Introduction

In 1909, a number of librarians attending the American Libraries Association conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, voted to form a group dedicated to professionals working in business, industry and government. Under the aegis of its first president, John Cotton Dana, the newly formed Special Libraries Association's aims were to promote the work of members and share information and resources. The Association's founding marked the formal recognition that among professional custodians of written materials, those who served the workplace, rather than students or the general public, had specific needs and skills. Over the next century (and more), the corporate information service has evolved in line with changes in the workplace; it has often been at the sharp end of change, and its staff the first to experience the effects of political and economic developments in the wider world.

In this book, the corporate information service is defined as a unit within a corporate body providing the information that staff need to carry out the work of the organization. Such service's main purpose is not the collection or dissemination of information or published works for their own sake, but they require such information in order to fulfil their objectives as well as possible. Collections in public, national and academic libraries are often used by these corporate bodies, particularly when they concern law or business, but this book is interested in and aimed at information professionals who work inside organizations. These include law firms, consultancies, other commercial entities such as banks and insurance firms, businesses engaged in retail and manufacture, professional trade bodies (which might, in some cases, be morelike the academic sector) and non-governmental organizations. The government sector also operates very much like the corporate sector. Some corporate sector organizations, such as the BBC, might in fact be publicly funded. The key is that their central mission is an activity other than information collection and dissemination.

Corporate information services naturally reflect their parent organizations and are therefore various and heterodox. Yet across all organizations, they face a similar challenge: how does an information service prove its worth when the main function of its organization is not officially information provision or learning? As their work, however valued, will always be an adjunct for the business, rather than a profit centre, the role of the information professional in such a context is particularly interesting.