tfpl blog

Archive rescue - back to basics

Author: John Davies
TFPL, Senior Records and Information Management Consultant

I was interested to read a note from the British Records Association about its new project to identify and make recommendations about how to deal with risks to historical records held in established repositories as well as to those not (yet) in held in archival custody.  The BRA survey is looking for responses from archives in London and in the East of England.  This type of work is exactly what the BRA was set up to do before World War II and it is the work it has done so well since then.

I read the note on the day that the Coalition Government began to announce the list of potential closures amongst government agencies and quangos. Here are potential archives at risk.  Will parent departments have the resources to manage the often important records that will be left behind?  Debatable.  I hope the BRA project notes some of this before it is too late.

If you are in a position to take part in the survey, the web link is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WLZ56WZ

Health Libraries Group (HLG) Conference 19/20 July, Manchester

Author: Vivienne Winterman
Senior Knowledge and Information Management Consultant

The theme of the conference ‘keeping information centre stage amid changing scenery’ was an apt title in the current climate. Pauline Blagdon, Chair of HLG, stressed in her opening remarks that ‘information is essential’ and the conference and individual presentations illustrated a variety of ways how information professionals were contributing to the work of front line-staff to show this. Dr Gillian Leng, Deputy Chief Exec. from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) opened the conference by talking about the aims of NICE to develop quality standards and guidance on specific topic areas, using NICE Pathways to map all of this, and the vision for NICE Evidence to be a single portal for health information to integrate both the ‘evidence’ data and the information-rich electronic resources (e-journals, bibliographic databases) previously available from the National Library of Health (NLH). The value from NICE would be measured in terms of the outcomes for patients by providing this knowledge and information to staff, patients and the public in a meaningful way. 

The conference programme consisted of several parallel sessions with papers and case studies showing:

• Development of LIS at a strategic level.
• How Library and Information Services (LIS) were working to raise and keep a high profile, develop the right skills, using the drivers for change as opportunities for LIS and not threats.
• Introduction of web 2.0 into the daily work of NHS staff and the use of IT.
• Development of e-learning platforms, coaching sessions to introduce information literacy, with an example of where clinical IT trainers had been brought into the LIS group.
• Examples of collaboration in delivering public health information by bringing together: surveillance data and the literature, - analysts and LIS.
• Successful toolkits that had been developed, including those for: measuring the impact of LIS; strategies for LIS professionals.
• How change could be managed.

Overall the impression is that there are so many examples of good practice where information professionals are demonstrating their value to, and working with, clinicians and other front line staff. This learning and good practice needs to be proactively shared across Trusts, SHAs, public health and social care organisations so that our specialist knowledge and value is unquestionable and the impact on patient treatment evident and measurable.

TFPL Connect - Depaul UK Update!

Author: Nina Benscher
TFPL, Networks and Events Manager

Following up the outcomes of our last Connect meeting (see here) we held the first meeting of the Steering Group for the Depaul UK Knowledge Management (KM) Challenge at TFPL this week. As agreed at Connect, we are looking to pull together a package of support and advice that address some of the key information and knowledge challenges currently facing Depaul UK.

Over a working lunch, we had a very informative discussion that set into the context the challenges that Paul Marriott, CEO Depaul UK, had identified as the major areas for attention for taking his knowledge strategy forward.  This discussion lead to a decision that in order to create projects that are tangible and actively support Depaul UK, a visit to the charity to experience first hand how it works would be necessary. Therefore John Davies, TFPL Consultant and Connect member, Iain Simpson will be visiting both the London and Newcastle offices of Depaul UK next week.

Once they have seen how knowledge and information is shared through the organisation and spoken to a range of staff members and young people, an interim report will be put together to detail the best way to manage this moving forward. It should make for a very interesting and insightful read!

We would like to thank Emma King and Iain Simpson for their time this week and next, it was greatly appreciated by all.

Value and Impact

Author: Claire Valentine

TFPL, Training Manager

This was the topical subject of the recent LIS Research Coalition conference held at the British Library earlier this week.  The day was introduced by Dr Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network, followed by an informative and thought provoking talk by Andrew Dillon from the University of Texas.  Andrew’s points included: the importance of considering human behaviour and not technology as the focus for looking at adding value, the importance of collaboration across disciplines encompassing information science, human computer interaction, computer science etc.  Full coverage of his and others talks have been expertly recorded on the LIS conference page - http://lisresearch.org/conference-2010/

Next followed the ‘One Minute Madness’ which I was pleased to take part in. A fantastic idea organised by Miggie Pickton and Hazel Hall, where participants were given exactly 60 seconds to present their topic of research around the question – “Evidence, Value and Impact – What’s on your mind?”  21 people took part and most accomplished getting their point across in the required time, one person even experimented with music and another presented in the style of a fairy tale!  (It was filmed and you can view it on the LIS Research Coalition website). 

Despite it being a nerve racking experience waiting in line to go on stage, I felt it was a great exercise.  It meant I had to focus my mind to get important points across in order to develop interest for my area of research.  I thought this exercise was particularly important to the topic of the day.  It is definitely a key skill in promoting value and making an impact.   All too often time is short when getting to speak with key stakeholders to get your argument across, whether it is to avoid cost cutting or to get buy in for your service provision or new business idea.

After a delicious lunch and plenty of networking it was on to do some work in the breakout sessions.  These were facilitated workshops designed to discuss the challenges faced by Information professionals in today’s environment, where limited budgets and resources are fast becoming the norm.  There were discussions around measuring the value by first measuring use of services before new initiatives were implemented.  This then allows for a more accurate demonstration of the value added afterwards.  In addition, another topic was how we can take a different look at failure to learn from previous mistakes and how this knowledge could then be communicated in a confidential environment.  We also looked at the importance and benefits of research and how to gain benefits through promotion of services and collaborative work across disciplines.

For me, ways to work cross collaboratively to the benefit of all concerned, as well as looking at failure in a more positive way, were topics I could see really making a difference in today’s working environment.  I believe it would help us work more effectively to be able to learn from mistakes.  To work across organisational silos would really make a difference in what we do by incorporating different perspectives and knowledge making us more innovative.

The day ended with a summing up and review by Charles Oppenheim.  The day for me was valuable and a chance not only to connect with like minded researchers but also to gain different perspectives on the challenges posed in these tough times.  Thank you to all those who have offered help for my research topic for my dissertation and to Hazel for recommending the day to me.

Connecting our knowledge to make a difference

Author: Claire Valentine

TFPL, Training Manager

This was the topic of our latest TFPL Connect meeting which we held last night.  In a change to the usual format we invited Paul Marriott, CEO of Depaul UK, the largest charity for homeless young people in the UK to present his company and his challenges for developing an information and knowledge management strategy.  Our members were then asked for their ideas and advice on how he could meet these challenges.

The group broke out with enthusiasm into several different teams and each were assigned a particular challenge which ranged from providing staff and volunteers with a shared vision to addressing how to encourage information sharing in an environment where confidentially brings much needed trust to relationships and information sharing is not the norm.

Key themes to come out of the evening were:

• development of partnerships with like minded organisations to share best practice and obtain help with providing more services such as temporary accommodation
• a rating system for information posted to understand what is useful and what isn’t
• use of social media in various different forms for communicating with the homeless
• use of mentors to work closely with new staff to share knowledge more effectively

Paul was keen to consider each and every suggestion and promised to feedback later in the year with what they had taken from the evening and been able to implement.

The evening ended with a chance to network and share ideas further over a glass of wine and nibbles, with further ideas being added to the documentation which we will present more formally back to Paul.

Feedback from those that attended was that they had felt the session was immensely positive and liked the idea of contributing to an organisation that needed advice.

We will be in touch soon with further details on the report which will be made available on the TFPL Connect members’ area.  On a final note many thanks to all that attended and contributed to making the meeting a success last night.

Networking at SLA Europe

Author: Luisa Jefford
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Director - Public Sector Recruitment

As a Recruiter I have always understood the value of a network.  It's an essential part of my job, it's how I get to meet and greet the people I am working with, it's also how I build my own professional brand and that of my organisation.  We have an array of technical tools to help us network virtually these days, my preferred choices have always been and will always be Linked In for professional contacts and Facebook for friends.  However, meeting people face to face, particularly new contacts, is why I am a regular attendee at industry network events.

This week I have networked at the SLA European Chapter SLA(m) meeting.   The meeting was sponsored by SLA Europe, FreePint and TFPL and the venue was a funky bar in Blackfriars.  I was told it would be a great opportunity to build and cement existing relationships and indeed it lived up to expectations.
 
The evening kicked off in the usual fashion of being greeted by the SLA team.  I was presented with a badge which has space for me to pose two discussion points, one professional and one personal, was then handed a drink and off I went to work the room.
 
As a seasoned networker I find it relatively easy to approach old friends and colleagues at these events but the structure of this evening really did allow me to step outside my comfort zone and chat to new people.  There were certainly some common themes for the night, outsourcing and the future of the KIM profession and on a more personal note there was lots of discussion around the recent election, the ash cloud and holidays.
 
It was a great night, lively discussion, a great venue and many enthusiastic networkers so I am sure I wasn't alone in my enjoyment.

Conference announcement: 'Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010'

Author: Darron Chapman
TFPL, Managing Director

'Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010'

 

Monday 28th June, 10:30-16:15

British Library Conference Centre, London, UK

Organised by the Library and Information Science Research Coalition

£100 (including VAT, lunch and refreshments)

http://lisresearch.org/conference-2010/

 

 

The Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference ‘Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010’ takes place on Monday 28th June at the British Library Conference Centre in London. This one day event will consider perspectives on the LIS research landscape and will appeal to all LIS research stakeholders, ranging from funders to publishers, as well as practitioner researchers and academics. 

 

There will be access to expert speakers and peers from public, academic, special and corporate libraries, the health service, higher education and the corporate sector. Delegates can develop their knowledge and increase awareness of different aspects of research in the context of the conference themes - evidence, value and impact. Related research priorities will also be considered on the day e.g. identification of research opportunities, collaborators and funding; methods for enhancing the relevance of research outputs in services delivery; avenues for publishing research output; techniques for integrating research activities into everyday work practice.

 

The conference format includes a number of presentations including two keynotes and a "one minute madness" session in which delegates may opt to actively participate . There will be facilitated breakout sessions and opportunities to discuss LIS research issues informally during breaks. 

 

For more detailed information, the conference programme and delegate bookings please see the conference web site at http://lisresearch.org/conference-2010/, and the registration page at http://www.event-logistics.co.uk/lisrc10/lisrc10_registration.html

The Library of Congress to archive all "Tweets"

Author: Shooresh Golzari
TFPL, Consultant

According to this BBC article, The Library of Congress is set to archive every Tweet that has ever been and every Tweet there ever will be. In effect, this is an attempt to preserve the [social] historical context around world events (i.e.) what people were saying, for example:

• before and after Barrack Obama was elected as US president in 2008;
• the drama around the Iranian elections of 2009 as it was unfolding;
• or in reaction to the earthquake disaster of 2010 in Haiti. 

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service, which allows users to post their thoughts on anything in no more than 140 characters; the number of users is well in excess of 60 million and ever growing and there are reportedly up to 55 million "Tweets" per day.  My first reaction to this news, given that number, was to wish any future historian luck in finding any gems amongst all the drivel. But... I then remembered the clever search mechanism built into Twitter ("hashtags") and Google's hand in enhancing search in Twitter is apparently also being utilised by The Library of Congress.

RMS Conference 2010 - Martin Sanderson's highlights

Author: Martin Sanderson
TFPL, Senior Consultant

Returning from the conference and stuck on a London train between Rugby and Milton Keynes with a promise of going backwards due to system failure seemed analogous to how some records managers think about how they find themselves in their organisation today. That is until we had the pleasure of  Mr Mc Gee’s   SUMO’s  Key Note Address burdening me with listening to that  inner voice telling me to ‘Shut Up and Move On’ – (read his book). Cursing National Rail and  wallowing in misery as I look out of the train window at empty fields,  coping with the  guilt of thinking myself  victim to National  Rail - What  to do but to ‘move on’,  so I did and began to write a blog of my more positive experience at this year’s RMS Conference in Manchester.

A great start with the SUMO opening address that for once amused stimulated and had nothing to do with records management or government edicts.  Quickly back to reality however with a whirlwind overview of Information Assurance from Paul Dodgson.  It seemed to me from Paul’s talk that Information Assurance is a move to take a holistic view of l information within an organisation with the ambition to resolve a number of requirements such as information integrity, confidentiality, non repudiation and authentication. It sounded very similar to records management to me whilst introducing a wider scope of information than what RMers normally engage with.  I was slightly disturbed by Paul’s rather mechanistic approach to information assurance as we all know from experience that information is not a neutral entity lending itself to process management but has political, social, behavioural and psychological factors to be taken account of.  I was left to wonder how much government tax money is going to spend on mandating the assuring of all that information and to what effect.

My next highlight was Dr Reeve’s presentation describing his journey from Records Manager to Information Manager accompanied with suitable recognition and reward.  It was heart warming to listen to someone who simply (but obviously effectively) applies his many skills and knowledge to provide his organisation with pragmatic solutions to deliver positive outcomes. It confirms what I have always thought that success comes out of what you do not what label you give to it or where you sit in your organisation.

Ibrahim Hasan lived up to my expectations with an informative update on FOI with a large splash of humour which all appreciated except perhaps any politicians that may have been lurking in the audience.

My final session was Doug Miles from AIIM Europe who presented the latest survey results (great for presentations and reports) gathered by AIIM from across the globe.  The big message was the growing importance of Information Architecture.  I was much amused by the reported suggestion from ECM providers that the lack of IA experts and skills was the reason why ECM solutions were not gathering the pace expected by the big vendors.  Although few in the audience claimed to do IA I wanted to tell Doug that TFPL had been training and consulting in IA for a number of years.   We see Information Architecture as the key to providing the strategic map and holistic view of information making sense of an organisation’s information landscape from which to develop a sensible IA that can fit with an organisation’s business and technical architectures.   Personally I think this is one area that records managers should be taking very seriously as they are well placed to fill this apparent gap in the skills market.   Sorting out repositories, designing data models, metadata and the like, auditing information assets and collections, mapping information flows as well as understanding the user interface are the bread and butter of IA. IA is the platform for RMers to play a strategic role in their organisations.

A test of a good conference is not to have to sit through a boring or irrelevant session so I give full marks to this year’s conference.  Congratulations to the RMS Committee for still managing to attract the numbers in such difficult times and making the conference a pleasurable and valuable experience. I will leave the views on the dinner pots to others but I must say that having sweet followed by main course followed by starter was a new experience for me.

Gartner latest thinking on Information Management roles supports TFPL thinking

Author: John Davies
TFPL, Senior Consultant

It’s interesting to read that Gartner has identified four “new” information management roles that IT departments will need to establish, in order to meet the “business demand for IT-driven growth and innovation. Gartner Analyst, Debra Logan believes that the “future" of IT lies outside the IT department. Increasingly CIOs are coming from “the business” and “users” are taking control of their own information delivery infrastructure.” By the end of 2010, Gartner predicts that 40% of people, who report directly or indirectly into IT, will have substantial business and non-IT experience”.

Ms Logan’s four “new” roles are:

1. Legal and IT Hybrids, who will create policies, design and execute discovery exercises and act as bridges between the legal and IT functions. More interestingly, these new staff will move to implement corporate retention schedules in the digital world and on e-mail.

2. Digital Archivists, who will apply traditional archivist skills to digital records. Her assertion that “suitable candidates can be found in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools or existing employees nearing the end of their careers” is, we think, debatable but poses an important question for those designing curricula in these areas.

3. Business Information Managers, who Logan seems to think have never existed. Information Managers, Information Analysts have been working for years in, amongst others, the finance and pharmaceutical sectors making Gartner’s expectation that “20% of companies [will] employ business information managers by 2013, compared with 5% in 2009” a somewhat surprising assertion.

4. Enterprise Information Architects who will “create taxonomies, document templates and data models”. Again, not a new role as far as TFPL is concerned but perhaps just not visible enough.

Logan rightly states that IT organisations have not changed to respond to changes in business and demographic trends and concludes that the “role of technology will now be to augment human contributions, rather than automate them. The only way to manage information better is to manage information better with people.”

Our own research has mapped the emergence of new roles like these alongside a continuing demand for more traditional skill sets. In a world where managing huge volumes of content is a growing challenge for the IT community, well-trained and appropriately-skilled information management professionals will become increasingly influential in all organisations.