As the writer Horace Walpole observed of the Three Princes of Serendip, “they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of…” and these discoveries actually saved their lives. Users of your ILS/KM solution may find it to be a lifesaver—if it enables true discovery; that is, if it enables finding, not just searching.

In discussions with our archives clients, we often hear this: “I’m using a system that an old colleague built for me and it doesn’t work well. There’s no documentation, and the guy who built it is no longer with our organization.” Why is this a problem? Let us count the ways.

Photo: David Ohmer

Many of our Argus clients are feeling inspired by the achievements of Thomas P. Campbell, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who among many things, is an advocate for digitizing museum content and publishing online exhibits.

Due to popular demand, we are reprising a webinar presented by museum evangelist and strategist Nina Simon, where she drew upon research for her book, The Art of Relevance, and offered substantive, creative, and inspiring advice on how to increase your organization’s relevance to communities you hope to engage. Join us on February 2nd and see how Nina’s advice applies whether you work in a library, a museum, a theater, a park, an academic institution or a corporation.

The Arizona State Archives collects and preserves permanent public records, historical manuscripts, photographs and other materials that contribute to the understanding of Arizona history. With six professionals overseeing their many collections of government materials, private manuscript collections, oral histories and photos, documenting everything and making it accessible is a huge challenge. With CuadraSTAR SKCA (STAR Knowledge Center for Archives), their collections are now more visible and available than ever before.

 

One of the many positive aspects of solo librarianship is the diversity of the practitioners. Among them are law librarians, medical librarians, corporate/special librarians and archivists, to name just a few. This diversity helps solo librarians to better help one another, solving common problems and sharing/implementing best practices.

We recently offered a webinar presented by museum evangelist and strategist Nina Simon, where she drew upon research for her book, The Art of Relevance, and offered substantive, creative, inspiring and practical advice on how to increase your organization’s relevance to the communities you hope to engage. Interestingly, in Nina’s role as speaker, she offers advice that applies whether you work in a library, a museum, a theater, a park, an academic institution or a corporation. It’s all relevant.

The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) is a national professional organization with a $45.5 million budget representing more than 95,000 members. Its goal is to foster advancements in physical therapy practice, research, and education. APTA is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with more than 180 employees serving APTA members, and has a small library staff that delivers large library results, with Inmagic Presto.

Baylor University is a private Christian university and nationally ranked research institution in Texas with more than 16,000 students, and multiple libraries and archives maintained by approximately 30 staff members. They have achieved significant impact using Star Knowledge Center for Archives (SKCA) to manage their collections.

Could you lose your job to a robot? In an earlier post, I wrote about 10 Ways to Foil a Robot, which I hope was inspiring and optimistic. In reality, artificial intelligence is yet another tool for knowledge professionals—an arrow in the quiver.

People at organizations with underperforming KM platforms can really struggle to find information; unfortunately, they pretty much need to know exactly what they want and where it is, before they can find it. A great KM platform solves that problem.

If your organization relies on a shared drive or a DMS—or an underpowered knowledge management system—to house or reference critical information assets, that’s a real handicap. It means you can only retrieve valuable content if you know exactly what you want (and where it is), and that means you often have to rely on institutional memory.

Earlier this year, we presented a “KM Conversation” with knowledge management evangelist and expert Stan Garfield. “Gamification Accelerates KM Adoption” focused on using proven gamification techniques to encourage active participation in KM initiatives and venues. Earning membership in a “Circle of Excellence” can be a powerful knowledge exchange incentive.

Originally posted 1/15/2015

I left this year’s American Alliance of Museums (AAM) conference with its theme, “Innovation Edge,” rumbling through my brain. My old Webster’s Dictionary defines innovation as:

1) the introduction of something new
2) a new idea, method, or device: novelty

My own definition is simpler: a new or better way of reaching a goal.

Many librarians choose to work on their own, inside many different types of organizations. All library skills—whether reference, cataloging, or collection development—are useful and valuable to both solo librarians and their users. However, there are challenges (both budgetary and organizational) to going it alone which require one-person library managers to seek out both a network and a professional development “support system.”

Does your organization’s mobile website lack the punch of your desktop version?

“Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. However, our ranking systems still typically look at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user. This can cause issues when the mobile page has less content than the desktop page because our algorithms are not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher.”
–Google Webmaster Central Blog, Mobile-first Indexing, November 4th, 2016

As part of its new mobile-first strategy, Google will give preferential search rankings to “mobile-friendly" sites (sites optimized for mobile devices). This change will have a significant impact on search results.

Earlier this year, we presented a “KM Conversation” with knowledge management evangelist and expert Stan Garfield. “Gamification Accelerates KM Adoption” focused on using gamification techniques—including awarding points and point scoring—to help build user engagement and ensure your KM platform is vibrant and widely leveraged within your organization.

We will be offering a free webinar on November 15th that promises a substantive and thoughtful discussion full of creative, inspiring and practical advice on how to increase your organization’s relevance to the communities you hope to engage.