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February 16, 2006
Today Alane Wilson of OCLC spoke to the Education Institute and provided what she called an “amateur primer” on environmental scanning (ES)based on insights from It’s All Good blog that I mentioned in an earlier post on the topic of ES.
Alane discussed how ES at OCLC started with strategic planning efforts as one elements of the planning process. Alane, like most other planners & scanners, is not a professional futurist, came to the futures field accidentally. It is amazing the number of disciplines and avenues from which futurists emerge, like Ray Kurzweil, a current fixture at futurist conferences. She quoted from futurist, Peter Bishop, who said that futurists need two things — a facination and interest in change, and didn’t want an MBA.
The definition of ES from Alane’s primer describes it as an internal communication of external information that may influence your future. It is a tool to evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Even though there is no one template, or list of must do’s with ES — ES has to be relevant to your organization. There are often
common elements with ES in that they look at variety of landscapes to describe and co-ordinate trends such as ecomonic, social/sociological, technological, and other landscapes that might be relevant such as the local political environment if you are a community organization. Alane mentioned the RCMP environmental scan and that their organization changes their sensing compass for landscapes each year.
The scanner is the look out — not the navigator, first mate or captain. The scanner sees something on the horizon — rocks there, a pod of whales. Great analogy. The environmental scan must have top level support and an institutional purpose — what is it going to result in. Since it is an intensive process, it must lead to action, otherwise there is no point in reading and synthesizing mounds of information.
Alane talked about how fads can form trends and if fads have longevity may become a trend. An example, there are many social spaces for young adults, and that is an important trend, but at this point she’s not sure how to translate that into the library world. But if 95% of the students at the University of Washington are part of Facebook, it has to mean something!
The environmental scan has to be actionable, part of the bigger planning process.
For OCLC it is a business tool, a planning document for the board of trustees and senior management team. It is an early tool in the planning process. In the case of OCLC it has led to fast tracking of OCLC’s Open WorldCat – OCLC’s way of opening up library metadata to Google, Yahoo, Askjeeves – because of trends in their ES. It has also led to more study, and their most recent publication, Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources which helps them to understand the scan by looking at perceptions.
February 14, 2006
The SLA 2006 conference program is coming alive and you can now start your own personal planner for the event being held in Baltimore, June 10-14. There’s also a detailed PDF file of programs from the Leadership and Management Division which has a theme for each day of conference sessions: People, Strategic Planning & Knowledge Sharing.
February 13, 2006
Don’t you love it when things come together? I was just talking with CIL conference speaker & organizer Darlene Fichter the other day about getting a wiki up for CIL to include travel and eating tips, information about DC, techniques for getting the most our of the conference, and also a place to connect with the CIL community. Watch for posts from pros like Scott Brandt, who I’m hoping will post his tips for speakers.
And now a CIL06 wiki exists, and it comes from someone I have never met — Meredith Farkas whose blog is called, Information Wants to be Free. Meredith is planning to attend CIL/Computers in Libraries for the first time, and we look forward to meeting her next month; and we really appreciate her efforts to assist all conference attendees through a CIL06 wiki. A great way to build community and wonderful to come from the grassroots! Thanks, Meredith.
February 9, 2006
One of Information Today’s most popular speakers has a new role – Director, Online Resources, Ask Jeeves. The wonderful ResourceShelf will continue. Congratulations Gary! Can’t wait to hear you speak at the upcoming Computers in Libraries, DC, March 22-24.
The 10th annual KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exhibition will be held on October 31 – November 2, 2006 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, in San Jose, California. Consider being a speaker or participant.
The KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exhibition offers a wide-ranging program especially focused to meet the needs of executives and strategic business and technology decision makers. This is a must-attend for those concerned with improving their organization’s bottom line, business processes and productivity, as well as streamlining operations and accelerating development and innovation in their evolving enterprises.
This year’s theme, Applying Strategies & Tools for Innovation, emphasizes that Knowledge Management is neither theory nor dream, but at work today, totally integrated into daily business and work processes, and having a major impact on organizational innovation. A reality check for the business manager, this year’s KMWorld Conference and Exhibition looks directly at improving business processes, solving urgent business problems, and expanding creativity and innovation. As always, the conference program covers the strategies, practices, processes, tools and solutions for enterprises. This year, the emphasis is heavily in favor of practical, hands-on advice and real-world experience. This is a conference that stresses solutions that businesspeople can use immediately in their organizations.
While traditional knowledge management (KM) often signifies sharing already existing knowledge which leads to some value add, major gains and competitive edge come today from creating and implementing new knowledge — innovation. A recent global study of innovation showed that transformational innovation comprised 2% of the projects, but 90% of the value add. Join us as our experts and practitioners share their knowledge on applying strategies and tools for innovation.
KMWorld 2006 aligns perfectly with programs featured in Intranets 2006, a complementary event focused on the key infrastructure supporting knowledge sharing with organizations.KMWorld & Intranets 2006 is supported by leading companies demonstrating their products and services in the Exhibition Hall.
KMWorld & Intranets 2006 is comprehensive, with many simultaneous tracks plus numerous workshops and more networking opportunities than ever before. Dozens of sessions fill these conference tracks:
Innovation Strategies, Techniques & Practices
KM Strategies: Business Processes,
Case Studies & ROI
KM Enablers: Tools & Technologies
Intranets & Portals: Design, Usability, Leading Trends
Content Management: Applications, Practices & Tools
Culture, Collaboration & Learning Organizations
February 7, 2006
Aaron Schmidt, Reference Librarian, Thomas Ford Memorial Library talked to the Education Institute today about using social computing tools. Here are some of Aaron’s highlights and comments.
Social software is all about people: connecting, collaborating & communicating. Since libraries are concerned with people as well as materials, these tools are important because withbut people libraries are nothing. The tools are simple to use, and fun. There are low barriers to entry, as using the tools requires low web savvy & most options and tools are free. Of course, there is staff time involved in learning and using the tools. However, since sharing & interacting in new and unique ways on the web really injects the web with humanness for your library community. You can put your resources where the users are, where are your communities are, making your library customer centric.
Sites to check out/tools to try
Flickr — photo sharing
del.icio.us — store & share bookmarks on the web
askmetafilter — questions & answers from an online community; reference in action
Last.fm — chart musical profile through a plug-in
MySpace
43Things — goal setting
Wikipedia — free encyclopedia with group contributions & edits
37Signals — collaboration software for personal networks
Commonalities of tools:
Folksonomies, which are different from taxonomies, are basically systems of metadata set up by users which are flat not hierarchical, and are created through use of tags/keywords. Tags highight the wisdom of the crowds and we librarians should definintely pay attention. In addition we are moving on the web from expertise to consensus where there is a collaborative effort using everyone’s knowledge to achieve a goal (43 things) or get an answer (Wikipedia).
Great Library Examples
MySpace - Hennepin County
Flickr - Colorado College, LaGrange Park, Library group
del.icio.us - Thomas Ford, LaGrange Park
weblogs - Ann Arbor, WS History, Bisson’s weblog OPAC
instant messaging - Libraries using IM Reference
wikis - Butler University WikiRef
podcasting - podcasting libraries
Friday at OLA was another fun day. (You know that right-brain stuff = play is important!) More of my favourite quotes of the day:
Kathleen Imhoff — “Cultivating Creativity”
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers
“Remember: only you can change your frame.”
Kathleen had us all playing with pipecleaners — and by the end of the first exercise, the range of results was interesting: angel, swan, tiara, cat, one-legged dog. Her point was, in a meeting, many of us can be looking at the same thing — but see totally different outcomes / opportunities. We have to remember the frame.
Stephen Abram — “Are Libraries Innovative Enough?”
Stephen’s point was that libraries are innovative — but questions whether we are innovative ENOUGH. He challenged us with the emerging technologies that will transform our world — and whether or not we were ready to accomodate and embrace these technologies — and the kids who are already there!
“The next 10 years will be about even more huge discontinuous change.”
“What will it mean to libraries when our services can be delivered to cheap technologies everyone carries in their pockets?”
“Think about how innovative we have to be to deliver to a market with ubiquitous access to technology via wireless connectivity.”
“What if there were no libraries — what would you do if you were starting from scratch?”
“Don’t transact — transform!”
And my personal, lighthearted favourite: “If the TV’s a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian!”
For more of Stephen’s thoughts check out Stephen’s Lighthouse.
Tony Horava — U of Ottawa; Robin Fogel — OVID; Doug Lynch — EBSCO — “Electronic Licensing”
Libraries have many issues with licensing that they perceive rest in the hands of the information services to control. However, from the perspective of the services, ultimate control rests with the publishers. Result: not everyone gets what they want all the time. A lively discussion ensued — with the bottomline being: to librarians: keep communicating to your info service but also communicate to the ultimate publisher — you’re more likely to affect change if you go to the source — in the meantime, “don’t shoot the messenger”; to info service providers: keep advocating to publisher partners about the needs of your customers — while exploring new model opportunities (eg. standardized licences, an inverted triangle pricing model with electronic at the broad end).
“We are each other’s best partners.”
Rebecca Jones — “Let’s Get Down to Business: Accelerated Planning”
Accelerated planning means: “Keep the complex simple!”
The very first question should be: “what do you want to end up with?”
If anyone suggests that, by using internal resources, the planning process will be “free”, remember: the biggest expense for any library is human resources; therefore, it’s not “free”.
“The most critical success factor for plans: just do it!”
“There’s nothing like writing to accelerate the process.” So, get pen to paper FAST.
My personal favourite: “Get your strategies done in the morning. There’s nothing worse than a vision after lunch — it’s just not going to happen!”
Then, at 6:15 PM, we all enjoyed the hospitality of Micromedia ProQuest and the antics found therein. You weren’t there? Plan for it next year!
Juanita Richardson
February 6, 2006
Juanita Richardson’s quotes of the day:
Kim McArthur:
“Following on what Dan Pink told us about right-brain thinkers last night, consider this: there are 240 Master of Fine Arts in Writing programmes now in North America — 20 years ago, there were 3! Great news for publishers — and for libraries!”
MJ D’Elia “Connections not categories”:
“Ontology is nearing the end of its useful life…LC classification exists not because concepts require hierarchecal placement but because books do.”
Steve Uzzell “Creative problem solving”:
“If you don’t visualize the solution, you will never see the path.”
“Ask yourself: 1) Is it the right time? 2) Is it the right place? 3) Am ***I*** in the right place?”
“Don’t focus on the near term, go for the wide shot.”
Stephen Abram “Real measures for libraries”:
Finding from the NDP study being conducted by SIRSI: “What do the patrons of our public libraries value?: Community, learning, quality, efficiency, money.”
So what should our objective be? “Empower your client to thrive — our success is dependent upon their success.”
Wednesday night at OLA: A surprising number of us trekked over to the convention centre to hear Dan Pink on Wed at 8:00 PM — and it was well worth the effort! He told us that the world is shifting from being dominated by left-brain thinkers (the analytical, number crunching type) to more right-brain thinkers (the artistic, wholistic, big picture inventors) — which is good news for librarians who tend to be more of the latter. What’s causing this shift? Abundance (eg. in Cda, 25 M vehicles — for 24 M eligible drivers), Asia (ie. in India, there are 150 M people in the middle-class = 4 -5 times the size of Cda!) and automation. The shift is leading to offshoring. What kinds of tasks are most readily sent offshore? “The most dangerous word in the world: ROUTINE”. Routine represents all those left-brain activities — activities that are well-suited to being “routine-ized”. So, in our emerging new world dominated by the right-side of the brain, “routine and right answers are not enough — what matters is novelty and nuance”. Dan concluded with some buzzwords for the new world: design; story; symphony; empathy; play; meaning. What’s in it for libraries? Design great buildings, tell a good story, pull it all together, listen to our customers, have fun, and show our clients the profound meaning of it all = success for libraries in the brave new world!
Juanita Richardson
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