Professionals in
Information and Documentation

Mr. Andreas R. Brellochs is President of BIS.info (Library Information Switzerland).

Mr. Andreas R. Brellochs, Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

Originally, I come from Germany, but I'm working in Switzerland since 1998. I am Documentalist and Information Scientist and after my studies, I started my occupational career with three years as independent consultant in the area of online advertisement concepts for small and medium organisations. Since then, I collected more than ten years of work expericence as a knowledge manager and information researcher with an economic research company and an international management consulting company in Switzerland. Currently, I am employed with a Swiss bank in Zurich, also working as an information intermediary but with a strong involvement in projects.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your career?

I see it as a huge advantage, every day to be able to deal with new and exciting topics and (hence) always to develop myself further.

What is the most challenging aspect of working in this field?

It is always a challenge to remain close to the demand of the customer and to build a bridge between my technical knowledge and his demand and professional language.

You are the President of the Bibliothek Information Schweiz (Association for Library & Information Switzerland - www.bis.info). Why this association? What are the most important activities? What is your role as President?

Library and documentation professionals nowadays have – again – much more in common than in the beginning of industrialization, when documentalists split off as a separate professsion.

This shift in the development of the information professions towards each other is one of the reasons, that in Switzerland since the nineties integrated studies and vocational trainings emerged. Here, 'integrated' means, one gets a combined education as a librarian, documentalist and archivist.

BIS as the professional association of the librarians and documentalists was formed in the early 2008 by a merger of the professional associations BBS (librarians and libraries) and the SVD (documentalists and documentation organisations) (Dokumentationseinrichtungen). This means, BIS is not only a professional association but also an industry organisation of the libraries and documentation related organisations in Switzerland.

With the merger, we took the next step to follow the development of our professions. Our tasks are to represent the interests of our members towards politics and to promote the development of libraries and of the information profession in Switzerland. We provide chances for networking between our members and organise the basic vocational training, and also we offer a further education program to our members.

According to the Swiss political tradition, my role as president is more a moderator than a principal. Together with the board I am responsible for the development and implementation of our associaton's strategy and also, I work as an interface between the board and our administration and have to represent the association with several public events.

If you could travel back in time to visit librarians of the late twentieth century, what advice would you give them? Do these advices serve up for professionals today?

From the viewpoint of today, I must say, that librarians and information specialists did not serve adequatly to form the information society with their special abilities. These fields were taken over by other professions like computer scientists.

For me, the lesson for information professionals only can be: Never stop changing!

Respond always as fast as possible to new needs, be always ready to develop new products and services and always be ready to use new technologies if they meet the needs of customers better. And, of course, these lessons definitely apply to today's professionals.

When you look to the future, what are your goals and dreams? Please tell our readers a little bit about any special projects you're looking forward to.

I already talked about the merger of the Swiss professional associations of libraries, librarians and information specialists in 2008. But I'm pretty sure there is still a potential for a further concentration of the Swiss information associations landscape. We need to further join our forces to raise our political influence and to be able to face the challenges ahead.

One of my personal goals is to unleash the job potential for our information professionals in the privately held Swiss economy. There are a lot of information-related job profiles out there, but only few of the staff managers in companies know about the abilities of our information specialists. Especially in the private sector there is a widely untapped potential for such specialists with the ability to work with and to organize information contents. However, these jobs don't run with the classical naming lirarian, dokumentalist etc. ...

In your opinion, How to promote the value of the library to the society?

This is one of the most difficult questions for libraries. Showing the benefits is on the one hand a matter of survival. If publicly funded libraries don't have the explicit backing of politicians, they are increasingly called into question. Therefore, one of the tasks of the BIS as professional association is lobbying with the political world to point out the social significance of libraries.

If you had to name a single most important technology to libraries today, what would it be?

Currently, web 2.0 applications and the social web exerts a great influence on our profession. But in my point of view, with the mobile internet, the mobile user comes up the horizon. Libraries will have to answer this demand.

Also, new classes of publications will challenge the 'business model' of libraries. We already see e-journals and e-books handled by libraries. Next will probably be publications on mobile phones, e-publications using the special properties of mobile phones.

Are the Swiss libraries prepared to handle with the global financial crisis that currently we live?

Of course, also in Switzerland, libraries face an increasingly more difficult financial environment by budget shortages and restructurations. However, most libraries are mainly funded by public finance. Therefore, they are usually subject of a medium-term financing. Thus, the financial crisis is currently not one of the main threats to public libraries. In private institutions, however, libraries are often subject to economic evaluations. They are especially forced to show their value to the management.

Based on your experience, what skills does a person need to become a librarian?

I'm pretty sure, the classical properties (accuracy, ability to concentrate, broad general education etc.) are still valid.

But we have to consider that with the dawn of the so called 'new media' the profile of information intermediaries became subject to a constant cange. This means, we probably should add new abilities to the profile of the ideal librarian.

I could imagine, requirements like the ability to communicate (also on electronic media), flexibility, and, of course, a kind of technological affinity are surely becoming more important today.

If I talk with library managers in Switzerland, they tell me about their difficulties to find adequate candidates for leading positions in the profession. Therefore, I always remind professionals to keep in mind that there is not only the option to develop to a professional, but also to think about if a management position could be an interesting and rewarding direction of development.

What impression do you have of Spaniard information professionals? Are there any differences with Swiss professionals?

Well, actually, we didn't have much direct contacts in the past. I guess, it has a little bit to do with the language barrier. However, our association keeps tight relationships with international associations like IFLA and there is also our interest group SLIR (Swiss Librarians for International Relations) keeping in touch with foreign professionals. Maybe, this is the way we could establish more frequent contacts in future.

Reading your publication 'Boletin Docuforum' makes my pretty sure, that our colleagues in Switzerland could benfit from this contact.

Is there anything else that you want to add or that you wish I'd asked you about?

No, but thank you for the contact!

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