As already mentioned in my earlier post Monday for a Commercial Librarian, I work as a Senior Information Officer at a commercial property firm in Bristol. Our small team (just me and the Information Centre Manager) provide an Information Service to around 1,500 employees.
My previous post explained a non-enquiry day. Whilst I don’t wish to bore you with a blow by blow account of every day I thought it would be useful to write about an enquiry day.
On an enquiry day I deal with any requests for information from within the firm. Generally the requests come by email, however some people prefer to call and occasionally people in the Bristol office will pop down to see us in person.
This what happened on Tuesday 26th July:
8.30 – in work already, although I don’t start until 9am. As nothing urgent had come in I took the opportunity to start writing my Library Day in the Life post for Monday.
9.00 – the following enquiries had now arrived in my inbox;
How much was paid for an industrial unit just outside of Cardiff?
They had already checked some of the specialist property databases we subscribe to with no luck. A quick land registry search provided the answer.
Please can I have a credit report for XYZ company?
Another quick enquiry using a paid for subscription service. The company report only had 2009 financial info on it so had a quick check of Companies House which told me 2010 accounts wouldn’t be available until the end of October.
A request for some articles from Property Week.
9.30 – we run a number of daily/weekly/monthly searches. 90% of today’s searches were press searches which we run through Factiva. It’s always good to get them done early as you never know what the day will bring and if you’ll run out of time to do them later.
10.45 – set up login details for a surveyor to Goad (a paid for retail mapping service).
10.50 – another land registry request. This time I was unable to get any electronic results from the Land Registry database so had to mark up a plan and submit it to the Land Registry, we’ll get the results in a couple of days.
10.55 – planning search using a subscription database.
11.05 – two more land registry searches. Until the recession hit in 2008 we had an Information Assistant who carried out these searches. They are searches surveyors could carry out for themselves with adequate training. This is something we’ll be looking at in the future.
11.25 – yesterday we received a request for information relating to airports. My colleague had already passed it on to one of our researches who she thought would have some relevant data. I called to check what they could provide and if there was anything we needed to do. It looks as if they had enough information to answer this query. Spoke to the surveyor to explain that the researcher would be in touch and asked him to get back to us if there were any gaps – we can check for market reports, run press searches etc.
11.45 – request for company financials. The surveyor knew the trading name, but didn't know what the company was registered as with Companies House. First I checked for a company website, there wasn’t one. A press search didn’t help either. Google bashing finally gave me an answer. I downloaded the latest accounts and checked that the information corresponded with what I knew about the company. It did, hoorah!
11.55 – another land registry search
12.05 – no more enquiries had come in so I took the opportunity to contact a colleague in procurement regarding paper based subscriptions. Whilst we manage subscriptions centrally, the company we have merged with use SWETS, with each department managing their own subscriptions. The librarian in me shouts noooo! Managing them centrally has allowed us to reduce duplication and cost and we have a complete record of what everyone subscribes to (invaluable for a tricky enquiry). However, in reality managing subscriptions involves a lot of paper pushing, chasing people and chasing payment. This isn’t a good use of my skills and in the future I will not have time to do this, so I need to let go.
12.45 – started looking into a request for the top 100 financial firms in the UK.
13.30 – downloaded a company credit report and dealt with one more land registry search.
14.00 – lunch.
15.00 – yet more company credit checks, land registry searches and another press search.
16.00 – no new enquiries, so start to do battle with my in-tray. Dealt with some subscription renewals, invoices and caught up on my reading; I scan through Property Week and Estates Gazette each week to try and keep up to date with what’s going on.
17.30 – time to go home. An unusually quiet day in terms of enquiries with nothing too complex. It’s rare to be able to catch up with other things whilst on enquiry duty, but makes a welcome change.
