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