#218 from R&D Innovator Volume 5, Number 5          May 1996

FORUM—from our readers

How Can I Keep Up With the Literature?

I am a senior scientist who, with a technician, has enjoyed working in a small lab of a large company.  The company has gotten its value from me through contributions to many key patents.  Also, I’ve been a key intellectual resource in my field.  And my knowledge is frequently tapped by others in the organization. 

For most of my career, I made sure that I spend half a day each week in the library, keeping up with developments in my fast-evolving field.  I found out long ago that just doing computer searches of titles, or just looking at titles of newly published papers, wasn’t sufficient to identify work that relates to the research.  I feel that many of my breakthroughs came about because I found something unexpected in a publication that gave no clue in its title to the treasure. 

But things are changing.  Not only are there many more papers relevant to my area, but my time for reviewing them has shortened.  I had been given an additional administrative responsibility, and could spend only a few stolen hours a month at the library.  What particularly bothered me was that I felt that my ability to be up-to-date was slipping away.  Therefore, my value—at least from a technical standpoint—was decreasing.  If I particularly enjoyed administrative work, then perhaps I could look upon this situation as one that is giving me the opportunity to broaden my abilities and grow with the company.  But I don’t enjoy this type of work.  It was given to me because, “Someone has to do it!”

I was bothered by the fact that once I lost the status as “company resource” for the field, and once I lost the opportunity to make important advances by searching for clues in the literature, my future wouldn’t look as encouraging as it had been.  It’s not that I was insecure about retaining a job here.  It’s just that my skills and interests weren’t being properly utilized.  And, these skills can easily and quickly atrophy.  My field is just as important to the company as it was previously.  The opinion of my director is that it’s the company library’s role to get reprints of papers I tick off from a computerized list of titles.  He isn’t convinced of the value (to me or to the company) of browsing through unrelated articles.

So, what I’ve done is to over-request articles.  I select the ones with titles that interest me, and then select at least four times as many random titles.  Unfortunately, the only time I have now to go over the reprints is on weekends.  That doesn’t make my family too happy, but it may be necessary to assure that I will continue to contribute.