Guy St. Clair is president and consulting specialist for knowledge services at SMR International, a New York-based consulting firm focused on change and its impact on people, organizational effectiveness, and knowledge services delivery within the larger enterprise. SMR International specializes in helping institutions and organizations explore alternative future programs and then assisting in crafting these visions into functional definition.

Much of the firm’s work has been in helping organizations re-conceptualize, transform, and support new ways of managing knowledge services, defined as the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning for enabling research, contextual decision-making, and innovation. The result is the development of a knowledge culture, allowing all knowledge workers to have access to the information, knowledge, and strategic learning they need when they need it.

SMR International offers expertise in strategic briefing and planning for new ways of managing and delivering information, knowledge, and strategic learning and for building a vision and framework to guide decision making in the development of the knowledge culture. Since 1984, the company has been committed to the integration of strategy, research, and management expertise, believing that each informs the other. SMR International is known for the company’s research on client needs and provides the following products and services:

• Terms of reference development, to assist clients in defining the focus of a potential project and identify the work and schedule for the project

• Knowledge services audits, an evaluation tool which combines the methodologies of the standard needs analysis (asking what research resources and services people require to do their work), the information audit (which determines how research resources and services are actually used), and the knowledge audit (which looks at knowledge assets, how they are produced, and by whom)

• Management reviews in organizational information, knowledge, and strategic learning delivery

• Strategic planning for knowledge services, including knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) studies

• Enterprise content management (ECM) and collection development studies

Through its strategic alliance with EOS International, a San Diego-based company providing integrated library automation, knowledge services support, and global ASP hosting for knowledge services staff in organizations throughout the world, SMR International works with clients to identify technical solutions in support of successful knowledge services delivery.

A past president of the Special Libraries Association, Guy has written several important books, including Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services,   in which he introduced the concept of knowledge services as a management methodology; Entrepreneurial Librarianship: The Key to Effective Information Services; Total Quality Management in Information Services; Power and Influence: Enhancing Information Services Within the Organization; and Customer Service in the Information Environment. His other titles include Change Management in Action: Industry Leaders Describe How They Manage Change in Information Services, published by the Special Libraries Association in 1999. His many articles for Information Outlook and, earlier, for Special Libraries, have established him as a strong advocate for specialized librarianship and for positioning specialist librarians as leaders in knowledge services delivery. He is the author of the SLA centennial history, SLA at 100: from putting knowledge to work to building the knowledge culture, to be published in 2009.