Resources

There are lots of books and online resources about the Foreign Service. I think the current two most comprehensive ones (besides the Department of State's website) are Peter Kennett's The DipNotes and Melissa VonHinken's Foreign Service Links. They mention books, other FS related blogs, Yahoo and Wiki groups, etc. There are also groups on Facebook like Foreign Service Specialists and Foreign Service Tandem Couples.

However, there is not all that much information about information resource officers. Besides the job posting, one has to search pretty hard to find out what a day in the life of an IRO is really like. Here are a handful of resources I have found on the Web. Please feel free to include additional resources in the comments.

• For information about the public events that IROs engage in (such as presentations and activities in embassy information resource centers), look at the websites of various embassies by going to: countryname.usembassy.gov
• Current IRO Wendy Simmons wrote an article tracing the recent history of embassy libraries. The citation is: Simmons, W. A. (2005). Three decades of challenges and changes in US embassy libraries around the world. Advances in Librarianship, 29, 99-132. An abridged version of Wendy's paper is available in PDF format here.
• Ruth Mara and Cynthia Borys wrote a brief article about IROs in the September 2003 issue of the Foreign Service Journal entitled IROs: Into the cyber age. It's available here.