Marlene Gebauer
New York City, New York, United States
Video Call
I am a law librarian and director of the research center at a global law firm. The firm has 3000 employers with more than 30 locations nationally and internationally.
In my position, I work in the areas of research, management, product licensing, contract negotiation, project management, information management, customer service, strategic planning and business development, adult learning, eLearning, and library management.
Here’s just a bit of what we can cover in our PivotPlanet session(s):
• Discuss my experience and how it relates to your career goals.
• Answer your questions and ask you questions to determine how you might move forward in the field of library science.
• Suggest direction, process and strategy.
• Offer research.
• Identify additional resources
I would like to get a sense of what has taken you to this point; your thoughts about moving forward; and what you want to achieve from our interaction, and then develop a personalized plan.
There are many things I enjoy about my work: the freedom, autonomy, creativity, work/life balance and intellectual stimulation. I value the opportunities to stretch outside of my comfort zone, to establish and enhance client relationships, build teams and work in information management.
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Before becoming a law librarian, I was a practicing attorney in the health and hospital law area for six years. What I enjoyed most about practicing law was research. It was fun to try to find the research needed to support a legal argument. The more I did it, the better I became at research strategy and identifying sources. I soon became the go-to person for research and was often teaching others how to do better online searches.
However, I soon discovered work/life balance as an attorney was difficult to achieve and decided it was time for a change. I had always been friendly with the law librarians at work and at school, and I spoke to several of them about the feasibility of a career. Once I felt I could do it, I returned to school and got my Masters in Library Science. Soon after, I was hired at my first New York law firm as a research librarian.
I have published bibliographies and articles and have spoken to various industry groups on training, knowledge management, legal research and business and competitive intelligence research. I have been president of my local law librarian association, and I have delivered a program on business and competitive intelligence to a national industry association.
