ASIST K-Blog Panel

Proof of Blogs as Knowledge Management

2005-12-01T19:44:00.000-05:00

*j blows dust off this weblog

Next Friday, I get to talk for about thirty minutes on blogs and knowledge management. To prepare for that presentation, I plan to dig through this weblog because I know it has lots of nuggets. It's nice to be able to return to this resource to do my research instead of starting it all from scratch.

30 Minute Presentation on Blogs for Information Management

2005-07-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

I presented a lecture in the Welch Emerging Information Technologies Lecture Series. It was on using Blogs for Information Management. See the presentation View the slides Read the handout

Blogtalk Downunder Papers & Presenters

2005-05-18T15:57:00.000-04:00

Blogtalk is a series of conferences on blogging. It's pretty academic/scholarly. Many of the articles are posted full text online. If you're interested in meta-blogging; that is, information about blogs and blogging, there's a wealth of good information here.

JHMI Emerging Technologies Lecture Series: Using Blogs for Information Management

2005-05-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

I will be giving this lecture at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in East Baltimore. If you're in the Baltimore, Maryland area, feel free to drop in.

Using Blogs for Information Management June 29 Christina Pikas, MLS Noon - 1 pm Mountcastle Auditorium, PCTB
Summary Blogs are simply web pages with reverse chronologically arranged collections of individual posts. What makes them new and unique is their ability to organize and share your information without requiring burdensome programming, specialized technical knowledge, or expensive “solutions”. It is easy to add information -- as simple as sending an e-mail or filling out a form on the web. Blogs may belong to an individual or to a group. They may be on the internet, on an intranet, or protected by password.
This lecture will define blogs and provide a basic introduction to blog software, structure, and blogging practice. The benefits of collaborative blogs and individual blogs for researchers in science, technology, and medical settings will all be discussed.

The other lectures announced are on RSS and open software.

gapingvoid Illustrates Why Blogs Work

2005-05-11T12:25:00.000-04:00

Many of you probably know of gapingvoid because of Hugh's humorous cartoons. Here, he explains why blogs work--both as external and internal communication tools. It's one of the best and simplest diagrams and explanations I've seen in a while.

urlgreyhot : Blogging in the Labs: Notes from the LANL presentation on weblogs

2005-05-10T11:35:00.000-04:00

Michael Angeles, Information Specialist at Lucent, recently presented on weblogs for internal communications and information management at LANL. He also spoke on this topic at CIL2004 and wrote "K-Logging: Supporting KM With Web Logs." Library Journal 128, 7 (2003): 20. He has some interesting points on the power of blogs and aspects of enterprise support for blogging.

Business Week 5/2/05: Blogs Will Change Your Business

2005-04-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

Pointed out by HR via e-mail. An interesting article on the state of blogs. It covers corporate PR blogs like those from GM and also covers the potential impact of personal blogs to companies and brands. Wow, it looks like they get it. They really, really get it:

Blogs are different. They evolve with every posting, each one tied to a moment. So if a company can track millions of blogs simultaneously, it gets a heat map of what a growing part of the world is thinking about, minute by minute. E-mail has carried on billions of conversations over the past decade. But those exchanges were private. Most blogs are open to the world. As the bloggers read each other, comment, and link from one page to the next, they create a global conversation. Picture the blog world as the biggest coffeehouse on Earth. Hunched over their laptops at one table sit six or seven experts in nanotechnology. Right across from them are teenage goths dressed in black and thoroughly pierced. Not too many links between those two tables. But the café goes on and on. Saudi women here, Labradoodle lovers there, a huge table of people fooling around with cell phones. Those are the mobile-photo crowd, busily sending camera-phone pictures up to their blogs. The racket is deafening. But there's loads of valuable information floating around this cafe....

corporate blogging|business blogging

NYT: When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?

2005-04-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

Free reg req. If the free period has elapsed for this article, find it in your local library's electronic resources using this citation: Tom Zeller, Jr. "When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?" New York Times Technology Section (April 18, 2005). First, the number of blogs is probably more like 54 million, not 10 million. But 10 million might describe active US blogs. Second, this article is more of the same. To quote: "don't be a damn fool." It does, however, mention a few laws that may apply to employee blogging. That's probably worth a quick browse.

Great use of a blog for SDI: BiodefenseEducation.org

2005-04-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

Noted in the D-Lib Article: Donna M. D'Alessandro and Michael P. D'Alessandro. "Initial Experiences in Developing a Chronologically Organized Digital Library for Continuing Education in Biodefense." D-lib v11 n4 (April 2005).

Julia Habermann: Analysis of the usage and value of weblogs as a source of business news and information

2005-03-29T10:07:00.000-05:00

German information science student Julia Habermann recently completed a thesis with the above title. She has given Jack Vinson (of Knowledge Jolt with Jack) permission to post an overview report and the data from the survey. She did a nice job. It looks like her n=415, but the respondants seem to be mostly librarians. A good next step would be to survey middle managers or upper managers in for-profits. BTW- the top blog is ResourceShelf by a landslide so the survey folks have good taste, too.

Common Craft: List of Business Blog Resources

2005-03-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

A nice webliography of how enterprises are using blogs. Pointed out by KMD.

Ongoing > Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

2005-03-14T14:57:00.000-05:00

Pointed out on Blogger Buzz (the blogger staff blog). A common question posed to bloggers is, "aren't you afraid you're going to be fired?" This list from Tim Bray of Sun says it all. Of course, he does present background assumptions ("Let’s assume that you’re reasonably competent, reasonably coherent, and reasonably mature.") Here's his list:

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted. 2. You have to get noticed to get hired. 3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.” 4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice. 5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage. 6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open. 7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people. 8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you. 9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled. 10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

It's worth following the link above to his original post and to his company's policy.
blog policies|corporate blogging|Business Blogging

StructuredBlogging.org > Semantic Web Comes to the Blog

2005-03-10T14:36:00.000-05:00

SC (now at PubSub, the guys who are developing this) pointed this out. It's not as good as Reger was/is, but since it's a plug-in to WordPress it might get some play. I think that's been the problem with other tools -- they haven't caught on. You need a critical mass of bloggers adding content to make it really useful. So if you're blogging on WordPress, consider giving it a shot. I still need to find a book plug-in for my blogger blogs... one that links to Open Worldcat, of course. Update: This was posted to this blog by accident, but it still may be of some interest to the readers here so I'll leave it. It will be cross posted to another blog.

Slides from my presentation to the Potomac Valley Chapter of ASIS&T

2005-03-10T12:03:00.000-05:00

I've forwarded the entire presentation to the PVC chair who will get them loaded on the website. Here's the html version:

Soup: Blog Basics in the Enterprise
Christina K. Pikas

About Me

Librarian/researcher at APL in the Science and Technology section of the RE Gibson Library & Information Center
Science and Navy background
Blogger (http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/, http://cpikas.blogspot.com/)
Fast follower in new technologies
Personal research interests include information seeking by scientists and engineers andpersonal information management.

Agenda

Introduction to blogs, blogging, and feeds
Use of blogs and feeds
Libraries
Other organizations

We WILL run out of time. There is more here than can be covered. Stop me with questions! What is a Blog?

Reverse chronological listing of discrete posts each having a permanent link.
They use the technology of the web

XML
HTML
CSS
Back end is ASP .net, Perl, etc.

Run on a web server, can be database driven
Format, usage, methods of interconnection differentiate them from other web media

Anatomy of a Blog

Anatomy of a Post

Different Types of Blogs Setting

Personal, public or private
Corporate/enterprise/ organization, internal
Corporate/enterprise/ organization, external

From: Frederik Wacka, Corporate Blogging Blog, August 10, 2004, http://www.corporateblogging.i nfo/2004/08/six-types-of-business-blogs.asp Contributors

Automatically compiled from multiple sources
Collaborative blogs
Individual blogs

What Are Feeds?

Generally, automatically generated XML files that provide titles, summaries, and links to full content
Several competing standards
Aggregators
Where do feeds come from?

Most blogging software automatically creates at least one type of feed
Third party scrapers create feeds from web sites
Newspapers, journals, databases create feeds

Program your own

RSS 1.0 specs http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/
ATOM support http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/

Uses of Blogs in Libraries

SDI, TOC alerts
To promulgate results of environmental scanning
Library news (new books, new hours, database updates)
Internal communications

Popular assignments
Tricks of the trade
Project management
Shift logs (broken equipment, visitors, open tickets)

Important Things to Know to Get Started at your Place of Work

The software/platform is the easy part

When in doubt, use Blogger or Typepad
Customize templates with brand information

Policies are a hard part

Public or intranet?
IP considerations (may need access control)
Levels of access/privacy, use of information
Will anyone be allowed to post, comment, trackback?
Time allowed
Culture that supports knowledge sharing?

The Other Hard Part: Buy-in

Management has to ok time and resources spent
IT may have to support server
Individual bloggers have to commit

More things to think about: Access and Preservation

Re-finding posts

An enterprise search may take care of this
Changing the post template to add meta-data may help
Start a portal site with a “blogroll” of company bloggers

Categorization

NOT assigned from above or default, assigned on the fly
Crosswalks to existing taxonomies may be helpful

Archives

CNET News.com > FAQ: Blogging on the job

2005-03-09T13:43:00.000-05:00

Pointed to by the Topix feed, and About.com's Weblog thing.
A question that comes up quite a lot in discussions of blogging is, "will it get me fired?" My answer has been and continues to be: follow the rules of your organization for speaking/publishing in a public forum. In other words, would you get fired for saying the same thing in a letter to the editor of the local paper? Accept that it's much more likely to be found on a blog. Publish no trade secrets, news of upcoming mergers/acquisitions, don't berate your boss...
Update: Changed a word, added tags. Business Blogging|Corporate Blogging

InformationWeek > Look Who's Blogging

2005-03-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

Jim Nash."Look Who's Blogging: How five executives got blog religion and are using it to their professional and personal advantage." InformationWeek. March 7, 2005.
Pointed out by R.A.
Here's a quote from Phil Windley, former Utah CIO and current BYU professor:

I blog to be part of a community of people whom I respect; I want to understand their thinking, and I want them to understand mine. I blog to be part of the conversation. I blog to remember. I blog to refine my thinking. I blog because I don't think I really understand something until I write about it.

The executive bloggers quoted in this article have all encountered issues and resolved them. Some of the uses are what we've heard before, but one from Pusateri (of Disney) stands out. A shift log. In the Navy, we had pass down logs which are informal notes to the ongoing watch of what events are expected, anything coming up on the schedule, and anything unusual with equipment, etc. Disney cable has "shift logs" for the same purpose. I tried to institute something like this at the public library because you have a huge shift change at a busy reference desk and customers get lost, the toner never gets changed...well you get the picture. If you could get people to blog the issues as they arise, and the oncoming people to read the blog as they take over the watch, then you'd be in better shape.
See also, the sidebar on blogging tools.
Updated: shortened URL. Business Blogging|Corporate Blogging

Artificial Organs: "Blogs" and "Wikis" Are Valuable Software Tools for Communication Within Research Groups

2005-02-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

"Blogs" and "Wikis" Are Valuable Software Tools for Communication Within Research Groups - Artificial Organs, Vol 29, Issue 1, pp. 82-83 (Abstract) Full text for subscribers only. Found by accident on CiteULike (folksonomies at their finest). Succinct and on target.

We would like to encourage the use of these simple and affordable tools for communication and knowledge management. Due to their structure they can be easily integrated in already existing intranet and internet-solutions.

Fichter: Always Fresh: Fast Content For Library Web Site with Really Simple Syndication

2005-02-10T13:06:00.000-05:00

beSpacific points to the pdf of Darlene Fichter's OLA Presentation. Here's the author's abstract:

Keeping a library web site up to date with fresh content is a challenge for any webmaster. Learn how to publish, merge and format RSS feeds into instant web content. Discover how libraries have made specialized pages featuring article titles of new journal issues, new library acquisitions, book and movie reviews, and much more. Take away a list of sites that allow anyone to simply cut, paste and publish RSS content to their site in seconds. For the technologically daring, find out about free scripts to install that allow you to "shake and bake" your own combos. Dive in now and offer new services that auto-magically refresh and keep your audience coming back for more!

March 2005 Program: From Soup to Nuts: Blogs, Blogging, and the Greater Impacts to Information Science

2005-02-09T13:20:00.000-05:00

If you're in Maryland, DC, WV, or NOVA, consider signing up and attending. My co-presenters have beautiful blogs (here and here). Should be interesting.

mamamusings: why do academics blog?

2005-02-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

A nice compilation of posts on why academics blog.

Educause Review: Social Software and the Future of Conferences – Right Now

2005-01-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

Pointed out by SC. Vicki Suter, Bryan Alexander, and Pascal Kaplan. "Social Software and the Future of Conferences – Right Now." EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 1 (January/February 2005): 46–59. Wow. Explains the difficulty of moving to all online conferences by analogy to throwing a good party. Discusses the value of f2f conferences:

We attend conferences for the conversations, among other experiences. Through conversation, we create a common ground from which we can explore the issues and problems of our professions and practice, as well as potential solutions. Conversation is the engine for work, for community, for decision-making, and for collaboration. However, the conversations we have at conferences are ephemeral. If we could find a way to make the conversations persistent, what effect would that have on our ability to construct knowledge collectively?

Talks about moving from virtual interaction to f2f (we should have conference name tags that transmit our online identities and can be set to alert us if we are in proximity to someone with whom we have an online relationship, it's possible, I saw it on morning tv... )... The important point that we don't have to choose between online and f2f interactions or the interface between the two

We tend to think of a virtual space as some sort of alternate electronic analog for face-to-face, as a replacement location when the physical is not available. Given the evolution of increasingly sophisticated social software and of the social architecture that can manage its effective uses, we might realize significant advantages if we think of virtual spaces as interwoven or intertwined with face-to-face experiences in equal partnership. The combination may augment the benefits of each—through complementarity (the strengths of each compensate for the weaknesses of the other) and synergy (the joining creates properties that did not exist when the experiences were separate).

Update 2/17: A new case study web-only add-on is up. The Future of F2F

Cote's Weblog - Enterprise Blogging in Practice, Notes

2005-01-26T17:49:00.000-05:00

Found on CorporateBloggingBlog. There's a follow-up post here. Note: I posted this over the weekend but the post is missing. Regrets if you're seeing this twice.
What's very interesting about this post is that the author gives honest feedback from an IT guy on setting up blogs on the intranet. He brings up some interesting points. First, users should be able to create new blogs without admin help. Second, the blogging guru can make comments on different blogs and talk about blog posts in the halls to encourage users. Some other things I knew, but I'm glad to see repeated: fear of sharing, need for enterprise search, need for local aggregators, opposition from the people who paid $$$ for a complex content management system... See also his survey of types of posts.

Tech Republic: Why blogging matters to your business and your IT

2005-01-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

Pointed out by Topix (which has been doing really well recently in delivering meta information on blogs and blogging).

1/21/05, commentary by David Berlind (also available via podcast, here, I think).

Berlind has recently started using a Userland blog and has started a conversation with Userland CEO Scott Young.

In this brief article, he neatly places blogs in corporations and contrasts them with e-mail and complex content management systems. For organizations that have spent lots of money developing CMS-es and portals, how do you sell blogs? How do users decide to e-mail, wiki, upload to a CMS or document management system, or blog some piece of information?

Anyway, it's an interesting article worth at least a quick scan. He's a real RSS believer, too.

Campus Technology:Blogs in Higher Ed: Personal Voice as Part of Learning

2005-01-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

by Ruth Reynard Pointed to by CorporateBloggingBlog

Finding personal voice as a pedagogical method is important to establish learner identity and focus, and journaling has long been recognized as an effective way to provide space for this to occur. The blog, however, provides a context in which personal voice can be 'published' by the student, which means that attention is given to content, relevancy, and connection with learning outcomes to a higher degree than a traditional journal submission. The idea that more than one person will view the work is quite powerful in promoting a sense of ownership from the student.

I think research in corporate settings whether for pharmaceuticals or aerospace is a form of learning. Aren't lab notebooks a form of journaling; researchers are learning from nature, not necessarily from others...The access to the blog should be limited and the outcomes should be measured appropriately... Update: I finally fixed the spelling of the title.

Free pint article on "enterprise blogging"

2005-01-12T16:51:00.000-05:00

Knowledge Jolt with Jack: Blogs in business article

2005-01-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

I'm really quoting most of his post here:

Howard Baldwin writes in the 1 January issue of Electronic Business Online, Blogs for business?
Forget about all the hype you've heard about blogs (a.k.a. Web logs) as the latest outlet for personal journalism. It turns out they also have a remarkable ability to aid communication in business, whether within internal workgroups or among external chains of suppliers and partners. For an industry such as electronics -- where relationships are far-flung and time-to-market pressures require fast communications -- blogs can bring a new agility to the workforce.
[via micropersuation via new KM blogger Eugene Giudice]

b/ITe: Corporate Library Blogs

2005-01-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

Pointed out by the author. It's a very general article that really just gives an overview of points to consider when starting a blog for a corporate library. If you read this article and want to know more about corporate blogging policies, see Charlene Li's blog post linked below. He also makes some good points about dealing with IT. It never hurts to make friends with those who control the servers!

Gigablast Site Search Added

2005-01-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

It's still indexing, but I've added a Gigablast site search box on the rhs at the bottom (scroll...). I've found that it actually works pretty well on my Library Rant.

Professional-Lurker: Notes from HICSS-38

2005-01-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

Scheidt blogged her notes from the Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. The proceedings will eventually either be on ACM or IEEE, I'm not clear on that. Her notes and links to presentations offer more informative abstracts than the original program. The link above goes to a particular set of notes, but look up and look down because there's a lot of content here on blogs in different settings. Update 2/11: The articles have shown up in ACM

kLog News

2005-01-11T13:51:00.000-05:00

kLog News focuses on enterprise knowledge management weblogs and includes links to a number of bloggers writing about KM. It's not a new source, but it's new to me. Bill Ives of Portals and KM profiled it in December.

It seems familiar, though. Perhaps someone already wrote about it here and I just didn't find the entry when I searched. One of the challenges of group blogging is remembering what other people might have posted in this space. ; )

Our very own J is a Feedster Contest Winner!

2004-12-29T16:58:00.000-05:00

J created two very nice tutorials on RSS for Newbies and Feedster searching. Congrats!

Knowledge Jolt with Jack: KM Chicago: Clare Hart

2004-12-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

As I've said before, top-down KM is pretty limiting. All types of incentives have been offered, but the knowledge creators still lose control of their stuff. Vinson reports from this meeting that:

"There was an interesting discussion around change management and a shift from 'if we build it, they will come' mentality to a 'if they use it, it will build itself' mentality. With a focus on individual knowledge worker performance and capabilities, this kind of idea could find a lot of traction"

Of course, he goes on to say that responsibility should be at the workgroup level. I disagree. I believe that knowledge workers need to take responsiblity for their own knowledge and that km should be devolved down to the individual where possible.

Lois Scheidt (PhD student and blog researcher) Posts her Reference List

2004-12-07T09:53:00.000-05:00

(PDF) Her page. Her blog. Her main research is on teens in the blogosphere but she's got some good stuff here. She's another academic who uses multiple formats for PIM/PKM: a webpage, a bibliographic manager, a blog, forums, etc. I posted my ProCite output early on in this blog, but since then I've pretty much moved away from ProCite -- which I really regret since my blog doesn't help me cite while I write in a word processor. It is better at annotations, though. I'm hoping someone will combine tools a little better. Update 12/10: link has been updated

Online2004 Blog Track: Clyde Presentation, "Enterprise Blogging"

2004-12-03T14:51:00.000-05:00

Oh, to have been there! Clyde is a professor of the library school at the University of Iceland. She also has a new book (not in open worldcat, look here) on blogs.

Putting Math Online

2004-12-02T01:31:00.000-05:00

During the question period of this panel, someone asked about ways to put mathematical notations online. The other day, a physicist just happened to mention something that caught my attention and I learned a bit about LaTeX, which allows mathematical and scientific notation. He mentioned the Wikipedia article about it and the encyclopedia uses it for their mathematical and scientific notations. The Wikipedia entry shows some examples of math notations rendered with LaTeX.

Mopsos - Blogging to become a legal obligation?

2004-12-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

This is in response to a very good question received at the talk. When all the data/information/knowledge you share at work belongs to the company, what happens when you leave? Does every idea you expressed in your company blog belong to them? The general idea in the US is that whatever's done on company time using company resources (to include your brain?) belongs to the company. Dugage blogs this from a French point of view which seems pretty extreme to him but I believe is more typical in the US. If your company has a knowledge hoarding atmosphere or if your colleagues feel they need to hold back because they're getting ready to leave, this whole blog thing and KM thing won't fly. He ends his post with this suggestion

In the end, it might well be that the best interest for both parties is to have every employee keep written logs –one per community- of everything they do. The employee can then use the blog records to prove that he did not withhold information from the company. If he cannot, well, too bad for him.

Sound like a place for blogs? Maybe?

Charlene Li: One company's use of internal blogs

2004-12-01T11:00:00.000-05:00

Charlene Li is the Forrester researcher who recently wrote a report on corporate blogging (November 5, 2004, Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal? When And How Businesses Should Use Blogs). In the post linked above she describes what one forward thinking company is doing with blogs. As a couple of information architects asked at ASIS&T, how is this different from a portal? I think blogs can be part of the content that feed the portals, automatically generated XML feeds make this easier - not instead of but as a content generator for. This reminds me of a recent article from the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (Perret, Borges, and Santoro, "Applying Group Storytelling in Knowledge Management" LNCS 3198 (October 2004): 34–41, here for everyone else) UPDATE 12/2: somehow the rest of the post is missing... I said something like this: The authors discuss the richness and value of adding stories to km and im for projects and companies. They created another software to allow for collaborative storytelling. My issues were 1) it's separate from other project information 2) everyone hates when someone finishes their story for them and ruins the ending -- IOW, I'm skeptical of the collaborative part. I think you need each individual's story from their point of view, then you can read them all and see a better view of the whole. I think blogs like what Li suggests might be a better way, and they can be incorporated into the project managment content.

New article from Vogel and Goans: DELIVERING THE NEWS WITH BLOGS: THE GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY EXPERIENCE

2004-11-30T12:24:00.000-05:00

Is available in pre-print from the page linked above. It is to appear in Internet Reference Services Quarterly v10 n1 (March 2005). What's unique about Georgia State's implementation is that it's homebuilt and its been around a bit longer than other library blogs. This is also a scholarly journal for those of you looking for someone to cite! Pointed to by Shifted. Althought T.V. told me she was writing it and I've been looking for it...

Sabrina Pacifici on Corporate Blogging

2004-11-30T09:42:00.000-05:00

A presentation on how organizational blogs may "facilitate research services, knowledge management, marketing, training, and communications within groups, departments, and enterprise wide." (Source: beSpacific)

Nice Pointer from Bill Ives

2004-11-26T15:49:00.000-05:00

Bill Ives highlights our presentations on his blog, Portals and KM.

WRT Question: Math in blogs?

2004-11-22T13:05:00.000-05:00

I recently did a little research on Math on the web to see if anything had changed in the almost ten years since I was doing a lot of math. The answer is that very little has changed! There's still a dichotomy between software that does the work and software that does the presentation (mark-up). The majority of product right now include the equations as images/graphics/.gifs. MathML might eventually fix this problem, but we appear to be years away from widespread use. Generally, if you use MathLab, Mathematica, etc., you save as HTML or XML and it creates pictures that show the equations -- correct me if I'm wrong. Since there's really no new technology in blogs - it's all just XML and HTML - you do the same thing you do with any other web page. It depends on where you host your photos and blog if the images come through in the feed. Here's my post on math on the web. Here are my posts on searching math on the web.

Denham Grey on Asynchronous Repositories and Explicit Sharing

2004-11-21T01:38:00.000-05:00

Grey discusses many reasons blogging can be productive in a corporate environment without explicitly talking about blogs. I suppose some/much could apply also to wikis or KM systems or even storytelling/oral history?

Reflection (also mentions not being fast enough thinking on your feet in f2f stuff, there's something to that)
The Record
Getting in Deep
Helping Novices (see Efimova who calls this distributed apprenticeship)
Communication

Discussion from the KMEurope PKM Session: Knowledgenetworker Wiki

2004-11-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

As I might have mentioned, the European blogger and KM communities are much more active in researching blogs (and other tools) for PKM. They recently had a well-attended workshop at KMEurope. Many of the attendees blogged it, but this wiki is probably a better place for an overview. Remember, if you would like to see the blogs that discuss it, look in Technorati or Feedster.

Mathemagenic: Why she blogs

2004-11-19T14:06:00.000-05:00

Efimova pointed this post out recently when discussing the "power of articulation." She also points to another post where she says why there are a lot of librarian, journalist, and lawyer bloggers) This is a nice explanation of the benefits and uses of blogs for PKM. All quotes, formatted in a list for clarity:

conversation for growing my ideas
to make some free space in my memory
feeling of “coffee-table dialog” with my far-away colleagues
blogging builds my own (customised! :) network of like-minded people without almost any effort from me

Garrett's "About a blog' presentation slides

2004-11-19T11:25:00.000-05:00

Christina's slides, in outline form

2004-11-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

This might actually be more useful for some. I'll still try to get them up somewhere in PDF or PPT. This post will mutate until I'm happy with the final format.
Blogs for Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
Christina K. Pikas
Agenda

What is PKM?
Why Blogs?
Nuts and Bolts of Blogs for PKM

What is PKM?

Taking personal responsibility for lifelong learning and organization of ideas
Requires individual ownership and motivation (see note 1, below)

How is PKM different from personal information management (PIM)?

PIM	PKM
Facts Documents Addresses (URL and geographic)	Connections Analysis Conversations Ideas Selection Sense Making

How is PKM different from KM?

Organizational KM: Unlike personal KM (see definition [below]), which centres on the individual, organizational KM depends upon an enterprise-wide strategic decision to actively manage knowledge through a range of processes, tools and people. Personal KM: A set of concepts, disciplines and tools for organizing often previously unstructured knowledge, to help individuals take responsibility for what they know and who they know.

From European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management Part 5: KM Terminology (ftp://cenftp1.cenorm.be/PUBLIC/CWAs/e-Europe/KM/CWA14924-05-2004-Mar.pdf)

KM	PKM
Organizational/Enterprise Doing for Top down Knowledge as an object that can be identified, stored, used out of context Public (enterprise-wide)	Personal/Individual Enabling Bottom up Knowledge as part of your habitat in your organization’s information ecology Straddles public/private domains (see note 2 )

Why Blogs? What I mean by blogs
Blogs for PKM are defined here as internal, enterprise-supported individual efforts

From: Frederik Wacka, Corporate Blogging Blog, August 10, 2004, http://www.corporateblogging.info/2004/08/six-types-of-business-blogs.asp (see note 3 )

PKM blog posts may be as simple as a link, or may be part of a long collection of analytical essays

Seven Blog Posting Formats
Link-only Link blurb Brief remark List	Short article Long article Series postings

From: Amy Gahran, Contentious, September 22, 2004, http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2004/09/22/blogging-style-the-basic-posting-formats-series-index posting-formats-series-index

Why Blogs? - Voice

Blogs are inherently personal
Encourages contributions from lurkers
Low technological barrier concentrates effort on content, not graphic design or presentation
Informal style allows personality to show – author chooses tone, style

Why Blogs? – Reflective Thinking

Like more traditional journaling, posting can require reflective thinking, distillation of ideas (see note 4 )
Practice writing for later publication – reflect and polish
Exploration of new research areas or testing of new ideas with low or no risk
Encourage a higher level of "information engagement" (see note 5 )

Why Blogs? – Annotations

Documenting links encountered via blog posting does more than provide access
- Selection
- Annotation with analysis
- Added context – in time, relationship to other items, meaning to field
As part of Bates’ "berry picking process" (see note 6 )
- To place street signs along the path
- Berries can be saved
- Path can be retraced (reverse) chronologically
Nonlinear information seeking processes can be traced via category filtering (see note 8 , should be 7, appeared as 8 in presentation)

Nuts & Bolts – Organizational Culture

Sharing or knowledge hoarding
Management support
IT support
Policies (see note 7 , should be 8, appeared as 7 in presentation)
- Gentle but firm guidelines
- Time allowed
- IP considerations (may need access control)
- Levels of access/privacy, use of information

Nuts & Bolts – The software

Post via
- E-mail
- Web form – from anywhere by VPN?
- Bookmarklet
Ability to customize look and feel
Ability to add new blogs quickly
Nice-to-have items
- Levels of access
- Ability to post files (drawings, recordings, etc.)
- Ability to cache page views
- Company specific meta-data assignment

Nuts & Bolts - Access and Preservation

Search
- An enterprise search may take care of this
- Changing the post template to add meta-data may help
Categorization
- NOT assigned from above or default, assigned on the fly
- Crosswalks to existing taxonomies may be helpful
Archives

Nuts & Bolts ROI, Elevator Talk, Why Us?
With such a personal focus, what does the organization have to gain? (brainstormed ideas)

Very functional tools are free or are inexpensive. More integrated and advanced tools are available to plug into other CMS or KM suites… low bar to show return.
Efficiency of knowledge workers
- Less time spent finding what they already know
- Writing activities can be done in pieces
Better networking – search across to find someone with a good idea
Organizational learning / distributed apprenticeship

Conclusion

PKM blogging is an inexpensive partial solution to a complex problem
Blogs can be an important part of an organization’s tool kit – help knowledge workers get more out of their reading, meetings, and thought

Notes
These and other relevant links can be found on our collaborative blog: http://asistkblogpanel.blogspot.com/ (you are here!)

1. For a reading list on PKM see: http://wiki.knowledgenetworker.net/wakka.php?wakka=ReadingList back
2. See Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker, "Blogging thoughts personal publication as an online research tool," chapter in SKIKT-Researchers' Conference 2002: Researching ICTs in Context, Oslo, Norway: InterMedia, 2002, pp.256-9. back
3. See also Frederik Wacka, Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Blogging, http://www.corporateblogging.info/basics/corporatebloggingprimer.pdf back
4. For more on blogging and reflective practice see Sebastian Fiedler. "Personal Webpublishing as a reflective conversational tool for self-organized learning." In T. Burg, ed. BlogTalks. Vienna: Zentrum für wissenschaftliche Forschung und Dienstleistung , 2004. 190-216. (draft available http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/stories/storyReader$963 , accessed 11/4/2004) or P. Hernandez-Ramos, "Web Logs and Online Discussions As Tools to Promote Reflective Practice." Journal of Interactive Online Learning 3, no. 1 (June 2004). Available: http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/archives/2004/summer/04/index.htm (accessed 11/3/2004).back
5. Thomas H. Davenport, "Information Behavior and Culture." In Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Page 93 has a graphic demonstrating "a hierarchy of information engagement" from read/view through simulate/live.back
6. Marcia J. Bates. "The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface." Online Review v13 n5 (1989): 407-24. back
7. There are several good discussions of corporate blogging policies that are generally intended for external blogs. A very recent one is from Charlene Li of Forrester Research, http://forrester.typepad.com/charleneli/2004/11/blogging_policy.html (accessed 11/9/2004) back
8. In fact, the information-seeking behavior described in Allen Foster, "A nonlinear model of information-seeking behavior" JASIST v55 n3 (Febrary 1, 2004): 228-237, speaks directly to professionals doing interdisciplinary research. back

Contact:
Blog http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/

WRT Question: Time spent reading feeds, blogging

2004-11-19T08:39:00.000-05:00

A question was asked in our session (and also in other blogging sessions I attended) about how much time should be expected/budgeted to keep up with feeds and to blog. This is actually a somewhat complicated question, because there are quite a few people who sort of crawl into the internet and don't reappear for hours (days?)! Knowing that our audience is mostly composed of busy professionals narrows the answer.

First, there's ample evidence that librarians at all levels (school, public, academic, corporate) must read the newspapers to adequately serve their customers. See, for example: Juris Dilevko and Elizabeth Dolan, "Reference Work and the Value of Reading Newspapers: An Unobtrusive Study of Telephone Reference Service", Reference & User Services Quarterly v39 n1 (Fall 1999): 71-81 (available full text in Wilson OmniFile Full Text Mega and other places). So, assuming we all know this, I also assume that most librarians are spending time every day to read the local and national papers in addition to the time spent reading professional and trade literature.

If instead of flipping through a paper, if you subscribe to targeted feeds (available from Washington Post, New York Times, and other places), you should actually be quicker and more efficient. It really is much quicker to open your aggregator and scan the headlines than it is to flip through print. Also, if you have a few colleagues who have interests similar to yours, you can scan through the feeds generated from their blogs to see what they've seen that's important and why. In general, you'll have a few "must reads", some things you're reading for a specific project but then may abandon, some "if I have time" reads, etc. Based on the time available, you can read the feeds in that order.

When you're doing targeted environmental scanning for your organization, how do you disseminate the results? When you're reading the papers, trade pubs, journals and you see something of interest, what do you do? My suggestion is to go ahead and blog these items with a little comment why you think that item is important, interesting, wrong, relevant, etc.

If you're doing your environmental scanning for a project team in your organization, then start up a blog for them on the intranet where you can post these observations with links to the full text. As Xiaoli Huang and Dagobert Soergel discuss in their paper presented at ASIST '04 (see pp.156-167 in the proceedings), there are many different types of topical relevance. If you select an article for your customer, and it doesn't show the exact words they use in their papers in the title, how do you explain to them that the paper's worth their time? Try blogging and placing the paper in context (as directly relevant, indirectly relevant, contextually relevant, relevant by comparison, a pointer) with indications of the paper's implications to their project.

Build some trust, get some more work, help your customers be more efficient, improve the bottom line...

Yes, this takes time - but less time than it would take using other methods, and less time than it would take all of your customers to scan all these publications themselves.

Updated seconds later to add paragraph breaks, and then seconds after that to add more paragraph breaks... ckp (ok, so now for the third time, sorry if this appears in your aggregator all over the place)

Feeds and KM Presentation (.pdf)

2004-11-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

I posted my presentation about feeds and knowledge management as a .pdf. It covers the basics of feeds and how they contribute to knowledge management.

I completely forgot to share the fantastic analogy my Dad gave me about feeds. My Dad's been in the computer industry for years. In my mind, he knows everything about computers. I could never surpass him in knowledge about computers and systems and stuff. When I was telling him about my presentation the other week, he acknowledged that like many people, he didn't know too much about feeds. I started explaining them to him and he said, "It sounds like you think you might be thirsty some day, so you go turn on a fire hose. That way when you're thirsty, you've got water to drink." Getting feeds can indeed be like that. But using and receiving feeds doesn't have to be as overwhelming as (pardon the cliche) drinking water from a fire hose. When we learn how to use them to our benefit, they can be quite powerful tools.

That analogy is why my slides have drops of water all over them.

Notes from the Panel

2004-11-16T16:34:00.000-05:00

The panel went very well today. About 123 crowded into the room and many seemed very engaged. Thanks to everyone who attended and those who have given us support and assistance. And thanks to Kris for coordinating and selecting us. I posted my notes about the panel on j's scratchpad.

Michael Feldman recorded a test run of our presentation at the Berkman blog group on November 4. The large sound files are available as MP3s. The presentations we gave today didn't change much.

Christina (11.2 M)
Jessica (7.8 M)
Garrett (9.3 M)

Weblog Collaboration Blog Examines this Blog's Collaborative Nature

2004-11-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

"Certainly one of the great advantages of a weblog approach over e-mail when collaborating with several geographically dispersed individuals is that all the communication resides in one central repository," writes Scott, which addresses one of the questions someone asked in the presentation today: how blogs differ from e-mail and e-mail discussion lists.

Portals and KM Highlights this Blog

2004-11-16T08:18:00.000-05:00

Bill Ives of Portals and KM writes a much better summary about this blog than I did: "It is full of interesting stuff and a good example of a blog for knowledge management and event planning."

His blog features many terrific resources about knowledge management.

Some serendipitous examples of blogs for PKM

2004-11-15T19:01:00.000-05:00

I was just wondering who all else at ASIS&T is blogging their conference experience so I searched Feedster (alternatively I could have looked at who's got a blog posting that links to the ASIST conference page). I came up with a post from another presenter who briefly mentions how his blog is supporting his PhD work:

pseudo-serendipitous discovery - value in research oriented blogs
Similarly to Kylie Veale (in the comments of Dissertation blogs), I also find it interesting and rewarding to write in my blog. Once in a while I go back and read what I have written in the past. It is amazing to find thoughts and ideas that come handy in the present research projects and interests, especially since I'm about to finish my Ph.D. glasswork [sic] and embark on my dissertation. The pseudo-serendipitous discovery in things one has written in the past is not so much of a discovery since you have written it. It is amazing however to try to understand the framework and the mental state present at the time one wrote an earlier blog entry (i.e. the source of the pseudo-serendipitousdiscovery). From Mentor Cana: http://www.kmentor.com/socio-tech-info/archives/000632.html
From Kylie Veale (http://blogger.iftf.org/Future/000368.html)
I write a PhD weblog and find that it helps to formulate my thoughts and ideas when I know I'm writing notes and someone else might read them.Posted by: Kylie Veale at April 2, 2004 03:53 AM

How Feeds Help with KM

2004-11-15T17:20:00.000-05:00

Unveiling this blog is giving me another reason why feeds help people with knowledge management. For some reason, I feel very challenged explaining why feeds can help with knowledge management, which is my portion of Tuesday's talk. This blog has content gathered over the last seven months. It contains many fabulous resources about blogs and knowledge management. But how many people are actually going to dig through the accumulated content? Handing someone this blog as a giant chunk of information is quite different from giving someone a few posts every few days. Going back through seven months seems a bit daunting. Looking at a post every day or so seems much more reasonable.

The lack of features like categories also strains new readers. There's no easy way for someone to get a cursory glance at the topics we've covered or to look at things that might interest them the most. The navigational choices of a search engine or mousing through the archives seem limited and limiting.

No Pressure. No Pressure. No Pressure.

2004-11-15T01:03:00.000-05:00

We're all feeling a little bit of pressure to post something really amazing near the top of this blog so that the people who come here after our presentation on Tuesday, Blogs for Information Dissemination and Knowledge Management (SIG KM) decide to return to peruse some of the amazing resources in our archives or subscribe to one of the feeds to see if we post anything useful in the near future. This blog dates back to the spring, when we started using it to collect and share resources related our panel.

Christina and I have improved the sidebar by adding more links to feeds, links to our blogs, and the story and purpose of this blog. We talked about adding some blogs about knowledge management and similar issues, but we aren't completely sure we'll do that yet.

2004-11-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Down to the Wire...

2004-11-12T16:53:00.000-05:00

Our presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, November 16, 2004 at 10:30. We hope to see you there!

About wikis, not blogs, but wow...

2004-11-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Davies. "Wiki Brainstorming and Problems with Wiki Based Collaboration" Report on a project submitted for the degree of Information Processing in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York (UK). Submitted 10th September 2004. link. He doesn't say what degree, but I hope at 77 pages it's at least a Masters. updated: 2:23pm. To fix line breaking

The Dowbrigade on Thursday's Talk

2004-11-08T01:49:00.000-05:00

Michael Feldman, aka the Dowbrigade, wrote some thoughts about our talk last Thursday, including his own taxonomy of blog posts.

Science blogs, blogging

2004-11-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

A kind of neat resource for science blogs is Tangled Bank

In cooperation with several other of us geeky science types, I am pleased to announce our own version of the "Carnival of the Vanities". A Carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that's the vanity part). Each week, one of our crew will highlight a collection of interesting weblog articles in one convenient place, making it easy for everyone to find the good stuff. Two things will distinguish us from the original "Carnival of the Vanities": 1) we are specifically restricting ourselves to articles in the field of science and medicine, very broadly defined, and 2) we've got a different name. Our weekly compendium of great science weblog articles will be called the Tangled Bank, after Charles Darwin's famous metaphor...

Also, Sean Carroll has a lot of science blogs on his blogroll. Instead of saying that there aren't scientist blogs, I think it's fair to say that they don't necessarily participate in feedster or technorati. After all, you pretty much have to nominate yourself to be in those. What I found when I was doing my now somewhat famous b/ITe article was that most of the so-called blog search engines really just search feeds that have been submitted. If the blog a) doesn't have a feed or b) until recently if the feed is only in ATOM or c) the author isn't trying to get noticed or d) if the feeds are title only ... it's not really that likely you'll find it in technorati and the like.

Ok, I'm having issues today, notes from the trial run

2004-11-05T10:58:00.000-05:00

This will be my 3rd attempt at blogging my notes, comments, etc., from last night's trial run. Each time it gets a little shorter, a little less thorough.

length – I didn't look at the clock when I started but I think I went over 20 minutes. The problem is that for the complexity I tried to discuss, I probably should have gone longer. I'm thinking about backing down the complexity a little bit
intro and conclusion – in technical writing, you say what you're going to say, say it, and then say why you said it. I didn't do that well. I need to do a better job of introducing my subject and then tieing together all the loose ends at the conclusion
citations – I tried to use the notes section as footnotes, but that seems ineffective. I think that putting them on the slides is not an option, so I think I'll either create a handout that's an outline with the citations or I'll have endnotes with the citations on a final slide. K- if I do a handout, how many copies should I bring?
ROI, or why should businesses do this? – I totally left this out, but it's very important.
- aggregation across
- encourage innovation
- productivity
- workers might do it anyway – in a public forum
Delete Gahran's classification (slide 8)? – I know why I put it in there. I used Wacka's taxonomy to get the audience on the same page as what kinds of blogs I am talking about. I used Gahran's classification to point out that on corporate > internal > knowledge blogs, there might be different types of posts even within the same blog or across blogs. That might open up a can of worms that will take time away from my most important points
My most important points are voice and reflective thinking so I will try to develop these more/nail them down a little better
The whole secure annotations thing – this is not convincing that it's actually PKM instead of PIM, I'll need to bring up personal knowledge publishing (Paquet, also Mortensen and Walker); ie, selection, analysis → meaning, context → PKM

Ok. Now for the important point. They say we need to add jokes. Hmm. Clean and appropriate for our audience.

Journal of Interactive Online Learning: Web Logs and Online Discussions as Tools to Develop the Teacher's Voice

2004-11-03T17:45:00.000-05:00

Hernandez-Ramos, P. "Web Logs and Online Discussions As Tools to Promote Reflective Practice." Journal of Interactive Online Learning 3, no. 1 (June 2004). Interesting article... especially for librarians...

Part of the challenge for a teacher preparation program is how to inculcate in graduates a greater sense of the importance of their profession, how to see themselves as constructivists—producers of information and knowledge— and not “just as teachers”—objectivists—who are solely in a transmission role....Journals are a common requirement in many courses, not just in teacher preparation, as a strategy to help students engage in metacognition (thinking about their own learning) with the expectation that the process will help them learn better....A complementary goal was to encourage students to see both blogs and discussion forums as valid and effective tools for professional development and lifelong learning. Levin and Camp (2002) argued persuasively that, “without the disposition to reflect on their performance, teachers are less likely to improve their practice or to be able to see the links between theory and practice.” They further said, “we believe that this habit of mind is so important that we must try to teach all prospective teachers how to reflect on their practice” (p. 572).

I feel like I could copy and paste the whole article here. It's really part of the evidence-based practice movement. In the "technology's contribution" section, the author goes on to discuss the differences in online courseware discussion forums and blogs. I like this goal of the project:

to help students develop a sense of themselves as creators of knowledge, rather than just consumers of information, and to see themselves as meaningful contributors to professional dialogues

On Keeping Found Things Found

2004-11-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

I have a meeting with JJ Allaire of Onfolio tomorrow, so I've been reading about the product. It's a research management tool people can use while surfing the Web. (It's a PC application, so I can't actually use it.) I came across a quote I thought some of you might appreciate: "The trick ... isn't about getting the information; it's about being able to keep it all straight," the article's author paraphrases Adam Berrey, who has worked with JJ Allaire and his brother, Jeremy, before.

Getting from Here to There

2004-11-01T19:19:00.000-05:00

I figured out that it costs $6 on the commuter rail to get from South Station to Providence one-way. The station in Providence at 100 Gaspee Street is less than a mile from the convention center.

Feeds and Knowledge Management

2004-11-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

Here are my scattered presentation thoughts. I'm still analyzing how feeds can help with knowledge management and what points I really need to cover. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the basics.

Intro to Feeds
-Two main kinds of feeds: RSS and Atom
-Feeds are gaining in popularity, trend will continue

Feeds are a quick way to learn about site updates
-work for blogs, Web sites, a number of things
-feeds come to you, you don't have to go to the source
-some people use them to learn when a source updates, as opposed to simply reading the feed iteself
-can be a great way to learn when sites update, especially sites with sporadic update schedules or long breaks between updates

How to find feeds

Share Your OPML

How to use feeds

How to receive feeds

Different sources of feeds/ways people use feeds --news
--podcasting
--Feed from a buoy to know the height of the ocean

Neat things to do w/ feeds

How do feeds contribute to knowledge management? -A big piece of KM is making knowledge available for sharing: feeds help share knowledge.
-route information to specific places or people using feeds If you have any thoughts for how you use feeds for knowledge management, please feel free to share them.

For Thursday

2004-11-01T15:27:00.000-05:00

Christina asked some questions about Thursday, when we should be presenting to the Berkman Thursday blog group. Instead of commenting on her post, I'm responding in a different post so everyone can see it easily.

Thursday should be a complete run of our panel. We have about 1 1/4 hours at ASIST, including time for questions, right? That's what we should plan on Thursday night. If we don't fill the entire 1 1/4 hours, that's fine. Thursday meetings end whenever they end. Our talk is the big agenda item.

I think we should present whatever we're presenting at ASIST and not worry too much about the difference in the audience. Some of the people know a bit about knowledge management already. Judging by Shimon and Josh's presentation in September about using Frassle for interpersonal content management, it seems like people already have some idea about what it is and how to do it. Otherwise, I think Shimon and Josh would have gotten more questions along those lines.

If you want to do examples, that would be good. It's up to you, though.

As for slides and whatnot, if you can either send me your presentation or put it on the Web somewhere, we can follow along using the computer in the meeting room.

In what order should we present?

Christina's Outline: Blogs for KM, the special case of PKM

2004-11-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

(still in progress) Updated... I'm changing the order, please let me know if you think this is a bad idea! (updated seconds later because IV actually comes after III)
I. Intro
    A. What is PKM? (How I will use the term PKM, hopefully a standard definition)
    B. How does PKM differ from PIM/PCM and KM?

II. Why Blogs?
    A. They add richness to narratives of how projects developed from the personal view of the engineers, managers
    B. They are personal, but can be aggregated for the benefit of the enterprise
    C. For researchers and other knowledge workers, it gets them writing which can lead to better conceived reports and published papers
    D. They put a personal face on the enterprise
    E. It lets the quiet guy get heard, no barrier to speaking up
    F. Users can effectively annotate webpages without the privacy/spyware concerns of furl, A9 or other web-based tools
    G. May lead to innovation - researcher can note good idea for later, after current project is done? Also can publish an idea to get feedback - kind of peer review - prior to formal submission.

III. Models for Use of Blogs for PKM (this may be weak, and get dropped)
    A. Berrypicking (a la Bates)
    B. Distributed learning (a la Efimova)
    C. Information seeking process (a la Kulthau)

IV. Nuts and Bolts -- what features, policy, meta-stuff are necessary for success?
    A. Low barrier to publishing (basically a given with any COTS software)
    B. Terms of use (gentle but firm rules for everyone's comfort and liability)
    C. Search
    D. Levels of privacy/access (at minimum, limited to intranet, better yet multiple levels enterprise-wide to personal),
    E. Categories/meta-data
    F. Management support

Updated with line breaks. Also -- maybe I should be less theoretical for the Berkman Group? How long will I have on Thursday?
Should I have examples? What would the examples show/prove that aren't better described?

Theory of 5 Knowledge Transfer Mechanisms

2004-11-01T11:07:00.000-05:00

A lot of the stuff I'm discovering you all might be very familiar with if you work more in KM. I'm really a reference librarian by training, so I'm doing some research on the recent theory, etc., of KM. I don't think this works with my part of the panel (*p*km), but maybe we can work it in there somewhere... N.M. Dixon. Common Knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. Quoted in Karlsen and Gottschalk. "An Empirical Evaluation of Knowledge Transfer Mechanisms for IT Projects" Journal of Computer Information Systems v44 i1 (Fall 2003): 112-9. Available online fulltext (pdf) via Business Source Premier. Incidentally, Karlsen and Gottschalk's study seems pretty flawed so I'm not really recommending citing it. The five types (briefly):

Serial – same group, same task later, writing down what worked and then doing it again
Near – same task, different group, follows other group's notes
Far – different task, different group, new context
Expert – generic, explicit knowledge transfer

I'm thinking that this kind of goes with Efimova's distributed learning/apprenticeship model.

Power Strip

2004-10-30T21:02:00.000-04:00

It might be a good idea if one of us brings a power strip to the talk, just in case ... That's the one piece of equipment I hadn't thought to bring.

Ives: New Tools To Link the Changing Workforce

2004-10-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

Accidentally cross posted on my library blog! Bill Ives has gotten permission to open up access to his writings for KM Review. Free registration is required. Of specific interest to me is his newest one, Ives, Athey and Joost, "New Tools to Link the Changing Workforce," v7 i4 (Sep/Oct 2004)28-31. Just about every organization remotely related to aerospace is facing a crisis: the majority of the engineers are ready to retire. KM has long been touted as the solution to all our problems. Unfortunately, instead of a panacea, KM's become a money drain with small ROI and low participation (some places, not in my workplace, of course). This article discusses some ways blogs might work better for KM than the standard repositories. Maybe we need a combined oral history/storytelling/blogging software?

We're on for November 4th!

2004-10-21T19:32:00.000-04:00

The blog group meeting starts at 7 pm. I will be there early to set up and whatnot. Guess I need to figure out what I'll say ...

Library Management: "Library Weblogs"

2004-10-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

Gary pointed out that this journal is free to all this week. L.A. Clyde. "Library Weblogs." Library Management v25 n4(2004):183-9. DOI: 10.1108/01435120410533765
A few interesting observations:

only half of the blogs link back to the library home page?
only half of the blogs had a purpose statement?
the blogs aren't being updated regularly
libraries aren't marketing their weblogs through "claiming" at Technorati
institutional barriers to having library blogs?

I'm also interested in reading Harry Bruce, William Jones, and Susan Dumais. "Information behaviour that keeps found things found" Information Research v10 n1 (October 2004). http://informationr.net/ir/10-1/paper207.html. It looks like it prints to about 27 pages, so I'm planning to read it online.

CFO Magazine: Blogging for Dollars

2004-10-13T10:29:00.000-04:00

John Edwards (no, not that one) October 2004 "Once the domain of the disgruntled and demented, Web logs are being embraced by business executives." UGH! I don't feel particularly disgruntled so I guess that means I'm demented? This is aiming at CFO's so it really tells what our colleagues in corporate libraries and KM groups will be up against. oops. forgot to say that I found this via Topix.net

Could you make the argument....

2004-10-12T13:58:00.000-04:00

That k-logging increases opportunities for/ability to employ evidence-based practice? It used to be a medical thing, but now it's in libraries, education, and other fields. I don't really know enough about it to say but my thought process is something like finding and gathering "evidence" makes it readily available (not invisible) and sharable so that it is more likely to be used.

Does this make sense: PKM blogging in support of the berry-picking process?

2004-10-11T11:51:00.000-04:00

Feedback requested, please! I have a half-formulated (or should I say half-baked?) idea. I was trying to map the PKM blog posting process to Kulthau's information seeking process (fairly successfully in some cases) and came to the idea that perhaps for many bloggers, PKM blog posting (as in the act of formulating and posting a single post, not the comprehensive idea of the blog in its entirety) is better seen as a useful supporting technology for Bates' berry-picking process. I had to look this up again since my notes are at home so I'll assume it's worth reviewing here. The article is: Marcia J. Bates. "The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the on-line search interface." Online Review, v13 n5 (1989):407-431. Basically, she proposes that instead of the classical linear model which moves from need to resolution, it's more like berrypicking where users find a little something, reformulate their search, look again, find a little something... the information is scattered (like our current state of affairs) and the search is evolving.

the query is satisfied not by a single final retrieved set, but by a series of selection of individual references and bits of information at each stage of the ever-modifying search.

So my assumption is that a chemist, say, is always looking for information on chemistry, but individual searches vary with project, changing state of knowledge, collaboration with internal and external colleages so over time the chemist can post the various things she finds in categories and then see a path or an evolution of thought. -OR- maybe to prevent berrypicking -- If she is searching to solve a very specific problem and runs across something that requires more thought or could solve an unspecified future problem, PKM blogging allows her to note, follow that thought a little, and move on with minimal disruption and also little fear of losing the thought. You should be able to hit a bookmarklet on your browser when you're in a database and have it add the doi and citation to the post automatically for future retrieval... but that's another topic.

Contentious: Arranging Ideas: Knowledge Management in Human Terms

2004-10-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

by Amy Gahran, 7/16/04 She talks about the human part of KM as opposed to the big business where everything is done by the proprietary algorithm. KM in collaborative software as arranging ideas resulting in "structured thoughts." Going beyond links to get "(ideas, relevance, and insight) from raw data." In other words, km is not database building. She follows up in a later post.

We're on for a Thursday Night

2004-09-30T19:26:00.000-04:00

The blog group is very receptive to us doing a trial run of our presentation. Wendy said we can do a conference call for Christina. Now we just need to pick a date. They seem very interested in it, too.

Bill Ives Talks at Tonight's Blog Meeting

2004-09-30T11:42:00.000-04:00

Bill Ives will be talking about knowledge management and blogging at tonight's Berkman meeting. I will, of course, take notes.

Addendum: Bill mentioned his post Blog as Filing Cabinet. It sounds relevant and I plan to read it later.

My notes from his presentation are on the Thursday Meetings blog.

Christina, I asked him about his take on personal knowledge/information management. He said that's what he does and that's what he'd talk about, but I'm not sure that he talked about anything of particular relevance to what you might have specifically wanted to know. Let me know if there's something particular you want me to ask him. He's here almost weekly and he'll probably be in the room when we present.

What do y'all think about slipping Bill Ives our blog to see if he'd be interested in blogging about it? Maybe we could get him to do an embargoed post for 11/16 to herald our unveiling.

Contentious: Blogging Style: The Basic Posting Formats (Series Index)

2004-09-29T15:59:00.000-04:00

Writer Amy Gahran offers a list of the types of text blogs. 9/22/04 Pointed out by Bill Ives, who saw it on Dina Mehta's page. I have to say that type 4, list format, really drives me up a wall! I like to see only one thought/theme per post. Also, (and importantly) all of these assume you're writing for an audience. In blogging for km, I believe the employees should be encouraged to blog for themselves for PKM (or PIM) and for their teammates for km. Identifying and targeting a larger audience is v. important for external blogs... but for internal? Comments anyone?

Made out of people: How Stuff Gets Into (and Out Of) Blogs: All About Search

2004-09-27T16:36:00.000-04:00

Another post discussing the importance of intranet search to successful intranet blogging.

From an obvious plug

2004-09-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

Which I won't link to... turns out that one of the V3rity enterprise search products is now set up for intranet blogs to ping when updated. The new post is indexed almost immediately.

Notes from my Wisconsin Blog Talk

2004-09-17T15:37:00.000-04:00

I think the notes I posted from my talk about blogging in Wisconsin on Wednesday might be worth a look because I included many of the questions I received from the audience. They might give us some idea about what kinds of things people are interested in knowing, which could help us figure out what we want to say. A few audience members had a difficult time understanding feeds, syndication, and aggregators. I tried using several analogies, but none of them really worked. I'm not sure if the women gave up trying to get me to explain it or if they really did leave the room understanding what aggregators, feeds, and syndication are. I've explained them many other times without problems. I'm not sure if I just wasn't explaining them clearly Wednesday evening or what. I go into detail about the analogies I used and what I did in my notes. Do you have any ideas about how I can explain them better? Do we need to cover them in our ASIST session?

Woo-hoo we're beta testing an enterprise search

2004-09-17T09:49:00.000-04:00

-- and the team lead is complaining that the search results are crowded with hits from my internal blog! This could mean great things for blogging and knowledge sharing on the intranet. I'll post updates when I have them.

CorporateBloggingBlog: The Problem Of Unstructured Blogs That Are Hard To Search

2004-09-14T08:59:00.000-04:00

This is a huge issue for me. My employer does not own or license an enterprise search. EPA did, and it was actually fairly simple to make sure your intranet sites were accessible. Intranet blogs lose some of their utility if they are not searchable. For my blogs on the internet, I added a Google search. This is not terribly effective. What do you do for blogs behind the firewall? Some of his commenters believe in making blogs into wikis and you can read my response in the comments.

Common Craft: Survey Results: Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions

2004-09-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

Lee Lefever blogs on a survey by Joe Cothrel and Jenny Ambrozek on adoption, acceptance, etc., online communities in business. It includes blogs, fora (forums?), wikis... N is only 135, but still interesting.

respondents say that they plan to be using Weblogs more frequently than than any other technology 1 year from now. To me, this suggests that respondents are learning about weblogs, but have yet to test them as online community tools- but plan to in the next year.

K-logging in books

2004-09-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

We have a 30-day trial going of Safari so I put in one of my standard searches and came up with this book: Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content by Biz Stone (New Riders Publishing, September 13, 2002). Chapter 10, Section 6 is on Knowledge Management (in the event you all have this database: http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/0735712999/ch10lev1sec6). Before you all run out and buy this... it's a very, very superficial treatment with somewhat misleading or at least uninformative definitions of what knowledge management is. They do spend a paragraph defining tacit and explicit knowledge, but I would expect our audience to already know that. Essential Blogging by Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott, and Mena G. Trott (O'Reilly, August 1, 2002) doesn't seem to have anything on k-logging but We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs by Paul Bausch (Wiley, 2002) does. I got that one through ILL and already sent it back. It has a little more information than the Stone book, but not too much.

Mathemagenic: Defining Personal KM

2004-09-08T17:24:00.000-04:00

An interesting post in which Efimova responds to Jeremy Aarons' post regarding the "recent fad of interest in... PKM." See also: her PKM Q&A.

Joyce Park: Towards Semi-Permeable Blogging

2004-08-31T11:41:00.000-04:00

8/6/2003 Pointed out by Ross Mayfield because apparently she just got fired? Mayfield's post was picked up by Topix. She's talking about levels of privacy on blogs. She also briefly mentions integrating blogs with other communications and PIM tools used in the workplace.

Mortensen and Walker: Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool

2004-08-27T12:39:00.000-04:00

Paper presented at SKIKT-RESEARCHERS' CONFERENCE 2002. Held in Oslo, 8 April 2002. Pointed out by Elmine Wijnia Taken together with the previous post, they're saying that k-logging for personal km is more than "keeping found things found", it's selecting, connecting, and analyzing.

Upcoming Blog Talks, Part 2

2004-08-27T12:03:00.000-04:00

I've been working with the professional development director of the SLA News Division about very fundamental plans for a blogging continuing education course at the next SLA Annual Conference. He told me today that he turned in the course proposal and thinks it's okay for me to start generating buzz about the course. SLA still has to approve the course, but we'll be surprised if they don't. Once we get the okay from SLA, we'll start working on a plan and tracking down speakers. I will share this news on the scratchpad later tonight. If you would like to help me generate buzz, that's totally cool, but I would appreciate it if you could hold off until I post it on the scratchpad. I'm really excited about this!

Also, it looks like the SLA Boston Chapter program on blogging will be on Saturday, October 30, at Mount Holyoke from 1-4 pm. I'm not sure if that means I'll/we'll be talking for three hours or if that includes time for registration and networking. Garrett, Kris, any interest in sharing the podium? Christina already commented that she may not be able to make it. Since it's the day before Halloween and it's a Saturday, the program planner, Dorothy Barr, and I have been considering doing something with costumes or insisting that people come in casual dress. I'm not sure how public this information is yet--if we can do "save the date" kinds of announcements or if I shouldn't be typing the sketchy details on the Internet.

I finally got clearance from work to go to Wisconsin in about three weeks and to be on the ASIST panel. It looks like I can only be away from work on the day of our panel, though, so I don't think I can go to the rest of the conference.

Sebastien Paquet: Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research

2004-08-27T11:40:00.000-04:00

From 10/2002 but relevant. (update: forgot to say where I found it. Pointed out by Elmine Wijnia ) Here are some things of interest that I found: Selection of material - basically says that with information overload you can use comments and the selections of others in their blogs to decide if material is worth using (he calls it triangulation). Also mentions pitfalls of citations to gauge value. Information routing - information spreading across geographic or disciplinary boundaries The difference between pkp and k-logging -

I wish to make a distinction between personal knowledge publishing and knowledge logging or K-logging. K-logging is actually the more general term of the two. It encompasses personal knowledge publishing, which consists of publishing on the Web for everyone to see, as well as "inward" K-logging, where knowledge sharing is restricted to an organization, and typically supported by an intranet. The distinction has to do with the scope of distribution, but not with the tool itself.

Comparison to other forms of knowledge sharing - no time limitation, public, shorter conversations "Issues of competition and secrecy" - when you run something up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes (or throw it against a wall to see if it sticks), someone might figure it out and publish before you do. There's also a real ethics problem in blogs about people not citing where they got their ideas (recently be-moaned here).

beSpacific on blogging

2004-08-26T10:45:00.000-04:00

Sabrina Pacifici published her presentation "Are you ready to blog" in the current issue of LLRX.com. Among other interesting phenomena, she references Christina's blog searching article. Greetings to all.

E-consultancy.com: How blogs and wikis can help knowledge management

2004-08-20T09:13:00.000-04:00

Post by Wayne Robinson 6/18/2004. I already pointed to Bill Ives post about this in the comments below but I think this deserves its own post.

The creation of knowledge within an organisation occurs as a result of the interactions of explicit and tacit knowledge, in the process of knowledge conversion. This is where both types of knowledge increases in both quality and quantity. One useful model of this process is the SECI process - which stands for socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation. In this post I’ll explain the SECI process and explain where wikis and weblogs can help.

Upcoming Blog Talks

2004-08-18T15:56:00.000-04:00

The SLA Wisconsin Chapter has invited me to speak to them about blogging on Wednesday, September 15. I might talk to a library school class about my job while I'm out there, either on Tuesday or Thursday. I'm waiting for clearance from work to go. The Boston Chapter is planning a similar program, perhaps for Saturday, October 16. The program planner has invited me to be the principal speaker, but if any of you would like to join me, I can easily share the responsibilities. It could give us a nice practice round for our panel or, since I would imagine this meeting will be longer, it could give us the opportunity to talk about many things we wouldn't be able to during the limited time at ASIST.

ASIST Preliminary Program

2004-08-18T15:50:00.000-04:00

I almost tossed the Preliminary Program for the American Society for Information Science and Technology in the trash because I thought it was junk mail. We're on page 22. = )

TechSoup Forum on Weblogs and Nonprofits

2004-08-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

TechSoup, a Web site about technology in nonprofits, might hit on KM issues in nonprofits in this discussion it's hosting this week about nonprofits and blogs.

Shimon's Thoughts on Blogs as Personal KM Tools

2004-08-17T16:02:00.000-04:00

Shimon Rura responds to Lilia Efimova's post about knowledge workers by discussing blogs as personal knowledge management tools. Well, it's obvious that I like what he has to say or else I wouldn't share it with you and point to it from here.

I think she's onto something. Blogs, unlike other "knowledge management" tools, center around a person. This is important because it gives individuals the freedom to post whatever they want. By eliminating the fear that something you care about doesn't belong in the system somewhere, the act of posting is always much closer at hand. You don't even have to ask yourself if something belongs—you get so used to writing things down on your blog that you instead have to wonder, when wouldn't I want to share this {idea, feeling, picture, tip, joke} with other people?
And so people simply care more about blogs than other KM tools. The boat of knowledge written down on the blog is lifted by the tide of person-centered writing and discussion.

My little brain is trying to crank out a response related to group blogs/blogs with multiple authors/blogs in a group environment because I don't think I agree that what he says completely applies in those situations, but I can't quite think of how to word it. Perhaps something to that effect will be on the scratchpad later this evening.

By posting about Shimon here, I know I'm taking a slight risk of exposing our "top secret" blog because he easily finds things with his name in it. I thought not using his name in this post would just be silly. So, Shimon, if you find us here, congratulate yourself for being the first person in our little blogging group (besides Garrett) to find my sixth blog. You will probably find many useful and interesting things in this space, but we would appreciate it if you could keep our secret blogging space secret for a little while.

Corporate Blogging Blog: Six Types Of Business Blogs - A Classification

2004-08-16T09:29:00.000-04:00

{I just lost this post a minute ago, so if it's suddenly here twice, I'll delete - ckp} 8/10/2004 Frederik Wacka posts this revised classification scheme for corporate blogs. It's important when trying to sell the management on corporate blogs to define what type of blog you're proposing, it's purpose, audience, etc. This scheme could help you get your boss on the same page.

MarketingProfs.com: Three Reasons to Publish an E-Newsletter AND a Blog

2004-08-06T12:02:00.000-04:00

6/22/04 by Debbie Weil Pointed out by "Blogorama" Internet Resources Newsletter issue 119 (August 2004) Straight forward short column. See also the author's Business Blogging Starter Kit($129) and her blog.

Ariadne 'Towards Library Groupware with Personalised Link Routing'

2004-08-05T15:16:00.000-04:00

Chudnov et al. Issue 40 (July 2004). Everyone was so hung up on the public libraries article from this issue, this one fell into the weeds. I haven't finished reading it yet, but this passage stood out:

In a fluid world where users move regularly between informal discussion and scholarly/research domains, we can consider the functional areas of linking, reference management, and weblogging to be service points on a single continuum of information gathering, study, and creation. Following a reference from a weblog or from a scholarly article are each similar steps in exploring threads of related ideas. Capturing a reference in your own weblog or reference library indicates that the citation somehow relates to your own thought process. Publicly citing a reference more closely associates your thinking with that of others.

Compare to Edmonds, Blustein, and Don Turnbull below. Update (8/9/04): Check out what they're doing at UThink. They've integrated database searching, with blogs, with RefWorks! So you can blog your results from a database search, then transfer the blog item to your bibliography when it's time to submit a paper. (pointed out by Fichter)

Das E-Business Weblog: Published my BlogTalk Paper

2004-07-28T12:06:00.000-04:00

I linked to this paper earlier, but one of Roell's responses to my comments struck me worthy of posting again.

I left out privacy for simplicity. At the moment, "channeling" in blogs, that is: publishing for specific audience is not well developed yet, and as most people who read the paper will not know much about weblogs in the first place I did not want to make things complicated and introduce the dimension of "publishin [sic] channels" (which could cope with privacy issues).

Help understanding this? Are you all avoiding the city (and work) this week? Maybe this is my niche for the panel -- KM and levels of access and software and ... Has blogging for specific audiences really not been covered? J, you talk about blogging by a group of people... but for the public, right?