We interviewed the Research and Information Coordinator for a publicly funded trade association and leader in workplace health and safety education, to find out how they leverage Presto for DB/Textworks to widely disseminate information that helps companies fulfill the vision of workplaces without injuries, illnesses, or fatalities. Please read on for more information about Presto’s far reaching impact.

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.

This is the fifth post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. No matter the organization size, sector or geography, the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals. Please read on for our thoughts on the fifth most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—dependence on the IT department, or on costly vendor services.

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.

This is the fourth post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. The same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the fourth most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—lack of integration with other critical systems.

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.

This is the third post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. (You can find the first post here and the second post here.) We observe that the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the third most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—permissions management.

This is the second post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. We observe that the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the second most prevalent opportunity for special library growth.

During our conversations with clients, prospective clients and information management professionals across the globe, we observe that the same six challenges to library success and sustainability keep surfacing, no matter the organization size, sector or geography. In this blog post series, we’ll explore these challenges one by one.

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.

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.

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.