commencement/convocation May 27, 2009

Today I officially received my diploma- a Master in Library and Information Studies from McGill University.

Now that I have officially graduated, I really see the potential for this blog. I was having my lunch in my old student SIS lounge and came across a poster that described some of the more common positions associated with this degree:

librarian

cybrarian

records manager

archivist

knowledge manager

information analyst

Although one day I will aspire to be an academic librarian or a KM professional at a development-oriented NGO, there are many options I wish to explore in the meantime.

The problem is that most job descriptions do not use the terms we have been taught to use over the last two years. (Digression: Funny that in order to find our dream jobs, we’re forced to create mini-thesauri to explain what we do in narrower and broader terms.)

An additional setback is that most employers also do not understand how innovative, technologically savvy, and business oriented librarians can be. We have been repeatedly told to avoid the “L-word,” though librarianship is still a word that is imprinted on our diplomas and forever to be embedded in our resumes.

If nothing else, I want to publicize what we can do by demonstrating how our skills are applicable to different sectors and professions. This week alone I have read of positions that require skills such as:
crm capabilities, business development, information architecture and database management, strategic intelligence. Not labeled under librarian, of course. But who else is in a better position to deliver expert knowledge of social capital management: contact information, client product and service taxonomies, in addition to soft skills that elicit client needs and service requests?

In sum, library school was great–learned a lot of interesting concepts about the organization of information and research. But now it is time to transcend the titles and labels of this discipline to make a difference in organizations that struggle with information mismanagement.

Just a thought on tacit knowledge and globalization May 23, 2009

The growth of knowledge management as a field signals a revolution in the way organizations do business because they are placing a greater emphasis on developing tacit knowledge, which might possibly increase the incorporation non-Western learning models. By the same token, Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat, argues that employees all over the world are competing for the same service sector jobs. As competition tightens, only the best obtain the most coveted of posts. Friedman argues that increasingly, those that qualify have shifted from western circles, which means that the most influential people in the world are now distributed among more cultures. In short, I’m led to consider: is KM is a product of globalization, and is the inclusion of tacit knowledge in business practices a consequence of a more global involvement?

It is my belief that as transnational organizations begin to expand beyond a concentrated population of employees, it has become increasingly possible to envision creating an organizational memory that considers the different types of knowledge, as well as the different types of approaches to knowledge that might exist within an organization. Globalization and the “transnationalization” of industries have brought people of different networks, or cultures, to work together or learn together, eliminating some of the historical barriers that created sectionalized “know-how.”

In a global society, in which the majority of individuals are considered cultural hybrids, having spent different parts of their lives in different cities, among different languages and cultures, people have gained insightful exposure to the “know-how” of different communities. If communities have sufficient exposure to one another, and enough exchange among different cultural networks occurs, then it might very well be possible to translate the tacit knowledge from one culture to then next. Aside from having more contact among different cultural networks which allow them to negotiate understandings of “know-how,” the rise of knowledge management as a discipline has allowed non-Western pedagogical techniques to provide even greater access to otherwise culturally- segmented tacit knowledge.

Today, several organizations are considering the importance of oral storytelling as an alternative means of transmitting knowledge. All in all, globalization, and the bridging together of cultural networks of practice, have given individuals and organizations the context in which to exchange ideas and negotiate understandings of tacit knowledge, allowing individuals to explore alternative means of learning and transmitting knowledge. With the inclusion of non-Western learning techniques, I intuit that organizations will successfully learn to organize and represent knowledge in ways that can convey important organizational lessons such as context, while appealing to an international workforce.

This blog entry was originally written for Communities of Practice, a McGill University School of Information Studies course, under Professor Venkatesh.

Reception Theory and Participation in KM Activities and CoPS May 23, 2009

Is there a relationship between the factors that contribute to a CoPs success and the reception theories articulated by Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss? When one examines the expectations that CoP members must consider as they participate in online repositories or virtual chats it becomes clear that CoP members write baring their audience already in mind, allowing the audience to influence the content of a publication, as proposed by Jauss and Iser.

When writing for a CoP or to collaborate, the authors are suddenly confronted by a new dynamic to that of not facing their readers’ immediate reactions: his or her audience is very much present in the day-to-day interactions of an organization. Most importantly, not only is the author’s audience present, but this audience is charged with the responsibility of extracting knowledge from the author’s postings. The following implies a certain level of analysis and evaluation from the audience’s behalf. In the process, the act of sharing knowledge is formalized and writers, or CoP participants become accountable for the information they distribute unto other CoP members, who act as more than an audience. The increased proximity of the audience creates a new dynamic that goes beyond reception theory, which evaluates the interaction between writer and audience. In the case of CoPs, the audience is not only an audience, but an empowered body of judgment and evaluation. The audience represents a group of peers that the author can:

a. recognize and identify

AND THE AUTHOR CAN SUBSEQUENTLY

b. anticipate areas of interest or solicited themes, according to personal interaction in the organization

c. anticipate judgment and ascribe consequences to these judgments.

What thus happens, when this dynamic has changed, when authors must react to the immediate needs and foreseeable reactions to a text? In this case, I would recommend that KM theory delve into and attempt to establish a relationship with how raconteurs in oral traditions have dealt with the immediate threat or presence of their audience.

Storytellers from oral traditions deal with community members and their proximity. They must adapt their texts to the conditions of their current environment to be sure that the details of the content remain relevant, and that the content itself remains interesting to the crowds. I suggest that better understanding this relationship may act as an enabler to communities of practice. Seeing as how the presence of the “audience as peers” can act as both a motivation and a deterrent to writing, it would be interesting to study how storytellers manage the proximity of their audiences.

A comparison between these tactics and conditions might help determine which conditions act as enablers to CoP authoring and participation, and which ones lead to stagnation. It might help make KM participants be more sensitive to the ambiental factors that help determine when a narrative or text is relevant, and when it is necessary to modify an intended text.

This blog entry was originally written for Communities of Practice, a McGill University School of Information Studies course, under Professor Venkatesh.

Knowledge Creation from a Colonialist Studies’ Perspective?! May 23, 2009

Homi Bhaba is a post-colonialist theorist who has written profusely about encounters between cultures, primarily “indigenous” cultures and “colonizing” cultures. He wrote an article entitled “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” which has allowed me to contextualize my classmates’ understanding of CoPs and tacit knowledge.

If I recall correctly, this article talks about how that colonial situations often resulted in the “colonized” mimicking their “colonizers,” due to the political and subjugation that took/takes place in colonialism. It argues that despite this game of mimicry between cultures, each civilization remains an “other” because it can perfectly replicate that which another culture originated. Thus, perhaps inherent to this theory is that “becoming an ‘other’” requires being able to perform the role of the “other” perfectly. Otherwise, attempts to mimic the “other” result in something new, a “hybridity” of culture that departs from the original “colonized” culture, and that of the colonialists. In the context of knowledge management in general, the following suggests that there must be relational differences in order for learning or innovation to occur. One learns of one’s differences and one’s identity by contextualizing how an “other” is different.

In one sense, the following could emphasize why lateral as well as vertical peer to peer learning is imperative to the transfer of tacit knowledge. By learning of how others have internalized knowledge, and which external factors have influenced peers to learn of something under a specific scope, then individuals who constitute part of the “other,” might have a better grasp of understanding why and how certain ideas are implemented, in relation to how they usually conduct business.

If KM strategies are built almost exclusively on vertical relationships, then practitioners will not have the occasion to contrast their specialized methodology with that of their counterparts. Peer to peer learning compels compartmentalized groups to study “out-of –specialization” techniques, which might go ignored if one is just learning from a standardized managerial mentor. By the same token, if one applies Bhabha’s theory to CoPs, after being exposed to the “other,” and reapplying the “other’s” behavior, his or her tactics or know-how, then peer-to-peer learning will inevitably result in some kind of knowledge creation. By default, the “other” is incapable of perfecting and performing a counterpart’s exact tactics or behavior. Having been exposed to another culture, or another discipline his or her entire life, the “other” is incapable of mastering the nuances that differentiate him or herself from a counterpart. If this is so, the tacit knowledge transferred in a CoP will result in a sort of hybrid knowledge that is new and innovative: knowledge creation.

This blog entry was originally written for Communities of Practice, a McGill University School of Information Studies course, under Professor Venkatesh.

SEO, Online Marketing and Librarians May 23, 2009

Librarians rock! Why– because though you might try to confine our skills to dusty shelves and OPACS, we have skills that transcend libraries and advance organizations’ presence before their clients.

Yes– you heard me. SEO AND librarians. I came across a job description for an Online Marketing position which sought out skills that I already possess or nearly possess. As I read through the job description, I was completely surprised to discover that librarians are in a position to lead SEO campaigns.

Having studied taxonomies, indexing, web design, natural language searching and metadata standards, I have a great understanding of the principles that maximize a website’s intended ranking and subjects.

Taxonomies: Understanding how to create functional and multi-faceted taxonomies allows creators to cluster or classify topics according to themes, discipline, subject, or functional utility. Essentially, taxonomies help group information pools, giving an entity’s information structure and architecture. On a website, this means knowing how to leverage information architecture principles to improve navigability and sectionalize information in ways that group topics so that they can be retrieved without the excess of “information noise.”

Indexing: Knowing how to summarize or best convey the subject of a topic in a few words. Librarians are experts at describing the core of a text to publicize its value and purpose.

Web Design: A helpful skill in the SEO field. To understand how to improve a site’s retrievability, SEO professionals must understand how information is structured in a web page, both in terms of content (information architecture) and structure (xhtml coding standards)

Natural language searching: Searching that does not rely on subject headings or predefined themes. Most internet searches are conducted through natural language queries, which require information professionals to understand (and often intuit) how users and information clients interpret and articulate a topic. A lot of people do not know what SEO is, so if I wanted to maximize the interest that this post received among general readers, I should use an expression that conveys the same idea in laymen terms throughout this post.

Metadata: Information about information. Using metadata for SEO helps describe the content of a page in its structure as opposed to its content, giving search engines an additional space in which to rank and glean the topics that your intended audience might be searching for. That’s right, Dublin Core can help your website shoot up in search result rankings.

Furthermore, after drawing these conclusions from the job description alone, I came across “Determining Web Page Keywords,” a site written by Eric Holter, which provides explanations as to what SEO is, and how to get it done.

More importantly, it also explains which librarian skills are pertinent to this specialization, highlighting some of the ones I had recognized in my own skills set, and bring a few others to the table. It even provides tips as to where keywords can be used within an html page to optimize your site’s recall.

I knew librarianship could open several doors to me, but I had no idea I could one day become an Online Marketing specialist thanks to my MLIS.

Web Analytics and CI Resource May 23, 2009

So here I am, drinking bubble tea in one of my favorite Montreal cafes. After my first week of work, the library school afterlife has officially begun. As a twenty-something who has lived in 3 countries in the last 3 years, I have a lot of ambitions and several goals. In two years time, I want to be working in a context that blends IT governance issues, consulting, and online learning and intelligence communities. That’s one possibility– the other extreme will probably have the same focus as the former but replacing the consulting context for law.

My first project in this so called afterlife just opened my eyes as to some of the many things I can do with this background. My current project deals with collecting intelligence for an internationally-recognized organization. Already four days into the job, I have learned that librarians have all the skills they need to manage web analytics. I had NO idea it was that easy!

Avinash Kaushik’s blog, “Occam’s Razor,” provides very thorough examples of how Google Trends, Google Insights, and Google Analytics can be used to monitor a website’s visits (for free). Please check it out; it’s a great guide for CI juniors and web 2.0-philes. The same blog post leads to links that compare non-Google CI tools based on their functional capabilities. Its a great resource that amalgamates CI product information, tool application explanations, and web 2.0 concepts in one convenient blog.

Obviously, the ROI for these tools correlates with a CI strategist’s ability to understand why a competitor’s website (navigability, organization of information, product, SEO techniques) yields more visitors or clicks. In order to extract value from these tools, CI specialists have to combine these facts with conclusions that are based on client research, a comprehensive understanding of competitors’ website, as well as a thorough understanding of your organization’s SWOTs. The idea is to use these tools to compliment information about your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses as well as its external opportunities and threats.

If you are interested in understanding your competitors’ online marketing strategies, these are great tools to consider.