Show off the corporate library

Some published evidence has suggested that corporate libraries are slowly becoming irrelevant in meeting organisational information needs due to old-fashioned models of service delivery. Elsewhere in the literature the intranet is heralded as a technological tool for corporate information management. This paper provides the results of a series of case studies completed in 1998. The purpose of the research was to investigate: (a) whether corporate libraries could be considered as heading towards demise; (b) the extent to which corporate librarians might use intranets to provide information services to their clients; (c) the level of library involvement in the planning, implementation and running of corporate intranets; (d) the perceived impact of intranet development on libraries' profiles within their parent organisations. The data were collected from library staff in eight corporate headquarters of organisations based in California, USA by observation, interview and e-mail. The results suggest that the case study libraries are heavily integrated with the corporate intranet and that the library staff are actively involved in taking the best advantage of this technology to deliver information services to meet increasing customer demands