Knowledge Leadership Associates » effective knowledge sharing

Citation mapping

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 06:00:41 +0000

Bibliometrics is an information science technique that aims to show the relationships between documents; however, the results have often been difficult to understand and the real meaning obscured by mathematical and statistical relationships. A new approach is being developed by three researchers at the University of Washington, United States of America: Carl T. Bergstrom, Jevin D. West and Martin Rosvall. the essence of the work is to develop a mapping technique that can be used to capture the associations between patterns of citations and, thus, to map relationships. In her article of 11 September 2011, Jennifer Howard explains the origin and reasons for developing the technique (Citation by citation, new maps chart hot research and scholarship’s hidden terrain, Chronicle of higher education, 13 September 2011). Their system, InfoMap, makes use of a statistical technique called “Eigenfactors” that provides a rather more sensitive measure than the Journal Impact Factor that has been so widely used. The researchers aim to make their system freely and easily available. Rosvall and Bergstrom’s paper about the technique as applied to the development of neuroscience, Mapping change in large networks (PLoSONE, 5(1) doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008694) explains the technique and highlights its advantages.

Citation mapping is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Looking for a new role?

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:51:05 +0000

Information today Europe carries an interesting idea: in his blog entry for 5 August 2011, Stephen Cahill proposes a new career strategy, that of becoming an information coach. He makes the point that, in an intensive and information-rich environment, many managers are finding it difficult to cope because they do not have the necessary skills to navigate the information space to find relevant information. Information overload and the difficulties of identifying reliable sources combine to make the task problematic. “Being an information coach means that you need to help a decision maker establish exactly what the key, ‘ruin or success’ dimensions are for their part of the organisation and then build the scaffolding that supports their core needs”, writes Cahill, and goes on to pose five questions that one should ask of decision-makers in order to assist in building a coaching strategy.

Looking for a new role? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Copyright and fair use

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:24:55 +0000

The “Fair Use” convention allows the use of small portions of copyrighted materials, without permission, in certain circumstances. It is this agreement that enables one to make a copy of a journal article, for example, for research and private study, to quote from a work that one is reviewing or include quotations in lecture materials. The convention is a privilege — it is not a right — and really constitutes an agreement that the copyright holder will ignore use of material (and, thus, breach of copyright) provided it is within the guidelines.

There is much confusion about how the convention of Fair Use is applied. An article in the 2 August 2011 issue of Inside Higher Ed seeks to explain what can and what cannot be done under the convention. Patrica Aufderheide, in “Myths about Fair Use“, provides a clear explanation and reasoning for the provisions of the convention; although she writes from the perspective of an academic in the United States of America, the guidance she offers is equally applicable in South Africa, wherein the legal system also accepts the Fair Use convention.

Enterprise risk: the role of information management

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:13:22 +0000

Pat Bryant, a recent speaker at the Network for Information and Knowledge Exchange (NetIKX) Information Risk Management Workshop (London, 19 July 2011), emphasised that information is not only a resource, the value of which needs to be enhanced through proper management, but is also a resource that can lead to harm if it is not properly managed, as the recent events at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation graphically demonstrate.

Some important guidelines are:

concealing information (“top secret’) creates silos and can create the impression that it has been hidden for a reason — this encourages attempts to discover it and thus discredit the organisation;
paradoxically, organisations tend not to be very successful at managing boundaries between information sectors — much more can be gained by creating a culture of transparency;
a key role in an organisation is the manager of information — and this is an appointment that should be considered carefully.

Further comment can be seen in the Information today blog (Europe) for 20 July 2011, by Pat Skelton.

Enterprise risk: the role of information management is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

What do you remember . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:44:55 +0000

A report, Google effects on memory: cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips, by Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel Wegner of Columbia University in the United States of America presents an interesting account of how the way in which people remember information may be changing as a result of use of Internet technologies. Four studies conducted by the research team have indicated that many people now instinctively think of using a computer when faced with a problem to resolve. Whilst this may not be surprising, the consequences are: heavy users of the Internet show “much lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it”. Thus, the Google Generation is learning and remembering techniques for locating information, but not the information itself. What happens when the power goes off?

What do you remember . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

All the news that’s fit to read . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:39:18 +0000

Not quite the motto of The New York times, but an implied question in these troubled times. The furore surrounding News Corporation and Murdoch, father and son, has raised many questions about the behaviour of the press, freedom of information and the “right to know”. However, there are other aspects of the business models that should also concern us as librarians and providers of information services to the public. Ian Clark, in his blog, Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian, has commented on the impact that direct charges to users may have had on the supply and use of news-related information in libraries. He comments, “Many libraries provide access to newspapers for free and, with declining budgets, it raised the question: should libraries subscribe to online newspaper content for their users? But it also raised a greater and more important question. If information is increasingly to be found behind paywalls in a time when libraries are faced with closure, how will we ensure equal access to information for all?” The question is even more pointed here, in South Africa, where the cost of a newspaper is high and a significant proportion of a worker’s pay, and where access to networked sources of information is often difficult and expensive. If libraries are impeded in providing access by the use of paywalls, doesn’t this have a direct effect on the social uses of information in South Africa?

All the news that’s fit to read . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Facebook versus Google+: is it really a competition?

Peter G. Underwood — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:57:49 +0000

Google launched its social media experiment, Google+ Project, a few weeks ago for testing by a limited number of users. In going into this market, it is in danger of launching a “me too” product unless the company can add some distinguishing elements that will make Google+ be perceived as different from Facebook and similar sites. In his Search engine watch blog of 15 July 2011, 5 Reasons Google+ is not a Facebook killer, Dave Davies has concluded that this is going to be a very uphill task for Google: “It’s an interesting social media experiment by Google, but it is likely to remain that. Another ‘almost ran’ in the social media game; another Google property that just won’t quite make it”. The blog entry has created a very lively conversation, which can be followed at the same site.

The competition has not been long in responding. Facebook. The 6th of July saw the announcement of Skypebook — a partnership with Skype to allow face-to-face chat from a Facebook account. It is likely that companies offering similar services will enter the field or that existing services, such as LinkedIn, will also seek to expand their profile with adjunct functions. There is a “social networking” war about to begin!

In another posting on Search engine watch, Garry Przyklenky recounts an address “by Michael Eisner of Disney fame at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City. In his address, he eloquently explained how technology enables a never-ending and consistently innovative evolution of content delivery mechanisms: from Gutenberg’s printing press back in 1440 all the way to present day with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook”. In this respect, Google+ probably won’t supplant any other technology!

Facebook versus Google+: is it really a competition? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

How to tell a good story . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:05:32 +0000

The value of narrating stories has long been recognised in Knowledge Management: such accounts often contain a wealth of tacit knowledge, unacknowledged insights and other useful information about an organisation, its business practices and the “real” job, as distinct from the one we describe in our job descriptions. To be valuable, a story needs to be rich but robust. In a recent American Express Open Forum blog, Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith consider the Seven Deadly Sins of business storytelling, providing helpful guidelines and concluding that stories need to be documented and stored because of the tacit knowledge they contain.

How to tell a good story . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Wikipedia — ten years old!

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 07:08:18 +0000

It has certainly courted notoriety since its implementation and has also received its share of plaudits. On 15 January 2001, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales began a new project with the words “Hello, world.” Their next entry was “Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.” Since then, Wikipedia has become the go-to online reference source for many seeking facts. Wikipedia has grown to be the fifth-most popular online destination in the world, and it draws in 410 million unique visitors a month. Recently, growth of new and discrete entries on the site has slowed significantly but this may be expected due to the fact that with 17 million articles, quite a bit of knowledge has been covered over the past decade. Andrew Lih, who wrote the book The Wikipedia Revolution, commented that it will be integral for the Wikimedia Foundation to reach out to large cultural institutions in the coming years in order to provide the site with new, high-quality material.

The Scout Report has assembled an interesting list of collection of comment about the development of Wikipedia. Daniel Terdiman writes on the history of Wikipedia in a CNET News article for 14 January 2011. In The Guardian, Clay Shirky writes an article on the enduring popularity of Wikipedia. The Economist considers the future of Wikipedia, whilst Casper Grathwohl, the vice president and publisher of digital and reference content for Oxford University Press, considers the longer perspective of the impact of Wikipedia on reference works. A short graphic presentation narrated by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales considers Wikipedia’s past, present, and future. Finally, here is a Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia.

Adapted from The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2011. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Wikipedia — ten years old! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Open Access Publishing: a good read . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:48:07 +0000

In 2010, the European Union–sponsored Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) revealed that scientists are avid readers of articles published in open-access sources but are much less enthusiastic about publishing in them. The study surveyed 50,000 researchers, seeking their views on open-access journals. The prevailing publishing model is that open-access sources allow free access to papers, charging a small fee to authors for publication. The respondents indicated that, whilst they supported the concept, there was some reluctance to publish in them. Overall, only some 10% of papers are published in open-access journals. An article by Gretchen Vogel, in Science insider for 14 January 2011, highlights the results.

Open Access Publishing: a good read . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates