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I recently attended a webinar where the speaker used the term social interoperability, which he attributed to OCLC having coined in a 2020 report on research support.
The context was academic libraries supporting research efforts across campus, but this could easily apply in hospitals or health systems -- or any organization prone to working in silos. The more I thought about it, it's about networking and managing the matrix, making connections where there were none before to make the organization work better. Creating connections between nodes. Sort of like the old telephone operators plugging in the lines at the switchboard to make connections between callers. I'm probably dating myself with that image ...
The point is: We're all part of the same jigsaw puzzle. Everyone has a different view of the organization and their place in it. We all know someone who could help in any given situation, who might have certain knowledge / info, so why not make those connections? Often, it only take a couple of degrees-of-separation to track down the person with the answer.
Here's an example from my own library this week:
A nurse, updating a local dept. policy, asked me for the current edition of The Nutrition Care Manual. I did not have it in my library. From what I could tell, this is an ebook only available from the American Diabetes Association's Eat Right Store. I was not able to purchase it through our regular library ebook vendors. And as an ebook, there was little chance I'd be able to borrow it through ILL on her behalf. If I was going to get it for her, I'd need to take a different approach ... I remembered that in the past our Food & Nutrition Dept. used this manual, so I made some inquiries ... and sure enough, they had access to the current edition and showed me how to get to it on our intranet. So I was able to connect the nurse with the dietician who had the info she needed. I also made some notes on our LibGuides and catalog/opac explaining who to contact and how to access this resource to make it easier to track down next time.
How do YOU make these kinds of connections in your organization?
Share in the comments below ...
Bryant, Rebecca, Annette Dortmund, and Brian Lavoie. 2020. Social Interoperability in Research Support: Cross-Campus Partnerships and the University Research Enterprise. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/wyrd-n586
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