spotlight on: Dan Trefethen     return to other professionals

Your primary responsibilities:
I am here to support Boeing's goal of improving the global air traffic system to improve safety and reduce congestion and delays. I maintain a full service library, both hardcopy and electronic resources, which specializes in air traffic management (ATM) and materials dealing with aircraft communication, navigation and surveillance. One of my primary responsibilities is to publish a weekly newsletter on recent events in ATM. I also maintain two web sites for my group, one for external use and the other as an internal home page for technical resources. Lately I have been providing orientation for new employees, many of whom will be working on the East Coast and with whom I want to establish face-to-face relationships before they move.

While I work directly for Boeing ATM and am not a member of the larger Boeing Technical Libraries, I work cooperatively with the Boeing library system and rely on them for access to a wider variety of resources (especially electronic) than I could otherwise afford. In this way I have the best of both worlds--I operate as a solo librarian who can leverage the wider resources of a larger technical library for the benefit of my customers.

The knowledge and skills required to do your job:
I see the need for special librarians to work as closely as possible with specific user communities, operating more often as members of the team than as separate support staff. What enables this is the ability of today's solo librarian to provide sophisticated information delivery without having to build a huge physical collection first. A small core collection combined with knowledgable retrieval skills is an effective formula for many special librarians now. This also means that librarians will be teaming with people from other professions, with different perspectives and objectives. This can be challenging, but quite rewarding. There is also a greater risk of mobility--having to move to different teams (or companies) periodically. This reflects a general societal trend, though, and I don't see why librarians cannot adapt to it as well (if not better) than any other profession.

The Future:
Soon I will be moving my library for the fourth time in five years. This is another type of "mobility" issue that encourages me to keep a rein on the growth of the physical collection. I see this as another growing issue in today's dynamic economy. Special librarians will not stay wedded to the same space as much as they used to, and should be prepared to move the collection occasionally. Knowing a few basic things about space planning and moving will become more necessary for tomorrow's special librarian.

(September 2001)