Meeting Reports

1. Searching the Internet

2. Taming your intranet

Searching the Internet: Google and beyond

Workshop Leader: Karen Blakeman
Birmingham University Library, March 2006

Report by Theresa Summerfield, Altis Content Coordinator, University of Birmingham, Information Services

I work as a Content Coordinator for Altis http://www.altis.ac.uk

Altis is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) http://www.rdn.ac.uk

As the title suggests, the RDN is all about electronic resources. We scour the Internet, sourcing resources for our subject gateways, of which there are eight. Resources are evaluated according to their relevance, authority and accessibility. First and foremost resources must be freely available on the web. We then assess their relevance to a particular subject area within the post sixteen learning and research communities.

I am therefore constantly on the look out for new resources to support learning and research in hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism; the subjects supported by Altis. As well as sourcing resources I am keen to find out about the new search engines that are around and to learn new tips for improving my search strategies.

That is why I signed up for this workshop, and the fact that it came recommended by a colleague who had previously attended the same workshop in London. Karen Blakeman, of RBA Information Services http://www.rba.co.uk/ is highly regarded in the profession and I wasn’t disappointed. Her presentation style is very clear and considering that there was a huge amount of content to cover in just one day she managed to get through it all without leaving us with a feeling of bewilderment as can often happen. Although I felt quite bombarded with information I did not feel confused or did not feel lacking in my understanding of the content. On the contrary the feeling of bombardment was very positive as I had discovered some excellent new searching tools and picked up some top tips to enable me to find some new resources for Altis.

My particular favourite is http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/ as this enables you to refine your results set according to whether you are shopping or researching. Other search engines highlighted in the workshop enable the user to compare results sets from different search engines side by side. This helped to illustrate why Google is not necessarily the best option!

Karen also talked about specific tools for finding audio visual content, advanced search techniques, different file formats and news services. Particular attention was given to wikis, blogs and RSS feeds. The session allowed plenty of time for hands-on so that we could put all of the theory into practice. Delegates were free to ask questions at any time, which helped contribute to the relaxed nature of the workshop. There was plenty of time for networking too with refreshment breaks and an hour for lunch.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this workshop to anyone who uses the Internet as part of their daily work routine. Even more experienced users will benefit – we can never know everything, can we?

Meeting Report: Taming your Intranet

CILIP, London, March 2006

Report by Helen Davies, Information Manager, Trades Union Congress (TUC)

The course gathered a large cross-section of the information profession, from those who oversee their Library’s site pages to those who manage intranets for complex multi-sited organisations. Irrespective of this, it was soon established that everyone was tackling similar problems; including issues around staff ‘buy-in’, user expectations, competition from e-mail and shared network drives, ownership of content, and archiving/deletion policies.

The day focused on how some of these issues could be resolved, however it highlighted the inherent conflicts within intranets, for example:

• Organisational needs versus user needs;
• People and their interaction with technology;
• Variant user needs;
• Information store versus a communication tool;
• Up-to-date information versus an archive;
• Flat structure versus a hierarchical structure;
• Centralised content management versus decentralised.

In the process of discussing these, Luke Tredinnick, author of Why Intranets Fail (and How to Fix Them)[1] attempted to cover much of the content of his book, a tall order in a six-hour seminar.

Although the course was titled Taming your Intranet, it did begin to feel there was a bit too much doom and gloom; with a feeling that the problems have been around for some time and no one has really found the solutions. A session on sharing success stories, however, lifted spirits, and the day was a valuable opportunity to discuss both problems and successes with fellow professionals.

To find solutions to the challenges our intranets pose, we need opportunities to learn from each other. Also, to share experiences of using newer web technologies within our intranets; wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, folksonomies and social tagging were touched upon in the final part of the day.

A few key issues I took away from the course:

• Keep the intranet’s aims realistic and the intranet small;
• Exploit what is working well;
• Manage users’ expectations by informing them of the intranet’s core function.
• Ensure users do not have to work harder, than before the intranet existed, to find information.

 And finally, one of the day’s key themes was that our intranets are a reflection of our organisation’s culture, processes, and practices within them. And so, in our roles as intranet managers, for success, we need to become enablers of cultural change.

References

1. Tredinnick, L. (2004) Why intranets fail (and how to fix them): a practical guide for information professionals. Oxford: Chandos Publishing Limited.