Rebecca Dorsett.
“I loved the TV show Changing Rooms, so I did interior design at the University of Wolverhampton. I needed a part time job while I was there and got one at the library around the corner from me, which happened to be my childhood library.” This completely redefined her aspira-
tions: “I just entered this world where, for the first time in my young years, I actually enjoyed my job. That sounds stupid, but I’d been surrounded by people that didn’t enjoy their roles wherever I seemed to go. But this was a place where people actually liked coming to work, I liked coming to work, I’d leave feeling like I’d done something.” The experience had profound effects as Becky recalls: “I was really quiet at that point, I wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But I definitely didn’t come out of public librar- ies like that. I think purely because the staff I met there were amazing.” Despite this Road to Damascus career moment, she still had to make a choice. She says: “I finished my interior design degree and left uni. But I stayed in libraries because I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Then at some point I thought, ‘You know what? I think you need to make this your career because you bloody love it’.
“I took my MSc at Northumbria because they did it by distance learning, which meant I didn’t have to move and I could stay in the roles I loved. That was in 2010 and that’s when I joined CILIP.”
Change
“Then the public library world became quite unstable. Volunteers were coming in and overtime being cut. And when you’re young you’re thinking ‘I’d like to move out of home one day’ so I had to look for some- thing else. This led to further education and health libraries.
“In further education I learnt more about the breadth of information literacy at a dif- ferent level. In public libraries you are used
24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
to helping people with all sorts of enquiries – which prepares you for anything in life – but education was different because you’re focused on supporting students.” However, it was her stint in health librar- ies that opened her eyes to the immediate power of information and an introduction to KIM.
“I started working at the Royal United Hospital in Bath and that was another game-changer. I still reference it now when I’m talking about information manage- ment because the library service there gets it,” says Becky. “Doing literature searches for medical professionals and also teaching them their information skills – I’d never really thought about it as a skill that every- body needed before. In the NHS you’re seeing that correlation with patient care, seeing information have a direct impact. To exploit what we can find directly and see it impact something. And capturing the knowledge that we have and exploit- ing that. That was revolutionary for me then. And those were the core principles of information and knowledge management. I still refer back to the NHS when I’m helping people work out what information management is.”
Lessons from the past “For example, when I worked in the air safety team at the MOD, that opened my eyes again to what information did. How information is linked to safety and keeping everyone alive. KM became really important after incidents in the MOD highlighted knowledge and information not linking up. It echoed that NHS view of the value of KIM.” She highlights the Haddon Cave Report, saying: “This was published after a Nimrod plane crash led to loss of life. There had been a series of missed opportunities and previous incidents on this type of aircraft, but they weren’t captured effectively which created a ‘Swiss cheese’ effect. You’ve got
to get people to report things when they go wrong so you can fix them. Occasional- ly things will fall through the cracks if you don’t have a strong system in place, and that can end up adding up to a big thing. “The review highlighted, amongst many things, how important capturing knowledge is. It also challenged current records retention policy. It made KIM professionals begin to challenge the cur- rent process and consider the different needs defence has. Aircraft can fly for a lot longer than anyone realises and if retention is seven years it doesn’t fit with something that has been in the air for 20 years. It means you haven’t got any reference points to go back to and find out when things actually started going wrong. Now they are capturing that with safety reports right from the ground through into the back office, collating and analysing that, looking for those threads, looking at what they can learn, looking for common problems.”
Saved by the profession When she switched from libraries to KIM in the Civil Service the role was
BAE Nimrod MR2 XV230 that crashed in Afghanistan in 2006.
Photo © Oren Rozen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7914843
March 2024
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