Ballad in Plain E

One of the coolest things I get to do as a member of the LTAIG committee is put together our new(ish) newsletter. Our third issue was published yesterday, and is available here. Two of my law library technician colleagues and fellow VALL members, Kathy Barry and Christina Tribe, generously contributed articles for this issue.

Kathy’s recollection of her library tech program practicums should be of interest to students who are at that stage in their own studies, and is a great reminder of how important it is to try out whatever you can while you’re in school - I had no idea I would wind up in a law library, but I got my foot in the door during a practicum at Faskens, and I’ve been working in one ever since graduation.

Christina’s recap of SLA/CASLIS seminar “A Google Smorgasboard” provides a thorough overview of what you missed if you were unable to attend, as I was. One of the speakers at that seminar was Eugene Barsky, who will be presenting “WIKing in your library: a practical overview” at the October 19th VALL luncheon. Should be great!

I listen to Z95 in the morning while I’m getting ready for work. For me, one of the more entertaining segments is Battle of the Sexes - not because I really care who comes out looking smarter, but because it’s interesting which questions they think will be challenging for each sex. The guys get questions about soap operas, cosmetics, and baby products. The ladies get questions about cars, sports, and Maxim magazine (the questions usually remind me of the classic SNL sketch Food, Sex, or Cars, but I digress). The other day, they asked the woman this question:

Where would you find an RSS feed?

a) In an army mess hall

b) On a farm

c) On the internet

I was rooting for her, really I was, but perhaps not surprisingly, she chose the wrong answer. I think she chose “mess hall”. Anyway, whether or not the ladies clean up on those tech questions, RSS is creeping is slowly but surely making its way into the vernacular.

Knowing that in coming weeks, my boss and I are holding several hands-on RSS workshops for the members of our firm, our research lawyer handed me a copy of the crappy commuter daily 24 Hours with the Buzz Bishop column circled. The headline read “Tap into the news feed” and he pointed out that it was about RSS, which made our upcoming sessions quite timely.

Fortunately, I didn’t get too out of hand with the mocking that anyone who admits to reading 24 Hours deserves, and actually read the column. Good thing, because lo and behold, ol’ Buzz was talking about about a service I’d never heard of, called Feedwhip. Feedwhip allows you to generate makeshift feeds for sites that don’t offer RSS. I did a little looking digging and found out that Feedwhip has been around for quite a while. I’ve set up a couple feeds to see how they compare to monitoring from WatchThatPage, which I’m fond of but would love to get out of my inbox. We’ll see how Feedwhip works - I’ll report back on that in a few days.

In other RSS news, I came across Jason Eiseman’s RSS Tutorials for Law Librarians (although as Jason says, they’re not limited to law librarians - they’d be helpful to anyone starting out with RSS). We watched them today, as inspiration for our upcoming sessions, and they’re extremely well done. Way to go, Jason!

Understanding Web Project Management: Build a Better Relationship with IT – Christina Zeller, VPL’s InfoAction
 Christina Zeller is well-qualified to talk about working with IT on web projects, and her presentation was full of useful (if not overwhelming!) tips. The main points I took from the presentation:

• Planning takes the most time but really is crucial. It turns out that the Gantt chart, that pesky organization tool we were forced to use in college, is widely used and pretty much can’t be lived without during large projects
• If you have a year-long project, it’s much easier to think about it in terms of weeks
• There’s all sorts of PM & IT terminology you should be familiar with: work package, work breakdown structure, requirements document, resources (what a revolting term for “people”!!), environment, work, duration (fixed or variable), dependencies, deliverables
• Where you delegate or let others make decisions, reinforce that you trust them to choose the appropriate solution
• Status meetings should occur once a week, or more often if needed

On a familiar note, according to Christina, the project kick-off is essential, and there must be snacks. Same with the launch – treat it like the celebration it is!
 
 
The Human Factor of CM – Rahel Anne Bailie, Strategy A Business Consulting
 
Bailie began the presentation with a series of great quotes. This was my favourite: Content management is 50% change management, 40% process control, 10% technology (Howard McQueen).
 
The top reason CM fails? Resistance in corporate culture. If everyone is on board, they’ll find a way to make it work even if the CMS is crappy. Often we’re too busy worrying about process management that we forget about the human performance side.  This is troublesome when you consider that 10-15% of the population just don’t “do” change. At all.
 
If the CMS project is a second or third attempt, people will be gun shy. That is why having a communication plan (and then sticking to it) is crucial. During the training phase, create a “wish list” from complaints, and air technical issues openly.
 
 

“Content Analysis: Methods and Mentoring” was a session by Chiara Fox, an information architect at Adaptive Path. Fox’s presentation was definitely the most engaging and practical of all the sessions I attended. Content analysis is the process of assessing the nature of content on a given web site, but can also be extended to other types of content, say, the signage in your library.  It is the study of patterns and relationships. You perform content analysis so that you know what you are working with before you rip it apart.
 
The three main parts of CA are:

1. Content inventory
2. Content audit
3. Content map

The first two parts can be done using a spreadsheet, but the third is more of a visual representation. It’s what you want to show to the higher level people within the organization because it gives the overall picture.
 
Other noteworthy points:

• In content analysis, you want to watch for ROT: content that is redundant, outdated, or trivial.
• Generally, do don’t want to mess with the format or function of certain types of self-explanatory content, like press releases, shopping carts, contact info, etc. People already have an expectation of how those types of content work.
• A great resource for this topic is the “polar bear book” (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web)

Lastly, I can’t remember in what context it arose, but Fox said something about Google Maps being full of “Ajax-y goodness”. Nice!

Xpediant’s Farida Hasanali presented “Implementing a Content Management System: Do Your Homework!”. The most important message I drew from this session was to avoid using technology for technology’s sake. Hasanali discussed explicit knowledge versus tacit knowledge, and how they fit into CM and KM systems. Explicit knowledge is easy to replicate and share and contributes to efficiency. On the other hand, tacit knowledge is hard to articulate and hard to steal, leads to competency, and provides a strong competitive advantage.

KM=tacit knowledge, concerned with the message
CM=explicit knowledge, concerned with the medium

That said, CM deals with the output of KM, and encompasses people, processes, technology and the content itself.

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Susan Tyrrell, an enterprise content management specialist from Calgary, presented “If You Don’t Do It, Someone Else Will: Why Librarians Should Become Content Managers”. Her talk was quite general in nature and not specific to web, but worthwhile nevertheless. Tyrrell submits that libraries and CMS are similar in a lot of ways: content is tagged (catalogued), classification schemes and taxonomies are used, including controlled vocabularies, and generally they are self-serve systems, although they are developed and maintained by experts. CMS present additional challenges, though: there are so many places where technology can fail or go wrong, there are compatibility and integration issues, and the human aspect: it takes time, training, and effort to participate in a CMS. Evangelism is a critical part of a successful CMS. This involves marketing, tying in ECM with other systems and projects, identifying and mentoring champions, and listening carefully for ideas for improvements and then actually acting on them. According to Tyrrell, traditional library skills are a natural fit for CM projects, since we already have experience with taxonomy, metadata, search, and reference interview skills, which come in handy during the selection, design, and support of a CMS. We also experienced in training and orientation techniques, and know a thing or two about marketing.

That’s not to say that we are perfectly suited to CM projects: there are many areas where we can improve (skill gap). Project management — as a formal process (scheduling, scope definition, and change management) — is often foreign to us. We also need to become comfortable with IT infrastructure and jargon, so we can speak the same language as the techies. Tyrrell asserts that ECM projects often fail because they are lead by IT people, who generally favour products that look slick and are full of “features”, rather than selecting a product based on what the business requires. And ironically, the IT people rarely the ones using the CM, so it is difficult for them to understand user frustrations.

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Incidentally, I was talking to Susan before the keynote and it turns out she used to teach Records Management at SAIT. I told her what a rigmorole the class had been in the years leading up to, and to some extent the year we took the course, and she cringed, remembering that it had been somewhat stressful to teach the course. I guess being a sessional instructor can be quite gruelling! It made me hope that the year ahead of us wasn’t too hard on theirs.

Speaking of SAIT, at the conference I ran into my old cataloguing teacher, Darlene Taylor! And speaking of gruelling, I know for certain that cataloguing must be a very challenging class to teach - to teach well, anyway, as she did. Darlene has the patience of a saint! One of the neatest things about going to conferences is running into your old teachers. They seem calm and caring as ever, but somehow much more human, and they marvel at how you’ve grown out of “student mode” — it’s a good feeling.

I attended Day 1 of the SLA NorthWest Regional Conference at the Fairmont Vancouver today. The conference’s theme is Content Management - Converging Information, People and Technology. The timing was perfect since I recently became one of the adminstrators of the firm’s intranet.

The keynote speaker was Bob Boiko, businessman, educator, and author of The Content Management Bible (which has an entertaining number of statistically improbable phrases …mmm…inclusion metadata…) and the forthcoming Laughing at the CIO. He spoke enthusiastically and knowledgeably during his presentation entitled “What to Shout about Information Management”.  He made some very good (not to mention inspiring!) points that I will summarize here, with my thoughts included. If you ever have the chance, I would highly recommend seeing Bob speak. The session was high-energy and the perfect way to kick off the conference.

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Let’s call a spade a spade.  Why call it content management? It’s a term whose use is perpetuated by vendors who want to sell you a system. (When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail!) What we’re really talking about is information, so let’s call it that. The term “content” is constrained and connotates something exclusive and mysterious. We need to take back the term “information”.

There is an strange disconnect between the way we think we feel about information and the way we treat it in business. Most people believe that knowledge is power and content is king, but we don’t behave that way. 

Case in point: we love information. We want more and more of it, all the information we can get our hands on. But God forbid we should have to pay for it.  (So true!)

What would it look like if we treated information as importantly as we treat money? What would happen if, in business, we actually treated knowledge like the asset that we claim it is? 

So here’s what Boiko says our strategy should be: “If we deliver the right information to the right people in the right ways, it will help us meet our goals”.

When thinking about the “right way” to get the information out, we have to be aware that there isn’t just one way, there are a lot of them, and we need to master them all if we want to be successful.

One fantastic thing point Boiko made was that we need to put the ”I” in “IT”. Neither needs to be bigger than the other, but the “T” should serve the “I”: it needs to exist in the context of the information that needs to be delivered. This is frustrating to the “T” people because with technology there is a mechanical solution. It either works or it doesn’t. It is finite and measurable. There is no such thing with information. It is not tangible, and it is not concrete.

Boiko discussed how CM is really in its infancy. We get frustrated with the challenges we face when dealing with information: we think everything needs to be “digital and deliverable to everywhere in the world” - but why SHOULD we be able to do this? The concept of CM has only been around for 10 or so years! According to Boiko, we’re not really in the information age yet, because we haven’t mastered and determined how to make it work right, every time. Until we can get those processes right, as in the manufacturing age, we’re really not in the information age. At least we’re not succeeding in it yet.

A company is run differently depending on who’s in charge. If the finance guy is calling the shots, everything will be about the bottom line. If it’s the marketing guy, maybe the MO is “spend money to make money”. What would happen if it was the “information guy” who was in charge? When information needs are the “top line”. Boiko says information belongs at that table, because it is as important as all those other departments.

The last reason on earth to implement a CMS is “We just have too much information, we have to put it somewhere”. Decide what the goal of the repository is and then figure out how to fill it. We have to learn to assign value to information. It shouldn’t be the thing we spend the least amount of money on.

Information professionals are perfect for this role and a natural fit. We have a fondness for information and pride in working with it. We believe that it serves a noble purpose. The other contenders don’t have those feelings toward information.

Most thought-provoking quote: “The Google we want is the one that gives us ONE piece of information - the one we want and need”

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Tomorrow: last third of the conference, with closing session with SLA president Rebecca Vargha. I’ll post summaries of the today’s other sessions, maybe tomorrow. Chiara Fox’s presentation on content analysis was fantastic. She actually used the term “AJAXy goodness”!

Well, here it is, my inaugural post. For a long time I resisted starting a “real” blog; I was content with my four-year-old LiveJournal, which suited me fine for (mostly) rants and (occasional) raves on all sorts of topics of a somewhat personal nature. So why’d I change my tune?

For starters, I finally decided to get serious about writing at a personal level (I’m taking a writing class at SFU) so I figure it’s about time to get serious about writing in my professional life, too. Also, the world we live in is getting too interesting not to be documented. Oh sure, there are naysayers skeptics who say “What’s wrong with keeping a paper journal, the kind you keep under lock and key?” (I believe that particular rant ended with something about a four-year-old brother hacking into said diary.) But since it has been such a pleasure and privilege to read others’ blogs, I feel that since I do have the inclination to do so, I owe it to my counterparts to contribute something to the blogosphere, not just take from it.

The first time I ever heard the word “blog”, I was enrolled in the SAIT library tech program, and it was 2002. Strangely enough, it wasn’t in one of my own classes that I heard the term. My good friend and then-roommate Marianne was studying at ACAD, and one day I sat in on one of her classes, because that day they would be discussing Christian Bok’s clever book Eunoia. The notes from the previous class’s lecture were on the board, and I noticed the word, with an explanation that it was a shortened form of “web log”. I didn’t realise for another year or two that the LiveJournal that I’d been keeping since that fall was, in fact, a blog. I started my LJ during the period when accounts were either invite-only or paid. There was, I suppose, an air of exclusivity, since you had to know someone who was willing to give you a code. Like Gmail was in the beginning. And now they’re practically liquidating them. Ubiquity.

Here what I think: good blogging takes commitment and enthusiasm, a love of writing, and then obviously something to write about. I sort of panicked about the commitment part for a bit, but now that I’ve taken the proverbial plunge, I think it’ll be ok. We live in pretty interesting times. “Ballad in Plain E”, the name of this blog, is a play on the name of one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs. “Ballad in Plain D” is both beautiful and heartbreaking, and interestingly, a song that Dylan wished he had never written and released. But there’s the rub: it can never be unwritten, and now exists for eternity. It is precisely that quality of the internet that makes it all at once appealing and terrifying. Depending on the context in which the information was created, and whatever subsequently unfolds, this clash of realities is fascinating, to say the least.

I make no such claims as to the eternal nature of my own words, but certainly hope that twenty years from now, I’ll be able to look back and see these words for what they are: a snapshot of how our world existed, in this crazy place we call “online”. And just as Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable, the internet’s influence on my generation is near impossible to overestimate. I’m not particularly qualified to talk about the hugeness that is the internet, nor should I spend much time trying to, since there’s plenty of great writing about that already. Nevertheless, working in the library field makes it possible to explore the information, business, and social aspects of the internet in ways that are more intimate than say, online banking, and more involved than oh, I don’t know…checking out weather.com.

So, thanks to all the great bloggers out there who said “no lock, no key” and let the world in on their thoughts and ideas on everything from crappy fonts to workplace politics and everything in between. I salute you and proudly join your ranks!