As of March 2nd, 2009, I have joined the Martin Prosperity Institute as their Data Librarian. Having worked with them (via BrightSail) since June 2008, I am thrilled to have been asked to join their team permanently.
To learn more about the MPI, visit us at martinprosperity.org.
I can be reached at kimberly.silk AT gmail.com and also kimberly.silk AT martinprosperity.org.
Presented by Jennifer McNenly and Matthew Frederick,
Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP
Although this case study describes a legal environment, the learning can be applied to any environment.
Life before the FindIt! Portal:
Step 1: Defining the Search Scopes - created four basic scopes: people, precedents and research, firm information, client matters
Step 2: Defining Search Requirements - case sensitivity, spelling, pluralization, word stemming, language
Step 3: Define Metadata Standard, including the controlled vocabulary
Step 4: Conduct Content Inventory - determine anything restricted or sensitive
Step 5: Metadata training for content owners - consistent naming conventions, synonyms, categories (also done for French content). Used Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a tagging framework. Developed a metadata tagging tool to add metadata to documents.
Step 6: Content Sources:
Web pages (ASP files) were indexed too. The website was built in frames, which presented challenges for indexing. Similar issues for Javascript links.
Internal blogs using Moveable Type and WordPress were also crawled and added to the index.
Structured data included InMagic Content Server, people directory (SQL).
Used crawl rules to include or keep out particular content and content types.
Best Bets were created based on frequently requested content, common tasks, stats on content usage, and existing “can’t find it” information.
Step 7: Search Interface and Results Display:
Step 8: Search Usability Testing - compare against actual user behaviour.
Having a project sponsor at a senior level in the firm is crucial.
Current Work: content migration into SharePoint; reviewing metadata fields.
Future Work: Faceted navigation, improved search.
Presented by James Robertson, Step Two Designs
How do we break down silos, and improve conversations across and through them?
Top-down communication is working … but horizontal communication is poor. A chat over a beer (or around the water cooler) is often not enough. The weaknesses continue to be exposed with the rise of Web 2.0.
How do we build on the knowledge and solutions we already have? The ability to take advantage of current ideas and discoveries and use them in new circumstances. At the same time, we need to avoid reinventing the wheel.
Indexing tools are not enough - technology is not the whole solution. Google is not the whole answer. We are not faced with an information discovery problem, because indexing can solve that. Search results are abundant.
It’s not necessarily only an knowledge sharing problems; centralized knowledge bases are not the whole solution, either. Centralizing knowledge via knowledge extraction is not the whole answer.
The issue is how to bridge the gap between industries and the differing terminology. Ideally we want to find the right people to talk to, where the meeting of minds produces new ideas and discoveries.
We need to talk about sharing awareness before we share knowledge. We need to know where to look. Everything that we do, we think what we’re doing is unique. We need more peripheral awareness of what else is happening in the organization.
How to Share Awareness?
Search Engine best bets: www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_bestbets
Communities of Practice - see Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger
Information discovery can be aided by bringing people together to communicate and share best practices that can be used and built upon.
Using RSS to support peer-to-peer communication - see www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_rss.
It’s not about the blog - it’s about the communicator.
Communication must be recognized as a business problem, not an information discovery or a knowledge management solution. We need a business solution, not a technology solution. Start small, and focus on the people.