Library Science: Information Architecture and the Synthesis of Details with Abby Clobridge (1/2)

Nerd Journey

What do you think the following jobs have in common? The answer will give you a hint about our guest this week!

• Doing statistical work for a market research firm
• Conducting research for a popular news network
• Architecting information flow and query optimization for websites
• Leading digitization initiatives for a university
• Becoming a consultant
• Owning a business

Abby Clobridge, our guest in episode 292, held all of the above jobs as a result of pursuing a degree in library science. Listen closely for the parallels between learning how to architect information flow / retrieval for websites and learning how to architect communication flow so that people needing information get just enough at the right time and with the appropriate level of detail. This includes learning how to exercise brevity in communication while being assertive. You’ll also hear how Abby worked on natural language processing and sentiment analysis years before we had mature tools to do it.

Original Recording Date: 08-23-2024

Topics – Falling into Library Science, The Technical Nature of Library Science, The Architect of Information, Just Enough Information, Exercising Assertive Brevity, Leading Digital Initiatives and Walled Gardens

2:49 – Falling into Library Science

• Abby Clobridge is the founder and lead consultant at FireOak Strategies.
  • FireOak Strategies is a boutique consulting firm specializing in information management, knowledge management, and everything related to how information, data, and knowledge are managed, secured, and shared.
• In college, Abby studied history at Tufts University and wasn’t quite sure what she might do after graduation.
  • Tufts had an experimental college that allowed undergraduate students to teach a class to first year students, but it required a faculty mentor / sponsor. Abby was teaching a class, and her mentor was the head of information technology and human resources at the undergraduate library.
  • Abby kept in touch with this mentor as she got closer to graduating, and she had also done internships focused on research for producing a documentary and other things adjacent to history.
  • Abby’s mentor kept suggesting she attend grad school and look at library science as an option.
  • The library science program aligned with Abby’s interests(using technology, looking at information, doing research) and combined them with the use of analytical skills.
• John jokes that library science is the original information technology and highlights the pattern we are seeing that there is no traditional background to get into technology fields.

5:43 – The Technical Nature of Library Science

• People might not know how technical library can be.
• For reference, Abby was studying as an undergraduate in the mid 1990s and was getting into library science in the late 1990s. During this time, doing research was not doing a Google search on a computer or phone. It was very different than today. This was before all the tools we can now use for free.
  • Most of Abby’s initial work had to do with online searches and paid databases like LexisNexis, Avid, WestLaw, Dialogue, etc.
  • Doing a search with one of the above tools wasn’t just typing in a search term / phrase like it is today. People needed to learn query languages that were specific to each database provider. When crafting a query, it was important to refine your query to get all of the necessary information needed because of the cost of doing searches using these tools.
  • “It’s not that different from writing a script to do a thing using Python. It’s the same general conceptual work but in a very different way. So I think having those skills and spending time in that space early on in my career was really helpful.” – Abby Clobridge, on doing paid database searches before the time of Google search
  • While in grad school, Abby worked for a market research firm doing data and statistical analysis using SPSS, which is similar to doing programming and scripting (same kinds of skills).
• Were the computer skills Abby needed for the jobs she held while in grad school taught to her as part of the program or something she had to pick up on her own?
  • Abby says it was a combination of both and cites learning basic HTML as part of the program.
• What made Abby decide to give library science a try after her mentor suggested it?
  • Abby’s mother was a librarian, and as a result she was familiar with what a graduate degree in the space might look like. From Abby’s perspective, many who pursue library science end up having unusual career paths.
  • She talked to other people and did research on other options before saying yes to library science.
  • “I knew that pretty much anything I was going to do was going to have some aspect of technology and information science and information organization connected to it, so it seemed like a good, very open ended option that wasn’t necessarily going to mean I was going to end up working at a library.” – Abby Clobridge, on choosing library science
  • Nick says if someone recommends we look at a particular field of study or type of job we should give it thoughtful consideration because it means the person sees something in us we might not have seen in ourselves. John calls it a package of aptitude and skills. Abby would add interests as well to this.
    • Abby can think of 2 different internships she was part of while studying history that contributed to her decision to pursue library science.
    • “Experiences led me to spending a lot of time in libraries and a lot of time looking for a needle in a haystack, and the satisfaction that I got when finding it is something that I really enjoy. So I think that’s something that you either really like doing or you don’t, and there’s not much of a middle ground maybe. It kind of made sense then when somebody said, ‘these things that you like doing and that you’re good at, there is a career here. You’re just not sure exactly what it would look like, and it doesn’t have to be the person behind the circulation desk who is checking out books or helping somebody teach a class on how to do research. There’s more administrative work involved. There’s technical work involved.’ There’s a whole bunch of other options here that I hadn’t necessarily thought about.” – Abby Clobridge
• What did Abby see as potential careers once she went through the program?
  • Abby thinks doing the statistical work as part of the job she held while in the program was the most surprising. She really enjoyed it and the analysis of large amounts of data in different ways.
    • While an undergraduate Abby was analyzing words and patterns to specifically answer a question.
    • While she was in grad school the statistical work at the market research firm was more about analyzing numbers and being able to tell a story around the data.
      • There was a lot of data representing customer satisfaction with a specific company or product, and Abby was involved in writing reports that went along with this data.
      • “How does the data answer the questions that you’re trying to answer? And it’s not just ‘let’s put together a table’ but really craft an entire story around it. And I thought that was really interesting. And it kind of all made sense and started to fit together in a weird sort of way with information and data and the knowledge that you can glean from these things….” – Abby Clobridge
      • Abby understood the work she did was an example of how companies could use this type of data. It answered the question of why companies should do market research or some type of data-driven analysis.
    • John says it sounds like Abby was doing natural language processing (an early precursor to it as we know it today).
      • Abby says as more tools have developed in these areas over the last 20-25 years it has allowed us to take advantage of these new tools quickly and rethink how we do things for improved efficiency.
      • John points out Abby was (in the 1990s) basically working on the number 1 use case for natural language processing today – sentiment analysis.
      • But Abby tells us she was not doing it in a cutting edge way. Today’s tools could scrape sentiment from social media. At this time at the market research firm people were making phone calls and going to malls to get people to take surveys (with hand written responses).

15:36 – The Architect of Information

• Did the statistical work land Abby her first job after graduate school?
  • No. After grad school, Abby worked for a company selling engineering standards (ASTM standards for building things). Many of the standards were paper books at that time and not digital copies.
  • Abby was in charge of creating the information architecture and taxonomy for the company’s website so people could locate a standard and place and order for it (i.e. early ecommerce).
  • At that time, Abby was focused on organizing the information on the website, its navigation, and making searches on the site efficient.
  • Nick thought maybe Abby was architecting databases and the flows of information in and out of the databases and how to visualize the data on the company website.
    • Abby says in some ways yes, but she was not a database administrator or programmer.
    • “Being the go between, the translator between, ok, this is what people are searching for. We have data that is telling us that. How do we construct the database? And then kind of bridging the gap between the two. And that is still a skill that is incredibly useful today, that translation piece.” – Abby Clobridge
    • This is the metadata we store in databases about the data, or what we might call information taxonomy.
    • Abby says this is completely relevant today, but it goes well beyond websites due to the volume of data that exists.
    • You might see this metadata / taxonomy applied across many SharePoint sites, for example, to highlight the most important data or data that needs to be kept vs. that which needs to be archived. We would need to think about where version control comes in and what data is feed to AI tools to produce good results.
    • Maybe we’re just solving the same problem today but using different tools that are making things easier while at the same time having so much more data to examine.
    • Storage is cheaper these days, and many of us just hold on to digital data indefinitely. Abby highlights the need to ensure AI tools are only looking at good data and not junk data. We have to figure out how to help those tools tell the difference so that we can get meaningful answers to our search queries quickly.
• Did information architecture experience make Abby a better researcher?
  • She tells us the two are very closely connected almost in a chicken and egg type relationship.
  • Abby thinks the information architecture work may have made her better at coming up with alternative ways to search for the data she needed (i.e. thinking from different angles or perspectives).

20:09 – Just Enough Information

• Abby worked at the CNN News Library in the late 1990s / early 2000s. She would often need to find a needle in a haystack from the video library, for example. The job was news research. It could be hard to imagine if you didn’t live through it.
  • New employees like Abby would get weekend shifts on Saturdays or Sundays. Hers was Saturday mornings. There was a running joke that things always happened on Saturday mornings when the newest person was around. It felt very much like that was the case to Abby.
  • Abby recounts the story of one of the first Saturdays she was by herself. It happened to be when John F. Kennedy, Junior’s plane went missing. She received a call from a news anchor during the commercial break who needed information about Kennedy by the time the commercial was over. She had to get correct information very quickly at a time when Wikipedia did not exist.
  • Fielding requests for information and understanding that many of them were very urgent was part of the job.
  • “I learned really quickly that people were not looking for an exhaustive set of research about everything. They were in the car on the way to interview somebody. They need a couple of paragraphs that they can digest quickly or a couple of really great articles that summarize what they need in a short sort of way because you’re not going to have time to sift through 100 pages. Learning how to do that synthesis and pick the best articles and decide what they need to know and what you trust and what you don’t trust really quickly became really important.” – Abby Clobridge, on working as a researcher for CNN
  • Nick thinks this is similar to working the help desk fielding severity 1 calls. On the spot you have to do troubleshooting and get the right solution to the problem as quickly as possible.
  • “Within the information space, how do you get people what they need as easily as possible so it’s the right level of details so that they can do whatever it is that they need to do with it? That is still something that as the amount of information, the quantities just keep increasing, in some ways it becomes harder and harder, not easier to do.” – Abby Clobridge
  • Nick says this is the same problem people have communication with their manager or a senior level leader. We often give them (our leaders) way too much information without summarizing it or putting it into the form that is needed.
    • Abby says this is a frequent topic among team members at FireOak Strategies.
    • Anyone at a relatively high level is going to read the e-mails they receive from their phone. If what you need to say isn’t in the top of the message body, it might be too much information that someone else won’t read.
    • Abby suggests if we need to give background info or more context, put a summary at the top of your e-mail with further details / context below it.
    • This is an even bigger problem now with many people reading messages on a smart watch (less words people see upon first glance and more potential for something to get lost). Keep the message simple and brief.
    • Abby suggests when we need an answer, ask your questions in a way that gets you a yes, a no, or a “let’s discuss it later.” Structure your questions to enable a quick answer from others.
  • Do most people who become people managers understand they will need to train their teams to do the above?
    • Abby thinks most people don’t necessarily know they will eventually become a people manager. People also might not have training on how to become a manager. New managers might have to learn by doing or learn from the examples of good managers they’ve had over time.
  • Did Abby practice the summarization technique we discussed (or the idea of just enough information) in communicating with her management?
    • CNN was a little bit different. If a news anchor, a producer, or a reporter called the turnaround was so fast that there wasn’t time to wait for or interject approval from a manager.
    • "You had to learn how to do it yourself really quickly. And if you couldn’t you weren’t going to last very long because there just isn’t time to go get somebody else… The feedback was more direct because of the nature of the work that I was doing and the people who I was working with. They would call back – ‘no, I don’t want 20 pages. I’m literally in the car, and I’m going to be there in 10 minutes. I need something shorter.’ " – Abby Clobridge
    • The immediate nature of the feedback Abby got in the role at CNN helped her refine her communication skills and to determine the level of depth needed based on the request.
    • Though Abby runs her company, she still works with clients and considers each of them managers she reports to at the end of the day. Making it as easy as possible to get an answer is more of a consulting skill than working for a specific manager.

28:33 – Exercising Assertive Brevity

• Were the information summary and synthesis skills something Abby began to implement intentionally in her work, or did they naturally become part of her communication workflow?
  • Abby thinks this may be a byproduct of her personality and situations she has been in over the years.
  • She has been in a number of situations where it was important to be assertive but brief.
  • “Learning how to condense your thoughts and articulate what’s most important I think is a really important skill.” – Abby Clobridge
  • In the news world 20 years ago, Abby was often one of the youngest people in the room. Listen to her describe the atmosphere in the daily news meetings and the importance of being assertive.
  • “So you couldn’t talk for an extended period of time, and you needed to learn how to jump in, say something, and then let other people react to it or move on. I think I was just watching that and absorbing that around me…. You had to be assertive and you had to say something and you had to get your point across quickly.” – Abby Clobridge, describing the need to speak up but be brief while working in the news industry
  • It was similar to the above during school when she attended classes and worked in small groups (the need to speak up).
  • Abby has been the only woman in various situations over the course of her career but says the gender imbalance is not as bad as it once was.
  • Being assertive means not waiting to be asked about your opinion, and if you have something to contribute to a conversation, take the initiative to speak your mind and share our opinion / thoughts.
  • “Frequently the loudest voice in the room is what wins out, so learning how to inject your point of view quickly…I think that’s important.” – Abby Clobridge
  • John uses the analogy of having someone in the room who is in charge of cooking the meal. You are in charge of making the ingredients you have available to that person.
    • “It’s their choice whether they incorporate your ingredients or not, but if you withhold your ingredients, then you’re not serving the greater good.” – John White
    • If we further the analogy, the chef doesn’t know certain ingredients are out there unless you tell them.
  • What’s Abby’s advice for women to be more assertive despite the gender imbalances?
    • Abby says you need to get comfortable with it.
    • The tech industry has changed in the last few years. Abby cites fewer times during a given week or month when she is the only woman in a conversation, but there are still times when it happens.
    • Abby feels it is important to develop a thick skin. You can learn how to be that person on the call with a different background from others.
    • “Have confidence in yourself, and be comfortable that what you’re bringing to the conversation is valuable. And if you have something to add, you should add it.” – Abby Clobridge, advice for other women to be more assertive
  • John says this is also a leadership lesson for the chef in the room.
    • Make sure to get opinions from everyone who can offer them on a topic. Just because certain people are more likely to speak up in conversations, it does not mean they don’t have valuable opinions to add.
    • It’s good to have people with different perspectives, opinions, and ideas.
    • “It’s important to ask. As a leader, I completely agree with that. You have to be asking for other people’s opinions and not just encouraging the loudest voice in the room to speak. And you Need to make sure that people are invited to the conversation…. It’s a skill, and it takes time. And it takes getting comfortable in your own skin sometimes to do.” – Abby Clobridge, on advice for leaders
    • The above extends beyond an organization’s boundaries. There are conferences that take place without diversity of panelists. We’re missing opportunities.
    • It’s been statistically proven how important diversity of thought, background, and opinion can help an organization thrive. John says a lack of diversity could result in poor strategy because everyone has the same blind spots.
    • Abby suggests asking as a leader how things could be done differently or what we might be missing when trying to make a decision. Different opinions about optimization of processes and procedures is extremely valuable.

36:21 – Leading Digital Initiatives and Walled Gardens

• Around the time Abby was getting married, she decided to look for a different job. She wanted to get into academia and took a role at Bucknell University.
  • “All of the jobs I had most of my career really were pretty far outside of traditional library work.” – Abby Clobridge
  • Abby was charged with building a new digital initiatives program from scratch.
    • As an example she worked with the art department (which had a museum on campus) to determine the best way to create a digital version of artwork.
    • Aby found herself once again between the people who were developing the database to store information, the people who wanted to present the art collection to the public, and other stakeholders who wanted to use the collection for teaching purposes.
    • Abby had to think through the metadata needed for all of these requests and create an interoperable metadata schema. The schema would need to be used internally but also with other systems externally.
    • Abby worked on projects in this space for 5-7 years and covered many areas – art, history, and even civil engineering. She loved the variety in the kinds of work she was doing.
  • Did being in the middle mean Abby owned the deliverables, or was it more co-owned with stakeholders and technology personnel?
    • The team selected a platform for many of the collections. The art collection had some internally built enhancements on top of the platform.
    • “I didn’t feel responsible for the end product that was being built, but I felt responsible for making sure that the outcome was something that was going to be useful, usable, met everybody’s needs, met the requirements we had articulated, met the requirements we hadn’t quite thought of, and that there was something at the end of the day that was completely useful in a meaningful kind of way for everybody and could be sustainable and scalable. That was my responsibility…figuring out what was that path to get there and making sure that there was going to be something in place that 5 years later would still be functional.” – Abby Clobridge
• John says Abby started her career at a time when things were all walled gardens. In the academia position she was trying to share the information with the world (breaking down the walled garden).
  • Initially, Abby and team had to figure out sharing what needed to be shared inside the university. Then they looked at the value of sharing it more broadly, and there was not value in sharing everything more broadly.
  • Part of this was getting everyone comfortable with sharing this data. Not everyone was.
  • They had to think about the licensing and copyright implications of buying slide libraries compared to buying the same images (or renting them). This came into play in discussions on sharing things internally compared to also sharing externally.
  • They considered making searches interoperable with collections from other universities.
  • Abby spent a lot of time walking the line between open access and closed access.
  • Parts of the art gallery collection were designed to be publicly accessible, but there was metadata that did not need to be accessible to the public like insurance values, appraisal information, etc.
  • Open access and making the results of research publicly accessible (free to access / read / download) was new in the early 2000s. This was one of the big projects Abby worked on when she became a consultant.
    • Open access is something Abby is very interested in and remains passionate about. It’s not as much of a concentrated focus for her right now in her work, but it is interesting to see how much has changed in the last 10-20 years.
• It feels like Abby took the experience as an information architect and layered on things like compliance, data governance and privacy, and even cybersecurity. Did she feel like this was a specialization?
  • Abby does not think she has a specialization, feeling she knows a little bit about a lot of things that go together.
  • The communication piece is a critical part of this. Abby gives the example of being in the same room with lawyers concerned about copyright, those who built a product’s functionality, risk management…and even executives (who need to understand benefits and risk involved).
  • “It’s being able to serve as the middle person in a conversation…it’s all really closely connected, but you have to be thinking about that when you’re designing something and you’re trying to disseminate information and data and knowledge and how is this going to be used…and trying to strike a balance…. It can be an interesting space because it’s not the same for two organizations….” – Abby Clobridge
  • Abby gives the examples of 3 different organizations her company has worked with, each looking at things from a different viewpoint.
    • “What is it that we’re trying to protect, and what is it that we’re trying to disseminate? And how are people going to use what we’re sharing and what we’re producing, and how do we figure out what’s the right way to do this for that organization? And yeah, risk absolutely comes up, and governance comes up. And trying to manage all of this is really interesting.” – Abby Clobridge

Mentioned in the Outro

• The idea of telling stories with data sounds a lot like what a security engineer has to do. It reminded Nick of Episode 240 – Nurturing Cybersecurity Talent Development with Kenneth Ellington (2/2) with and the mention of the capstone presentation students had to complete as part of a cybersecurity training program.
• Maybe you’ve heard about the concept of just in time, just enough access (or JITJEA). Abby had to deliver just in time, just enough information to people calling her at the news station.
• Brevity in communication is very important when communicating with leaders. Sean Tolram learned that a few meaningful sentences could make more of an impact than hundreds of pages of reports. Check out these episodes for more details on that:
  • Episode 265 – Interview and Collaborate: Fostering Human Connection with Sean Tolram (1/2) – start near the end of the episode in the section on communicating results
  • Episode 266 – Stress Response: The Business Impact of Mindfulness with Sean Tolram (2/2)
• Evan Oldford spoke about sending a brief daily report to his management to help them understand what was happening but that was short enough to read in the Starbucks coffee line.
  • Check out Episode 172 – Ease the Mind through Daily Reporting with Evan Oldford (1/2)

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