Abstract
Information professionals perform various tasks in corporate libraries, but, generally speaking, parent organizations can invest only limited management resources in such libraries. Therefore, parent organizations are not able to allocate equal management resources to every job. The purpose of this study was to both analyze the performance situation of jobs and evaluate the specialty tasks performed by information professionals in order to help them distribute and utilize these limited management resources effectively. We hypothesized that it is becoming increasingly important for information professionals in corporate libraries to perform two tasks: provision of a positive and direct information service and provision of an administrative service. We distributed a questionnaire to clarify this hypothesis. Two results were revealed. First, the service of performing information searches using information technology was valued more highly than any other task by information professionals. Second, they considered that their other tasks did not meet the criteria of "important" jobs. We then interviewed the staff of two corporate libraries in regard to five tasks regarded as lacking in importance, including the planning of Internet and Intranet content for the library section of the company and the performing of user-oriented information analysis. We found that these five tasks were likely to gradually increase in importance in future.
