tfpl blog

TFPL Training - end of term report

Until relatively recently, many people viewed training as something that was 'done to them' or that they were passively sent to, rather than something that they directed.  The world of work has changed and workplace learning has changed with it.  We are all expected to take charge of our own learning and professional development, and this learning can take many forms.

In 2007 we began to offer delegates the opportunity to undertake one-to-one coaching with trainers.  We also developed courses that we call 'intensive' one-day sessions.  Not only is the training day itself longer, but delegates engage with the trainer both before and after the event to derive maximum benefit and develop customised outputs.  For other courses we created extranets ensuring that delegates have access to updated resources after the course itself is completed.

People Management Matters, which we launched in February 2007, was a ten-month long development programme for a group of delegates moving into more senior management roles.  Working together, and with their Programme Director, they have benefitted not only from monthly face-to-face sessions but from a dedicated online forum and from the supportive community that developed amongst the delegates.  This collaborative continuous learning model has been enormously successful and will be continued with a new group of delegates in 2008.

Next year we will increase the number of courses we offer on demand as coaching options which delegates can schedule to suit their own timetables.  We will also, of course, continue to launch new events, revise [or drop!] existing ones and work to keep in touch with the needs of the information, knowledge, records and web content professional.

How web 2.0 tools can help with records management

Web 2.0 tools (Blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS feeds and social networking sites) have added a human dimension to the unimaginably vast expanse of the world wide web.  They mitigate the problem of information overload on the web through allowing us to use other people to filter content of interest to ourselves.

Web 2.0 tools will not help with two of the core tasks of records management: applying retention periods and access permissions to records.  The world wide web doesn’t have those problems so hasn’t evolved tools to deal with them.

But the philosophies that lie behind these tools will influence conversations in organisations, and the expectations of colleagues.

The tools will also have practical uses in records management.

• Wikis keep a record of their own development.  The final output and the process of its creation are combined in one entity.  This makes it far simpler to manage than the many separate revisions of a particular document, where organisations have the difficult task of distinguishing which of those revisions are needed as a record and which aren't.
• An exchange of comments against a blog post is more visible and manageable than an e-mail thread, which resides only in individual's in-boxes.
• Folksonomies allow colleagues to voluntarily ‘tag’ documents (or folders) with any words they find meaningful.  Colleagues can then search using each other’s tags.  This could complement a business classification by offering many different perspectives on records, and by indicating which documents and folders particular colleagues found useful
• Social network sites have parallels with collaborative sites within organisations, and can be used to provide an alternative to e-mail, particularly to internal e-mail.

Can we breathe life into electronic records?

When office IT networks came in during the 1990's records managers and archivists speculated on whether we could ever reproduce the paper file in electronic form.

The key features of the traditional paper file were that it:

• told the whole story of a piece of work
• was kept in an organised filing system together with files from similar pieces of work
• was visually distinct from any collection of papers that people had gathered for their own convenience but which was not regarded as an official file

These factors can be replicated on an electronic system.  What can not be replicated is the authority and importance the paper file had for the people carrying out a piece of work.

I can go to the National Archives today and order a thirty year old file about a particular project.  They will hand me a file that would have been used as a working tool by the people who carried out that project.  It would have been taken along to important meetings.  It would have been the first place anyone would have looked if they had wanted to know or check something about that project.   

The file would have been a staple part of the conversations of people working on the project.  You would have heard people say things like:

• 'can you put that on the file?'
• 'can you get me the file?'
• 'please don't put this on the file'

Nowadays you are more likely to hear:

• 'can you put that in an e-mail' 
• 'can you copy me into that e-mail?' 
• 'can you forward me the e-mail so-and-so sent?'

For the immediate actors involved in the thick of a piece of work, e-mail has taken over from the file/electronic folder as their prime source of information and authority, as their working tool.

When you look at the piece of work from a distance, either of time or of space, e-mail is far less useful than a file/electronic folder.  Other colleagues cannot access the e-mail in-boxes of the people involved in the project.  Even the people involved in the project would struggle to piece together the project from their e-mail after a distance of three or six months. 

Teams do generally keep an electronic folder for a piece of work, whether in a shared drive or in a collaborative system or a records management system environment.  But will historians be interested in these electronic folders when they look back on our era?  They seem something of an afterthought, drained of the life and energy that actually went into the project.  They will be cluttered with many versions of the same document (ten versions of a particular draft of a presentation/proposal/report/).  They will be missing significant documents or e-mails.  The reduced importance of the folder in the working life of the project as compared to twenty years ago, means that these inadequacies are less likely to be picked up by the people working on the project, and less likely to be of concern to them.

The challenge (and opportunity!) for us as information professionals is that:

• organisations face massive problems with e-mail:  important information being shuttled between e-mail in-boxes that effectively constitute a massive collection of individual, inaccessible, unmanageable, information silos
• organisations still need the team of people carrying out a project to leave behind them a usable narrative of their work, which integrates the key documents of the project into a coherent story   

Is it possible to create working spaces where the thread of messages between people about that work is kept in a shared space, together with the documents relating to that work?  A working social space that combines the features of a record folder, a SharePoint collaborative project site and a social networking site/blog/wiki.  A place where colleagues can message colleagues, leaving a trace on the site (with alerts going to e-mail in-boxes). 

The National Archives  produced a specification for electronic systems that work from a technical recordkeeping point of view.  What would a specification look like for a working environment that works from a social point of view as well as a recordkeeping point of view, and which could again enable the working tool of a project team to be the trace left for others looking at the project from a distance of time or space?

Good news story

Great news, courtesy of People Management magazine under the strapline 'Swearing at work can cut stress'. 

Researchers at the University of East Anglia found that not only could swearing ease stress, but it could also boost team spirits.  This is true for peer groups it seems.  However it is not big or clever when you swear in front of clients or superiors.

Blogging about blogging...

Last Thursday evening TFPL held another free training course for its registered temporary workers called ‘Exploiting the Blogosphere.’ A good crowd of blog sceptics turned up to listen to Karen Blakeman provide a foundation on the subject and persuade them of their value. At the end of the hour long session, including how to set up your own blog, many of the listeners found themselves converted and off to become first time bloggers. One temp said ‘Found it a really good introduction. Had not explored them very much ... put off by the amount of "rambling". Particularly appreciated her comments re how to identify really useful comment. Good also for contractors to have ways of keeping up with conference information and trends as generally not able to go to such things unless we fund it ourselves.  Thank you very much for organising it.’

For more information about temps training events or temporary recruitment at TFPL contact katy.crosse@tfpl.com

Web 2.0 technologies and the information professional

Information World Review (November 2007) refers to the latest Outsell Information Industry Outlook report and quotes the author of the report as saying that in 2008 'a critical mass of information professionals would take charge of wikis, blogs or other 2.0 technologies on behalf of their organisations'.  Get up to speed by attending a TFPL course!

• Basic business blogging
• Web 2.0 for information professionals
• WWW pages 2: the next steps

The dangers of being an information professional...

Questions colleagues have asked me, in passing, this week include:

• Is sweetcorn a vegetable or a starch?
• Is there any salt and pepper in the kitchen?
• What's darker, 'black' or 'midnight black'?
• Is this the right way up?
• How do we clean our phones?

Unfortunately, my answers are usually less interesting than the questions!