tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11712026959180639332024-02-09T05:09:28.124+11:00KM LibrarianLinda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-45692100299648941232013-05-05T08:57:00.000+10:002013-05-05T08:57:08.016+10:00About me: the 2013 editionGiven it's been 3 years since I blogged I thought I'd better give you a sense of who I am and what I get up to professionally these days.<br />
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I am the Knowledge Manager for <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/au/default.aspx" target="_blank">CCH Australia</a>. My role is a blend of special librarian and true knowledge manager (ie working on improving the flow of knowledge and information around the business). I've also done a fair whack of research on behalf of CCH. Let's break those three down a bit more:<br />
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Linda the Special Librarian:</h3>
CCH is a tax and legal information solutions provider. Our editorial team (mostly lawyers-come-writers) spend a lot of time tracking what the government and courts are up to, analysing it and turning it into useful information for our customers. So as a special librarian for this team my focus is on providing effective current awareness for these sources. I'm also in charge of managing all our research subscriptions so editors stay on top of what other information providers are saying about the law.<br />
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The CCH library is virtual, with the exception of our historical publications archive and the odd book that an editor may request. We are too small to bother with a proper Library Management System so I have become a master at contorting Microsoft SharePoint into a library intranet and basic catalogue.<br />
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<h3>
Linda the Knowledge Manager</h3>
This part of my role is a funny blend of document management, intranet management and social media champion. I have become a DIY expert on SharePoint and am currently working on two projects that utilise SharePoint to manage and access editorial and marketing documents more effectively. Recently the business implemented Salesforce Chatter (think Facebook for the enterprise) and I am doing a lot of work with various teams around the business to help them use the tool for genuine cross-functional communication and collaboration.<br />
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<h3>
Linda the Researcher</h3>
As part of my work at CCH I have done several major research projects on how our customers (ie accounting and legal professionals) use tools such as mobile devices and social media. My interest in mobile technology is not a new thing! You can access all of my whitepapers <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/AU/MarketingPromo/MarketingPromo.aspx?ID=88&" target="_blank">here </a>but the most relevant one for #anz23mthings is <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/AttachmentLibrary/MarketingPromo/cch_whitepaper_mobile_devices_20110329.pdf" target="_blank">Legal Professionals and Mobile Devices (March 2011)</a>.<br />
<br />Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-4363780894093889372013-05-05T08:22:00.000+10:002013-05-05T08:22:42.522+10:00Resurrecting the blog for ANZ 23 Mobile ThingsAfter almost 3 years I've logged into Blogger and blown the dust off my poor old blog. The reason? Despite having several major projects at work and a REALLY major one at home (I'm having a baby in October), I've been swept up in the excitement of <a href="http://anz23mobilethings.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">ANZ 23 Mobile Things</a>. For the first time in a long time I feel the need to publicly say something longer than 140 characters about my profession and technological change.<br />
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ANZ 23 Mobile Things is a learning program based on the highly successful "23 Things" model that educated the library profession about social media and its applications for libraries/info mgt about 6 years ago now. This time (in case you hadn't guessed) the focus is on educating us about mobile devices and their applications. I'd say I'm familiar with about 2/3 of the concepts in the program, but there is always room to learn more! I volunteered to write a feature post on mobile email and I've already discovered some apps that will make my inbox waayyy more manageable.<br />
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So if you're involved in the library, KM and info mgt profession and have even a passing interest in mobile technology I encourage you to sign up to the program. Heck, sign up even if you don't. It's an enjoyable, free opportunity to do some structured professional development, and you can't go wrong with that!<br />
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PS twitter details: my public handle is <a href="https://twitter.com/Linda_Moore" target="_blank">@Linda_Moore</a>. The program account is <a href="https://twitter.com/anz23mthings" target="_blank">@anz23mthings</a> and the hashtag is <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23anz23mthings&src=typd" target="_blank">#anz23mthings</a>. See you there!Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-9593289199155482992009-12-04T10:10:00.005+11:002009-12-04T10:18:53.267+11:00ECM: Governance, Implementation and More – Chris Donohue, Alpha KnowledgeThe last NSW KM Roundtable event for the year was held this week. The theme for the day was information and governance - a topic I am currently quite interested in. Here's a writeup of one of the presentations on Governance and Enterprise Content Management.<br /><p></p><p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile?authToken=WW-0&viewProfile=&authType=name&locale=en_US&key=28018019">Chris Donohue of Alpha Knowledge</a> has had a long and varied career in both corporate governance and KM, which means he is well qualified to speak on the challenges of implementing a content management system that allows sharing while ensuring that there is a consistent approach to the governance of critical information.</p> <p>It’s also fair to say that a number of KM Roundtable members pricked up their ears when Chris indicated that most of the ECMs he has implemented are based on – you guessed it – Sharepoint.</p> <p>Before he launched into his case study, Chris made a couple of pithy observations:</p> <ul> <li>We spend 90% of the time managing 10% of information that needs to be secure </li> <li>Why copy and paste documents, emails and images when you can streamline a process? </li> <li>Part of the info management challenge is identifying what “quality information” is. </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Case Study: Information Mismanagement</strong></p> <p>There’s this alarmingly common assumption that the implementation of a shiny new piece of software (in this case Sharepoint) will instantly fix all of the challenges an organisation might have with managing their documents and content. But, as the subject of Chris’s case study found out, just tossing documents into Sharepoint because the CEO has decreed “make it so!” really doesn’t work.</p> <p>Enter Chris. His mandate was to establish a governance structure that would turn their Sharepoint site from a mess into a well-ordered and efficient platform for managing content and sharing information.</p> <p><strong>Implementation</strong></p> <p>Here’s some of the elements that helped them to achieve an effective Sharepoint implementation: </p> <ul> <li>The information architecture was carefully designed and kept CONSISTENT across the team sites </li> <li>A governance and security framework was also clearly defined </li> <li>Any content that had not been used in more than a year was not not migrated </li> <li>The implementation team got buy in and collective consensus from the company (it helps if the CEO is a fan of the project!) </li> <li>Phased process – it doesn’t have to happen all at once </li> <li>Communication was critical </li> <li>Change managed proactively </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Information Architecture</strong></p> <p>Chris then discussed the Information Architecture of the site. It was broken into 3 types of repositories: </p> <ol> <li>Personal Knowledge <br />- folders/personal data <br />- emails <br />- IMs <br /><br />which feeds into </li> <li>Group Knowledge <br />- meetings <br />- Network data <br />- Intranets <br />- hard form docs <br /><br />which feeds into </li> <li>Business Intelligence <br />- data warehousing <br />- data mining <br />- KPI tracking <br />- Reporting </li> </ol> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Governance Framework</strong></p> <p>Some issues that had to be considered when creating structures for information sharing were:</p> <ul> <li>Chinese Walls (where departments/business units are in competition and can’t share info) </li> <li>Privacy (information that should only be available to HR etc) </li> <li>Hierarchy (cascading information accessibility appropriately) </li> <li>Compliance (ensuring appropriate and secure management of information required for audit and disclosure) </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p>Most of these issues were dealt with by developing a generic security matrix. Sharepoint allows administrators to establish security groups. In this case they were set up by function:</p> <ul> <li>Group 1 – exec </li> <li>Group 2 – projects </li> <li>Group 3 – Operations </li> <li>Group 4 – HR </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Implementation and Change Management</strong></p> <p>Training consisted of “Pretraining an post-training”</p> <ul> <li>pretraining grouped by IT proficiency. Pretraining also provides the opportunity to test the usability of the site and make adjustments before going live. </li> <li>post training – refresher courses </li> <li>flick the switch! At some point old systems and repositories need to be shut down to avoid duplication of content OR worse, the ongoing problem of content scattered across multiple systems. </li> </ul> <p><strong>Monitoring and Updating – facilitating governance of content</strong></p> <ul> <li>Assigned owners to content, automated update reminders were set in Sharepoint to prompt review of content by the owners <br />-> great for policies and procedures. </li> <li>Need to have an overall coordinator monitoring the content owners </li> </ul> <p><strong>An overall view of the process:</strong></p> <p>Analyse –> redesign architecture –> plan –> implement –> maintenance</p> <p>The value of the who project was clearly demonstrated when the business went into a merger and were able to create a data warehouse of all the information in just a few days.</p> <p>Thanks Chris for a solid and interesting presentation.</p>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-58720638496135434712009-09-24T15:39:00.002+10:002009-09-24T16:01:25.537+10:00Instant Messaging: an "elegant solution" for general practicesMy family lives in rural NSW, where there is a chronic doctor shortage and it can be difficult to recruit new practitioners. So I really loved the story my mum told me about her most recent trip to the doctor. She wasn't able to get an appointment with her regular doc, and saw a new doctor who hadn't been practicing very long. This doctor wasn't sure about the correct prescription for my Mother's condition. But instead of spending time surfing around medical databases, or knocking on the door of the doctor next door, she sent an Instant Message. Within seconds she had the name of the appropriate medication - from two different doctors.<br /><br />This practice probably has 5 or 6 doctors and probably hasn't even heard of "Enterprise 2.0" - but by using a free application such as MSN they have been able to dramatically increase the sense of presence and support they can provide this new doctor. She can confidently request assistance from her colleagues while knowing that it won't significantly impact the time required by her patient - or theirs (especially as they can choose not to respond). It would be interesting to know if this will consequently increase the likelihood of this practice retaining their new recruit - which would definitely be a plus for the rural community.<br /><br />Some might consider Instant Messaging to be a relatively "old" form of social media - but there are still so many ways it can be used innovatively to solve basic problems and increase efficiency. It's great that small businesses are realising this as well.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-69309323641308750802009-09-11T21:15:00.000+10:002009-09-11T21:23:19.410+10:00Legal Professionals and Web 2.0 - ALLA presentationI have loaded a copy of my conference presentation up to Slideshare - there are notes for relevant slides too.<br /><br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_1976144"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/LindaMoore/professionals-and-web-20-findings-from-the-cch-whitepaper" title="Professionals and Web 2.0: Findings from the CCH whitepaper">Professionals and Web 2.0: Findings from the CCH whitepaper</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=professionalsandweb20presentationalla-090909230158-phpapp01&stripped_title=professionals-and-web-20-findings-from-the-cch-whitepaper"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=professionalsandweb20presentationalla-090909230158-phpapp01&stripped_title=professionals-and-web-20-findings-from-the-cch-whitepaper" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/LindaMoore">Linda Moore</a>.</div></div><br /><br />You can also read the full paper (yes I actually submitted an article - it was like being back at uni!) on the <a href="http://www.alla.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=268&Itemid=513">ALLA conference site</a>. A number of the papers and presentations are now available - I'll let you know my favourites over the next week or so.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-89916885617835933202009-09-11T21:02:00.004+10:002009-09-11T21:25:39.149+10:00ALLA sidetrip - Kakadu!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2439/3905921601_dd0970e4f4_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 171px; height: 240px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2439/3905921601_dd0970e4f4_m.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />I haven't posted any of my notes from the ALLA conference because I am still recovering from the holiday to Kakadu that I took on the side! If you're a fan of birds, crocodiles, aboriginal rock art or sunsets you might like to have a look at my pics on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/24315280@N03/sets/72157622327851746/">flickr</a>. I'll blog about some of the most interesting papers here or on <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au">CCHatter </a>over the next week.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/24315280@N03/3905922765/" title="Yellow waters sunset 3 by jedi_enna, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2454/3905922765_fe497b3c3a.jpg" alt="Yellow waters sunset 3" width="500" height="332" /></a>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-5366291662829873202009-09-02T10:23:00.001+10:002009-09-02T10:23:40.121+10:00On my way to ALLA<p>I’m sitting at the airport about to board a plane to Darwin for the Australian Law Librarian’s Association conference.  I’m super excited about the conference this year – the theme is evolution and many of the papers explore how legal research has changed and is changing.  </p> <p>I will be giving a presentation that draws on the findings of the CCH “Professionals and Web 2.0” whitepaper and explores what Web 2.0 means for the creation and dissemination of information – and what THAT means for information providers such as CCH!  I will put the presentation up on Slideshare next week.  In the meantime you might like to check out these <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au/?p=153">two</a> <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au/?p=165">posts</a> on <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au">www.cchatter.com.au</a> – they are based on some material that didn’t quite make it to the final draft of the paper.</p> Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-29777424570686348602009-07-10T12:26:00.004+10:002009-07-10T12:52:22.461+10:00Lawyers and Web 2.0: what are the implications?Today I started work on my paper for the <a href="http://www.alla.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=222&Itemid=371">ALLA Evolution Conference</a>. The topic is Professionals and Web 2.0, and will to some extent be a presentation of the results from our <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/DocLibrary/cch_professionals_web20_whitepaper_final.pdf">Professionals and Web 2.0 whitepaper</a>. But I also want to dig into the implications of Web 2.0 for legal research, current awareness, publishing, and libraries.<br /><br />For example, the Canadian law blog <a href="http://www.slaw.ca/2009/05/25/slaw-wins-lawford-award/"></a><a href="http://www.slaw.ca/">Slaw </a>won the <a href="http://www.callacbd.ca/index.php/publisher/articleview/frmArticleID/174/">2009 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing</a>, presented by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. It is considered to be a legitimate source of "high quality materials for use in understanding and researching the law." Yes, a Web 2.0 resource has just been lauded as a high-quality publisher in the league of Insight Press, CanLII, and Canada Law Book (just a few of the previous winners). But how do you go about evaluating web 2.0 sources and differentiating them from each other? What differentiates Slaw from Wikipedia? Yes I know this is somewhat obvious but what specific factors make you trust it more?<br /><br />I would love to hear your thoughts about how you use web 2.0 sources and the implications this has for:<br /><ul><li>legal and general research, including evaluating sources<br /></li><li>news and current awareness</li><li>the legal publishing industry</li><li>law libraries and KM</li></ul>I'll be incorporating any insights proferred into my paper. You can <a href="http://twitter.com/Linda_Moore">tweet me</a> or post longer observations as comments on this blog - I'll be posting on these topics over the next month or so as I put the paper together.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-69614686694650417962009-07-08T20:33:00.006+10:002009-07-08T20:46:27.352+10:00Who are you and why should I buy from you?<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Just found this fantastic presentation from the<a href="http://www.marketing.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=3298"> Business Marketing Associations' "Unlearn" conference</a>. A fantastic illustration of how markets and technologies change but the fundamentals of the business relationship don't.</span><br /><br /><object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nXG7zYWKHGU&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nXG7zYWKHGU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I found a link to it on one of my favourite blogs, </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.webinknow.com/2009/07/btob-marketing-fundamentals-do-not-change.html">WebInkNow</a><span style="font-family:arial;">. I also noted that the author of WebInkNow, David Meerman Scott, is coming to </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.socialmediamasterclass.com.au/">Sydney and Melbourne</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> in September. Here's the tag for his course: "Instead of explaining what Social Media is, David specialises in showing Marketing and PR experts exactly how to use it."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Now if only I could justify another training course LOL!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Oh well, there seems to be a blog specifically for the Australian masterclasses with Australian examples, so I'll have to get stuck into reading that instead.</span></span>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-30079266896065003752009-06-08T09:55:00.004+10:002009-06-08T10:53:31.811+10:00Bookmarking tools for private communitiesI've been on the lookout for a tool or site that would allow a private community to share links and discussions. There has been a real need for this among a group at work, as we explore innovative ideas and resources. At the moment we all use different tactics - I use Delicious, there is a share drive folder (ugh), and of course there's the ubiquitous link in an email. <br /><br />Here are a few tools I've considered over the past year, I would love to hear any other suggestions.<br /><br /><a href="http://delicious.com/">Delicious</a><br />I've been using Delicious as a personal bookmarking tool for over a year now (click <a href="http://delicious.com/JediEnna">here </a>to see my collection). It has some great features:<br /><ul><li>Integrates with your favourites in Firefox or Flock browsers - if you add to your browser favourites you can also publish it to your Delicious account. You can also set up a button in your links bar that will publish a site directly to Delicious</li><li>Also offers web-based posting of links for when you are unable to access a buttonbar plugin<br /></li><li>Fantastic predictive tagging facilities based on your existing personal tags and how other people have tagged it.</li><li>Great search and sort facilities - eg you can browse one tag (such as web2.0) and then refine the list with an extra tag such as "twitter"<br /></li><li>Public access - share the links you've tagged eg "web2.0" with other people</li><li>RSS feeds for your account or for a particular tag - so people can automatically receive notifications of any sites you've tagged eg "Web2.0".<br /></li></ul>However, Delicious falls down a bit when it comes to creating a community for sharing links.<br /><ul><li> it lacks privacy settings which limits its use as a potential business tool for security reasons</li><li>there is no group function (although an individual can create a network of other individuals). This defeats the concept of a collective library of tags and sites, as they can only be added to an individual's account. Also, I would like to have the facility to add and remove eg team members as they come and go.</li></ul><a href="http://www.ning.com">Ning</a><br />Ning allows for the creation of a private or public community. Have a look at this <a href="http://library20.ning.com/">Library 2.0</a> community to get a feel for it. The individual community can set up a huge variety of features:<br /><ul><li>Welcome page</li><li>Personal profile page</li><li>Forums</li><li>Blog aggregators</li><li>Post links<br /></li><li>Post videos and images</li><li>Chat</li><li>And more</li></ul>Ning is a fantastic tool for creating a community site, but it's not really a bookmarking tool. While it allows you to share links and bookmarks, there is no way to organise and sift through them.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.diigo.com/index">Diigo</a><br />I came across this yesterday so I'm still exploring it. However it's looking pretty good:<br /><ul><li>Both a personal bookmarking tool and a group tool</li><li>Adds a toolbar to IE, Firefox and Flock for quick bookmarking or post directly to the website<br /></li><li>Allows you to highlight and annotate sections of a website that you bookmark<br /></li><li>search for a particular tag or view a tag cloud (I don't feel this is quite as functional as Delicious)<br /></li><li>Create private or public communities</li><li>Administrator can easily add and remove users</li></ul><a href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx">Microsoft Sharepoint</a><br />Sharepoint has the advantage of sitting directly behind the firewall, however it lacks the "plug and play" functionality of eg Diigo which is so easy to set up. It also sits outside of the workflow - while both Delicious and Diigo allow you to click a button in your toolbar to bookmark a site, I suspect you would have to do the good old cut-and-paste to add to a list of links in Sharepoint. Also, Sharepoint out-of-the-box functionality is not maximised for easy web 2.0-style browsing and searching - no tag clouds, and essentially no easy way to tag in the first place. It would require extensive modification to make it as friendly as online sites - which means involving IT or developers, and that of course means it's no longer a "lightweight" solution.<br /><br />I'll be playing with Diigo over the next few weeks and will update you on how it goes. I suspect the main barrier will be whether our firewall allows sufficient access.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-75208463554120896332009-05-28T14:39:00.004+10:002009-05-28T15:17:18.958+10:00CCHatterI'm a little behind with my blogging because much of my attention has been focused on a new work venture, namely our very own "official" CCH Australia blog <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au">CCHatter</a>. We launched rather quietly last week and I think we are still in the process of finding our "voice". Currently the blog is authored by Jessica Hobson (New Business Initiatives Director) and myself, although we hope some more passionate bloggers will emerge from the woodwork. It is also part of a very exciting new partnership with <a href="http://www.practicesource.com">Practice Source</a> who are hosting a feed to the blog on their site.<br /><br />The blog has been a very practical introduction to social media strategy and policy. We've had to ask ourselves: why are we doing this? Is it ok to talk about x? What about y? What would our comms person think about that?<br /><br />At the moment we are still feeling our way through this, starting with reviewing our existing communications policies to see if they stretch enough to encompass social media channels. We are also quite keen on the idea of a set of guidelines (such as the <a href="http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm">Intel social media guidelines</a>) that will enable rather than restrict potential communicators. <br /><br />Back to "why are we doing this?" Innovation and customer focus are buzz word around Wolters Kluwer and CCH at the moment, and social media is a perfect forum to explore both. We will be listening to our customers who are already engaged online, and asking questions, debating issues and (hopefully!) proposing the odd solution. It's not going to be a "new product" blog; it will be more about the future of professional publishing and how we can move in that direction.<br /><br />This blog is a first toe in the waters of social media for Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific, and I am optimistic that it is the starting point for developing a culture within the company of listening and engaging online. <a href="http://www.cchatter.com.au">Head on over and have a look</a>; and be patient with us as we establish that "voice"!Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-53402697334859247652009-05-12T07:45:00.004+10:002009-05-12T08:10:43.889+10:00News online - a "crisis of intellectual property"?A study by PwC that has been reported in <a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,25457961-7582,00.html">The Australian</a> seems to bear out what I and many others have been saying:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A GLOBAL survey has found that readers could be willing to pay almost as much for some high-quality online newspapers as they do for print versions, particularly in specialist news areas.<br /><br />The study of 4900 respondents in the US and Europe by accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has found sport and business to be the areas in which consumers are most ready to pay for content.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span></span></span></span><span>This bears out the findings of CCH's "<a href="http://www.cch.com.au/DocLibrary/cch_professionals_web20_whitepaper_final.pdf">Professionals and Web 2.0</a>" whitepaper, namely that people still expect to pay for quality content when it affects their business or professional decisions.</span><span><span><span><span> Don't ask me why sport is the other special area, I have no interest in that particular topic!<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>Of course, there is a proviso to this assertion:</span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">The survey said consumers would be willing to pay 97 per cent of the purchase price of a traditional newspaper for online business content, <span style="font-weight: bold;">provided there were no free online products of equal quality on the market.</span></span><br /><br />Providers of business and B2B information have been far more cautious in releasing free content, plus only a handful of providers have the capacity to research and verify the information. Small wonder then that this "specialist" area is considered of high enough value to purchase content, as opposed to standard news which as I pointed out in my previous post can now often be harvested from the eyewitnesses themselves.<br /><br />I think <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/08/rundle-sorry-rupert-were-not-paying/">Crikey.com</a> have nailed the whole situation on the head with this pithy observation:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">...what is happening is not the death of newsprint, but an effective crisis of mass intellectual property and copyright.</span><br /><br />Again - what areas of information are worth investing time, IP and money? Selecting the wrong field or channel for journalistic or publishing efforts could mean saying goodbye to any kind of return on your work.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-85094802803806076732009-05-04T20:13:00.004+10:002009-05-04T21:33:20.374+10:00The exponential decline of newspapersThe New York times has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050300269.html?hpid%3Dtopnews%26hpid%3Dhttp://www.http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/register&sub=AR">announced its intention to shut down the Boston Globe</a>. The decline of traditional newspapers - and the attention given to it - has escalated rapidly over the past few months, thanks to declining advertising revenue and the ubiquitous Global Financial Crisis. Australia <a href="http://marketing-interactive.com/news/11915">is fairly protected</a> from the current drama - but the reality is that the GFC has only accelerated the inevitable.<br /><br />For the past decade news online has been free. This was not a problem when it was merely a supplement to print and broadcast news. But suddenly the internet is the predominant medium, and some <a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25293711-7582,00.html">very upset</a> <a href="http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62052923,00.htm">media providers</a> are struggling to jam the cat back into the bag. According to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/media/07paper.html?_r=2&ref=business">New York Times</a>, possible solutions the AP is investigating are:<p style="font-style: italic;">"to make sure that the top search engine results for news are “the original source or the most authoritative source,” not a site that copied or paraphrased the work. </p><p style="font-style: italic;"> The A.P. will also pursue sites that reproduce large parts of articles, rather than using brief links, and it is developing a system to track articles online and determine whether they were used legally."</p>I think both of these strategies are reasonably fair, as far as they go. But the reality is that an increasing quantity of news is now made available by the people who are there to witness it - on twitter, flickr, even Wikipedia updates. Yes, there is still value in quality investigative journalism - this is hard to replace. But the people who distribute this journalism need to rethink their target audiences and how they can reach them effectively. Thanks to the internet, there is no need for newspapers to be all things to all readers. There's no need to create new content to a topic when you can link to the equivalent.<br /><br />Jeff Jarvis wrote a passionate and articulate response to the increasingly shrill cries of traditional media, entitled "The <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/04/07/the-speech-the-naa-should-hear/">"speech the NAA should hear"</a>. I highly recommend it and am slowly plowing my way through the copious comments underneath it. Lots of gems of wisdom, although everyone is still struggling to answer the same question - how do we reinvent the media business model so that it is still high quality and sustainable?Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-16155187363950619162009-04-26T15:51:00.003+10:002009-04-26T16:34:34.858+10:00The decline of the Encyclopedia: a timely object lesson?The <a href="http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/business/11028273-41/story.csp">demise of Microsoft's Encyclopedia Encarta</a> has unsurprisingly kicked off another round of agitated discussion about the future of traditional publishing. <a href="http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/"> Neerav</a>, a fellow librarian/social media geek, <a href="http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/encyclopedia-britannica-how-the-mighty-have-fallen-lessons-for-market-incumbents/">has been doing some muck-raking of his own </a>to encourage some meaningful dialogue on the topic. He recalls an early experiment by Britannica which, if it had been continued, might have made it the default "Wikipedia":<br /><br /><blockquote><p>As Mark Pesce describes in his talk <a href="http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=101">The Alexandrine dilemma</a>, Britannica online was a subscription-based reference site for 5 years until 19th October 1999 when “the online version of Britannica containing the complete unexpurgated content of the many-volume print edition was unlocked and made freely available, at no cost to its users”.</p><br /><p>For the next few months Britannica Online became one of the most popular sites on the internet but in the face of having to service this traffic via more and more servers and escalating data transfer costs management decided to retreat into their shell, putting the content behind a paywall and charging a $7/month subscription fee. Traffic soon plummeted to previous low levels.</p><p>.......The issues they faced were not new: all online publishers have struggled to find out how they can turn high-quality content into a money-making business where profits are greater than costs. </p> <p>Shifting back to a subscription model reflected a natural conservative urge by management to avoid relying on fickle online advertising income but in the end it was also Britannica’s downfall...</p></blockquote><p>Talk about 20/20 vision in hindsight!</p><p>There is a reason news and general reference have been the early fatalities in the war of free vs subscription publishing. The fact that this kind of information is available in so many forms (such as the same news article being reproduced by dozens of news sources) reduces its value as a commodity. Likewise, general reference is the reproduction of (relatively) common knowledge and thus lends itself very well to being written by "the crowds".</p><p>Publishers would do well to examine their content and identify what elements are unique and what is freely available. For example, is there enduring value in providing subscriptions to court cases and legislation? Probably not when the same content is freely available on government and LII websites. BUT providing professional commentary and research tools for the same is unique to publishers and their highly qualified authors and editors. It requires time and skill and a much higher level of knowledge and analysis than your average Wikipedia article. This is not easily or freely reproduced; this is a commodity with high value. This is what publishers should be focusing their resources on.</p><p>Likewise publishers should be engaging more closely with their clients to identify what is high value to them. What do they truly seek when they turn to us? What do they see as our core offering? How do we provide it so that there is mutual satisfaction that the cost of the product (both to produce it and to purchase it) equals its perceived value?</p><p>I strongly believe that publishers (and librarians) will continue to have a role to play as stewards and promoters of unique and high quality content. But we need to listen very carefully to clients and to the general market in order to understand exactly what that content should be.<br /></p>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-8208217962998265232009-04-17T08:03:00.002+10:002009-04-17T08:08:51.571+10:00New Google features mimic professional research platformsOne of the features I have always loved about ProQuest and various other research databases is the way they recommend alternative or refined searches based on your original search. For example, the results page for a Proquest search on Knowledge Management offers around 15 suggestions for refining your search, starting with “Knowledge management AND” Organizational learning” and ending with “Knowledge AND Management development”. Similarly, if you conduct a search on the soon-to-be launched CCH IntelliConnect platform, you have the option to refine your search by options such as format or practice area.<br /><br />This is very comforting when you first launch into a topic and aren’t 100% sure about your keywords. It’s also useful if you’re a touch compulsive (like me) and want to make sure you have every possible relevant article on the topic at hand. In my university days I would spend hours surfing the recommended search terms and additional subject headings on Proquest or the library catalogue. <br /><br />Now Google have introduced a similar feature on their standard search. At the bottom of the search results page for “Knowledge Management” there is a collection of “Searches related to Knowledge Management”, including “knowledge management articles”, “knowledge management definition” and “information management”. These appear rather basic but as you drill down into a topic they seem to grow increasingly sophisticated.<br /><br />Unlike research databases and library catalogues, Google’s related searches are algorithm-driven rather than manually indexed. If or when these algorithms will match the quality and sophistication of human indexing is a very interesting question. <br /><br />In the meantime, the Google related search is a great feature to point out to less experienced searchers who aren’t sure whether their keywords are really relevant. Plus it’s a great way to wander through a topic area – just like browsing in the library.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-30554688804397651512009-03-30T17:50:00.002+11:002009-03-30T17:58:01.672+11:00The Commonwealth Bank wins the Twitter PR gameIt's funny that I keep posting about Twitter, as I actually think it's hopelessly over-hyped. But I couldn't resist <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25261841-5014239,00.html">this news.com.au story</a> about an unhappy customer's tweet and CBA's rapid response:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"A TWO-line Twitter post pushed my mortgage application from the Commonwealth Bank's "to do" list to an urgent priority.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The post said simply: "CBA f#$&ked up our loan approval so we're still waiting to exchange contracts". One hour and 17 minutes after it went live I was contacted by someone offering help to solve my problem. That person was the head of Commonwealth Bank's customer service team. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He told me the message made him "feel like crap" and the bank was only just beginning to understand how crucial social media sites were in maintaining the corporate giant's image. By 3pm the next day, my loan was formally approved." </span><br /><br />One person who responded couldn't understand how complaints on social media carry more weight than a complaint by phone. The reason is simple. A phone complaint is witnessed only by the customer and the corporation - and perhaps a few friends of the customer. But a complaint on twitter, or a blog, or any form of social media might be read by hundreds of people, if not more. As will their favourable review if the corporation moves to fix the problem rapidly. And THAT (to be cynical) is why the CBA moved so quickly on this incident.<br /><br />When corporations respond rapidly and sincerely to bad PR on social media the effect is incredible. Suddenly bad PR is converted to "wow, look how responsive and switched on this organisation is". Of course, this effect may only last as long as social media is "cool" and "new". It may not be such an unusual thing in a year or two.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-52633587922743847822009-03-19T18:26:00.005+11:002009-03-19T19:20:32.946+11:00New Think for Old Publishing: Tweeting audience 1, publishers 0There has been a great kerfuffle about the <a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive/talks/schedule?action=show&id=IAP0901368">"New Think for Old Publishers"</a> panel held at the <a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive">South By Southwest Interactive Conference</a> in Austin, Texis. This conference sounds fantastic, revolving around new and interactive media (I'm downloading me some podcasts from it as we speak). The panel in question was promoted as traditional publishers sharing new ideas for interactivity. But it turned into a tedious half hour of introductions followed by "now YOU tell us your new ideas for our industry".<br /><br />Little did they realise that they had completely lost the audience....and that all the action in the room was happening on Twitter. I love how <a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/03/back-channel-rules-ot.html">Michael Tobis</a> put it:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"...almost everybody in the audience was on a pre-announced twitter channel </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23sxswbp">#sxswbp</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. And by the time anybody in the crowd got to ask anything, most of the crowd was in a very collective and connected foul mood." </span><strong></strong><br /><br />I love that twitter (and subsequent blog posts) were able to give this audience a voice (and believe me, they had plenty to say - just check out the pages and pages of chatter on the twitter stream <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23sxswbp">#sxswbp</a>). After all, many of them are bloggers and essentially moved on to the new publishing model that traditional publishers are still wrapping their heads around. I highly recommend reading some of the posts from audience members, including "<a href="http://booksquare.com/new-think-not-so-much/">New Think? Not so much</a>" by Kassia Kroszer and "<a href="http://www.williamaicher.com/2009/03/16/really-new-think-for-old-publishers/">Really New Think for Old Publishers</a>" by William F. Aicher. I'll leave you with a quote from his blog as food for thought.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The ultimate “New Think” for the publishing industry that I’ve been pushing both in book publishing, as well as in the music publishing industry is to change the mindset that publishers are in charge and the customers should trust them. Instead, publishers need to stop trying to be tastemakers and instead realize that they are ultimately administrators of extraordinarily valuable copyright-protected content that they can build a brand around. Find content or creators that already have a following (and sometimes take risks on ones that have a potential to be big), cultivate those creators and their content with your professional editing staff and then get the content out to people.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;">William F. Aicher, "<a href="http://www.williamaicher.com/2009/03/16/really-new-think-for-old-publishers/">Really New Think for Old Publishers</a>"<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Powerful stuff!<br /><br />Thanks to <a href="http://www.heidiallen.com.au/sxsw-publishers-nothing-to-say/">Heidi Allen</a> for the heads up on this topic...she is quite rightly furious that publishers emerged from this looking like they have nothing to offer in the world of new media. And we we do have new ideas and innovative plans to interact with this world...check out what Henri van Engelen has to say on <a href="http://www.wolterskluwer.com/WK/Related+Nav/Innovation/innovation/next-gen-publishing.htm">Wolters Kluwer and Next Generation publishing</a>. However, I think this event (along with <a href="http://km-librarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/lexisnexis-add-fuel-to-fire-by.html">other situations</a>) clearly indicates that publishers do need to be more savvy about how they engage with the new media community.<br /></div></div>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-19325631503587367002009-03-07T11:26:00.003+11:002009-03-07T11:48:23.928+11:00Electronic Document Managment is all I thought about this weekI'm a little late posting this week, and I'm going to shamelessly play the pity card. I injured my lower back which makes it uncomfortable to sit/stand/lie down/do anything!<br /><br />That said, I actually had quite a busy week at work, and it was all about Electronic Document Management (EDM). First of all, a large chunk of my time was spent uploading and indexing a collection of resources into a Sharepoint document library. There is something incredibly satisfying in being able to populate 8 different fields with info on the one document, instead of trying to cram everything into a single file name on your share drive.<br /><br />So I'm creating all this beautiful metadata, but the Sharepoint basic search is pretty much ignoring it when it comes to returning and ranking search results. (Makes me want to tear my hair out!) We are now investigating appropriate search plugins to rectify this situation. Does anybody know of a good Google-style search plugin that works with both document full text and assigned metadata? Much obliged!<br /><br />I also had a wonderful "lightbulb" moment this week. We have commenced work on the next whitepaper, which is going to be all about accountants and the paperless office. Now this was troubling me for two reasons:<br />1) I don't know all that much about accountants despite them being the majority of our customers (!)<br />2) The term Paperless Office sends me straight back to the '90s and seems incredibly passe.<br /><br />Then the whitepaper team sat in on a presentation regarding <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/AU/MiscPages/MiscPage.aspx?ID=102&">CCH Prosystems fx</a>, our document management and workflow software for small to medium accounting firms. And I realised that it doesn't matter what your profession is, being "paperless" in the 2000s means Electronic Document Management. And of course EDM is a big component of Knowledge Management AND modern libraries. Which I know all about (or at least something about). Huzzah! Suddenly this whitepaper is no longer the Great Unknown.<br /><br />So now we are wondering what consitutes the "paperless" ideal for most enterprises these days? We're inclined to think that just like "full employment" is classed as 95%, perhaps "paperless" actually means, I dunno, 80% of tasks are achieved without paper. Over the next week I'll be looking around for any benchmarking studies on this issue. If you know of any or have some thoughts on the topic, please let me know!Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-17321411613602884472009-02-26T07:07:00.007+11:002009-03-06T11:49:13.401+11:00Freehills - how to create a classy intranet with a laughably small amount of time and moneyYesterday I attended the NSW KM Roundtable, which is always good value for ideas and networking. The absolute standout presentation for me was how <a href="http://www.freehills.com.au/">Freehills</a> put together a fantastic intranet using Sharepoint within 9 months. I nearly fell over when I heard how little it cost them despite having both a usability consultant and professional sharepoint developers.<br /><br />So how did they pull it off? Here's a few points.<br /><br /><ul><li>They engaged a usability consultant (<a href="http://jandersdeanleadership.blogspot.com/">Janders Dean</a>) with expertise in law firm intranets because they couldn't engage their lawyers in user consultation (not billable hours you know!)</li><li>They determined that phase 1 would be a fairly shallow intranet that really focused on core information and they refused to be distracted by Sharepoint's bells and whistles.</li><li>The Sharepoint consultants, usability consultant, Freehills IT folk and the KM folk all co-located for the duration of the project. This cut out the time-consuming process of the consultants taking the spec, going away, building it and then coming back to present it and request changes/clarification. They could spec directly with the writer of the spec for any clarfication they needed and show them the progress of the model before they got too far down the wrong track.</li><li>The final result had to be so easy to use that no user training was required.</li></ul><br />So what did the final product look like? Not Sharepoint, that's for sure. With the exception of a small amount of news and navigation on either side of the screen, the front page looks like Google. That's right, lots of white space with a big search box in the middle. The aim is to encourage searching over browsing.<br /><br />That said, the structure of the content is great, and based around function rather than organisation structure. There is a "How Do I?" section for forms, policies etc. There is also both a "white pages" AND a "yellow pages" directory - so it's easy to work out who to call eg when the aircon breaks down. There is a company page that is kept rigorously up to date with information on board members, financial situation etc (this was in response to a perceived lack of transparency around business processes). The front page also has constantly updated company and external news AND a regularly updated mulimedia presentation. Oh, and most importantly it has a "Did you find what you were looking for?" link to solicit feedback on improvements.<br /><br />The most important lesson from their consultants was to make sure you had a vision of the future while designing the first phase. Sharepoint is very flexible, but the way you design an element in phase 1 WILL affect your ability to scale/expand its functionality in the future. If you want to continue to grow the intranet over the next 5 or more years, you have to be thinking about how you want to do that from day 1. The value of their usability consultant was to show them the potential of the technology and challenge them to think of ways to improve efficiency that they didn't even think were possible. Amazing stuff.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-29756266322492119392009-02-17T09:21:00.004+11:002009-02-17T09:57:26.170+11:00Media companies realising new media is well and truly here.Just thought I'd share this quote from an article in the Australian Financial Review, <a href="http://www.afr.com/home/login.aspx?ATL://20090217000030844245&section=search">"Opportunities in a mix of old and new"</a> (17/2/09, p31). It's from Caroline Little, CEO of Guardian News and Media North America.<br /><br /><em>"Multimedia platforms are no longer the future, they are here and the focus is not necessarily to preserve newspapers, but to preserve core journalism values while stretching out into the new media."</em><br /><br />The article discusses how businesses see the incredible potential of the new media landscape but are "struggling to turn unprecedented reach and audience into revenue streams". AFR is certainly one of the more backwards examples, with all of their content locked behind a subscriber wall with an astronomical price tag attached (as most of you would have discovered if you clicked on my link above). Are THEY feeling challenged?<br /><br />I've spent the last few days writing an article on these very issues within the general publishing world, drawing on <a href="http://km-librarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/info-online-trouble-with-books-finding.html">Sherman Young's analysis of the core values of the book</a>. It also gave me the opportunity to really mull over and draw from Sarah Lloyd's article "<a href="http://thedigitalist.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/a-book-publishers-manifesto-for-the-21st-century.pdf">A book publisher's manifesto for the 21st century"</a>. I think this will be a defining work for publishers looking to the next generation of publishing. My article may not be quite so seminal, but I'm reasonably happy with it and it will probably appear in a Wolters Kluwer publication later this year.Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-23241446709276457942009-02-11T10:59:00.005+11:002009-02-11T11:44:48.042+11:00Metadata out of control - not a pretty sightOne of my projects for the next few months is to develop a collection of business-related resources in <a href="http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Microsoft-Sharepoint.aspx"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Sharepoint</span></a>. For those of you unfamiliar with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Sharepoint</span>, Microsoft itself describes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">SharePoint</span> as Collaboration, Portal, Search, Enterprise Content Management (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ECM</span>) , Business process management (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">BPM</span>) and Business intelligence (BI) (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">thankyou</span> <a href="http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Microsoft-Sharepoint.aspx"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">AIIM</span> </a>for that definition). <br /><br />My business development collection is just one part of a larger process of rolling <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Sharepoint</span> out across the company. And high on my personal agenda is to ensure there are appropriate guidelines to ensure a consistent approach to <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:metadata&ei=Yh6SSZ_ZFIKqsAOK9L27Cw&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">metadata</span> </a>across all <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">teamsites</span> (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">ie</span> make sure we have consistent titles and subject terms etc for documents loaded into <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Sharepoint</span>).<br /><br />You don't have to look far to see how messy an inconsistent approach to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">metadata</span> can get - just check out my "tag" list to the left. There's probably about 40 tags, some of which I remember to use consistently and many which I don't (meaning that if there are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">multiple</span> posts on a topic they may not all appear under the relevant tag). Plus it doesn't look very appealing at all. And this is after only a few months of active blog posting by one person. Can you imagine what a collection with multiple <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">contributors</span> might look like after a year or two?<br /><br />Now I am actually a pretty big fan of tagging items with as many relevant terms as possible, a la <a href="http://delicious.com/JediEnna">Delicious</a>. But it helps to think about consistency as you go - tag with either "blog" or "blogs", or you'll end up with two separate collections which defeats the purpose. OR you tag with both so people can find them, but then that's extra work (not much, but it all adds up). And the graphic interface of Delicious is a big help in searching through the collection.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Sharepoint</span> out of the box is not as flexible as Delicious and may not compensate quite so effectively for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">metadata</span> shortfalls. While I haven't had much actual experience with it yet, I'm anticipating its <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">metadata</span> will be presented in a manner closer to my blog tag list - <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">ie</span> in a big list without Delicious' ability to combine and filter tags. So we're back to that big mess again - unless we get in early with some appropriate standards.<br /><br />My next steps? Clean up my blog tags (sigh) and come up with a few standards for them. Then continue to establish and promote some standards for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Sharepoint</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">metadata</span> within our company. I'll also be spending some time reading <a href="http://www.sharepointplan.com/">Mark Schneider's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Sharepoint</span> Taxonomy and Governance blog</a>, which looks like it will be a good resource!Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-66082586331624020182009-02-05T15:18:00.003+11:002009-02-05T15:25:27.430+11:00Featured in Law Librarian News...Thanks to Sean and Joy from Law Librarian News who listed me as an interesting read in their latest edition. This is a real honour as I'm a long time reader of <a href="http://www.practicesource.com.au/">Practice Source</a>. <br /><br />Speaking of Law Librarian News, readers may remember that there was an article in the December edition on an upcoming CCH whitepaper, <a href="http://www.cch.com.au/whitepaper">Professionals and Web 2.0</a>. This whitepaper is now available from the CCH website - check it out!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cch.com.au/whitepaper">www.cch.com.au/whitepaper</a>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-2731636307510159022009-02-03T14:45:00.004+11:002009-02-03T16:28:26.188+11:00Information alone is not valuable - targeted information isDon't you love how patterns form from random things? A sample of four or so blogs and articles I read over the last week lead to this epiphany for me.<br /><br />Item 1:<br />Scott <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Karp</span> of Publishing 2.0 blogged on <a href="http://publishing2.com/2008/05/04/the-declining-value-of-redundant-news-content-on-the-web/">"The declining value of redundant news content on the web"</a>. He takes an example of a news story about Google that currently has 2000 separate articles tracked on Google News - and how for most of those 2000 journalists the cost of commenting and reproducing the news will not be matched by return readership, simply because there are so many other versions to read.<br /><br />Item 1.5:<br /><a href="http://practicesource.com/house-of-butter/too-much-legal-news.html">Sean from House of Butter </a>observes in the context of the legal industry that while excessively duplicated news has little value, "Human editors specialising in a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">segment</span>(s) of the legal industry will we <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">think</span> still find favour with time poor readers".<br /><br />Item 2:<br /> Hal <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Varian</span> of Google was recently<a href="http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286"> interviewed by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">McKinsey</span> Quarterly</a>. There are heaps of interesting insights in the interview, but here are two that stood out for me:<br /><br /><blockquote>We have to look at today’s economy and say, “What is it that’s really<br />scarce in the Internet economy?” And the answer is attention. [Psychologist]<br />Herb Simon recognized this many years ago. He said, “A wealth of information<br />creates a poverty of attention.” So being able to capture someone’s attention at<br />the right time is a very valuable asset.....<br /><br />I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be<br />statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">ve</span> guessed that computer<br />engineers would’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">ve</span><br />been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to<br />understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to<br />communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next<br />decades...<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Sensing a theme here? Information hasn't got much value when it's just floating around out there. In fact it can have negative value -the cost of "publishing" it may outweigh the return (even on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">internet</span>!). But information that reaches the right person at the exact time they need it, thus capturing their attention - that's where the money is.<br /><br />Dave <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Weinberger</span> recognised this in Item 3, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Miscellaneous-Power-Digital-Disorder/dp/0805088113/ref=ed_oe_p">Everything is Miscellaneous</a>" (p223-4):<br /><br /><span><blockquote><span>Miscellanized information is informaiton without borders. That means we've<br />been misleading CEOs for the past fifteen years by drumming into their heads<br />that every business is an information business. Of course information is central<br />to businesses, but business's reflex action has been to wall off what they know<br />as if it were gold. Now that information is being commoditized, it has more<br />value if it's set free into the miscellaneous. For example, airlines do better<br />when their prorietary scheduling and pricing information is made available to<br />travel sites...It gains even more value when innovators can combine it with<br />other data..."</span></blockquote><br /></span><span><br />Statisticians, innovators, librarians, publishers - whatever title you want to use, these are the people who can collect and present information in a meaningful way, at the right time, to the right people. And it is that skill that will be valuable, and valued, in the information economy of the future.</span><br /></span>Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-45885045284283466402009-01-28T07:23:00.005+11:002009-01-28T07:50:35.331+11:00More from Information Online 2009I'll be posting more of my thoughts from Information Online 2009 over the next week, but some people have already done such a good job summarising and commenting on some of the keynotes that I encourage you to read their posts as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anticipating the Future of Libraries (and many other things!): Andy Hines, futurist, adjunct professor of Future Studies at University of Houston </span><br />Andy gave a fantastic presentation on the following trends/challenges:<br />1. Values<br />2. Demography<br />3. Lifestyle<br />4. Technology<br />5. Work<br />6. Education<br /><a href="http://strawberriesofintegrity.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/anticipating-the-future/">Strawberries of Integrity </a>posted an excellent summary <a href="http://strawberriesofintegrity.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/anticipating-the-future/">here</a>, please read it!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Libraries as Happiness Engines - Liz Lawley, director of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology</span>.<br />Liz had some very interesting thoughts on how taking a gaming/fun approach to libraries, work and more can increase happiness AND productivity (shock!). She identified the elements of happiness as:<br /><ul><li> satisfying work to do</li><li> the experience of being good at something</li><li> time spent with people we like</li><li> the chance to be part of something bigger than yourself</li></ul>And points out that many of these are more accessible in the online gaming world than real life - no wonder people like games! More on how this applies to libraries etc <a href="http://strawberriesofintegrity.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/libraries-as-happiness-engines/">here</a>.<br /><br />Liz also pointed out <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/">Ravelry </a>as an example of an object-oriented network - where the network is not based just around people but a particular object (in this case yarn and knitting patterns etc). She suggests that the next step for libraries is to turn catalogues into this kind of social network. I think we (publishers) should turn our online research collections into them too! More on that from my<a href="http://km-librarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/web-20-enhancing-value-and-visibility.html"> previous post</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.annapearson.com/">Anna Pearson</a> has also been writing up some of her thoughts on Information Online...have a look at those too!<br /><br />io2009<br />#io2009Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1171202695918063933.post-16219698799639728512009-01-25T09:55:00.006+11:002009-01-25T10:09:58.355+11:00Info Online - The Trouble with Books: finding their place in a post web 2.0 world (Dr Sherman Young)Dr Sherman Young was an excellent presenter, and the concepts and issues he discussed stayed with me right through the conference. The title of his book alone is enough to command attention - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Book-Dead-Long-South-Books/dp/0868408042/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232836608&sr=1-2">"The book is dead: Long live the book".</a><br /><br />Dr Young's key point is that we need to disassociate the concept of the book - something that requires a significant investment of time and thought by the author, editor/publisher and reader - from the print, paper and glue that is its origin. The rest of this post is based on the notes I took throughout his presentation.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neeravbhatt/3211535350/sizes/s/" title=""><img alt="" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3464/3211535350_499b001b45_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Dr Sherman Young by neerav bhatt<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A History of the World and the Internet in 4 1/2 slides each</span>.<br />Dr Young started by giving an overview of the development of media and communication, from oral culture to the internet. He notes that upheaval that each development - written word, the printing press, the radio - caused, and the naysayers (starting with Plato!). He goes on to outline the development of the internet and the changes it is bringing to our research, reading and literacy culture. Then he played Apple's "Knowledge Navigator" vision from 1987 - which is the next step from Web 2.0 into the semantic web.<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3WdS4TscWH8&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3WdS4TscWH8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Where do books fit in a post Web 2.o world?</span><br />Now on to the meat of Dr Young's talk: What of books in this new world?<br />In the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock: "The Trouble with Harry"<br />....Harry's dead. So are books. Books don't seem to have a place. In the world of the Knowledge Navigator, books are props that line the dusty shelves of the academic's study.<br /><br />In our world:<br /><ul><li>Content in books is hidden from the basic google search.</li><li>Iphone: millions of videos and music on your phone - but not many books!!! (Unless you like Harlequin Romance, which IS available on Iphone. Yeesh!)<br /></li></ul> Dr Young contends that book culture and print culture getting confused. And as Jeff Jarvis said, "Print is where books go to die".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A book's core attributes.</span><br />But if it is not "a printed object", what is a book? Dr Young explains the core attributes of a "book":<br /><ul><li>Time. Books take time to write and time to read. It is a "premium of time" that must be committed by authors, publishers and readers<br /></li><li>Deeper content - the result of all that time.</li><li>Not required to react to current events - more reflective, thorough approach.<br /></li><li>And then the reader must create the world themselves by engaging with the book. Unlike a movie where everything is created and visualised for you, there is a space that must be negotiated by the reader to be meaningful.<br /></li></ul> Essentially, it's like cooking and eating a Casserole compared to a Big Mac.<br /><br />But the book is not dead yet - it's just resting.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The future:</span><br /><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/">Gam3r Th3ory</a> - each chapter discussed and reviewed online before publishing<br /><a href="http://www.yalepresswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikibooks at Yale</a> - read AND contribute to free scholarly works from Yale.<br /><a href="http://yupnet.org/home/">Yale Books unbound</a> - read and add comments to published works which are now freely available online. This is based on "CommentPress" software that (I think) was developed by the Institute of the Future of the Book.<br /><br />So how can we encourage "real books" - long form text?<br /><ul><li>ebooks. 68000 at MQ in 2007. Interstingly though, several of the papers from the conference focused on the difficulty in building awareness of e-books among academics and students. So this particular solution has a way to go.</li><li>Google books. Puts books back in the online conversation with higher, more effective result rankings.<br /></li></ul> Dr Youn'g final point was that we are experience a time of creative destruction. We need to navigate this time and ensure that books survive with the videos and blogs etc. But librarians need to support authors and publishers trying to work out new publishing, copyright and distribution models.<br /><br />Books should be part of the online world, not separate. This is our challenge: to make sure that we continue to value books.<br /><br />"The best way to predict the future is to invent it"<br />- ALan Kay<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">My thoughts.</span><br />This is an amazing vision which publishers really need to explore. In fact, we are already poking around the edges...one of the potential modifications of the new CCH Intelliconnect platform (coming this year) will be to allow comments and annotations to our online books and commentary. But thoroughly integrating our publications into the stream of the internet will be a much bigger challenge.<br /><br />io2009<br />#io2009Linda Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16774301818556949258noreply@blogger.com0