tfpl blog

Twitter: your mouth on the internet

You heard it here first: Twitter is your mouth on the internet. 

Just like your mouth, you can watch what you say with Twitter, you can use Twitter only when you need to and, you can speak babble and trivially converse with others as often and carefree as you please... whether they pay any attention or not is another story!

Now, I suspect that if researchers felt the need to fill their time with a study of exactly what kind of speech we use our mouths for every day, the results would be a little something like this:

• Pointless babble: 40.6%
• Conversational: 37.6%
• Pass-along value: 8.7%
• Self promotion: 5.85%
• Spam: 3.75%
• News: 3.6%

Today, I was pointed towards an article in Library and Information Update, entitled Twitter 'babble' drowns out 'news'.  The above are statistics on the nature of tweets from a study into the social media tool from America, which this article gave its take on.  For any regular user of Twitter they are not surprising, I somewhat suspect.

The research report seemingly made much of the disparity between the percentage of babble vs news, using it as a basis to challenge Twitter's claim to being the 'premier source for news and events'. 

A hollow challenge if my analogy has any substance.

It seems to me that there is an obsession with trying to frame Twitter into a particular category.  What is Twitter?

• Is it a professional development tool?
• Is it a social development tool?
• Is it another form of procrastination?
• Is it a tool for self expression?
• Is it s a tool for exhibitionism?
• Is it a prime news source?

Twitter defies this approach because of its informal and conversational nature, the essence of its versatility as a tool.  Twitter is all of the above and more.

Shooresh Golzari

Consultant

(Now, excuse me while I go on Twitter to embark on some shameless exhibitionism, self expression and professional network development by way of broadcasting this prime piece of news.)

Prince William as CKO

The news yesterday that Prince William is encouraging the charities he supports to work together was a refreshing start to the day.  He reportedly feels that these organisations have skills, experience, resources and ideas which could be shared and set up the Princes' Charities Forum with his brother to see if the charities they support could help each other.

“Twice a year, the princes coax their charities to discuss their plans and devise new ideas to work together”.  We can certainly support his view that many charities have great ideas – the Social Impact Awards at ebic 2008 illustrated just how much talent and commitment is in the third sector.

Prince William referred to a recent partnership between Centrepoint, a charity for the homeless, and Mountain Rescue England and Wales as "cross-pollination".  In July, the prince scaled England’s third highest mountain, with young people from Centrepoint and Mountain Rescue volunteers.  Mountain Rescue's chairman said that “the collaboration gave a morale boost to his volunteers and encouraged his organisation to be less inward-looking”; the chief executive of Centrepoint said that  the climb helped his young people to "build their confidence and self-esteem, confront their fears, and believe that they can do anything. It was very, very powerful."  

The Forum and this example illustrates the real culture of KM; partnership, collaboration, sharing, and celebrating success resulting from positive leadership and small practical steps.

The news made me think about a discussion on David Snowden’s blog about the role of, or alternative to, the CKO.  David had some interesting ideas which have generated a great discussion.  The sentiment that crept out from behind the “I don’t want to be a royal ornament’ statement seems to indicate that Prince William gets the KM point without worrying about the label.

 

Angela Abell
Senior Associate

Two to watch: Social Enterprise and Anarconomy

While the big corporations and the finance sector struggle to regroup along the same old lines, much of the most innovative thinking about work and business is coming out the voluntary sector.  Two organisations to watch are the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and the Social Enterprise Coalition.  The Institute has just published its Anarconomy Report #3/2009 which develops the anarconomy theme* in a wider context and looks at alternatives to the way we approach intellectual proporty issues today. 

The need to look at business and society together was highlighted by Peter Holbrook who will be taking over as CEO of the Social Enterprise Coalition in January 2010.  Holbrook is currently chief executive of the Sunlight Development Trust in Gillingham, Kent, and he will succeed Jonathan Bland, who is stepping down at the end of October.  The community-led approach to regeneration exemplified by Sunlight which is tackling health inequalties, and providing public services in one of the UK's most deprived wards has attracted a broad spectrum of political admirers. 

Business leaders and politicians take note.

John D. Davies
Senior Consultant

* The creation and distibution by users of content and services on the internet using voluntary networks by anarchist principles.

Library and Information Science Research Coalition

Congratulations to Hazel Hall on her appointment to the new Library and Information Science Research Coalition.

The remit of the Coalition is to facilitate a co-ordinated and strategic approach to Library and Information Science (LIS) research across the UK. It was founded in March this year by the British Library (BL), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the Research Information Network (RIN).

Hazel’s appointment, and the formation of the Coalition, is particularly timely in view of the debate that is currently taking place within the records and information management community around the question of whether there is a need for more coordinated representation of the various sub-groups within the profession.  It’s encouraging to see these organisations working cooperatively together to improve the value and impact of the research they fund and/or sponsor.

Hazel is an Associate of TFPL and worked with us on the 'who’s managing information? information responsibilities in the digital world' project in 2006.  I recently reread the report and was pleased to find that its conclusions remain valid three years on; in fact, TFPL commented on the convergence of individual disciplines at that time:

We are witnessing a merging of IM disciplines (library and information services, knowledge management, information management, records management, Web and IT) and the integration of new disciplines into the IM arena, resulting in the creation of new IM roles.  Whilst IM is becoming everone’s responsibility in terms of daily work the identification and allocation of explicit IM responsibilities is increasingly becoming essential to the development of robust IM capability.

Further information about the Coalition is available on their website.

Melanie Goody
Director of Consultancy

The Records & Information Management Profession(s?)

There is a lively debate currently taking place between the members of the UK Records Management Society listserv on the question of whether the profession (professions?) has too many professional bodies, and what the role of these bodies should be.

It brings to mind the lengthy - and at times very heated - discussions which took place when the Library Association and the Institute of Information Scientists were considering merging.  Those in favour of the merger and those against it held strong views and expressed these views freely.  The end result was eventually the merger of the two bodies to form CILIP.

At the time, one of the most contentious issues was the name of the new body - huge amounts of time and energy were consumed by the question of whether it should include the ‘L’ word.  This remains a question that generates very strong views and one which is currently under consideration by the SLA as part of its Align in 09 initiative - their website is worth a visit since they have undertaken considerable research into what executives think about information management.

It’s also interesting to see that some former members of the IIS elected to join the Records Management Society rather than to transfer their membership to CILIP - perhaps now is the right time to reconsider whether the merger of all of the relevant professional bodies would be of benefit to those involved in records and information management.

Indeed, the Society of Archivists, the National Council on Archives and the Association of Chief Archivists are currently working on a merger of the three bodies following a review of the sector which was completed last year.

From my perspective, I understand that individuals identify very strongly with the body which most closely represents their role and responsibilities but I have to question whether this makes sense in the wider world.  Potential employers don’t always see the difference between a librarian and a records manager and indeed, many of the contributors to the debate have acknowledged that they hold hybrid roles which span the full range of archives, records and information management.

Given the obvious strong interest in this topic perhaps the time is ripe for a review of whether we would all benefit from having a single professional body to represent us.

Melanie Goody

Director of Consultancy

Happy 40th Birthday BIALL!

BIALL (British & Irish Association of Law Librarians) celebrated their 40th anniversary with a sixties theme on Friday night. There were some admirable efforts at fancy dress amongst the party goers and the party atmosphere was helped along with a free flow of psychedelic looking cocktails.

From my perspective as a recruiter to this niche marketplace, it was good to join in the celebrations and take time to catch up with a cross mix of clients and candidates alike in this informal setting.

I left with the general feeling that information teams are reasonably busy at the current time and all eyes are looking hopefully to the future again. This is a positive message after the long haul of the last year.

Many legal information professionals will already be members of BIALL and accordingly you will already know what a supportive industry organisation it is in terms of your own professional development. In my view, there are still a number of law librarians who I have interviewed over the course of the last year who don’t network within their wider professional community and I can’t help but feel these people are missing out on fulfilling their own development potential.  

Here’s to the next 40 years, BIALL, and your continued success!

http://www.biall.org.uk/

Anne Ashdown

Consultant - TFPL Intelligent Resources Recruitment

Local government: how to get it right with social media

Computing posted an article highlighting interesting statistics from the Local Government Engagement Online Research Blog such as:

• over 50% of councils do not engage with their stakeholders with online social media (aka Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, YouTube etc.)
• 20% are using RSS or Twitter
• 15% use YouTube
• and 11% have a presence on Facebook

Considering that councils across England and Wales - and the UK as a whole for that matter - more or less operate using the same organisational structure and exist for the same purpose within their local context, it is surprising that there is no centralised and cohesive strategy to guide them all in exploiting the potential of social media.

Naturally, I imagine that there will be a lot of apprehension over this new territory with uncertainty on the potential risks vs. the benefits, uncertainty which is reflected in the figures above.  Doubtless, the more adventurous councils (the minority) have some valuable lessons learned.

UK councils should use the resources at their disposal and mandate a body, perhaps the IDeA* to develop a strategy for, promote, and help them implement an effective, cohesive social media strategy to engage with their stakeholders. Such an approach should not overlook the good work that has already been done and should take note of any mistakes made. 

*The IDeA is already commissioned to promote social media and collaboration among local government employees and their partners across the country.

Shooresh Golzari

Consultant

Making the most of your current skills and resources

In the current economic climate there is a real imperative to ‘do more with less’.  There is a constant pressure on managers and employees to manage their time and resources as effectively as possible, which can result in negative impact on morale and motivation.  What is the answer to this problem that is effecting most information departments today?

One of TFPL’s new trainers, Elisabeth Goodman is utilising her skills in Lean and Six Sigma techniques to show people how to empower them to face up to these challenges by ensuring that teams are working on the right projects and in the most optimal way.  She provides this through a training course she has developed – Optimising the use of internal team resources.

 

Other organisations are developing this further in cross training and up skilling programmes.  In Grant Thornton for example, (as noted from People Management’s 30^th July edition- page 12)  staff have the opportunity to move from areas of the business  where work has dropped off and re-training in new areas where skills and resource are still needed.  Their “clearr” forum is based on an admirable set of values and are intended to promote them – collaboration, leadership, excellence, agility, responsibility and respect.

It is encouraging to note, although there have been a lot of job cuts that organisations are clearly trying where possible to avoid this.  Employees are valuable assets to a company having key skills and knowledge that in some cases have been developed over many years.  To lose these skills through job cuts can only be detrimental in the end for the organisation concerned.  It is in times like these that we need to be more creative and realise the wealth of resource and skills we actually have, making the most of it.

 

As always we are keen to hear your feedback/comments.  Are you experiencing a new creative drive to avoid job cuts?

Ban Facebook from the workplace? No... employ someone to use it, silly!

Why all bosses should copy me and ban Facebook from the workplace (by Theo Paphitis) and Whitehall looks for a £120,000 'Twittercrat'; these are two stories from the Daily Mail which were brought to my attention this morning.

In the first article, Theo describes how witnessing his employees wasting time on the social networking site, Facebook, has led him to ban it completely from his business.  He goes on to highlight a few statistics and uses these as the basis for his overarching opinion that all bosses should be like him.

Is this really the answer?  Theo supposes that by banning Facebook, public sector and corporate employees would spend that time productively instead - for those of us who have been around long enough to know what office life was like before Facebook, it is obvious that some people will waste time regardless of the media at their disposal.  Aside from that, in some instances, social media like Twitter are actually complementary to an individual's professional pursuits and development.  For example, I have successfully used Twitter to find answers to technical SharePoint administration problems which I have encountered.

The opinion often conveyed in management and human resource science, which is informed by more than sensationalist tabloid headlines, recommends that the issue of time wasting by employees be addressed by performance measures, benchmarks and suitable coporate guidelines on the use of corporate resources.  An employee should then be reviewed against these cirteria. 

The second story (Whitehall looks for a £120,000 'Twittercrat'), gives a starkly contrasting image, to that of Theo's ideal, of the government actually paying someone to use social media at work!  Of course, this headline is typically sensationalist and if one cares to read a little further, the role is actually a little less shallow than that.  It is for a "deputy director of digital engagement" - which can be dubbed as the public sector's equivalent of digital marketing.  The validity of this role for me personally lies in whether it is used as another mouthpiece for government propaganda, as the Conservatives claim, or whether it is used to engage with the public at large in a way conducive to the betterment of our society.

Shooresh Golzari

Consultant, TFPL