneurs and executives about a year ago. I happened to sit next to a VP in and R&D department in a large government contracting company. And I said to him, you know, I’m not aware that your organization has a library—because I pretty much know everybody in the area. And he said, well, you’re right. We actually got rid of our library about seven or eight years ago. And I said, well, how do you handle your research as far as doing even online searching. Oh—well—a lot of our engineers have Internet accounts and they can go out and surf the Net. And then we’ve signed up with some of these places like TelTech and Nerac, so we can call up an expert and have them do our searching for us, so we don’t have a need for that. Oh, we’re doing fine. And so, of course, I’m not going to let him get away with this. So, I said, well, how do you manage to handle the information that your engineers generate? How do you organize it and track it so that you can find it effectively? He kind of scratched his head and said, you know, that is a problem. We don’t really have a good handle on that. We need to do something about that one of these days. Well, of course, that’s another aspect of what librarians do for an organization. That’s definitely…there’s a future for all of us out there. We work with a lot of different companies that don’t have libraries.

You already mentioned the two women that were your role models for starting your business. Who else would you say has influenced you in your professional life?

It’s interesting. I think that those two probably were the strongest in the fact that they were women and they were in the library field. They were the strongest overall. I guess as far a individuals go, I wouldn’t say that I have any specific ones that really influenced me. I would say that my involvement in Special Libraries was a tremendous help. I worked as a corporate librarian. In fact, I worked for two companies as a corporate librarian. But, I also had occasion to work at Stanford. And that experience has helped me tremendously to understand more about what it was to be an academic librarian. And at Foothill—that’s kind of good. There is a role model there. I don’t even remember her name, unfortunately. Since I’m from the Los Altos area, I went to Foothill. And when I was at Foothill, I had occasion to need to get a part-time job. So, I worked part time in the Foothill Library. I had really not had much exposure to libraries at that point. My only real contact besides using the school library on occasion, was that a friend of mine in high school had always wanted to be a librarian. And I remember during that time, not to her directly, but to other friends, saying, "Why in the world would she want to be a librarian!" I couldn’t even relate to it. Then, I went to Foothill. There was a woman who was the supervisor of the circulation desk, and I worked at the check-out desk. And this woman was probably only about twenty-four or twenty-five. She was a very recent graduate from San Jose State Library School. She was a terrific role model—my whole image of librarians changed. She was outgoing. She was very personable. And very dedicated to what she was doing in the way of helping people. It wasn’t so much that we had to do things because that’s the way things had to be done, but that this was going to be more effective in helping people. It was great! I even learned how to shelve books in a manner that was going to be appreciated by the public—for one thing, in order, and a certain distance from the edge of the shelf—and the whole thing. So, at that time, I was so impressed with her, and I only worked there I think a year because I went on and had other jobs throughout college. I thought back on all my associations with any kind of person and I really felt inspired and excited in thinking about being a librarian like this person that I used to work for. Because I felt like working with information was exciting and fun, and working with people was even more fun. There was a reason for it and there was a way to do it that was going to be better than another. So, she was a very good role model. Really, because I had no…even thought of going into library science. So, as I went through college and became more and more a humanities major, I was wondering what to do. I went to Brigham Young University in Utah. I have a lot of relatives out there. And interestingly enough, at one point they had a library program. So, I had only been out there for two years until I graduated. And I was able to get a job in the library, the university library, part time. And that was good, because I pretty much felt that library school left a lot to be desired, and I was working at the same time. I don’t know that I really would have finished library school at that time, and this was a long time ago, because the classes were not that stimulating to me at all. And it was only by seeing how this really applied in the actual working world that I was able to continue on. And, as I said earlier, at that time, they didn’t gear you up for special libraries. [After I graduated, I came back to California, but there were not a lot of jobs.] It was after Proposition 13 had passed, and there were not a lot of jobs in public libraries. And so, at that point, needing to have a job myself—and, of course, living with my parents in Los Altos, and several months of my applying and sending out resumes all over the place. My dad said, I think you need to go out and work in a temporary organization—just do anything. And every time you go out there, just tell them what our background is and that you’re in between interviews and that you’re looking for a library job—and you never know, maybe they will have a library out there. Sure, Dad, right. Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what I ended up doing. That’s how I got my first job as an engineering librarian. I had very minimal work skills at that point being a humanities major, and so I didn’t really have a lot of typing skills, or whatever, but I certainly had organizational skills. I went out on a project working for this engineering company in Palo Alto in their accounting department, actually, organizing accounting files. I told my manager, who happened to be head of their accounting department, what I was just out of school. I had gotten my degree in library science—we can’t put expressions into these things. And basically, I went through a period of being humiliated, that I was out there doing this kind of thing The thing was, that this was an excellent opportunity. And that’s why I said earlier, if people, you know, the students coming out of school today can be flexible—they need to understand more about how business operates. And in order to be able to do that, you have to be immersed in some kind of business. And temporary work is a way to do that. Even if it’s not through an organization like mine, which tries to put you in a regular library job. Even if you have to go out and work anywhere and tell them what your background is. And see if there’s anything else that you can do. [In any case], within about two weeks, the accounting manager approached me and indicated that they had a library. Looking at this engineering information, it was like Greek to me. And, I thought to myself, well this would be kind of interesting, if I really knew what this was all about. So, I went back to him, and said, thanks for the opportunity, but I’m afraid that I just don’t understand anything about engineering. So, I don’t know how I could really do anything for them here. I guess that you could say that this man was another role model. He changed the course of my direction. Because I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job. But, he said, you know—that’s interesting. You know, I’m an accountant, and I don’t know anything about engineering either. But I’ve been working here as an accountant. So, you’ve probably more of an understanding about organizing and working with information than anybody else here. So, I don’t see why you couldn’t go in and organize. So, I said, well, that’s a good point. So, I went and applied for the job. And, of course, I didn’t know anything about engineering then. My biggest fear for years was that the president of the company was going to come and ask me something and I’d have no idea what he was talking about. And I would appear to be a complete fool. But, that never happened, for one thing. And then, the other thing was that they didn’t really have a good catalog at the time. However, they did have the ability to produce a printout. I just was immediately interested in trying to do a printout of some kind rather than trying to type out sets of cards and order sets of cards from the Library of Congress. And that was just a big mess. So, I thought, this is the way to go. I knew some people down the hall that were in the MIS Department. I said, can’t we do some sort of a printout here. Just a title, subject author, key word sort. And they said, fill out these sheets, these coding sheets and then give us the information. We’ll teach you to key punch it. So, by the time I spent the first six months there actually cataloging and organizing all this information…of course, I didn’t understand completely all of it…but, if somebody came in and asked me for some information on fluid flow dynamics, I knew right where to go. In fact, what I began to see was that they had a number of PhD-level engineers and I recognized that I knew way more than they did about doing any kind of research. And their ability to understand how to use libraries was at third-grade level. So, I had a lot to contribute. In fact, we were only about a mile from the Stanford campus, so I spent a lot of time just running over to Stanford to the Engineering Library. As Dialog came into more of the forefront and I would do searches, and then I would actually run out and get the article. There was always a crisis—always. And there weren’t many document delivery things at that point. So, just back to the man who hired me on as a temporary.

If you could pick one experience when you look back over your professional career, what would you say was the most rewarding?

I certainly went into detail about how I even got a job in special libraries, which has to be one of the highlights. Recognizing that I actually could understand what technical people were talking about and could contribute to the work that they were doing because of my specialization. So that’s one highlight. I’d say, another one was just the belief in myself and in my profession that enabled me to start a business. A service industry business—that was another one. The other thing I can think of that would actually lead us into talking about special libraries is that my involvement in Special Libraries Association enabled me to do something that I had wanted to do for a long time, and wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t been on the Board of Special Libraries Association when San Andreas was started…well, shall I go into it now…

We could. Yes—I’ll ask you about it later, too, but fine if it’s one of your highlights…

Well, as a working person, we all get so involved with our jobs, and of course, we want to have some personal time, and we don’t always have the time for extra-curricular things. I thought that involvement in a professional organization was something that I didn’t have the time to do until…and I should say, I used to attend the San Francisco Chapter meetings about once a year because it was so far away from the South Bay. I always enjoyed it and got something out of it, but the thought of ever being involved with it was pretty remote because it was so far away. So, when the invitation came from a small group of people who had decided that they’d had enough of this commute up to the San Francisco Chapter and wanted to establish the South Bay association, I attended the meeting. And I was just so pleased because it would be so close by. I really felt that as a special librarian who was very isolated—at one point I just had one other person working with me—so this would be a great thing to have available. So, I attended the meeting and ended up becoming involved in that first year. I served for two years as the first treasurer of the Chapter. The president of the Chapter at that time was Celine Walker, who was the head of the Science Library at Stanford. She had been a former corporate librarian and she got into academic libraries. Because I was on the Board, I got to know other people on the Board and Celine. And I happened to mention to her that…I actually asked her how she liked being an academic librarian, said, oh—yeah—it was great. Really fun, interesting or whatever. She said, are you interested in becoming an academic librarian? At that time, many of us who came out of library school sort of thought that being an academic librarian was about the pinnacle of the library profession. I had always thought, at that point, that it would be just a fantastic opportunity, especially to be involved with Stanford. So, I said to her, oh, I would be very interested. The only problem is that I’m working full time…and we’d have to see. It turns out, about six months later, she called me up and said, I know that you’re working full time and maybe this won’t work. On the other hand, I just wanted to mention to you that we have a six-month, twenty-hour a week position for a reference librarian in the Engineering Library here so that the reference librarian can work on another project. And I was thinking I could bring someone like you in here, then our students will have access to somebody with a lot of practical experience, and it would be very helpful. And I’m wondering if you’d like to do it. So, I said, well, I think that would be really great. But I just don’t know how I’m going to work forty hours a week plus over at Cupertino at my regular engineering library job, and then take on this job half time, too. She was very creative and said, well, why don’t you explore it and see if perhaps they would let you cut back on your hours a little bit so that you could do this special thing. She had a very interesting way of presenting it. I went to my boss and I told him that I’d been invited to do this position. I expected him to say no. I don’t know why he would want to say yes. But, you know, there’s a mystique about Stanford. So, actually, he was very impressed that I’d been asked to do this even though it was really just a reference librarian job. So, I was able to cut back. I wasn’t able to cut back half time, but I ended up working thirty hours a week at my Cupertino job, then I worked twenty hours a week for Stanford. That was great, because not only did I have experience later on in academic as well as special librarianship, but also it answered some questions in my own mind about my own career, personally. Which was—was I just in special libraries because that was the only thing that I could find to do, or was I choosing. Did I have a chance to choose that and would I choose it over going into academic libraries. Because, ultimately, I was offered a permanent job at Stanford. I realized early on that special libraries was the best possible library situation I could have fallen into. It afforded me the opportunity to be my own boss, to make decisions really at a pretty high level. However I wanted to do something, I could decide that I was going to do something because I didn’t have too many people there that I had to ask about it. So, if I wanted to rearrange the whole shelving area, I could do it. If I wanted to start up a little newsletter and advertise courses on videotape through the library, which I did at one time in my career. But in the academic libraries the red tape is tremendous. So, for me, I realized at that time that if I had a choice between any of the forms of librarianship, I would definitely choose…and I did choose…special librarianship. So that was a milestone for me, to recognize that I wasn’t just doing it because it was the only thing I could get, but I wanted to do it.

When you think back to when you graduated and were looking around, and compare that to today, do you think the challenges are different or are there parallels?

I think that looking for a job never gets any easier for anybody. It’s a very vulnerable period of someone’s life, and from that aspect of looking for a job today is no different than looking for a job twenty years ago. In the past year, I have co-authored a publication with my brother, as a matter of fact, on the job search process. It’s a book which we call The Job Search Organizer. So, in the process of producing that…and we now have a publisher in New York…so, I’ve had a chance to focus on the job search process. I recognize that even though there are a lot more resources available for people, you still have to advertise yourself as well as look at what else is out there listed. It’s still a very difficult process, because, for one thing, it involves selling skills. The ability to sell yourself. Most people don’t have those skills. Most people don’t want to have those skills, unfortunately, but we all need to have those to a certain degree. So, it’s always difficult. Plus, trying to sell yourself in particular is very hard because even if a person is not rejecting you, you feel they are rejecting you. So, I think that’s the difficult part that’s never going to change. I don’t think that will ever change. We just have to steel ourselves to doing these kinds of things. As far as the market place and applications of our skills, probably librarians’ research skills and the skills librarians use are more recognized by the market place than they were twenty years ago. If you talk about online searching and do they surf the Net, they relate to the fact that you know how to do it. There are possibly some opportunities for librarians in using their skills in non-library settings if they can free up their thinking. I hope more and more that people will recognize that that doesn’t matter—that there are opportunities out there. Because traditional libraries—special, academic, public—have their own way of finding people and doing their recruitment process. So, it’s something that a person has to decide, well, which direction do I want to go off into. And play the game to be considered for those jobs. And go through the rules. I don’t have a second master’s degree, and yet I was offered a job at Stanford’s Engineering Library, which was a very unusual thing. So, it is possible to work around those requirements even sometimes. I, personally, have not had a lot of problems finding jobs since I got my very first job. You either know how to go about the job search process or you don’t. I think the special libraries organization is one of the prime organizations for librarians.

If you were going to trade places with me, and you were going to interview someone here in Silicon Valley in our profession, who would you choose?

I’ve interviewed a lot of people, so it’s hard to think of someone that I haven’t interviewed!

Because you are curious about their experience…

In our profession?

Well, loosely related…

The thing that comes to my mind—I remember two years ago…again, at a Special Libraries meeting [the Yahoo! founders spoke]…I’ve heard them speak, but I have not spoken to them myself, and I related to their story starting up a company and trying to figure out what was going on…Yahoo! It would be kind of intriguing to interview them. At this point, now that they’ve been going for a few years. Basically, what they’ve done is they’ve provided an online database on the Internet trying to help people understand what sites are available that would be pertinent. Pretty intriguing, because basically it’s kind of a library-type product that as librarians we could come up with that idea somehow or other. They came up with it and they were not librarians. And at that meeting I specifically remember someone asking them what is your biggest problem. And they explained, coming up with new categories to classify the sites. Of course, all of us thought, well, what’s wrong with Library of Congress subject headings and are you using that tool? They either didn’t know what that was or they weren’t using it. So, they were just creating and inventing all these categories out of their own minds. Someone kind of yelled out—you need a librarian! And it’s my understanding that they have since hired some people to do that. I think it would be interesting to just see what their experience has been in trying to get involved in providing something that is on the Internet.

In your experience, was the library always valued by the organization that you worked for?

In my experience, I would say that the libraries were not—hardly ever—valued by the organizations that I worked for. In the beginning. And I think one of the things that I was able to do working for the two organizations that I did work for in special libraries, was that I created more of a recognition and a value associated with it. However, it’s always been a very tough road to go, because it’s a service organization and it’s straight overhead. Unless a librarian creates a way to charge back extensively (which is very time consuming) to projects, it’s very hard to justify sometimes the work that you’re doing. When I was at these various libraries, I was never downsized or laid off myself, but after I left both libraries that I worked at, ultimately over a period of time, were downsized or closed down. That was actually hard on me from the standpoint that I felt like I’d worked very hard to build up a physical library with something there. And then either participated in hiring my replacement or they would bring in somebody for awhile to replace me. I used to be very tied to thinking that the value was in the collection, and it was only later that I came to an understanding, or at least resolving in my own mind that what was important when I worked in different companies as the library manager—what was important was what I learned and what I contributed to the organization. As long as I had gained something from the experience and as long as I had contributed something to the people who worked there, that that was what was valued and important, and what I left behind wasn’t that important.

The organizations valued you and not specifically the library…

I think that’s true. I think there is a recognition out there on the part of companies when they have really good staff with not only excellent technical skills, but good people and management skills, that there is a value and recognition that is created for individuals. The actual function or department itself is not as meaningful.

If you had not gone into library science, what would you be doing?

At this point, I think if I knew what I know now, I probably would have gone into having a business of my own of some kind. Because I definitely enjoy being in business and being in a situation where I can decide what kind of value I want to create and I can move forward and do it. I discovered when I started in business that I really enjoy working with people to sell something which I believe in and I perceive to be of value to other people. Creating a situation where someone is actually willing to pay money for what you have done for them makes me feel that they value the service that I perform. I enjoy that. It’s a fun, interesting, exciting thing to be involved in. So, if I hadn’t gone into library science, I probably would have gone into something else that I could have been involved with creating a business. And being involved with selling and providing a service of some kind. [Interviewers note: after the interview, Linda indicated that the business could very well be something to do with her love of horses.]

How do you go about changing with changing times and changing technology?

I basically just dive in. I can say that I know that I’m not one of the early adopters of new technology. In the business here, we didn’t even have a computer for about the first year. I used a three by five card file box like a manual card catalog, and cataloged people. Pretty soon I realized that we just had to have a computer…had to get into this. Now, we’re just going through networking our computers together. We’ve had a pseudo-network for about a year. I’ve been involved in getting that going. We finally have the ability for each person from their desktop to access the Internet and to use e-mail. Which everyone else in the library field has probably had from very early on and we’re just getting into it. What I find is that I really like to take a look at what is needed and what’s available out there. When it’s time to bring in something that is going to enhance what we’re doing and facilitate our efforts, then I tend to just pick one aspect of something and try to learn as much as I can about it. And then move on from there. Because if I get too many things going at the same time, I tend not to be able to relate to anything. Right now I’m focused on hardware. The next phase is software. So, that’s how I tend to do it.

What would be the most important elements of your epitaph?

Oh…my goodness. I said earlier that what I value in my jobs and in working has been what I have learned and what I’ve been able to contribute. So, I think, something to do with that. She learned as much as she possibly could, and she contributed where possible. And, hopefully, is remembered for some of that. The thing that really makes me smile at this point, is when I run across people who worked in companies where I used to be the library manager. And, even if they didn’t necessarily use the library directly, I’ve had a number of people, because I’ve been in Silicon Valley for awhile now, that said, oh, you worked at Four Phase. Were you the librarian over there? That was the best library we ever had. We’ve never been in a company that had a library like that. You know, people don’t have to comment or say anything about, so I know that there must have been something that was valued at that particular department or function. That makes me feel very good. I hope that the same thing can be said eventually, in fact, I have had a lot of people say to me about AIM, especially as people who have been looking for work, that the fact that we’re here has really given them a lot of peace of mind. Because they have either found jobs with our help. Or, they know that if they ever get into a situation where they’re going to be needing to look for something, that they know where to come. That we’re going to give them support and just be at least another resource for them. That gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Imagine a library historian reading this transcript maybe a hundred years from now—what would you want to communicate to that person about our situation here during this period?

Before the turn of the Century?

Right…

Librarians are people who care about information and people. No matter how fantastic the technology has gotten to be, that librarians still know what really counts, and that’s the information itself that’s generated and the people that need to use it. The technology is just there to facilitate both things coming together. Librarians really are a very important element in the communication process within their organizations.

We’ve been touching on this here and there, but I want to really focus on it now. You were on the Board of the very first Board of the San Andreas Chapter, so can we kind of start there. Do you have anything more to add about that—and go forward with your involvement with the Chapter.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a mailing that went out from a group of people, that I thought was very insightful. They were as very innovative group and they had a lot of gumption. They sent out, I think, about a hundred invitations to people that they could identify in the South Bay. And invited them to go to a restaurant here in Mountain View. It is not longer there, but it was called Chez Yvonne, a French restaurant over on El Camino. I think close to a hundred of us attended that first meeting. They had on the registration slip as you came in the door, they had noted on the bottom of the slip—would you be willing to serve on a committee or in some capacity in starting this chapter? I remember thinking, well, the fact was that I didn’t really have a lot of time that I wanted to devote to this. But, on the other hand, I thought, gee, if everybody said that, then this would be a problem to get this chapter off the ground. So, I checked the box and said yes. That I would be willing to serve. The next thing I knew, I was being asked if I would run for treasurer. Which I did, and was elected, so I did fill that position. Also, at that meeting, I recall that they were attempting to search for a name for the Chapter. We have a lot of very creative and fun-loving people in our chapter. So, there were some very creative names that came out during that meeting. But, the one that I remember the most besides the one that we actually got, the San Andreas Chapter. The other name that was voted on was Fiche and Chips Chapter. So, we could have had a worse name than we have now—we could have had the Fiche and Chips Chapter. As it was, the San Andreas Chapter was the one that won the vote. I thought that was appropriate because I feel that our chapter has a lot of movers and shakers in the library profession. So, it wasn’t just because we happen to be in this neighborhood that might be moved and shaken. So, the Chapter got off the ground. It is amazing to think of how these chapters actually operate. How much effort it takes from year to year, from board to board, to keep things going. As I’ve been involved with a few other associations not in the library field, I’ve really had a growing respect for how Special Libraries has set up this program. And how it’s been able to perpetuate itself once the Chapter gets started. In past years we’ve had problems with finding people to volunteer to be President and President Elect, but overall somehow we always seem to come through with someone who is generous enough be willing to donate their time in that capacity. So, that’s just part of my early memories of the Chapter. I think it’s been a great addition. I think it really has helped with the overall profession in the South Bay to have this chapter here. I think there’s been a lot of growth and movement among people in the profession because of things that we’ve learned in attending these meetings and because of the networking that’s been able to go on. Even with myself, the way I got my job at Stanford was through networking in the Chapter. And I’ve been able to start a business because I’ve know a lot of people in the field through involvement with both chapters, San Francisco and San Andreas.

When you say networking, what do you mean by that?

What I mean by networking is the ability to get to know people individually, face-to-face, first-name-to-first-name. People do things with people they know. So, the more people you know, the better it is. And the more people that you’re able to call upon when you have a challenge or a question or a need or a cause that you need to push forward. Networking is a very vital thing. In the job search process, as I mentioned earlier, networking is probably the key thing that people can do. In working with other people in doing the job search methods, the networking side of things is the most effective way to learn what’s going on out there. What the needs are and what you possibly might be able to do.

Have you had periods when you were more active [in the Chapter] than others? Tell me a little about that.

Gee—you want to really get the dirt here…

If there is any…

To me, time is more valuable than money. And time, as I get older, becomes more and more of a precious commodity. I was involved in both chapters, actually. The San Andreas…I was trying to think of when the Chapter actually started, 1980-82. I started the business in ’84. I know it was a couple of years before that. Ann Porter Roth was the secretary after me—probably about that time. Anyway, I went on to be one of the directors of the Chapter. I served on various committees, Nominations, and whatever, throughout the eighties. I also was on the Strategic Planning Committee of the San Francisco Chapter for awhile. I went through periods when I was more active as far as serving pretty much since the San Andreas Chapter has been going. Since I’ve been in business in 1984, I’ve been attending and a member of the San Francisco Chapter as well. I have tried to attend at least two or three meetings a year in both chapters. Also, since we have an office in Los Angeles and there’s a chapter in Southern California, I also try to attend at least a couple of meetings down there. Plus, in Southern California we have a very active ASIS group, and I try to attend some of those meetings. I try to spread myself out where possible. I feel it’s really important to attend and support the meetings themselves. Invariably—like I just went to the Professional Development at RayChem, and that was a tremendous meeting. I learned an awful lot about intranets and how they’re being used and what are the possibilities for them. That’s also another direction that I see librarians as getting into—as working on company intranets because of our organizational skills and abilities. Right now, suffice it to say, that I actually do not hold an office or am not on a committee for either of the chapters. I’ve actually gotten a little more involved with SLA national headquarters putting on workshops at the national conventions from year to year. We also offer a resume evaluation service through Professional Development. I try to spread myself around with these things. In fact, I’ve been pretty interested in getting involved in the national association. At least knowing more people there. It’s been interesting as I’ve had a chance to travel back to Washington, DC, twice now I’ve actually gone over to SLA headquarters. The first time, walked in without even knowing anyone over there and just kind of had a tour. The second time, I know people now in the different divisions, so I’ve gone over and had lunch with them and talked to people. It’s just interesting to see how this operates from a national standpoint. At the moment I’m not as involved except attending. I think that’s really important.

Taking the opportunity to go national, so to speak…

Right.

Is there a question that I should have asked that I didn’t ask or that you wish I had asked?

I think you’ve really thoroughly covered a lot of things and brought out a lot of my feelings about the profession. I guess mainly I can just review. I very much value the skills and abilities of people in the library profession. I think there is a very strong future for us all in this profession. I would just encourage everyone to be confident in themselves and their skills. To be able to go forward and be aggressive in their involvement in their organizations. That is going to help us all more than anything else. We’re each kind of a representative for the profession in our organizations, and it’s something we can all do to upgrade the image of our profession. The more visible we are, the more we will reflect positively on the profession and strengthen it.

Thank you very much.