From a world of content organized by news headlines and journal abstracts, business is moving into a universe of data that has potential to reveal insights and yield great discoveries. For San Diego-based Qualcomm, which has grown from seven individuals meeting in a den in 1985 to a world-leading provider of wireless technology and services, the challenge is delivering access to information of every kind where and when it’s needed – and on every type of device.
“We’re a mobile company, and our distributed workforce and our employees are accessing information on many types of devices. That could be on a desktop machine, a laptop, or a tablet. It could definitely be on a smartphone,” explains Britt Mueller, Senior Director for Qualcomm’s Library Services. “They may not be using just one of those devices, too, they may be using all kinds of those devices at different points in time. We really can’t wait for them to come back to just the computer. We really need to be able to distribute it at the point of need.”
Serving a global employee population of over 15,000 people, the Qualcomm Library has as its mission providing just-in-time, globally-accessible information, research and analysis to enable Qualcomm’s increased performance, productivity and competitive advantage. As Mueller tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally, “If someone absolutely needs [certain information], we need to be able to distribute it. That’s a really big challenge. Qualcomm’s certainly on the cutting edge of mobile and wireless, but a lot of the content providers are just catching up with that.”
In addition to her work for Qualcomm since 2001, Britt Mueller has served on the IEEE’s Library Advisory Council, and is a member of the ITIMG (Industrial Technical Information Managers Group), Special Libraries Association, and the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals. She has authored a number of papers/presentations focusing on Information needs in corporate environments.
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