It's One Big Circus

Louise Guy

Joined SLA: 1999

Job: Supervisor, Center for Research and Documentation

Employer: Cirque du Soleil

Experience:

Education: Bachelor's in Arts and Sciences and master's in Library and Information Science

First job: Assistant Librarian

Biggest challenge: To mobilize work teams in contexts of rapid change.

Guy Laliberte is the founder of Cirque du Soleil, the internationally renowned billion-dollar entertainment corporation. Nearly 25 years ago, Laliberte was a Montreal street performer who had the opportunity to utilize a $1.3 million public grant to develop a show that would participate in Quebec City's 450th anniversary celebrations in 1984 throughout the province. The result was Cirque du Soleil-and it was to be unlike any other circus the world had known.

But what sets Cirque apart from other circuses are the individual touring shows that possess their own themes and stories, craftily designed and planned to precise detail, whether it's sets, costumes, music, or movements of the performer.

One show, Kooza, is the story of a melancholy loner in search of his place in the world while addressing themes of fear, identity, recognition, and power. Dralion is the fusion of ancient Chinese circus tradition and the avant-garde that explores the quest for harmony between humans and nature. Corteo is the story of a clown who pictures his own funeral, a festive event that plunges the audience into a theatrical world of fun, comedy, and spontaneity in a mysterious space between heaven and earth.

Each individual show has its own team, creators who form the concepts and work with the performers and technical crew to breathe life into them.

The Montreal-based circus has become not only a branded entertainment entity but also an institution with its own distinctive performance quality and artistic vocabulary infused from folk stories, cultural identities, and the best aspects of the arts. Today, 3,800 people, including 1,000 artists from more than 40 countries are part of the enterprise. A 32,000-square-foot facility in Montreal's Saint-Michel District serves as the international headquarters that allows more than 1,600 hundred staff members to work side by side in one central complex, which includes: administration offices; The Studio, which houses three acrobatic training rooms and a dance studio; The Ateliers, where most of the costumes and props are produced; and a residence that provides temporary housing to artists during performance training.

Louise Guy's Show

Located between The Studio and The Ateliers is Cirque du Soleil's Center for Research and Documentation, or CRD. This is SLA member Louise Guy's show. As supervisor, her job is to oversee the development of an integrated document and information management service with a dual mandate: to feed the creative teams and to preserve the corporate memory. Guy, a Frenchspeaking Canadian who earned her MLIS from the University of Montreal in 1996, has been with Cirque du Soleil June 2001.

"The Center was created in 1992 to mainly manage the AV material produced for television and to make internal copies on request. At that time, this unit was not involved in the creation process. But its mandate was important since AV material is vital for Cirque and its creation teams because no words can truly described what has to be experienced during training or a representation. Artists work with those videotapes regularly to push their performance further; you can innovate by looking at those tapes and review the acts. It's the principal or main witness of performances that may not be produced live anymore."

Just before Guy joined Cirque du Soleil, a consultant had assessed the documentation center and recommended that it stop providing internal AV reproduction services and start pushing information into the creation teams. Another recommendation was to hire a professional librarian. "And that's how I came on board," Guy said. Her first task was to implement an integrated information service including research services, records management, and archives preservation.

Today, Guy supervises a team of six employees that offers research services, develops a physical and electronic library dedicated to the creative teams, and supports activities related to records management, conservation, and archive dissemination.

"Right now my role also involves implementing several knowledge databases and overseeing its updating thanks to the contributions of an internal network of researchers and documentalists working in the various divisions of the company," Guy said. "It's a service offer often seen in private companies. So, I integrated services and regrouped all the different functions related to library and record management."

Each Cirque show is created in Montreal by teams of conceptual designers, art directors, performance directors, artists, and various sub-teams within each unit. Guy and her staff circulate the information in their collection among the different teams.

One of her assignments was to regroup the different collections used by various departments. "That's how we built our collection over the last five years," Guy said. "We regrouped the different materials that had been put together by different teams. Regrouping all those books and media materials-the pool of information- was very, very interesting. Our collections include books and media materials on architecture, design, dance, theater, contemporary arts, textiles, and anthropology because our shows' themes touch different cultures.

"Circus in general has its own tradition; but at the Cirque, we try to regroup and or add multiple disciplinary approaches to synergize the creation process. Every time we add a new collection, we have to capture the relationship between the information sources and the usage. That's what I tell my team: It's not the amount of information sources that is important-it's to understand how creation teams use the information to create new shows. That's how we can be closer to the creation process." The CRD's library collection, by the way, has more than 20,000 items.

The CRD team also collects and maintains the archives, such as the collection of souvenir programs. "I have developed a good relationship with the marketing team. This allows us access to a copy of each souvenir program in hardcopy and digital format," Guy said.

"Last year we started building a new database to allow users a more convenient access to the library catalog as well as the archives collection. The purpose of this database is to pool all the sources of inspiration into one tool. This project shifted along the way to be included in a broader knowledge management initiative.

"In 2006, the newly created Knowledge Management Direction put together a multidisciplinary team to deliver this project. A new position called memorist was included in the team to work closely with the creation teams. The memorist and I collaborate to identify the documents to be retained as soon as they are created-only documents valuable to the corporate memory will be accessible through knowledge database. The items selected include documents explaining the show creator's intentions, how show characters move, why they move that way, and so forth. We try to capture a lot of information during the every stage of creation process to capture the essence of the show and ensure the show quality and integrity over the years."

The Goal

Guy's goal is to make the material accessible to the teams on a local network after the development process of a show. "We are very careful to keep the creation team's intimacy and privacy while they're creating, and we don't want to jeopardize originality by sharing information with other teams. We're sensitive to privacy requirements and we do not want to jeopardize the relationship we have built during the years. We'll be able to retrieve the infornation produced by each team once a new show goes live but not before. After the creation phase we can take all the documents related to the show, publish them and share them with other Cirque du Soleil units." Set designers, choreographers, costume designers, artist coaches, talent scouts, and others use the information.

"We are also in touch with their researcher when they have one," Guy said. "There's a big research community at Cirque du Soleil, so we collaborate with this group. We have a community of practice that allows us to exchange our projects and tips and review different projects. It's good to have this opportunity, which also allows us to communicate information about the implementation of the knowledge database and other initiatives. The CRD personnel always validate whether the material provided to the researchers and the creators was useful. I think it's stimulating and gratifying for the CRD personnel to know that their work was useful and appreciated.

"It's also important to know when the material was not useful. Initially the users were reluctant to tell us when the information provided was not relevant. But we were able to convince them that it was the only way we could get better and improve. I also use an audit in a more formal way by meeting directly with different users. My goal is to acquire knowledge about the user requirements, promote our services, and align the CRD with the emerging needs of creation teams.

"I'm curious to know when the information is needed in the creative process. What are their primary information sources? Was CRD part of them? Were they satisfied using each source? If not, why? It's important to know why they came to us. How is our information different from what they have from the other sources?

"We validated what we expected; people are often using the CRD as a second level of support when they were unable to find what they were looking for. Consequently, the level of difficulty tends to be increased proportionally."

Guy says her goal is to position CRD as an initial source of information for the researchers and other teams. The implementation of the new knowledge database will certainly help to reach that goal. "To have been integrated in the Knowledge Management and Information Technologies Service is a great opportunity for me to learn how to manage information in new ways and work in close collaboration with other specialists, like knowledge architects and business analysts. Cirque du Soleil innovates by mixing different cultures and art disciplines. This strategy can apply to our domain and, as information professionals, we certainly gain know-how when we have the chance to be part of a multidisciplinary team."

Guy's career has been a steady progression built upon a combination of the arts and business. Part of what attracted her to the information profession was working in the corporate world.

"When I started my master's in 1994, I was already working for the City of Montreal Public Library as an assistant librarian," she said. "So I started my master's at the University of Montreal. There, I discovered the corporate world. It was very interesting to me. All the courses that I chose were related to information management, automated document managing, and research of information in specialized domains. The corporate world gives me the chance to explore and develop my skills in all these areas. It's also important for me as a professional to be part of the Cirque vision, whose mission is to recreate beauty in every show. I'm part of this mission. It's very challenging for me."

Two years after earning her MLIS, she landed a job as librarian with Artexte Information Center, an institution that specializes in Canadian contemporary art. As head of Artexte's documentation center, she supervised a team of up to eight people.

"The team included documentalists, indexers, project heads, and interns," Guy said. "My duties included coordinating document processing, developing the center's collections by maintaining partnerships with the main publishers in the field, managing the computer network, ensuring the creation, updating, and dissemination of the organization's bibliographic and multimedia databases-both Internet and intranet."

The consultant who recommended hiring a professional librarian at Cirque du Soleil gave Guy's name to the human resources department at Cirque du Soleil. "At that time my profile was interesting because I had crossed over in many territories. I was able to manage a team, information technologies, and information related to art. I like working in those areas, especially when they are intertwined. But overall, I like the kind of information we manage at Cirque du Soleil and the perspective of offering views on the complexity of the creation process. I don't know if I would be so invested in a domain not related to the arts."

Guy joined SLA in 1999. She recalled reading copies of Information Outlook back then. "The articles and content were very helpful for me," she said. Guy said she regrets that she does not have the time to be part of the different divisions. "What I'm trying to do is network with other services that are based in Montreal region, that share the goals in different sectors of our industry and are integrated services."

One of the activities she manages biennially is to invite LIS students from the University of Montreal to see her operation at Cirque du Soleil. "I remember the first time I visited a corporate information center when I was still at the university. It was a cool discovery for me. I'm trying to do the same thing with the students and explain to them how I work, what our activities are. It's great to share my experience with the students. It's very refreshing for me also.

"I like working in a collaborative forum," she added. "What I'm trying to do is bring the user closer to the information, even if that means the users pursue their own information. My task is to help the users fast track the information they need. Not to do the research for them. I think it's a great challenge and I would like to develop in this capacity. At Cirque, I want to focus CRD activities rather than expanding the team. The information needs are increasing but we can't grow forever; it's rather the information accessibility that must grow. Our task is to promote user self-reliance and to direct the user through the multiplicity of sources that are available."SLA