It's off 2 work we go

Transfering information

2009-09-19T03:52:00.000-07:00

I had a brainwave yesterday. Like all brainwaves it came rushing in and swamped all my other thoughts. So what was it about - in my new job I need to focus on different aspects of business to what I have done previously. However the previous aspects still need to be recognised and managed. Unfortunately, it seems to me by my email and phone queries, I am the only person who has the knowledge of how it ties together. So the challenge is how do I give the knowledge to someone else or a few people so that it is not all stored in a single person again. The brainwave was how to do this.

Now I don't know if it will work or if I will be allow to do it, but I want to start a community of practice for recordkeeping. I will be the organiser for the first year in order to get it going, keep it going and transfer the knowledge I have to others. Then I will throw it open to someone else to take on. I will develop a strategy for it, goals and outcomes. I will publish the minutes from each meeting as a record of what we discuss and decide. It will build a body of knowledge about recordkeeping for the department, that will then be available to be read and used by anyone in the department.

My first steps will be to develop the strategy, then to run it past my boss. I believe she will support it as one of the areas that is under utilised in the department is knowledge management. What I am proposing is developing a model of how to transfer knowledge in the department from being stored in individual staff members into repositories of other people and communication tools such as the intranet.

Progress of sorts

2009-09-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have been in the new job for three weeks now. I am co-located at two different sites. travelling sometimes between both sites each day. We have an ambitious plan of work to achieve. It seems after no one having the slightest interest in managing their information, now everyone wants to manage it all at once. It is interesting how a few changes highlights that mess that we have created. My boss and I are determined to ride the wave of interest to bring about change.

So what have I done to make a difference. The first thing I have created is a set of Business Rules. These are things that aid us in our everday management of information. Things like consistent titling, classifying our work, understanding if it is a record or not, managing our work for the retention time, deleting or destroying ephemeral or valueless information. In this world were we all create records and information, we all have to know some business rules to enable us to manage what we create.

The other thing I have done is started to assess the organisation's current state of information management. What are we doing in what areas? Are we really good at recognising knowledge or data or risks to information and how do we go about demonstrating that? Once I have collected a baseline of information, I will analysis it to discover areas that we can leverage to improve information management across the organisation and gaps that we need to cover. One area that shows up clearly with only a few interviews so far is Knowledge Management.

It seems to be widely recognised that we have a large amount of knowledge captured in key people. The question will be how do we utilise these people to capture the knowledge into something that can be duplicated.

One of the areas that interests me is the change in staff retention. During my lifetime people have changed the way they see work and jobs. I have had a variety of different jobs through out my life learning from each and applying what I learn to each new situation. In our planning for the future we have to include plans for people to stay in jobs for a short time, make changes and then move on. We need to have in place methods of capturing the knowledge they hold and then transfering it to the nex t person quickly so that they don't waste time reinventing the wheel. So much time in orgnaisations is spent reinventing the wheel. New management comes in to a role and want to make changes to everything to showcase their expertise. We need to be able to help them to develop areas that the organisation is lacking.

Information Management - why bother?

2009-08-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

After my three months at Transport and Main Roads Library I am now heading back to my old new job. Queensland Corrective Services has been merged into the Department of Community Safety. All the operational business units have stayed the same with all the Corporate business units merging with the Department of Emergency Services to form the Department of Community Safety servicing all the operational business units. The area I worked in is no more and I am now part of a larger business unit. After talking with my new boss, I believe this will be a huge benefit for my work.

Managing information is a task so huge that people don't like to think about it in its total state. Information management encompasses recordkeeping, libraries, database administration, ICT, office administration, information security, custodianship, publishing, web content mangement, reporting, communication, RTI and privacy.
So how are we going to tackle it all. Like every project and every initiative one step at a time. To begin with I think it is important to define what managing information is in a way that people can understand what it means to their day to day work.
Data is a collection of facts, figures and statistics. We use data to create information about a person, a situation, a place or a theory. Some of the information we create will be records of the business we are engaged in, some will be ephemeral or for an administrative use only. Some of the information we create from data becomes knowledge.
We create and collect data in information systems both electronic and in hard copy more that ever before in our history, yet we don't have a consistent metod of managing the data. Every system is different, every system relies on different hardware to run it, few of the systems are able to talk to each other and few of the systems have been planned to migrate the information from them once they become obselete. These are just some of the difficulties in managing the data.

Managing information is the next step. It has the same problems in managing data as well as the additional problems of managing the information that is captured in email, usb sticks, cds, dvds, mobile phones, cameras, web 2.0 applications like this blog, flicker, myspace and youtube to name a few.

Why do we want to manage it? Why don't we just create it, use it and delete it, then if we need it again recreate it, use it and delete it again? The most compelling reasons are resource management, continuity and knowledge growth.
Each time we have to recreate something that has been already created that we can no longer find,we are wasting effort and time. There will be a lack of continuity because what we have to recreate will be slightly different from the previous version. Lastly the growth of knowledge in every area of research will be brought to a halt. One of the reasons for the amazing improvements in science and technology in the last 20 years has come about because people are able to share their knowledge and build upon the knowledge of others.

Librarians have managed print information by using defined consistent rules to classify and store books and journals. To manage information in the wider organisation we again have to apply defined, consistent rules to classify and store the information we create.

Change and heresy

2009-07-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

While working in the library for the last three months I have been thinking alot about what we do and how it is seen by our clients. Libraries are places that people don't associate with information. They are places that people associate with books. Yesterday while reading an opinion piece on the changes recommended by the Productivity council on the importation of books, the journalist stated she loved libraries and books, but could see the end of them. Her local library in Sydney had more clients using WiFi in the library than reading or looking for books. This she spelled as the trend for all libraries and so the beginning (or the middle) of the end. My own observations of our clients and our potential clients have shown similar attitudes and perceptions.

So has all the work we have done purchasing electronic resources and creating online catalogues with links to webpages, been wasted. Have we failed to send a strong, clear message to our communities and clients that libraries have never been about books, they have always been about information. Or is it we as librarians haven't seen that we are really about information. Is it that we only see ourselves as the custodians of books?

The last fifteen years have demonstrated that the medium the information comes in is the least important part of the package. The information itself is the important valuable resource. It shouldn't matter if the information is packaged in a database, a web application, a magazine or an image. These are the delivery methods. Our job is to make the delivery of information occur to those who require it.

Or is our job the task of creating and retaining a respository of books for the future (what in the future we don't know)?

Tweets from the library

2009-07-05T03:02:00.001-07:00

A while ago (I can't remember if it was this year or last) I was speaking to my friend Rachel about the possible uses of Twitter in a library. We didn't come up with many at the time. After the last few weeks of working again in a library I believe I have come up with a really good use of it.

When I was a reference librarian (back in the day) I would come across a range of interesting, but not necessarily relevant pieces of information in the course of my day. I would keep them in the back of my mind in case I ever needed them in the future. Evernote hadn't been invented then and now when I search for stuff and find other stuff, equally interesting, but not what I am looking for, I use Evernote to save it. However as a reference librarian my purpose was to disseminate information and I think Twitter is an excellent application to use to do just that. I haven't yet used it to do so. So that will be my next task to set up a twitter account and then send tweets to it when I find interesting stuff that may be of use to others. Like DIDI the acronym for Decide, Inform, Defend and Ignore - an explanation of the common practices of government.

Technorati code

2009-06-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

Signing up for Technorati needs 6vcku3niat

RSS, Taxonomy and Folksonomy

2009-06-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

A very interesting meeting this morning with other library staff who are learning to use Web 2.0 technologies at the same time. I am afraid I talked too much as usual. I get very excited about opportunities like these and don't shut up.

I finally know the difference between a taxonomy and a folksonomy. I first heard the word taxonomy at a conference in Sydney in 2006. I am afraid I thought the user was being a smarty pants using a word that I didn't know the meaning of. Please accept my apologies belated and as generalised as they are. Since then I have learned more about taxoniomies without understanding the term.

So to RSS feed. I have now used it with a variety of different blogs and I have to say I haven't found it to be the lifesaver that I expected. Perhaps this is because I don't go to particular sites regularly so I don't really have a burning need to know what they are publishing.

I am more interested in the idea that we use words that mean something to us to describe resources on the web. I particularly like the cloud effect that can come from it. I first came across this with Gnud in 2004. So I will go out there on the web and start tagging things that I come across with my subjective descriptions.

Has anyone played with Library Thing?

Social networking

2009-06-03T03:54:00.000-07:00

I have been using social networking for a while now in the form of Facebook and Ning.

This week on one of the currrent affair programs there was a story on the dangers of writing negative comments about one's workplace on Facebook. A few people who had posted potentially damaging comments and videos about the companies they worked for had been sacked and were very unhappy to find out that their employers were within their rights to do so. It was brought up that companies needed to have up to date policies available for staff to avoid unfair dismissal claims.

I don't think we need to have policies for specific media or applications. I think it is all covered in the Code of Conduct of an organisation. Just as a record is a record not matter what format it is published in, so are damaging opinions and comments. It is time we stopped seeing every new application as the important part of a process and started seeing as a delivery medium. The importance is attached to what it is delivering.

Great idea for the library wiki

2009-06-03T03:31:00.000-07:00

Today four of us from the library went off to Toowoomba. Two of us went to promote the library with regional staff and the other two went to learn more about the Historical Centre and its resources. It was a great success for everyone. when we arrived back in the library just on 5.00pm, we heard that three of the people we had spoken too had signed up as library users.

One of the discussions we had on the trip up was how to capture the ideas we had regarding a new LMS. Each of us has requirements that would make it easier to provide services to our clients. In order to capture these and have a forum for discussion on how they may impact on otehr members of the team we thought to create a forum on the new library wiki. It has the benefit of being a central place to capture all the ideas / requirements and giving us all the opportunity to discuss them - good, bad and otherwise.

Aother discussion we had was the need for us to accept that not every project or idea works as well as we hope it will. In the interests of sharing our experiences we have to share the bad experiences as much as we share the good ones. By sharing the bad experiences we can learn from them. We can alert others to what we have done, so they don't waste valuable time and resources trying the same thing.

One a more personal note I learnt some very positive things about my colleagues. I am proud to be working with them.

Libraries and Flickr and Steampunk

2009-05-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

Ok here I am at the second task of the licence: Flickr. I haven't had a great experience with Flickr so far. In the past I loaded a heap of photos to it to share with family and promptly forgot the password to get into the site. A tad frustrating. So it is with trepidation I go into Flickr. I know it's my fault for forgetting the password.

The first task I have accomplished is a search and found wonderful photos showing libraries around the word. But I have to say my favourite photos of a library has to be the ones on Steampunk Home blog showing a personal library: http://thesteampunkhome.blogspot.com/2008/10/holly-blacks-hidden-library.html

"In Praise of Google"

2009-05-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

I read a very interesting article in IQ called "In Praise of Google" by Professor David Nicholas and Dr Ian Rowlands. The first statement describing the article states "In the UK, librarians and other information professionals loathe search engine Google, claiming it has dumbed down information gathering." I believe that this is a mass generalisation of a profession. As a librarian I love Google, as an individual I love Google. I think it is the best thing that has happened to inforamtion searching since the internet.

As a librarian I believe there are many lessons we can learn as a profession from Google, some of which are stated in the article; Google is a brand, Google is convenient and universally accessible, Google is fast, Google is free, Google is a single point of access to a multitude of services, Google is trustworthy. As librarians we can benefit by understanding this and applying it to how we deliver services and provide information.

Fourth attempt

2009-05-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Well this is my fourth attempt to publish my thoughts regularly in a blog. Over the years I have experimented with blogs and not been very successful in the long term.