This article in Searcher Magazine discusses the changes taking place in Library and Information Science education and a study of current curricula at accredited institutions. It's written by a professor of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee.

By 2017, some 68 percent of today's librarians will have retired, according to recent estimates in the news (Lynch). President and Mrs. Bush have launched an initiative through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to recruit "a generation of librarians." Since schools of library and information science traditionally attract second or third career professionals, the aging of the information professions is a cause for concern. In addition, many new information-related jobs outside libraries now attract LIS graduates and compete with libraries as employers.
This poses several key challenges for the 56 ALA-accredited schools in North America. (For a list, check out the ALISE site at http://www.alise.org.) These schools must keep curricula vital for new professionals in a variety of settings, attract enough young recruits to fill the vacancies caused by retirements and to fill new types of jobs, and provide choices and flexibility in scheduling that appeal to full- and part-time students, both those pursuing a first career and those changing careers. It is a great time to enter the information professions, but one that poses challenges for LIS schools and employers, as a new generation of information professionals comes on the scene and prepares to tackle jobs in a variety of environments. [...]

I've been looking for a grad student in LIS to help me think through some business information flow issues, so this caught my eye. I know most small businesses don't have the resources to hire an information professional but, from my experience, small businesses need information help more than anyone. And the article discusses how LIS programs are more frequently showing students all the possible career paths they can take.

The careers that attract students to LIS programs aren't always what they end up pursuing. In fact, many of them come into the program without realizing all the career possibilities. One current student told me he started with an interest in special libraries, but, "as I have progressed, I realized that the skills that librarians have of analyzing information sources, or organizing information, and in researching are vital not only in libraries but in government and private business." His new goals are "to use the skills I have acquired to begin a career in knowledge management or competitive intelligence," with the ultimate goal of being in a position that will "have an effect on strategic planning."

Now that's the kind of person I'm looking for.

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Terry Frazier at 11:46 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Managing Local and Remote URLs in Radio

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I don't know anything about writing macros for Frontier so how would I create an ifLocal macro? For my reference mainly, as I don't fully understand the fix but I most definitely understand the problem -- it's bitten me a couple of times already.

Jon Udell is moving his weblog to new home using Radio and external FTP site. One of the gotchas he found:

"- If you hardcode your site address anywhere, you'll get burned. I did this in a few places. For example, I had:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/stories/2002/03/16/storylist.html

instead of:

<%radio.weblog.getUrl()%>stories/2002/03/16/storylist.html"

Right. In fact, I use my own macro to do just that and little bit more. <%ifLocal()%> macro, which looks like this:

on ifLocal (url1="/", url2=radio.macros.weblogUrl()) {
if radioResponder.flSameMachine {return (url1)} else {return (url2)}
}
One of the problems with Radio that I noticed is that it's not easy to produce link that works properly off- and on-line. Local links look like this: http://127.0.0.1:5335/gems/toolbox.css, and external links look like this: http://radio.weblogs.com/0106541/gems/toolbox.css. I use external stylesheets and often work offline, so it's real problem for me. ifLocal macros always generates proper link and works for images, files and pretty much everything else. Just put this as a value for href or src attribute: <%ifLocal()%>gems/toolbox.css and you're done. [toolbox]

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Terry Frazier at 11:05 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Automating Radio Deployment

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I'd forgotten how many interesting items Steve Pilgrim picks up. I hadn't updated my subscriptions list since he had all his trouble moving Radio to his own ftp serer and domain. That's all better now, as is Steve's new home.

Steve points to some scripts Jon Udell is writing to smooth the deployment of multiple Radio blogs over at InfoWorld. I can't even deploy Radio on my laptop, but I think it's due more to some intellectual deficiency than any serous technological problem. Maybe I'll get it right when I have more time.

Udell's post is focused more on replicting all the little changes we do to personalize our instance of Radio -- a good thing since it's likely a good many of us personalize at least some of the prefs once we get used to it.

EVEN PILOTS WITH 8000 HOURS RUN CHECKLISTS FOR PROCEDURES
Jon's checklist is handy if you change PC's, move your site or simply want to understand Radio better
Radio deployment descriptors. A few weeks ago, I spent some time showing an InfoWorld colleague, Mark Jones, how I use Radio. As always in this kind of situation, I was reminded of: ... [Jon's Radio]
[Rodent Regatta]

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Terry Frazier at 10:41 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Can Small Business Use Web Services

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If you have any experience with the printing and publishing industries you know that, outside of a small handful of billion-dollar companies, business automation is a pipe dream. The print industry is largely made up of companies $20 million and smaller -- with net profits as low as 1 percent -- and the idea of EDI-based supply chain operations, electronic invoicing, and real-time inventory management is just beginning to occur to most of them.

Even when it does occur, the implementation is most often a straight routinization of their old manual process -- it is exceedingly rare for a printer or publisher to completely re-engineer a process to take advantge of the inherent a nature of EDI and B2B e-commerce.

I don't know whether these initiatives will lead directly to services that the average small enterprise can use -- BEA and IBM tend to focus on gargantuan implemenations no small business can afford. But if they can get the groundwork right, and seed the tide of easily accessible services for things like invoicing, POs, order confirmations, etc., it could make a major difference in the way the print industry operates in the future.

WEB SERVICES FOR SMALL BUSINESS AUTOMATION
For years it has been extremely expensive for a small business to automate key aspects of its supply chain. Unless driven by a large customer (Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble mind) small businesses seldom took advantage of EDI feeds of order acknowledgements, accounts payable invoices, etc. Instead, many well run small businesses printed purchase orders and faxed them, hand-entered receipts of goods and manually keyed in invoices for supplier shipments.

Web services has the potential to bring on dramatic change. With today's generation of accounting and business management software, small businesses are prepared to remove much of the human intervention that was required in the supply chain. This article shows that the trend starts in the BigCo's, but the prospects for the Forgotten 5000 are clear.
Tech giants back new Web services. Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications that they hope will spur use of emerging software designed to foster business interaction over the Internet. [CNET News.com] [Rodent Regatta]

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Terry Frazier at 8:18 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Playing With Wireless

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I'm just fooling around with my new wireless toys and Radio Remote Access -- sitting in the TV room watching NASCAR at Watkins Glen while blogging. The D-Link AirPlus hub is really cool. I can't tell any difference in performace vs sitting on my local desktop.

I should have done this months ago.

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Terry Frazier at 4:13 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

PickWick Hotel Rating

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Have any of you out in the blogoshpere ever stayed at the Pickwick hotel in San Francisco? I see it's half the price of the Palomar, and just about as close to Moscone.

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Terry Frazier at 3:33 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Rethinking the Intranet Staff

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Martin White of Intranet Focus Blog provokes some thoughts on just who should staff and run an intranet for best results. The need to take an integrated view of a company's information systems seems to be gaining momentum.

My limited experience has been, in fact, that IT quite often does strangle intranets and most any collaborative effort with a lock-down, security-centric approach that is rarely warranted. Certainly some things need strong protection, but the blanket application of strong security technologies and approaches have really limited the usabiltiy of intranets I've been a part of -- for both large and small companies.

This, in turn, limited users' ability to easily contribute and update content, leading to some of the problems noted in the article.

Intranets need team players. This is the title of an excellent article in New Media Zero by Steve Lodewyke of Think Lateral. This short article contains some important insights into the management of intranets.
Steve observes that "Business-minded information professionals are needed, people who can open dialogues between departments to create improved products, services and systems. It will be these 'communication altruists' who will draw together IT, corporate librarians and HR in order to make the corporate intranet flourish. It's crucial that employees trust the content on their intranet, as well as the team responsible for its implementation. Currently, many companies recognise that their intranet is becoming a bank of information that no-one has any faith in, with no discernible knowledge management in place. It's time to give the task to the communicators, to cut through the chaos. Together with the Webmaster they will be able to create inter-departmental links to pull the side together. A game plan can then be devised to focus on business imperatives such as corporate culture, rather than technology. More importantly, they can identify where return on investment will be delivered. This quantifiable index of intranet success is what's needed to win the support of the directors."
The number of intranets I come across where the IT department has managed to strangle an intranet, often at birth. As Steve points out "When intranets first came into play, many could see the business sense in having one, but were unsure of where to start. It was customary to give the task to IT, because the intranet was seen as a technology solution. Although this strategy has delivered a lot of intranets, their quality is now under review. Information technologists don't have a monopoly on intranet common sense and companies are aware that their intranet isn't the open communication tool that their people need. Intranets are about communication. Obviously the better the technology, the better it will perform. But a great technical solution won't make an intranet work if information is hard to find or out of date."
There is nothing I can add. Steve has said it all.
Martin White [Intranet Focus Blog]

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Terry Frazier at 3:08 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Collaborative Work and Intranets

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This post links to a nice survey and introduced me to an interesting intranet weblog I'll be adding to my subscriptions. As |Matt| notes, the survey is geared toward BigCo, and unless you're a senior financial manager or have P&L responsibility you won't have any idea how to answer. But the behavioral section is very interesting and applicable to almost any organization.

The intranet is not a coporate brochure damnit!.
Collaborative working using an intranet. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at... [Intranet Focus Blog]

» Good pickup on how so many companies still have a narrow view of what an intranet can be. A good intranet is an information ecosystem and not just a magazine site for the corporate communications team.

The questionnaire mentioned looks interesting too. It is geared towards large companies and seeks to determine:

the potential value from developing a collaborative organization in your company.

the current behavioral obstacles in your organization.

the extent of collaborative levers currently in place in your company.

however I'm sure that many of it's questions could be usefully tailored to fit other situations. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

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Terry Frazier at 2:55 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Saturday, August 10, 2002

Integrated Blogging Functions and KM

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I wonder how many of |Matt|'s points are covered with Traction Server, and how easily Traction can be integrated with other, larger systems? Also, with the work David Gurteen is doing in Lotus Notes, and Trellix now including weblogging functions, how long will it be before most KM systems include basic blogger functionality?

Integrating klogs with Big-KM.
In order for klogging to be successfully I think it is going to have to come to an understanding with Big-KM.

Example: BigCo has invested half a million dollars in a big knowledge management system for their world-wide operations. This kind of investment can become a lode-stone around any other systems neck. For klogging to thrive here it is going to have to integrate.

Here's one idea I have for how this could work.

Extend Big-KM System-X so that it can aggregate RSS feeds like Radio, MT and others do now.

Extend your klogging software to allow per-post meta data. (liveTopics does this for Radio)

For each project in System-X define a set of topics that will act as trigger phrases for that project

Get the kloggers to use those topics when they want to involve a post in a particular project

Now subscribe System-X to every klog in the organization and watch as it indexes and archives all that information. Each project grabbing only those postings that are appropriate (by use of the trigger phrases)

This means that the klogs add value to the big-KM system. Suddenly it doesn't just have the dry dusty project documention, but all the live vibrant stuff that people are really doing!

Now extend System-X to generate a per-project RSS feed.

If I am on the project I can subscribe to this feed. Now instead of receiving email from System-X or having to go to an arbitrary web page, I get all the "official" project stuff (new documents, forms etc...) delivered in my RSS stream.

Closing the loop between the big-KM and the klog so that they both add value to each other.

Just an idea... [Curiouser and curiouser!]

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Terry Frazier at 6:37 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Collaboration, Strategy, Technology

The First Remote Post

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Yahoo! This is the first Radio post from a remote computer using the Remote Access settings via my new router and firewall (listen carefully and you can hear the Pointer Sisters singing I'm So Excited in the background.)

I have to say that over a dsl line at both ends this works about as well as locally. I could get to like this. It's still not quite as nifty as having Radio deployed on my laptop (where I could work regardless of connectivity) but it's pretty darn good. Now, next step is to figure out how to make a VPN.

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Terry Frazier at 2:36 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Failing Badly

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My friend Scott Walker pointed me to an excellent article on Homeland Insecurity in the current Atlantic Monthly. The article is based on interviews with cyber-security expert and author Bruce Schneier. The article covers a lot of ground, but it really points out the need to consider failure as a standard process. Here's what Scott wrote:

There's an interesting article in the current Atlantic Monthly about the likelihood that stricter security systems will make Americans less safe than they'd be otherwise. In it, one of the foremost experts in the world on cryptography talks about how certain systems fail badly -- by which he means that when they fail, as they inevitably do, the consequences of the failed system are worse than the consequences of never having had such a system in the first place. The full shutdowns and total rescreenings of passengers following airport security breaches are one of his examples -- when these systems fail, they do so in a way that is extremely costly and painful. Interesting in its own right, and unquestionably true. It got me to thinking about the broader implications of failing badly -- that a really well-designed system fails well, and that that might be a source of compelling competitive advantage in business -- that one's systems are designed such that the inevitable failures in any given component are isolated and prevented from causing more widespread and costly failures. While I haven't even finished the article yet, it seems that systems that fail well are designed so that components are modular, with responsibility for only one small area of functionality, and that surrounding systems are designed to catch and isolate the consequences of any failure.

Now, neither Scott nor I have really thougth this through, but it seems likely that failing to adequately consider the consequences of failure is at the heart of all sorts of major screw-ups -- ranging from California wildfires started by the Forest Service to the Worldcom debacle.

I wonder how often a failure point is observed but not noted by someone in a company, and I wonder if the open use of klogs within a company could broaden exposure to those failure points, thereby hardening the system and improving competitive advantage?

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Terry Frazier at 12:44 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Factory Tours -- BN.com

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One of the great things about my job is the chance to go into some very cool places (at least they're cool if you like huge, sophisticated machinery running incredibly complex, automated tasks. If you've never been into a major daily newspaper printing plant you have no idea what you've missed.

This week I went into the Barnes & Noble distribution center in Memphis, TN. I've been there before but it still amazes me -- 300,000 sq. ft. of space housing a $12 million automated book handling system that guides human pickers with RF-based scanners and then transports, sorts, matches, packages, weighs, stamps, and ships 10s of thousands of packages a day -- error free. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.

The level of software integration they have achieved is incredible. Sometimes orders are processed in the warehouse within an hour or so of being placed on the web. This really is the future of book sales.

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Terry Frazier at 12:23 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Untethered -- Going Wireless and Seeking Remote Access

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I went to Best Buy tonight and they had a deal on D-Link's DI-614+ AirPlus Wireless Network Hub. I've been working slowly toward remote access for Radio but I just couldn't seem to get it working with my old D-Link 701 router. I thought a more modern router might help. PLus, I wanted something a little more sophisticated for trying VPN connections and such.

The 614+ has a much nicer router with built-in web page for admin, plus 802.11b and enhanced 22Mbps wireless. It was only $119 with a $20 mail-in, and a PCMCIA card was just $59 with a $10 mail-in.

I haven't tested the remote access yet, but it sure was easier to configure. And the wireless is way cool. I haven't really played with WiFi before, but it was a cinch to configure and get access. Now I need to find some of those war chalking places and log in, tune in, and turn on.

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Terry Frazier at 12:15 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Browser Wars

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I give up -- I can't use Mozilla, I refuse to use MSIE, Netscape is deplorable. I'm going back to Opera even if I can't read pages that use Marc Barrot's activeRenderer.

I got started on this browser kick because some of my favorite blogs starting using activeRenderer for archive pages, blogrolls, and such. I can't read them in Opera -- it doesn't support some DOM and Javascript functions that Barrot uses to create the collapsable menus.

Mozilla supports them, but it just does not run on my system -- not v1.0, or any of the v1.1 Betas I've tried. Besides, it's full of other bugs and anomolies (at least on my Win2k system.)

So I'm stuck. I can't read a number of the very nice blogs I've been reading until Opera gets with the program and supports DOM. I hope that is soon -- it's the only real weakness it has.

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Terry Frazier at 12:06 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

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Monday, August 12, 2002

Referrer List Improvements Wanted

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Teaching the Next Generation of KM Leaders

Managing Local and Remote URLs in Radio

Automating Radio Deployment

Can Small Business Use Web Services

Playing With Wireless

PickWick Hotel Rating

Rethinking the Intranet Staff

Collaborative Work and Intranets

Saturday, August 10, 2002

Integrated Blogging Functions and KM

The First Remote Post

Failing Badly

Factory Tours -- BN.com

Untethered -- Going Wireless and Seeking Remote Access

Browser Wars

Syndication

Contact

Presence