American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) volunteer surgeons operate on thousands of patients worldwide, and they and their teams use Inmagic Presto and DB/TextWorks in very innovative ways to document patient data and outcomes. Read on to learn more about the FACE TO FACE database.

During my career as a KM practitioner, I developed a profile of the most effective knowledge managers. It’s included in my upcoming book on promoting knowledge management initiatives within the corporate world.

I was speaking with a client about faceted search. (For more information on that subject see my blog post “A Firm Foundation for Faceted Search”). We discussed the need for well-organized and well-structured data to support useful faceted searching. The client challenged that need, and stated she had read and been told that some forms of guided navigation require no data preparation—and will work with completely unstructured data. In this post I’ll compare and contrast two approaches to searching.

In my upcoming book on promoting knowledge management initiatives within the corporate world, I share a number of useful KM components that can be mixed and matched to suit an organization’s specific needs. Please read on for a sneak preview.

As discussed in my last post, special libraries now exist in a highly competitive information marketplace, where business users of content have lots of options. Michael Porter—in his seminal book Competitive Strategy—stated that in a competitive marketplace there are three strategies that make sense: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. What does this imply for special library strategies?

In my upcoming book on promoting knowledge management initiatives within the corporate world, I include a chapter on communication. Timely communication is critical to successfully introducing a new KM initiative and keeping the organization informed of implementation progress.

In my last post, I wrote about how I learned a difficult lesson: hard work and quality output must be in service of a solid business strategy if individuals, roles and departments are to thrive. As you know, keeping your special library vibrant and sustainable requires adaptation and lots of hard work. In addition, are you thinking strategically about how to make your library the best that it can be? Please read on for some ideas.

My first job was at Data Resources Inc. (DRI) working as a consultant with a large Fortune 25 conglomerate. My role was to provide industry information and sales forecasting via timesharing to its various business units by building a model that the customer would run (ideally) for years to come. Whenever the customer ran the model, DRI generated revenue. Sounds great, right? But I learned a difficult lesson about how things really work.

In his upcoming book on promoting KM initiatives within the corporate world, author and KM expert Stan Garfield shares a number of useful KM methodologies that enable colleagues to take advantage of proven practices and see the value of knowledge management to the organization. Read on for a sneak preview.

If you are planning to buy a KM system, or want to migrate/upgrade, you need to think about your organization’s needs both strategically and tactically in order to select the right platform. Here are 10 questions to ask yourself that will help.

In Neil Olonoff’s excellent post “Knowledge Management Tools That Aren’t Tools,” he takes us back to the basic purpose and definition of a tool: something that is supposed to make work easier. It’s easy to agree with that, yet there are so many KM “tools” that only complicate matters, and make work harder. And there in a nutshell is the biggest barrier to user adoption.

In his upcoming book on proven practices for promoting KM initiatives within the corporate world, author and KM expert Stan Garfield shares 11 attributes of a successful knowledge ecosystem drawn from one of his clients, a large multinational technology company.

Although these attributes are drawn from a technology company, they are relevant to organizations of all types and sizes. This is what success looks like.

The Center for Transportation Research (CTR) is a multidisciplinary and multimodal research institute at the University of Texas at Austin. It is recognized as one of the leading university-based transportation research centers in the world, working to promote cutting-edge developments in transportation science and technology that ultimately save lives. It’s imperative that this research be broadly shared.

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. Librarians and knowledge managers who make content available to the public, external researchers, funders, et al., through an organizational website must take this into consideration.

How many collaborators does it take to change a light bulb?

I was just visiting with a client and we had a long discussion about the benefits of collaboration in KM.

I’m reading a wonderful book at the moment, called “The Little Paris Bookshop,” by Nina George. In it, one of the characters says, “The others all left with the riddle unsolved; none of them asked the right questions. Asking questions is an art.” In my experience, that is very true …and the ability to practice that art in support of a patron’s or user’s needs is a librarian’s secret weapon.

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.

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.