FreePint Newsletter 241 - Business Development + Global Collaborative Search
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FreePint
"Helping 79,000 people find, use, manage
and share work-related information"
ISSN 1460-7239 8th November 2007 No.241
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ONLINE FORMATTED HTML VERSION
IN THIS ISSUE
-------------
EDITORIAL
By Monique Cuvelier, Editor, FreePint
MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By Mary Ellen Bates and Amelia Kassel
FREEPINT BAR
In Association with Factiva, from Dow Jones
JINFO :: JOBS IN INFORMATION
Library & Archive Assistant
Senior Information Officer
Records Manager
Assistant Librarian - London
Sourcing Manager
Information Officer
Global Knowledge Co-ordinators (2)
TIPS ARTICLE
"Methodology Mixer: Professional and Business
Development for the Independent Worker"
By Joanna Ptolomey
REVIEW
"A Day in the Life:
Career Options in Library and Information Science"
Written by Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray
Reviewed by Kim Dority
FEATURE ARTICLE
"Global Collaborative Search: Watch This Space"
By Judith Koren
EVENTS, GOLD AND FORTHCOMING ARTICLES
CONTACT INFORMATION
ONLINE FORMATTED HTML VERSION
FULLY FORMATTED PDF VERSION
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* Islamic finance projects and infrastructure database
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Regional Research Series:
Jump-Start Your Project with an Insider's View
FUMSI Regional Research Reports will help research projects get off to
the right start, by highlighting quality sources -- free and paid --
for research in key regions.
Now available: European Union and Middle East/North Africa.
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*** ABOUT FREEPINT ***
FreePint is a global network of people who find, use, manage and share
work-related information. Members receive this free twice-monthly
newsletter, which is packed with tips, features and resources.
Joining FreePint is free at and connects
information practitioners around the world with resources, events and
answers to their tricky research and information questions at the
FreePint Bar, our free online forum: .
Please share FreePint with others by forwarding this message. The
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EDITORIAL
By Monique Cuvelier, Editor, FreePint
When I first decided to go to work for myself, people around me had
the strangest reactions. Friends would call or drop by at odd hours of
the day proposing coffee or marvelling at how much time I could
dedicate to the garden. My mother would regularly give me job tips:
the dry cleaner down the road was looking for counter help, or the
Safeway was looking for cashiers.
These people didn't seem to realise that I already had a job. They
thought of me on holiday working at my home office, and never
considered the reality.
That, as any independent information professional knows, is quite
different than a holiday. It's about paying bills, finding clients and
taking on a host of business-related activities that are utterly
foreign and new.
Joanna Ptolomey knows how it goes working for oneself, which is why
she wrote her feature on how independent professionals can create a
business development plan that pays. It will form the basis of a talk
at Online Information in December.
We also have two more previews into other presentations at Online.
Judy Koren, an information professional and professor at the
University of Haifa in Israel, writes about collaborative search. And
Mary Ellen Bates and Amelia Kassel contribute a special collection of
Tipples based on some of their tag-team presentations at Online.
Keep your eyes on FreePint in the next weeks for more sneak peeks of
presentations at Online. Then stop by and visit with the team. RSVP to
let us know you'll be there. You'll have a chance to join our 10th
birthday celebration, plus other events throughout the week.
Oh, and if you haven't already voted, drop what you're doing and
immediately vote for the FUMSI Award for Most Useful Article:
.
Sincerely,
Monique Cuvelier
Editor, FreePint
e: monique.cuvelier@freepint.com
w:
FreePint is a Registered Trademark of Free Pint Limited (R) 1997-2007
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Applying Web 2.0: Innovation, Impact and Implementation
** Online Information Conference Early Bird Discounts end 9 Nov **
4-6 December 2007, Olympia, London , UK
Learn from over 100 international information leaders including a
keynote presentation from Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia & Wikia
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* FUMSI Award for Most Useful Article *
Nominate today -- tell us how an article has helped you at work
We put practical information at your fingertips; tell us how it's made
a difference. Nominate your favourite FreePint article for the FUMSI
Citation for Most Practical Article.
Details and online nomination form:
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MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By Mary Ellen Bates and Amelia Kassel
Our workshop at the Online Information Conference on Monday, 3
December 2007 includes a review of specialised search techniques and a
comparison of the best resources for specific business research
projects. Here are our favourite business and company research
Tipples:
* OFFSTATS - Official Statistics on the Web
is a
well-organised portal for 'official' statistics sites around the
world. This includes government agencies, international
organisations, NGOs and similar sources.
* Country Insights
,
from the Canadian Centre for Intercultural Learning, contains
information on all aspects of business culture for countries
around the world.
* Credit reports are an oftentimes overlooked source for company
information among information professionals accustomed to using the
more traditional company research vendors. On CRF Service Provider
Resource Guide, 2007
, go to Credit
Reporting and Information Resources - International, pp. 42-45.
It profiles a dozen credit reporting companies with international
coverage.
* Skyminder reports from every region of
the world including 50 million private and public companies.
Because of the fresh reports from a variety of credit report
vendors, Skyminder is both a D&B partner but also alternative.
* Wolff Worldwide
is a global network that specialises in providing reports from two
or three credit reporting companies per country with access to more
than 50 million companies in 238 countries.
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See Mary Ellen Bates, owner of Bates Information Services
, and Amelia Kassel, president and owner of
MarketingBase , live at their
presentation at Online Information 3 December 2007. For more
information on the talk, see: Mining the Web for Business and Company
Information: Digging Up Hard-To-Find Gems
.
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Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (BVDEP) specialises in
private company information
We have products covering the UK, Europe, and the globe
Our products include MINT, FAME, ORBIS, AMADEUS and QIN
Register for your free trial:
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New! FUMSI Report: Information Auditing Report and Tool Kit
Sue Henczel provides in-depth, practical guidance -- plus a tool kit
of hands-on activities -- for conducting information audits.
Get the benefits:
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FREEPINT BAR
By Monique Cuvelier, Editor, FreePint
* Those involved in further education are arguably always looking for
ways to promote their institutions. But how many are using blogs?
One researcher is looking for answers
.
* One FreePinter has been trawling for statistics about small- to
medium-sized businesses, including how many there are. Check the
thread for some helpful resources
.
* A discussion about using Meltwater News for monitoring
endures with a lively
discussion about its merits and other competitors.
Also make sure to check the November VIP for
its comparative roundup of The Big Three.
* Surely the steam iron has been a boon to wrinkled clothes everywhere
- or so you might tell yourself as you dress for work - but most of
us take its history for granted. One 'Pinter is looking for a
history and pressing for
answers at the Bar.
* Has anyone seen 'The Red Sailor'? This book written by Patrick
O'Hara is dear to one Bar member's heart, but she's having trouble
locating this out-of-print item. When you've searched the usual
paths and found nothing, where do you look next
?
Need more help researching? Check out new FUMSI reports at
.
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Monique Cuvelier is editor of the FreePint Newsletter. She has edited,
launched and written for many magazines, newspapers and websites in
the US and UK. Learn more about her at
.
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The FreePint Bar is where you can get free help with your tricky
research and information questions .
Help with study for information-related courses is available at the
FreePint Student Bar .
Subscribe to the twice-weekly email digests at
.
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Information Management Solutions Exhibition
and free seminar programme led by industry practitioners
4-6 December 2007, Grand Hall Olympia, London
Register online for free entry at
The leading event for business, marketing, web & IT professionals
Better information management, better business
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Company Dossier UK and Aroq: Detailed Reviews in Oct VIP
Read about the new UK version of Company Dossier from LexisNexis, plus
market research in key consumer markets from Aroq.
Coming in November: Comparative review of news in Factiva,
LexisNexis and Thomson products. Pre-order your copy today (GBP 54).
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JINFO :: JOBS IN INFORMATION
The Jinfo service enables you to search and advertise information-
related job vacancies.
The Jinfo Newsletter now features CV Makeovers, in which a job
seeker's CV is critiqued and revised by specialists in the field as
well as career tips for all experience levels. Read the latest edition
and subscribe free at .
Jinfo Jobs in the FreePint Newsletter are supported through our
partnership with Quantum2, an innovative skills development programme
offered by Thomson Scientific. Learn more at
Here is a selection of the latest featured entries in the Jinfo
database:
Library & Archive Assistant
Help provide and maintain the library and archive services
of the Museum of London Group.
Recruiter: Museum of London
Country: United Kingdom
Senior Information Officer
Provide WRAP's Information Manager with project management,
administrative and general support.
Recruiter: WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme)
Country: United Kingdom
Records Manager
A qualified Records manager is required to assess organisational
RM practices and culture.
Recruiter: Weekes Gray Recruitment
Country: United Kingdom
Assistant Librarian - London
We have a full time temporary Assistant Librarian position within
a government organisation involved in helping young people.
Recruiter: Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Country: United Kingdom
Sourcing Manager
Put your financial vendor management and negotiation skills to
use at this leading investment bank.
Recruiter: Sue Hill Recruitment and Services Limited
Country: United Kingdom
Information Officer
Non-departmental public body are currently seeking to recruit an
Information Officer, based at their offices in Coventry.
Recruiter: TFPL
Country: United Kingdom
Global Knowledge Co-ordinators (2)
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SUPPORT? Are you passionate about K.M. Best
Practice? Two newly created roles as client migrates to Sharepoint.
Recruiter: Glen Recruitment
Country: United Kingdom
[The above jobs are paid listings]
NB: These are just a selection of information-related jobs in the
Jinfo database . Receive the latest job
listings weekly with the free Jinfo Update. Free to subscribe at
Jinfo -- the best place for information-related job vacancies.
* JOB SEARCHING? -- Free search and sign up to the Jinfo Newsletter
* RECRUITING? -- Complete the form and advertise a vacancy for
just GBP 195
-- 10% discount for agencies
-- 50% discount for registered charities.
Find out more today at
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*** Line Up a New Challenge for the New Year ***
Jobs for professionals who Find, Use, Manage and Share Information:
find them at Jinfo. Search the database at:
Subscribe to the free weekly update of the latest jobs,
plus the monthly newsletter with career tips:
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TIPS ARTICLE
"Methodology Mixer: Professional and Business
Development for the Independent Worker"
By Joanna Ptolomey
Working as an independent worker can be a professionally liberating
and exciting experience. You are more in control of your own destiny
and there is an increased chance to get involved in enjoyable and
satisfying work. On the flip side it can be risky; basic concerns like
finding work, opening up new opportunities and remaining financially
solvent can be constant companions. Unlike work as a regular
employee, there is no monthly cheque and no guaranteed supply of work.
Business aside, there is also the question of personal and
professional development. How do you manage that? When you start out
as an independent worker, every day that you are not working on a fee-
paying project is a zero income day, and it can seem extravagant to
sit reading about Web 2.0 when you have no work on the horizon.
A couple of years ago I began to investigate whether there was a way
to combine both my business and personal development activities to
have a measurable tangible outcome on my business.
Joined at the hip
-----------------
One of the first things I encountered as an independent worker was the
difficulty in separating myself from the business. Instead of working
against this, I knew that any method I tried needed to work with it.
Your clients will almost certainly be commissioning work on the basis
of your ability to manage and deliver value added work on time and to
budget, not just because you happen to offer particular services. As
an independent you are required to do the business planning,
marketing, client management, administration, provide the information
services and be the only one on the coffee rota!
So what if you find yourself lagging behind in your own professional
development and are not sure about business development? You can
miss all the cues that things need to change and that you are missing
opportunities. You can quite quickly find that your market has moved
on or changed and that the services you offered are no longer
required.
The pilot project
-----------------
I would anticipate that very few independents (especially solo
workers) have a budget for personal and business development. Hats off
to you if you have, and it is a goal of mine to allocate part of my
earnings specifically for this purpose in the future. Happily or
fortunately, I realised that in the first instance I needed only to
allocate time to this process. My first step was to develop a short
pilot programme (with me as the guinea pig) and you can read the
outcome of this pilot in Jinfo Newsletter no.132
. This article
discusses my efforts including what worked, what didn't work and the
tangible results of my efforts.
In general terms this short-term pilot project was successful both
financially and professionally, but most importantly I began to see
the bones of a methodology that I could use to help drive my
professional and business development on a regular basis. It also
confirmed my hypothesis that personal development issues were not
standalone items, but could be embedded into any of my proposed
business strategies.
My pilot project had also convinced me that a structured and
methodical approach to business and personal development would have
the potential to yield tremendous results.
Bones of the methodology
------------------------
I believe that actually doing projects for clients is the 'easy bit'.
As an information professional I love my specialist subject areas,
finding information and delivering bespoke solutions for individual
clients. This is my real comfort zone.
Each independent worker has their own specialist area of expertise but
there are some key common areas that need to be addressed on a yearly
basis to keep yourself and the business moving on the right track,
such as:
Audit/analysis of your market
-----------------------------
* What markets do you work in?
* Is there enough work in this market?
* Who are you competitors? What makes you different?
* Have there been any changes to the structure of your market?
* Do you have enough clients?
* How much work do you get from individual clients?
* What would be the effect if you lost a particular client?
* Could you be taking your skills and using them in another market?
* What is your cash flow and turnover like?
* Do you do a few large projects or lots of small projects?
* Do you have too much work?
Audit/analysis of the services you offer
----------------------------------------
* Are you services valuable to your client? Do you have evidence?
* Do you have protocols for service delivery?
* What services are you never asked for?
* What services do people ask for most often?
* Are you making plans to develop other services and diversify?
* Do your clients know that you can do other types of work?
* Are there times when you could subcontract work?
Marketing/awareness techniques
------------------------------
* Are you aware of the key players in your market?
Who holds the purse strings?
* Do you take opportunities to publish, educate or communicate in
a variety of professional journals and industry titles about
your projects and/or your skills?
* Do you make a point of scheduling in appointments throughout the
year in an effort to network and keep up to date with what is
happening in your sector?
* Do you focus on key areas of professional reading and make time
to actually read them?
* Are you visible at key events and do you know what to say when
people ask you what you do?
These key areas are neat and succinct and allow for the development of
some lovely activities and goals to challenge us with. However, the
story is generally never that straightforward and there needs to be a
narrative that holds all our ideas and plans together. Driving a
business forward requires other skills, like asking hard questions
about what makes us tick personally and our commitment. I don't
believe that most independents are driven solely by financial needs.
Sure, we need to make a living and pay our bills but I don't believe
that is the only driver.
I suppose most of us have asked these questions. What is important in
our life, what drives us to work in this sector, how committed are we
to our endeavours and what gets us out of bed in the morning? I call
this my 'personal constitution'.
Personal constitution
---------------------
Developing a personal constitution is one of the most important
processes that you can do for your business and yourself. Ask
yourself the following questions:
* Why do you work in this sector?
* What is important to your work/personal life?
* What are your fundamental goals in working as an independent?
Everyone has different answers to these questions and we have all
arrived at independent working through different (and sometimes
bizarre) routes. In my formative years I tested the quality of
concrete on construction sites, which makes for a whole other story.
But here is my personal constitution, and I believe it provides the
foundation for everything I do.
* I work in the health sector, which includes the NHS, voluntary
sector, academia and education, and believe in equality and
access to healthcare for all
* I believe that through the work I do I can actually make a
difference to the health of the man in the street (albeit by an
indirect and sometimes circuitous route)
* I work part-time and flexibly, to enjoy my family life with
two small children
* I like challenging work and also a variety. I know that I have
a short attention span and get bored easily
* I like to be involved in projects where the outcome has a tangible
benefit to the client. The report, directories, presentation,
database, training, and consultancy has immediate uses and
benefits and will help drive their business.
Methodology
-----------
Think about what makes you tick and remember that your personal
situation can change from year to year. It is an important component
for a happy working and personal life.
This 4-step methodology can be used to build up a bespoke plan for
yourself and your business.
1. Consider what is 'your glue' to hold things together.
* Develop your 'personal constitution'
* Re-assess this every year or each time you go through this process.
2. Consider the three key areas of your business and look for personal
development associated with these activities.
* Audit/analysis of your market
* Audit/analysis of the services you offer
* Marketing/awareness techniques.
3. Consider when you would like to start your plan and for how long.
* I use the start of a new financial year to set the wheels in motion,
but you can start it at any time
* Make it bespoke to you, just like your services are to your clients.
Most of my projects need to billed by financial year-end and that's
usually when they are finished. There is usually a little lull as
new budgets start and people start thinking about summer holidays
so I take this chance for a slow down in workload.
4. Embrace reflective practice.
* One of the sheer joys and luxuries of independent working is
'reflective practice'. However I must admit that it took a few
years to really trust my own hunches and feelings, and to accept and
live with some 'bad choices and mistakes'
* It's so easy to say 'the buck stops with me', but it can be
difficult to actually accept this, take it on board and move forward
* Try and find a mentor to help you with this process. It is good to
have someone to discuss things with and bounce ideas around.
Personal Examples
-----------------
I used the above methodology to scope out some key activities for
financial year 2007-2008. For each key activity I allocate a proposed
action, a training and development function, and anticipated outcomes.
Key Activity: Strategic Annual review
* Proposed action: evaluation client/project type mix, revenue mix and
turnover
* Training and development: improve financial management and strategic
planning skills
* Anticipated outcome: better understanding of business values,
business direction, market position.
Key Activity: New business development
* Proposed actions: Generate ideas for training courses and workshops
and consider possible collaborators. Also research Community Health
and Social Partnerships sector in Scotland and identify key people
* Training and development: creative thinking, strategic planning
skills, financial planning skills, marketing and awareness
* Anticipated outcome: To make a business decision based on evidence
on the possibility of developing new courses and identifying
probable work markets.
Key Activity: Different types of projects
* Proposed action: handling more complex projects outside 'personal
comfort zone', consideration of smaller projects with quick
turnaround, managing multiple clients, outsourcing work
* Training and development: Improve research skills, improve
information management skills including new protocols for new
service delivery, improve time/project management skills, people
management skills
* Anticipated outcome: Improved workflow, increased variety of
clients, increased variety of projects, better cash flow and
increased turnover.
This year I am also considering items such as:
* Audit physical working environment
* Client database development
* Improved marketing and awareness
* Writing a book.
Conclusions
-----------
It needn't be complicated to mix your needs as a professional with
your business development needs. What I hope you can see is that they
are much intertwined and difficult to separate anyway. By starting
the process of developing your business you will be already be
stretching your skills base and questioning how you can do things
better, more effectively and more efficiently. However, by using a
methodology there is an element of control and also measurement of
what you have achieved.
In the last couple of years I have been using this methodology to help
drive myself and my business forward, and it is interesting to see how
far I have come in a relatively short space of time. But don't be a
slave to a plan and get upset when things don't work out exactly as
you'd hoped. Next time around try a different approach. How do you put
a value on being more confident in your own abilities, having a good
network of people and mentors, knowing that your products are valuable
and suitable for your market and, more importantly, that you are
absolutely sure of your market?
You know yourself and your business better than anyone so use the
methodology to make it fit you and your situation. And above all, have
fun!
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Joanna Ptolomey will be presenting at Online 2007. You can hear her
talk 'Footloose and fancy free - success in business and personal
development for the independent worker' on Thursday 6th December in
Track 3 14.00-1530.
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Related FreePint links:
* "A 4-Month Plan: Organise and for personal and business development
as a freelance information professional" By Joanna Ptolomey
* Discussion on being self-employed FreePint Bar
* Jinfo
* "Marketing for the Info-Entrepreneur" By Mary Ellen Bates
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ResourceShelf Resource of the Week: RSS Feeds About the Government
Explore the latest posts in mobile search, search engine news,
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REVIEW
"A Day in the Life:
Career Options in Library and Information Science"
Written by Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray
Reviewed by Kim Dority
Aunt Milly: 'What do you want to do when you grow up?'
You: 'How the heck would I know? I'm a 10-year-old!'
Okay, so maybe most of us were a bit more circumspect in our childhood
responses to this perennial question from well-meaning adults, but for
many of us, it still remains a central issue. In our professional
lives, this often translates into: 'What do you want to do with your
LIS degree?'
Although we're now smart enough to answer, 'Well, what are my
choices?' the challenge lies in identifying those choices in a field
that continues to expand well beyond any definable borders.
Into this dynamic professional landscape comes Priscilla K. Shontz and
Richard A. Murray's "A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and
Information Science", an engaging and well-organised collection of
personal narratives from 95 information pros who describe a 'typical'
workday in their jobs. Generally, contributors all follow a similar
format, describing activities engaged in during a typical day, pros
and cons of the job (often referred to as 'good things' and 'not so
good things'), and how to get a similar job. Within three to five
pages, the writers not only cover these bases, but also give us a
sense of who they are and what engages them about their jobs. This
brings a sense of reality to their assessments: if you have a
personality similar to (or different from) the writer's, then you are
better able to frame their comments within the context of your own
preferences and personality. Happily, the contributors have been
pretty frank in their 'pro and con' comments, so that readers truly
can, for example, understand that business travel may entail
excitement, exhaustion, loneliness, new sites, sore feet and blown
fitness routines - and then make an informed choice about how that
fits within their lives.
In addition to the realistic and useful information presented in "A
Day in the Life", its other strength is its breadth of coverage. The
book's 10 categories offer an excellent sense of both the diversity of
types of library/information venues, but also of the different types
of work available within those venues. The areas of greatest coverage
are academic (27 entries) and the more nontraditional paths: special,
consortia, LIS faculty, library vendors, publishing, associations and
agencies, and nontraditional, representing more than half of the
profiles. The range of jobs within those categories is especially
valuable and eye-opening. For example, public librarians include
multimedia and electronic services librarians as well as a rural
library director, an urban branch manager and a territorial librarian.
Among academic librarians are ones working for an overseas American
university, an extended-campus programme, a community college and a
small college in a developing country.
The nontraditional options are even more diverse: the special
libraries section alone covers positions within a nonprofit health
organisation, a global financial company, an Internet start-up, an art
museum, a film collection, a private social club in Washington, DC, a
national golf association, the American embassy in Oslo, the
Congressional Research Service's Legislative Relations Office, the US
Armed Forces, a municipal police force and a correctional-facility
library (for starters).
The great thing about this book is that there's such a diverse range
of jobs profiled here that it can be useful for anyone, regardless of
where he or she may be on a career path. For library and information
professionals just starting their careers (or for students now
contemplating those careers); for professionals considering their next
career step; or for those of us considering an entirely new
professional direction that still lets us build on decades of
experience, the personal narratives here can help us assess a broader
range of options than our professional networks might expose us to. It
also gives us a more realistic assessment of whether or not the grass
truly is greener in the
corporate/nonprofit/vendor/international/school world.
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Kim Dority is the Director of Content for Disaboom.com
, an online resource for people with
disabilities, and also does consulting work in information strategy
and content development. She teaches a course in alternative careers
for LIS professionals in the University of Denver MLIS programme
, and is the author of "Rethinking Information
Work: A Career Guide for Librarians and Other Information
Professionals". (Libraries Unlimited, 2006 ). Kim
can be reached at .
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Related FreePint links:
* "Rethinking Information Work: A Career Guide for Librarians and
Other Information Professionals" Written by Kim Dority Reviewed by
Marcia Rodney
* "Thriving on change: The right stuff for resilience in an
information career" By Kim Dority
* "The NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide" Written by Rachel Singer
Gordon Reviewed by Kim Dority
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FEATURE ARTICLE
"Global Collaborative Search: Watch This Space"
By Judith Koren
The Web's current evolutionary phase, Web 2.0, highlights user-
generated content. These days, anyone can publish anything, and
everyone shares everything. They do it partly to gain or enhance a
reputation ('Here are the coolest/most popular videos on YouTube') and
partly out of a real desire to make contact with and collaborate with
other people. For the first time ever, the scope of collaboration and
social networking is transcending geographical boundaries and aspiring
to be truly global.
Since the Web is a major artery for information, the lifeblood of our
profession, our tools and 'occupational culture' tend to evolve with
it. So we're hearing a new buzzword: collaborative search.
Truly global collaborative search - both international and universal
in reach - would be a way for all information professionals world-
wide, whether employed or independent, to discuss and help out with
the search needs of others. For our clients, end-users world-wide, it
would be a way to have access to advice, help with searches, and, if
they wanted, the paid services of any information professional. It
would involve a place where end-users and info-people could meet and
interact; and also where sub-groups could meet, such as info-people
discussing search questions between themselves. How close are we to
this concept of global collaborative search?
Not, it appears, as close as the buzz implies. As I tried to answer
this question, I found that everything out there now could be split
neatly into two types: on the one hand, services for librarians and
information professionals, and on the other, services for the end-
users. And never the twain shall meet? Let's take a look at what there
is, and then discuss what there could be.
Services for the pros
---------------------
1. Mailing lists
Long before the Web was born, reference librarians virtually lived in
listservs such as BUSLIB-L, MEDLIB-L and STUMPERS-L. They were 'push'
services - they landed in your email inbox, constantly reminding you
that they were available even if nothing at the moment was of
interest. And they were great collaborative search tools - a request
for help would usually get an expert answer within a day or two. But
since the 'Net back then only served the governmental and academic
sectors, their reach, while international, was not universal.
The need for subject-focused discussion of reference questions still
exists: when I describe mailing lists to younger reference librarians,
they tend to look wistful and say, 'I could really do with something
like that.'
2. Professional associations
Join SLA or AIIP and you find a community of peers eager to help with
search problems (and anything else). They excel in collaboration, from
advice to subcontracting. They include community listservs - 'push'
search-help services. But professional associations can't reach
everyone. That's because they:
* Are aimed at specific subgroups - AIIP at independent information
professionals, SLA at 'special libraries' and corporate information
centres
* Are, for the most part, US- or Western-centric despite attempts to
reach out to a wider global community
* Charge Western-level subscription fees that put them out of reach in
many parts of the world.
3. Web communities
FreePint is perhaps the nearest we've come to date to a real global
community of information professionals. Its membership is an order of
magnitude larger than that of the professional associations. Like
them, it's got a place to ask questions -a large percentage of which
are requests for help with searches. It's got added services, like a
job bulletin board. And the FreePint Newsletter is clearly
collaborative - info pros updating other info pros.
But even though FreePint has a wide reach, it doesn't offer everything
a search community needs. It doesn't really enable outsourcing -
collaboration on projects between professionals, such as AIIP excels
at. Like the listservs and associations, it doesn't give access to
end-users or enable collaboration between them and professionals.
Services for end-users
----------------------
1. Answer-type services
These are more about Web 2.0 than about search. Yahoo! Answers, for
instance, promotes itself as 'a new way to find and share information.
You can ask questions on any topic, get answers from real people, and
share your insights.' This is fun, especially since any real person
can reply, and what gives the service its warm'n'fuzzy Web 2.0 feel is
that those who reply are from the same demographic as those who ask -
they're not info pros. And the answers they supply are more opinion
than fact.
So there's a lot of sharing going on, but there isn't much finding (in
the info-pro sense of 'looking for') and if you're an information
professional, you find yourself wondering whether what's being shared
is really 'information'.
But these services indicate a felt need for help on the part of end-
users, and a willingness to use collaborative tools to get that help.
2. Expert-type services
These all have one central feature in common - they're a for-fee
service, in which the client can check out the experts' profiles but
eventually has to choose one expert and pay a fee (usually per-minute)
for a consultation. They provide a marketplace, which the
collaborative communities lack. But the Experts themselves are
competing, not collaborating; and it's sidelining the issue to call
the sale of professional services 'collaboration', let alone
collaborative search.
Information professionals are conspicuously absent from both Answers
and Experts sites. Go into Guru.com or Elance.com or pretty well any
other 'experts' service, and you find at best an 'Internet Search' (!)
category where the vast majority of the Experts are programmers/geeks.
Why? It's not because 'we don't do that type of information' - we
certainly do. Is it because we don't 'do' online help charged by the
minute? But reference librarians certainly 'do' online help, not
charged extra for at all. Would we feel more inclined to collaborate
if the service were vertical - a collaborative-search community,
rather than a general experts site?
3. Community information-sharing tools
Well, we've got wikis. They're good for collaborative content-
building; but they're not so suitable a platform for collaborative
search.
And we've got social bookmarking sites. You can search them and find
collections of bookmarks made by others. You can post your own and
find people like you. But, as in answers-type services, what's going
on here is sharing and social networking, not collaboration.
Finally, there are a few new services - perhaps in them we'll find our
Holy Grail of collaborative search?
* Mahalo is a compendium of subject resources
built by Mahalo's 'Guides' or contributors. It's collaborative in
the sense that anyone can suggest a link - but then so you can in
the ODP or Yahoo!'s directory. Isn't this simply an updated version
of a Web directory?
* Trexy offers a downloadable toolbar which
records the URLs of pages you've visited after using a search
engine. This list of URLs is automatically created and uploaded to
Trexy's site, where it becomes a 'trail' for the keyword you
searched. Other people can see it; and the site co-locates the most
popular sites from all the 'trails' suggested for the same keyword,
into one list.
This is a cute idea, especially since it does give end-users something
that only info pros have had till now: an easy way to share good
resources you've found while searching. But collaboration, again, is
limited, because you can't share your knowledge of how to search, only
the URLs of sites selected from a search-results list. You can't add
comments or advice about those sites.
Where does all this leave us?
-----------------------------
I emerged from this quick survey with a few conclusions:
* Info pros feel the need to collaborate - to get ideas for how to
approach a project; to get suggestions for good sources; and
sometimes to outsource to others
* End users feel a need for direct access to people who can answer
their questions. They love free community-type services, asking each
other, but they'll also turn to professional experts, and at least
some of them are prepared to pay for the service
* All the 'collaboration' tools I found are variants of known remedies
such as resource lists, social bookmarking and discussion groups.
They tend to address either the community of info pros, or the
community of end users. There isn't a place where endusers can
interact with search specialists (as opposed to whizkids who think
they're search experts because they dream in Java)
* End-user tools for finding information don't often involve searching
for it; and when they do, they're geared to simple searches - the
sort that don't help when you're researching a complex question
* There are no current resources for helping end-users perform complex
comprehensive searches - the kind that go beyond brief factual
replies to a defined specific question
* Services that try to be global are nonetheless Western-centric: the
non-US, non-European market is not well represented in them.
So we need GCS - Global Collaborative Search
--------------------------------------------
A Web-based GCS community would support:
* Searchers collaborating with other searchers to build lists, or
'trails', of 'best resources' for a specific query, lists that are
more content-rich than what's now available - not just links but
also metadata about the resources and tips on how to use them; AND
* End-users looking for such lists - these are the ones who want to
learn how to fish (without having to choose an expert and pay in
order to ask the question); AND
* End-users looking for research services - these are the ones who
want their fish filleted on a plate with the right sauce added; AND
* End-users and info pros who want to comment on and add to the
resource lists already built and the questions already asked; AND
* A way of comparing 'trails' for the same or related questions, real-
time; AND
* A way of supplying all this as a 'push' service - sending all the
trails for a question to anyone, anywhere, or putting it in a blog
or Web page and having it continue to update itself, without
requiring you to return to the original GCS website, as more
collaborators add suggestions, comments, other queries and other
related trails of sources.
How can we do this? Do librarians and info people want to do this,
considering our absence from the experts and answers sites? What's
stopping us from reaching out to the wider community of information-
seekers? That's what we'll be discussing at the Round Table on
Collaborative Search at the upcoming London '07 Online Conference.
I believe that the main things holding us back are lack of incentive
and lack of suitable tools. So I and my colleagues have made a start
with TrailMap, a Flash search-trail visualisation that solves the last
problem in the list above. It's a packaged list of subject resources
(Trail) and associated metadata that you can send to anyone or post
online, where it continues to update itself real-time. And we've got
some ideas about all the other points too. But I've already overrun my
space in FreePint, so join us at the Online Conference for the next
instalment.
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Judith Koren has been an independent information professional since
1994, serving the high-tech, bio-pharma and general business
information sectors. She also teaches information retrieval at the
University of Haifa, Israel. Before that she was library systems
coordinator and administrator for the academic database network at the
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. In addition, she has
recently co-founded ResearchTrail Ltd. You can read more about that at
or reach Judy at:
.
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Related FreePint links:
* "Search Trails: Back to the Future" By Nigel Hamilton
* "CI: Collaborative Intelligence" By Daphne R. Raban
* "Embracing the Wiki Way: Deploying a Corporate Wiki" By Leigh Dodds
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** "INSOURCE 2008: Conference on Professional Information Resources
for Business, Management, Marketing and Research"
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The first INSOURCE 2008 conference will focus on professional
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stress on the information contents available via the Internet
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FREEPINT GOLD
A look back at what FreePint covered at this time in previous years:
* FreePint No. 217 9th November 2006. "Internet Librarian
International: Impressions from a First-Time Attendee" and "Election
Cycles Primer: How and When People Come to Office"
* FreePint No. 194 10th November 2005. "VoIP: Threat or Opportunity to
the Market Research Industry?" and "Interview with Steve Borley,
winner of the SLA Europe Information Professional Award"
* FreePint No. 171 11th November 2004. "How to Improve your Business
Writing" and "Information Auditing: Key Concepts and How To Get
Started"
* FreePint No. 148 6th November 2003. "Records Management, the Aunt
Sally of your business!" and "Getting UK Immigration Information and
Advice"
* FreePint No. 124, 14th November 2002. "Teaching In China" and "Free
Pint talks to Jakob Nielsen"
* FreePint No. 99, 1st November 2001. "Web Sources for Climate Change
and Emissions Trading" and "Marketing Library and Information
Services"
* FreePint No. 74, 2nd November 2000. "Web Sources for Central and
Eastern Europe" and "Portals for business information on the
Internet"
* FreePint No. 49, 4th November 1999. "Key UK Library and Information
Science Information Resources" and "Affiliate and Associate
Programs"
* FreePint No. 25, 12th November 1998. "Web Site Promotion Ideas" and
"CD-ROMs and the Web"
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FREEPINT FORTHCOMING ARTICLES
[Provisional]
* Special Collections * Corporate IT convergence *
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If you have a suggestion for an article topic, or would like to write
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or read the notes for authors at
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