Again… art teaches us to just communicate

If music is the universal language, then we owe debt to those who speak to us. And those who make instruments for artists to speak through. I had my piano tuned today, and with that came a renewed pleasure in playing. A few weeks ago I was lucky to see Steinway L1037… both the piano AND the movie. As I watched, I couldn’t help but think how those who are managing Steinway and Sons could inspire organizations to manage and preserve their intellectual capital.

Trend to open access of scholarly research

My final paper on open access and the PKP OJS system will signify the completion of my MSKM degree. Some final research led me to an interesting February 2008 blog post by Michael Carroll , who teaches law at Villanova University School of Law and serves on the Board of Creative Commons.

I was encouraged by his news that Harvard faculty has “increased its competitive edge by adopting a faculty resolution to grant the university a license to make faculty scholarship freely accessible online.” In brief, he cites four reasons for open access archiving:

1. The impact of, and citations to, Harvard scholarship will increase because it is freely accessible.

2. Harvard researchers will be able to use the rich archive of Harvard scholarship to experiment with and for a variety of purposes, including developing new research tools.

3. Harvard librarians will get greater expertise than exists at competing institutions at developing, managing, and adding value to the university’s digital library because they will have a regular flow of new scholarship to manage.

4. Young academics should be attracted to the institution as prospective faculty members, graduate students or other kinds of researchers for the signal that this initiative sends. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at least, seems to get the Web.

Oh where, oh where have the faculty of other institutions gone?

If you’ve read my last post, you are aware of my concerns over “Education 2.0″ at OU and other institutions. Let’s face it, education IS a business, and if we’re not marketing our research, ideas, and image via modes of open access on the web, then we become victims of loss of identity, a barrier to communication and knowledge sharing, and guilty of prohibiting access to information… the VERY things institutions of higher knowledge are asked to monitor in order to expand the knowledge base of our world, decrease the digital divide, and alleviate suffering by providing access to knowledge.

Communicating on the web

Students from the “Design and Implementation of Web-based Services” class summarized the semester’s self-initiated, self-directed group project in a presentation to the OU infrastructure committee this past Friday. I was gravely disappointed as anticipated exuberance was deflated when focus turned away from positive ways to improve our current SLIS site and utilize the web for improved convenience, expanded community, effective marketing, and social networking to misdirected confusion and criticism.

Our KM education has encouraged us to step back, look at the big picture, promote a positive culture, encourage new ideas, and facilitate change.

Now I’m wondering why the disconnect? Why can’t we “Just Communicate?”

It was interesting to see my ICKM paper on Emotional Intelligence come to life before my very eyes, especially in light of the fact that all of us in the room are information professionals and our charge is to be leaders and educators in our field. Throughout the presentation I had flashbacks to articles I’ve referenced on this blog that describe an us vs. them mentality.

We really “should” be able to model what we teach (preach).

reluctant blogger?

Doc Martens asked me to pinch hit at the Oklahoma Library Association annual convention this past Wednesday. The topic of the panel discussion was open source software, i.e. OSS. I was the clean-up batter, and my mission was to summarize my conversion from an open source technophobe to an open source/open access evangelist.

Although simple, you can check out my powerpoint visual aid–“My Journey to Blogdom”–on slideshare.

In short, I took conference attendees on a sentimental journey of my OSS awakening… from blogging on WordPress to creating a PBWiki to designing an open access journal with the PKP OJS system to utilizing sites like slideshare, flickr, and the like.

One step closer…

For those of you who have been following my “saga” regarding the MSKM comprehensive exam, I’d like to report that at 3:40 p.m. on Friday, April 11, 2008, I found out that I DID in fact adequately answer all three questions, thus passing the exam. Yeah!

This leaves me with completing a relational database management final project AND completing my design project, which entails setting up an online access journal (kpmjournal.com), completing literary review of the open access movement, then writing a scholarly paper fit for submission to this year’s ICKM (International Conference on Knowledge Management). Let’s see… if I sleep just 4 hours a night that gives me 400 hours to complete these deadlines… all the while working 3 part-time jobs, raising two boys (11 and 8), bidding on an exciting consultant job, AND celebrating my birthday.

What difference do we make?

It’s post comps. Still don’t know how well I faired. I’ll let you know when I know. For now, I’m sorting thru old articles, ridding my library of unnecessary papers, and preparing to write a paper on open access and the PKP (Public Knowledge Project) for my design project.

While doing a “formal” academic database search on open access, I happened upon an editorial by Dr. Rush Miller, Hillman University Librarian and Director at the University of Pittsburgh, entitled “What Difference Do We Make?” Although I found it of little use for my project, I found a lot to ignite my soul. Dr. Miller shares, by far, my notion about the future of libraries, knowledge professionals, and where the two are converging.

I am a bit dissapointed that I cannot find the editorial via open access?!? For those of you who are not separated from The Journal of Academic Librarianship by the digital divide, I encourage you to access Volume 33, Issue 1, January 2007, pages 1-2. For those of you who ARE separated by the digital divide, i.e. have no access to a database that archives the article, I’m including significant excerpts:

“With the advent of the Google Print Project, open access journal publishing, repositories, and many other developments of the last few years, the nature and future of the academic research library are becoming less clear to us.

“Above all, it is time for us to stop criticizing alternatives to libraries and to begin to understand better why some of them are so appealing to our users. If we continue to base library practice on tradition or unquestioned assumptions about what is best for our users, we will fail.

“For example, instead of arguing that the controlled vocabulary of the OPAC produces better results, we need an analysis of how to incorporate the clearly superior aspects of Google and Yahoo into our approach to searching. Rather than presenting arrays of obscurely named databases to our users, we must create search environments that drill down below them and quickly return federated results, and eventually compete with Google and other search engines for the attention of our students and faculty.”

When speaking about a collection of materials known as Historic Pittsburgh, Dr. Miller said, “the use of this online corpus of books is already far greater than the traditional use of these same physical books on our shelves. Approximately 5,000 users per month access or view about 80% of these books. I dare say that the circulation of this entire corpus in its print version over the lifetime of the books has not equaled one month’s online usage.”

While it is still early days in terms of gathering and analyzing the data, I will be very surprised if we discover that the primary access to our digital materials is from the tools we created for them, as superior as they are! I believe Google may well emerge as the most popular route to the content of our digital projects while our OPAC may be the least used entry point. It would be very useful to me, and I believe to others, as we think about our future to understand better the relationship of the digital content we create and the methods of discovery of it by our users. We must particularly keep in mind that the purpose of knowing these things is not to better ‘‘educate’’ our users to the superiority of the traditional library approach and tools, but to create better integration with the actual tools of choice now and in the future used by our students and faculty.”

All this I offer as a way to further make a point about issues raised in my November, 2007 “metacrap” post.

Did I miss the revelation?

People + process + technology = good KM!

Did I miss something somewhere? When was KM ever NOT “a concerted effort to improve how knowledge is created, delivered and used?” When was it NOT recommended that “organizations adopt a management strategy that addresses each of those three key activities?”

A recent Wall Street Journal article–Knowledge management can make a difference—but it needs to be more pragmatic–penned by recognized leaders in the KM field, namely Tom Davenport, Laurence Prusak, and Bruce Strong, caught my eye. I thought it had been well understood for YEARS that KM is so much more than technology. Are the revelations in this article really revelations?

My broker first alerted me to this article a couple of weeks ago. I, in turn, forwarded it to Doc Martens, then discussed it with Dr. Hawamdeh this morning. We’re all baffled that the information contained in the article is “news.” It IS fabulous, though, that the management of our economy’s greatest asset (knowledge) is getting the press it deserves. Hopefully this awareness will spread beyond those firms listed on the Fortune 500, and with it, increased competitive advantage and information risk management!

This debate is deja vu from comps questions last week. More on this tomorrow!

thanks Ken…

’tis the night before comps, and…
no…
no parody, just genuine thanks.

The past few days of blogging about comps prep have been fun, and I haven’t done it alone. The unseen, unrecognized backbone of this operation has been my study partner, Ken. For weeks, nay months, we have been examining possible questions, researching current events, scouring through class objectives, googling informative and interesting articles, all the while discussing what we find and SHARING our knowledge by way of discussion. Much of the “explicit” knowledge found on this blog during the past week has come from Ken’s comments and insights. Let this be a lesson to all who are new to our (or any) graduate program:  by all means, get yourself a friend (or two or three) to study with! Thanks, Matthew, for joining us during our Thursday afternoon get-togethers. Our discussions have certainly ensured our success. I KNOW we’ll all do just great!

Just how do we find information in this day and age?

In focusing on information users, I found two articles that suggest that the Internet is quickly becoming our preferred source of information. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released findings in December, 2007, and comScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, released a report in January, 2008. Both substantiate Brenda Dervin’s 1976 findings, which indicated that the actual behavior of people demonstrates that most use formal information sources rarely, and often use family and friends. Obviously, the advent of the Internet–and even more so social networking–makes this type information-seeking behavior easier and more widespread.

On yet another note, I found an interesting link to John Batelle’s slide presentation about publishing in Web 2.0 on a blog by  David Rothman. Enjoy!

thanks Stewart Brower…

More on Web. 2.0

OU-Tulsa is so very fortunate to have Stewart Brower, MLIS, AHIP, as the enthusiastic and charming leader (more than a director) of our library. He has graciously agreed to post his RSS (Web 2.0) slide presentation on his “Professional Notes” blog. This serves as a good review of Web 2.0 for those of us preparing for tomorrow’s comps.