Information on the Move Seminar Tuesday May 13th Part 2

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Max Whitby of Touch Press http//www.touchpress.com came to talk to @30 people attending the NetIKX seminar at the British Dental Association in Wimpole Street, following on from David Nicholas (see related blog Part 1). Max’s company specialises in creating apps which are interactive and provide information or assist in education. In other words, these apps have a point, they are not games. They have created an app of  ‘The Periodic Table’ and ‘The Solar System’ and ‘The Orchestra’. Users spend hours looking, listening and reading the annotation on these apps. For example, on the app for T.S. Eliot’s great poem “The Wasteland” , there are multiple readers including Fiona Shaw, Alec Guinness and T.S. Eliot. Three of their music apps have been nominated for an award from the Royal Philharmonic Society. Max displayed a couple of the apps on screen – one in particular caught my attention – ‘The Orchestra’. This features the instruments (looking at each instrument from every angle); the music (including the score); the conductor. Amazing.

Following on from Max’s talk we had refreshments and then divided up into two syndicate groups. These working groups addressed two different issues. “1) Taking an example of the rich functionality and content of the Touch Press app, think of an app that your organisation could develop that would engage and/or educate and/or inform its users/customers”. Syndicate 1 came up with five ideas. Members from the Ministry of Justice suggested an information app for internal use within the Ministry. This app could identify all the things that policy makers needed to know (to connect with) in order to produce proper policy. The current tools are paper documents, documents held by records management or information controlled by external contractors. It is a question of packaging up such tools and presenting them in a uniform but innovative way on an app. Members from the Institute of Energy suggested an educational app. On their current website is an interactive matrix demonstrating “The Energy Chain”. It is linked to an offsite database (massive)  held in a separate location. An app could have one part of the database in order to describe “The Energy Landscape” (a mixture of visual/text/statistics). It could be used by anyone: researchers, students, members of the public. Attendees from the Medical Defence Union came up with an app about things to avoid, in terms of risk mitigation for medical professionals. Another attendee from the Department of Health suggested two apps – one about how the body functions, with different levels of knowledge, so it can be used by health professionals and members of the public; the other app to address the issue of IT Support. This would cover everything to do with Service Management from issues with suppliers to logging all support calls in one place. It was believed that such apps would offer a richer experience than textbooks or documents.

Syndicate 2 dealt with the question “What is the role of the information professional in a disintermediated, information rich world.” They came up with the idea for today’s Information Professionals to go out into the market place. Information Professionals are competing with IT people who have no background or skills in information management. The talk was about trust and embracing traditional skills of quality assurance and quality control so that information is trusted. Such an approach calls for advocates who are very relevant for the organisation in question. Librarians were once embedded in certain organisations (like the pharmaceutical industry) but not today. This syndicate focus was on disintermediation rather than ‘information on the go’.

Steve Dale wrapped up the syndicate sessions by stating that there was always a need to evaluate the information we receive – we can’t rely on algorithms, which can be degraded. The Syndicate Sessions ended and the attendees enjoyed a glass of wine (or two) and nibbles. It was a most successful seminar. Our thanks to NetIKX ManCom for organising the Event and in particular to Suzanne Burge, Melanie Harris, Anoja Fernando and Steve Dale for running the Event on the day.

rob rosset

Information on the Move – Seminar held on Tuesday May 13th 2014 – Part 1

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David Nicholas came to talk to a group of @30 NetIKX members at the h.q. of the British Dental Association in Wimpole Street. David runs CIBER a pan-European research outfit : http//ciber-research.eu He spoke about ‘The second digital transition’ which means that there will be no librarians (as we know them) by 2022. ‘The first digital revolution’ brought librarianship to its knees. This one will finish it off. It is ‘the end of culture as we know it’. ‘The first digital revolution’ took place in the office or in the library. The device – the pc – was desk bound, office bound. ‘The second digital revolution’ is taking place in the street. Mobile is now the main platform for accessing the web. Mobile means meeting information needs at the time of need. Mobiles provide access to masses of information for everyone. Smartphones and social media stride major information worlds, informal and formal.Mobiles empower digital consumer purchasing. Mobiles are fast. Mobiles are smaller devices with small screens.  They are not computational devices but access devices. Mobiles are social, personal, cool and popular.

Here are the basic characteristics of digital information seeking behaviour: ‘hyperactive’ – users love choice and looking; ‘bouncers’ – 1-2 pages from thousands; ‘promiscuous’ – about 40% don’t come back; ‘one slots’ – one visit, one page. Why is this ? Because of search engine lists/massive and changing choice/so much rubbish out there/poor retrieval skills (2.2 words per query)/multi-tasking (more pleasurable doing several things at once)/end user checking, so no memories in cyberspace and very high ‘churn rate’. The horizontal has replaced the vertical, reading is ‘out’ fast ‘media’ is in. Information seeking wise ‘skitter’ – power browse. Consequences ? Abstracts have never been so popular/scholars go online to avoid reading, prefer visual/few minutes per visit; 15 minutes is a long time/ shorter articles have a much bigger chance of being used.

Europeana mobile use : http://www.europeana.eu/ 130,000 unique mobile users accessed Europeana in last six months. Characteristics : ‘information light’, visits from mobiles much less interactive, few records, searches, less time on a visit/differences between devices (iPhone – abbreviated behaviour on part of searchers; iPad – behaviour conforms to that of pc users)/mobile use peaks at nights and weekends (desk tops peak on Wednesday and late afternoons)/searching and reading has moved into the social space. We could not have come further from the initial concept of libraries : no walls, no queuing, no intermediaries! Ask any young person about a library and they will point to their mobile. It is ironic that mobiles were once banned from libraries – now it is the library. The mobile, borderless information environment really challenges libraries and publishers. It constitutes another massive round of disintermediation and migration. The changed platform and environment transforms information consumption. Final reflection : Is the web and the mobile device making us stupid ? Where are we going with information, learning and mobile devices ?

robrosset

 

 

 

 

How to convince your organization that it needs a Taxonomy

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NetIKX will hold an event on July 3rd 2014 which addresses the above issue. Two speakers from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) will speak about their taxonomy and its potential to the organization. Anna Burmajster is Head of Information Services at the ICAEW. Alice Laird is the Taxonomy Project Manager at the ICAEW. In addition, Phil Carlisle will speak. Phil works at English Heritage and has a wealth of experience (both nationally and internationally) in explaining the need for taxonomies and developing them for the historic environment community. This event will be held at the British Dental Association in Wimpole Street.

robrosset 02/04/2014

Blog Post : Incentivising knowledge sharing behaviours

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35 people attended this NetIKX event held at the British Dental Association on the afternoon of Tuesday March 18th 2014. Steve Dale spoke on the ‘hot topic’ of  ‘gamification’. Quite simply, ‘gamification’ is the process of applying game elements to non-game applications using the fundamentals of human psychology to address motivation, ability levels and ‘triggers’ in individuals. The ultimate aim is to increase individual, team and organisational performance. Steve instanced a number of examples – from a multitude: within the NHS (a gamification app to encourage exercise); within local government (Halton Borough Council puts RFID tags on bins to track correct recycling by households and rewards good practice by awarding points that can be redeemed at local shops); within the market place (Supermarket club cards and loyalty cards). Steve cautioned against an  unthinking approach to adopting ‘gamification’ within an organisation. He emphasised the need to think carefully about organisational culture and to ensure that organisational goals are clear. After Steve’s talk and questions we moved on to syndicate sessions where five groups devised a gamification strategy to achieve an objective within their organisation. We then talked about the strategies. The event closed with networking, wine and nibbles. For Steve’s presentation go to http://www.slideshare.net/stephendale and for more information on Steve go to http://about.me/stephendale

Graham Coult has done an excellent write up of this event for the journal “Managing Information” Vol. 21 Issue 2 2014 pp. 26-28. ISSN13520229. This is a subscription journal go to http://aslib.com/resources/mi_intro.htm

robrosset NetIKX ManCom

 

 

 

Event report: From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow – a talk by Dr Serge Abiteboul

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Some notes taken at the Milner Award Lecture by Dr Serge Abiteboul for the Royal Society on 12th November, From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow. Dr Abiteboul was awarded the 2013 Milner Award, given annually for outstanding achievement in computer science by a European researcher.

Serge Abiteboul

Dr Abiteoul’s research work focuses mainly on data, information and knowledge management, particularly on the Web. Like NetIKX members, he is interested in the transition from data to knowledge. Among many prestigious projects, he has worked on Apple’s Siri interface and Active XML, a declarative framework that harnesses web services for data integration.

In a charming French accent, he explained to us that he was going to talk about networks – networks of machines (Internet), of content (Web) and people (social media).

Nowdays information is everywhere, worldwide. Everything is big and getting bigger – the size of the digital world is estimated to be doubling every 18 months. A web search engine now is a cluster of machines – maybe a million machines. In the past getting ten machines to work together was a big challenge! Engineering achievements have enabled hundreds of thousands of computers to work together.

Dr Abiteoul’s assumptions

1. The size will continue to grow
2. The information will continue to be managed by many systems (rather than a company like Facebook taking over all the world’s information).
3. These systems will be intelligent – in the sense that they produce/consume knowledge and not simply raw data.

The 4 + 1 V’s of Big Data…

Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity = four difficulties of big data. There is a huge mass of data, more than can be retrieved. And it is changing fast, particularly sets of data like the stock market. Furthermore, the information on the web is uncertain, full of imprecisions and contradictions. Search engines must contend with lies and opinions, not just facts.

Dr  Abiteoul’s +1 is Value – the bottom line is, what value comes from all this data? How does a computer decide what is important to present?

Data analysis is a technical challenge as old as computer science. We know how to do it with a small amount of data; the next challenge is to do it with a huge amount. Complex algorithms will have to be designed. These will need to do low level statistical analysis, because finding the perfect statistics will take too long. Maths, informatics, engineering and hardware are all needed.

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2.17)

People often prefer being given one answer rather than a multitude of options to sort through. When we ask another person an answer, they don’t reply by giving us twenty pages to read through, so why should we interact with machines (search engines) like that? (Note – should information professionals be very selective and choosy with the information we put forward to customers, would they prefer a reading list of five books rather than twenty?).

Machines prefer formatted knowledge, logical statements. Machines can be programmed to find patterns – e.g. Woody Allen ‘is married to’ Soon-Yi Previn. But people write that two people are married in many different ways. How does a search engine cope with all the false statements and contradictions, e.g. ‘Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977’ and ‘The King is alive’!

The real problem with the accuracy of Wikipedia is not incorrect amateurs but paid professionals with their own agenda, paid by companies to take a particular viewpoint.

The difficulty is when to stop searching – when to find just enough right answers. Precision, the fraction of results that are correct, must be balanced between the amount of results retrieved. There is a trade off between finding more knowledge and finding the correct knowledge. Machines will have to be programmed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Knowing the good sources, the trustable sources, is a huge advantage for this.

Serendipity

Next, Dr Abiteoul mentioned librarians! He praised the way that a librarian may suggest you read an article that transforms your research. Or you may hear by chance a song that totally obsesses you. Computers lack this serendipity – they’re square. Information professionals take heart: there is value in chance, in browsing shelves, in the ability of your brain to make suggestions computers wouldn’t.

Hyperamnesia

We cannot archive all the data we produce – there’s a lack of storage resources. How do we choose what we keep? The British Library is tackling this question through its UK Web Archive project, which involves archiving 4.8 million UK websites and one billion web pages.

The BL Web Archiving page says: “We are developing a new crowd sourcing application that will use Twitter to support an automated selection process. We envisage that in the future, automated selection of this sort will compliment manual selection by subject experts, resulting in a more representative and well-rounded set of collections.” So perhaps the web of the future will need both expert people and star computing systems.

The decisions of machines

Decisions are increasingly made by machines. For instance, automated transport systems like the Docklands Light Railway, or auto trading on the stock market. How far do we go with this, asked Dr Abiteoul. Would a machine be allowed to decide that someone is a terrorist and kill them, and if so at what level of certainty? At 90% sure? At 95% sure?

Soon machines will acquire knowledge for us, remember knowledge for us, reason for us. We should get prepared by learning informatics, so that we understand them.

There were so many ideas flying about that I was unable to note them all down! Luckily the whole lecture is freely available to watch at www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9_Xc9f96E.

Blog post by Emily Heath.

Event report: Knowledge organisation – past, present and future

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Our latest NetIKX event on 26th November was all about information and knowledge management within organisations. We took a look at how IKM has evolved and where it’s likely to go next. Our speakers were Dr David Skryme, Analyst and Management Consultant at David Skryme Associates and Danny Budzak, Senior Information Manager at the London Legacy Development Corporation.

Dr David Skryme
In his presentation ‘The 7 Ages of IKM in Organizations’ David talked us through the development of information and knowledge management over the past few decades.

Dr David J. Skyrme

Dr David J. Skyrme

David sees capturing the most important information as being a vital part of knowledge management. Communities are essential for developing tacit knowledge, through people talking to other people and sharing their knowledge. Work organisations are really social places, about human relationships and people.

In the beginning knowledge was passed down verbally – the Icelandic sagas are a good example. Storytelling has come back into popularity as a tool for knowledge managers to bring knowledge management to life.

1995-1997
David compared the development of IKM to Shakespeare’s seven stages of mankind. He dates the formal emergence of knowledge management as a topic discussed in boardrooms by senior managers to 1995-1997, when Nonaka & Takeuchi’s seminal book ‘The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation’ was published. This highlighted many advantages of knowledge management for organisations, particularly from a research and development point of view.

  • 1997-1998 – IKM still adolescent, growing up, coming of age
  • 1998-2002 – Segmentation/consolidation
  • 2003-2005 – Re-evaluation and re-definition. Reaching middle age, maturity
  • 2005-2012 – social media emerges as ‘grass-roots’ IKM. Wikis are increasingly used as a good way of harvesting information.
  • 2013 – Big Data & Analytics. What do you do with it all? Are we overlooking the human element, getting carried away with IT?

“The true success of knowledge management is when it disappears” – that’s when it becomes part and parcel of working life.

The American Productivity & Quality Center’s website AQPC.org has lots of survey data on knowledge management through the years. Challenges between 1997 and 2013 have consistently been achieving knowledge capture and reuse, but there are new challenges now – social media, visualisation, ramification, co-creation with customers. Still, David feels we shouldn’t necessarily prefer the snazzy new vs the proven old; there are a lot of solid knowledge management techniques already out there.

Danny Budzak
Next Danny talked us through how he is developing data, information and knowledge management at the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), in his role as Senior Information Manager.

Danny Budzak

Danny Budzak

The LLDC has a big job to do in its role to regenerate the Olympic Park and surrounding area. There are lots of policies at local and national level to comply with, and complex financial data that must be published in an annual report.

Danny feels that information professionals can benefit from linking good data quality to risk management. For example, LLDC health and safety files need to be well maintained to avoid fines and keep employees safe.

At a conference he attended, Danny heard an analogy that chief executives are like nursery school children – they like simple things and primary colours! Use bright graphics, try and capture your organisation’s knowledge pictorially. Big paper maps on the wall can be a good way of capturing and displaying information in an easy way to see, while mind maps can be a fast and effective way of taking notes at a conference.

Email encapsulates a lot of knowledge – but unfortunately accounts are set up individually. The metadata is hard for others to access again. To try and overcome this, LLDC has set up a collaborative environment for employees to communicate within. The organisation is now not going to fall over if key people leave.

To make sure document management is more efficient, Danny has introduced document control templates and version control to make sure documents are numbered properly – e.g. v0.1 for a first draft, v0.2 for a second draft. There have been issues with some people renaming the documents in their own way, but most people are using the new system.

In Danny’s opinion, information professionals are too timid. Nothing should be too complicated or complex for us – it should all be knowable. We should get very involved in our organisations. Go to meetings you’re not invited to, offer training sessions without being asked.

Once others trust you, they will share dark secrets and opinions, like ‘If I buy my own laptop, it won’t be subject to freedom of information‘.

Make data visible – say how many files you have in total and how many of these are duplicates. People understand concrete numbers and will appreciate how much it’s costing them.

Some really good ideas to take in here. Finally, think it was Danny that mentioned this delightful Dilbert strip, Knowledge worker!

Further reading: Our Storify collection of tweets from this event.

Blog post by Emily Heath. Many thanks to both our speakers.

Blog report: Managing change seminar, 13 May 2013

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A report on the latest NetIKX seminar on Managing change, held in London on 13 May 2013. Our speakers were Lesley Trenner, Change Coach and Janet Kaul, Knowledge Officer, NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre. The successful management of change is essential for organisations in order to achieve positive outcomes when implementing new or revised policies, procedures and projects.  During the seminar we discussed how to go about successful change management.

Lesley Trenner, @LesleyTrenner
Why change doesn’t ‘just happen’ …however good the idea is 

Lesley has a wealth of experience, including several years spent working at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). As a change coach, she now spends her time coaching people one-to-one when they are going through changes in their personal and professional lives.

At GSK Lesley experienced constant reorganisations, software changes and budget reductions. She observed that it is how well the change is managed that really makes a difference to successful change.

Change management is needed when there’s a change in politics, structures, culture, technology etc. Nowadays it is often used as a euphemism for cutting costs and reducing people. Ideally it should not be that – but lots of jobs advertised for Change Managers do involve doing that.

‘Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine’ – Lesley Trenner

How staff deal with change

People tend to resist change. Typical responses from employees confronted with major change will include: “Why didn’t they ask me?”, “Things ain’t broke”, “What’s in it for me?” or “Does it mean I will lose my job?”.

The majority of change projects fail – countless studies have found between a 60-80% failure rate for organisational change projects. For example, the doomed National Health Service Programme for IT lost a considerable amount of money. Project management and technology issues dogged the programme; ultimately trying to force people onto one system didn’t work.

Tips for managers 

Before embarking on change, managers should first:

  • Define what the change is, and what the benefits will be
  • Identify the impact on stakeholders – who are they, where are they?
  • Provide motivation and reinforcement – closing down old IT systems could force people onto a new system, but instead they might resort to scrappy pieces of paper. Users of new systems can be rewarded; or alternatively sanctions can be put on those resisting change.
  • Find sponsors and champions – influential staff who will speak up for the new system

Communication

Managers should work out what tone they want their communication to have. Is the aim to reassure, inform or maybe even scare? Communication messages should be tailored to different stakeholder groups. It also needs to be two-way – getting people’s feedback so that they feel heard is important, even if you can only say “Sorry, we need to do this anyway”.

Usually using a variety of communication methods to break the news is best. Telling staff by email can be cold and clinical, but on the other hand it can be useful for people to have something to refer to.

Lesley gave us an example from her own personal experience: GSK wanted to encourage smart working/hot desking at its headquarters in Brentford, to save space. Rather than everyone having their own desk, employees were asked to either work at home or come into work and sit at any desk available. There was a lot of resistance at first because staff were used to having their own desk, or even their own office if they were a manager.

To encourage acceptance of the new policy, the Vice-President of the department gave up her office straightaway. E-mails were sent round asking people for suggestions to give the environment a more ‘teamy’ atmosphere. Anyone leaving towels or other objects on desks at the end of the day would be reprimanded by designated change ‘sponsors’. The changes saved the company a million pounds.

Lesley’s key tips

  • Be really clear what’s going to change and why
  • Anticipate what the reaction will be – think of ways to get people on side
  • Recruit active sponsors and champions

Janet Kaul, Knowledge Officer, NHS Health & Social Care Information Centre
Online communities: Herding the scary cats

Janet’s talk focused on how to develop online communities during organisational changes and prove their value. Online communities have an important role to play in our society – some have changed the world… Indymedia (started World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests), Occupy Wall Street, Howard Dean‘s presidential campaign via Moveon.org (he set up natural and real  communities in every state, which Obama copied for his election campaign) and most famous of all, Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Why create an online community?

  • To share information
  • Establish trust between people
  • Increase traffic – another way to get customers on your side
  • Reach new customers
  • Learn what customers think – but don’t tell them what to think online. Don’t guide your community to only say what you want them to say

Planning

‘If you build it they will come’ doesn’t work for online forums. Janet has found that to boost intranet usage amongst staff it pays to keep an ear open. Chip into personal conversations and suggest people post questions on the intranet forum to try and find answers.

‘For sale’ ads are usually the most popular section on a staff forum. Good online managers push ads, for example by sending them out to personal contacts who might be interested. Janet was very pleased when she helped a staff member find a new home for her rabbit and received a message saying “Thank you for finding a home for our bunny. You made my son very happy.”

Things to consider:

  • You are asking for trouble if you don’t have a moderation policy
  • There’s no totally automated forum moderation software – someone will need to spend time looking through posts
  • Incentivising people to post more often by rewarding them with more responsibilities or prizes

Implementation

Anecdotes of success are priceless; store them – Janet Kaul

  • Collect your stories of success. Anecdotes are priceless; people remember them. Store them. For instance, a tip Janet shared led to a member of staff replying with a grateful comment – “This tip has saved my life. Not to mention hours of work.”
  • Provide answers to questions you hear by the water cooler
  • Start a competition. Perhaps everyone who posts something gets put into a draw to win a small prize each month.
  • Have a photo gallery for staff pets – this was very popular when first started at Microsoft

Maintenance

  • Reward participation (with status, praise or prizes)
  • Ask thought-provoking questions
  • Maintaining a community well takes lots of time and effort!

Further reading:

Blog post by Emily Heath. Many thanks to both our speakers.

Digital native or digital immigrant – does it matter?

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Karen Blakeman and Graham Coult, 28 January 2013 #NetIKX59

The first seminar of NetIKX’s new 2013-2015 programme looked at the issues we all face in a technology-driven world.  It combined two of our key themes: harnessing the web for information and knowledge exchange, and developing and exploiting information and knowledge assets and resources.

Karen Blakeman – RBA Information Services
‘Born digital: time for a rethink’

As Karen reminded us, the phrase ‘Digital immigrants’ can be traced back to Marc Prensky’s paper, ‘Digital natives, Digital Immigrants’, 2001. This paper is free to download and there is also a follow-up Part2 paper. Prensky made the argument that the US education system was no longer fit for purpose for a younger generation born with new technologies exploding around them.

Karen Blakeman speaking.

Karen Blakeman speaking.

Pre-internet, many information professionals were using subscription databases with no graphical interfaces. A lot of asking people we knew or asking other professional institutes was done back then. In contrast a wide range of innovative, imaginative search interfaces exist now:

  • ChemSpider – a free chemicals database which lets you search on a graphic, or even draw a chemical structure yourself and search on it. “Wonderful!” said Karen.
  • Mendeley –  a useful specialist search engine to find specific  forms of information, for instance patents, hearings, television broadcasts or computer programs.
  • WorldWideScience – pulls together information from a wide range of science websites and presents them in a visually appealing way.
  • masswerk.at/google60/ – an amusing punch card style mock-up of what Google would have looked like in the 1960’s.

Karen believes that the ‘digital native’ or ‘digital immigrant’ labels are not helpful and “we have far more useful things to worry about”! Using Google effectively, producing good digital photos – none of this comes naturally to any of us – we have to learn.

The major issue for many of us is not going to be the technical side of using technology but the cost, which could lead to poorer people and those living in remote areas being excluded. Many parts of the UK still do not have broadband.

School homework is often internet based now, with students expected to carry out research online – more difficult for children who have slow internet at home or no internet access at all.

Under new government policy rules, jobseekers will soon be forced to sign up online with a job seeker’s website named Universal Jobmatch, or face losing their benefits (see this Guardian article, ‘Unemployed to be forced to use government job website’. Those without internet can use their local library – unless, of course, the library has been closed down!

The Millennials may know how to use social media, but perhaps not in a work context. We tend to have an expectation that just by using the internet regularly, the younger generation have absorbed excellent web analysis and communication skills. This is not always the case. University lecturers often report that their students lack awareness of how to assess the validity of sources and construct their own argument in an essay. Perhaps the sheer amount of information available online has resulted in too much spoon-feeding.

Ultimately Karen believes that it’s your attitude to technology that matters, not what technology you were brought up with. It’s down to personality – your level of curiosity and happiness to explore, an individual thing rather than an age thing. This is demonstrated by an interview on the BBC website with a pensioner who enjoys gaming – ‘Computer games keep me mentally active’.

Karen’s presentation is available at slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/born-digital.

Graham Coult, Editor-in-Chief, Managing Information
‘Research behaviours: the evidence base’

In support of Karen’s talk, Graham gave us an overview of research which has been undertaken into research behaviours – “Karen was the main course, I’m the pudding”. He told us he would present a “selection, even a miscellany, not exhaustive” of relevant research, taken from Emerald and ASLIB’s database of research articles.

Social media at the university: a demographic comparison’. Alice B. Ruleman, University of Central Missouri, US (2012)

In this study, Ruleman analysed the demographic differences between faculty staff and students in terms of their social media use. She found that social media is by no means a youthful obsession, with both staff and students being active users of social media, just in different ways.

Graham Coult speaking.

Graham Coult speaking.

Kilian, T., Hennigs, N. and Langner, S. (2012), “Do Millennials read books or blogs? Introducing a media usage typology of the internet generation”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp.114 – 124. ISSN: 0736-3761.

The author of this study sought to add to the relatively small amount of empirical research done so far on the social media use of the “Internet Generation”. They found that although social media use amongst Milliennials is generally high, Milliennials as a group are not homogeneous in their online behaviour. Using a large-scale empirical study with over 800 participants, the authors identified three different subgroups of Millennials:

  • ‘Restrained’ – relatively low tech savvy, low social media usage group
  • ‘Entertainment seeking’ – the biggest group. Using social media for entertainment, but consuming passively, rather than creating new content themselves.
  • ‘Highly connected’ – the smallest group, predominantly male, busy creating content such as blogs or videos, leading a very active digital life.

Perhaps surprisingly, ‘information seeking’ was the main reason the surveyed Milliennials gave for using social media. Facebook are planning to enhance their search capabilities through their new Facebook Search service. Who needs Google+ or indeed Google if Facebook does search? This could create a situation where large groups of Facebook users never search outside Facebook.

Vandi, C. and Djebbari, E. (2011),”How to create new services between library resources, museum exhibitions and virtual collections”, Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp.15 – 19. ISSN: 0741-9058.

This paper discusses lots of ways to link up traditional sources using mobile technologies. There is evidence that new technologies (mobile etc) can increase use of “traditional” library services in unforeseen ways.

Graham’s conclusions:

  • There is still a great need for a trusted intermediary such as an experienced information professional. This need has probably increased rather than reduced.
  • Lack of access to technology, and lack of skill in its use, will increase disadvantages for certain user groups.
  • Editing and curating, picking out the best quality information, is likely to become a sought-after skill as information overload increases.

Graham’s presentation is available to NetIKX members at www.netikx.org.

Related links:

By Emily Heath

Blog for January 2013: Digital native or digital immigrant?

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The first seminar of NetIKX’s new 2013-2015 programme looked at the issues we all face in a technology-driven world.  It combined two of our key themes: harnessing the web for information and knowledge exchange and developing and exploiting information and knowledge assets and resources.

The first speaker was Karen Blakeman from the RBA Information services, talking about ‘Born Digital: time for a rethink’. As Karen reminded us, the phrase ‘Digital immigrants’ can be traced back to Marc Prensky’s paper, ‘Digital natives, Digital Immigrants’, 2001. This paper is free to download and there is also a follow-up Part2 paper. Prensky made the argument that the US education system was no longer fit for purpose for a younger generation born with new technologies exploding around them.

Pre-internet, many information professionals were using subscription databases with no graphical interfaces. A lot of asking people we knew or asking other professional institutes was done back then. In contrast a wide range of innovative, imaginative search interfaces exist now:

  • ChemSpider– a free chemicals database which lets you search on a graphic, or even draw a chemical structure yourself and search on it. “Wonderful!” said Karen.
  • Mendeley–  a useful specialist search engine to find specific  forms of information, for instance patents, hearings, television broadcasts or computer programs.
  • WorldWideScience– pulls together information from a wide range of science websites and presents them in a visually appealing way.
  • at/google60/– an amusing punch card style mock-up of what Google would have looked like in the 1960’s.

Karen believes that the ‘digital native’ or ‘digital immigrant’ labels are not helpful and “we have far more useful things to worry about”! Using Google effectively, producing good digital photos – none of this comes naturally to any of us – we have to learn. The major issue for many of us is not going to be the technical side of using technology but the cost, which could lead to poorer people and those living in remote areas being excluded. Many parts of the UK still do not have broadband.  School homework is often internet based now, with students expected to carry out research online – more difficult for children who have slow internet at home or no internet access at all.

Under new government policy rules, jobseekers will soon be forced to sign up online with a job seeker’s website named Universal Jobmatch, or face losing their benefits (see this Guardian article, ‘Unemployed to be forced to use government job website’. Those without internet can use their local library – unless, of course, the library has been closed down!

The Millennials may know how to use social media, but perhaps not in a work context. We tend to have an expectation that just by using the internet regularly, the younger generation have absorbed excellent web analysis and communication skills. This is not always the case. University lecturers often report that their students lack awareness of how to assess the validity of sources and construct their own argument in an essay. Perhaps the sheer amount of information available online has resulted in too much spoon-feeding.

Ultimately Karen believes that it’s your attitude to technology that matters, not what technology you were brought up with. It’s down to personality – your level of curiosity and happiness to explore, an individual thing rather than an age thing. This is demonstrated by an interview on the BBC website with a pensioner who enjoys gaming – ‘Computer games keep me mentally active’.

In support of Karen’s talk, Graham Coult gave us an overview of research which has been undertaken into research behaviours – “Karen was the main course, I’m the pudding”. He told us he would present a “selection, even a miscellany, not exhaustive” of relevant research, taken from Emerald and ASLIB’s database of research articles.

Social media at the university: a demographic comparison’. Alice B. Ruleman, University of Central Missouri, US (2012)

In this study, Ruleman analysed the demographic differences between faculty staff and students in terms of their social media use. She found that social media is by no means a youthful obsession, with both staff and students being active users of social media, just in different ways.

Kilian, T., Hennigs,  and Langner, S. (2012), “Do Millennials read books or blogs? Introducing a media usage typology of the internet generation”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp.114 – 124. ISSN: 0736-3761.

The author of this study sought to add to the relatively small amount of empirical research done so far on the social media use of the “Internet Generation”. They found that although social media use amongst Milliennials is generally high, Milliennials as a group are not homogeneous in their online behaviour. Using a large-scale empirical study with over 800 participants, the authors identified three different subgroups of Millennials:

  • ‘Restrained’– relatively low tech savvy, low social media usage group
  • ‘Entertainment seeking’– the biggest group. Using social media for entertainment, but consuming passively, rather than creating new content themselves.
  • ‘Highly connected’– the smallest group, predominantly male, busy creating content such as blogs or videos, leading a very active digital life.

Perhaps surprisingly, ‘information seeking’ was the main reason the surveyed Milliennials gave for using social media. Facebook are planning to enhance their search capabilities through their new Facebook Search service. Who needs Google+ or indeed Google if Facebook does search? This could create a situation where large groups of Facebook users never search outside Facebook.

Vandi, C. and Djebbari, E. (2011),”How to create new services between library resources, museum exhibitions and virtual collections”, Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp.15 – 19. ISSN: 0741-9058.

This paper discusses lots of ways to link up traditional sources using mobile technologies. There is evidence that new technologies (mobile etc) can increase use of “traditional” library services in unforeseen ways.

Graham concluded:

  • There is still a great need for a trusted intermediary such as an experienced information professional. This need has probably increased rather than reduced.
  • Lack of access to technology, and lack of skill in its use, will increase disadvantages for certain user groups.
  • Editing and curating, picking out the best quality information, is likely to become a sought-after skill as information overload increases.

(Val Skelton also wrote a report on this even in Information Today)

Maximizing knowledge – sharing information conversationally through podcasts and social media, Helen Clegg, 7 November 2012

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Blog by Emily Heath.

At our latest NetIKX workshop we heard how Helen led her team at A.T.Kearney in developing an innovative series of podcasts, providing a new, more conversational way of knowledge transfer for staff and potential customers. A.T.Kearney is an international management consultancy with about 2,700 consultants. There are four staff in the global Knowledge team, which is headed up by Helen from London, with the rest of her team based in a couple of locations in the US.

Helen Clegg

Helen Clegg

Typed documents are obviously one method of knowledge transfer, and still used within A.T.Kearney. However, in 2007 Helen and her then colleague Susan Montgomery (a founding member of the Aslib IRM Network, and its first chairperson), became increasingly aware that information also comes in audio or visual forms – phone calls, podcasts, pictures – and started to think about ways they could capture this alternative type of information through podcasting.

Innovation through experimentation

At A.T.Kearney innovation and risk-taking is encouraged as part of the corporate culture. Helen’s Vice-President told her – “Go and do something. If you make a mistake, plead for forgiveness later!”. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that big budgets are available for new projects, so Helen knew finding a very low-cost solution would be necessary to get the podcasts going.

The Knowledge team put a business case together to produce an information podcast, detailing the number of working hours required, recording costs etc. They didn’t expect it to approved, but it was!

The first podcast…

The topic they chose for their first podcast was ‘Sourcing business travel’ – an important subject for big organisations. To keep costs extremely low, A.T.Kearney’s technical team were asked if they could help. They started by recording a conference call with a consultant at A.T.Kearney, which cost nothing. The technical team then edited it using free Apple software called ‘Garage Band‘. Copyright free music from the internet was used for background music, plus a copyright free image to advertise the podcast.

Success!

It was “a really good feeling” for Helen and her team to have the first podcast done. They were encouraged to do more by enthusiastic colleagues and one of the team, Susan Montgomery, came up with the theme ‘Wave of the Future’ to name the series of podcasts. The aim is to give updates on the latest topics that matter to business leaders – including globalization, sustainability, and the latest trends in procurement – in a format that can be easily digested, for example, whilst commuting or travelling.

The podcasts feature conversations with the staff at A.T.Kearney, giving them a platform to talk about a subject they know about, showcasing their knowledge and presenting them as experts in their field. Podcasts have also been produced on ‘Business information research’ and ‘Skeptical information seeking’, advertising the Knowledge team’s services.

Improving the production process

As the team have gained more experience in producing podcasts, they have put together guidelines for moderators and speakers. Set scripts are not used, but talking points are agreed beforehand. In the beginning the podcasts were put on iTunes, and have since been added to YouTube and the A.T.Kearney website. New starters at A.T.Kearney have begun using them to gain an understanding of the company’s expertise and culture.

Helen Clegg speaking

Helen speaking

Quantifying and promoting their success

Key performance indicators (KPIs) as a measure of how well products are doing are used at A.T.Kearney, so being able to quantify the number of podcast downloads using Google Analytics has been useful. The podcasts are easily exceeding their current KPI of 1000 hits per month, averaging around 3000-4000 hits/month. To promote the podcasts, Helen tweets links to them and the Marketing team then re-tweets these, to promote her Twitter handle.

No direct revenue has been produced yet, as the podcasts are free, but the team has started thinking about selling the podcast content as an e-book for a nominal price, to help reach a wider audience and potentially bring in some revenue.

Helen concluded that “To innovate, you have to accept failure”. She didn’t know the series would be a success, and initially was embarrassed at the thought that they might fail, but went ahead and did it anyway.

Some audience questions:

“Do you keep podcasts up to date?”

Helen replied that they do weed out old podcasts, for instance the first one the team produced on sourcing travel is no longer available online as it’s too out of date now.

“How long does one podcast take to produce?”

Helen thought around eight hours of planning, finding speakers etc and four hours of a technical person’s time. It can sometimes be quicker and sometimes longer, depending on how long it takes to organise the meetings with speakers and moderate the podcast. Not everyone has natural moderation skills, so it depends upon the person doing it.

Further reading/listening: