The Running Librarian

Understanding and investigating new solutions is an important part of any Intranet Mangers role, which is why Catherine Grenfell's article "Understanding new solutions" on the Step Two Designs blog caught my eye.

From the introduction to the blog post:

"In today’s world new solutions and applications appear every day, and some are more useful and interesting than others. It’s part of an intranet team’s role to know what’s around and be able to make recommendations about suggested improvements. However some teams are reluctant to explore new areas such as social media, mobile devices or online hosted solutions"

Catherine then outlines some of the options (new solutions) available to Intranet Managers and some of the constraints and issues that Intranet managers need to be aware of. This is an excellent post which is well worth a quick read.

Last Sunday I ran the Dinosaur (Deal) 10k this was my first competitive race since the Darent Valley 10k in April when I fell off the pavement on the final corner and torn a bunch of ligaments in my ankle.

Since April I've not managed to train much until this month so it came as no surprise that my time was a very disappointing 52:00, this placed me 205th out of 463 runners. Having said that it was great to be out and about running again and I'll definitely be running this race next year, if only to better my very slow time of 52:00.

In case you're wondering the Dinosaur is from the Deal Tri website at time it felt a bit like I was running like a Dinosaur on Sunday!

LLRX.com have published a great introduction to Open source called "What is Open Source" which if you're interested in Open source, you'll want to take a look at! This sounds like it is just an introduction to a number of articles which will look at how Open Source can be used by Librarians. I'm sure the wait will be very worthwhile!

How do you evaluate wiki software for use in an Enterprise? The Confluence product blog might well have the answer with this post "10 questions to answer when evaluating enterprise wiki software" In the post the author puts forward 10 suggestions for questions which should form the basis for your requirements, they are as follows:

• Open-Source-Software or a commercial wiki product?
• Price? - This can be a major factor in determing what wiki software you can implement
• Are high quality plug-ins available?
• Does an active community already exist?
• Is this particular Wiki a known quantity?
• What kind of technologies?
• System functionalities?
• Usability and Design?
• Requirements for the project?
• Migratability of the data?
• Does the wiki offer simple system administration?

Hold on that's 11 suggestions...oh well who's counting! There are some excellent suggestions here for factors you need to consider carefully if you're looking at purchasing an enterprise wiki software application.

Note there is obviously a Confluence bias to this post as it has been published to the Confluence Product blog but the questions can be applied to any enterprise wiki application.

I could spend some time writing summaries of ALL the sessions I attended at the BIALL Conference but thankfully I don't have to because someone has beaten me to it!

Laura Woods aka WoodsieGirl has written some fantastic summaries of the sessions she attended. So if you didn't attend the Conference or even if you did have a look at the following and see if you agree with Laura's comments on the sessions content.

• You're hired practial tips and techniques for the confident interview
• Delivering change, changing perceptions
• Knowledge Management Refocused
• Integreon talks about Outsourcing
• Using Wikis as cost saving tools
• The Legal Services Act - what it means for Information Professionals
• People 2.0 - Working in a 2.0 World

Some excellent work here from Laura who not only managed to pay attention to what was happening during the sessions but take photos as the official BIALL photographer at the same time!

I don't do any legal research these days, most people will say that is probably a good thing but even I can tell that this is a very good introduction to legal sources for U.S Legislation and Case Law.

Don't say I don't ever give you anything for free...

I think our Intranet is excellent but apparently nothing compared to the "beautiful" intranets announced as part of the Intranet Benchmarking forum competition "My Beautiful Intranet" competition. Screenshots from the finalists Intranets are shown in the Presentation below.

Why does this always happen, you wait ages for an Infographic and then 11 come along at the same time?!

First up is this brillant, yes really, infographich called "How does Google Work?"

Infographic by PPC Blog

Then I stumbled across a set of not one not two, but 10 Social Media Infographics and then just when I didn't think things could get any better I found a fantastic set of photos on Flickr from a company called Intersection Consulting I love this one entitled "Anti-social etiquette"

...I'm pleased to say after several months of sitting around and twiddling my thumbs (figuratively at least) I'm back pounding the streets of my hometown.

I've been running every other day with no ill-effects from my previous and have been slowly but surely increasing the time and distance I'm running.

The even better news is that I feel ready to take part in some more races, starting with the Dinosaur 10k (not as scary as it sounds)The Mid-Kent 5 miler, The Sandwich Festival 10k and the Kent Coastal 1/2 Marathon, before the big one in October the Royal Parks 1/2 Marathon. If you're interested and have some spare cash(!) you can sponsor myself and two colleagues who are running this race with me.