Northern Lights Inc.

Content Management Systems

We’ve been busy at Northern Lights over the past year in some new areas that I think you might find interesting and perhaps relevant to your library’s strategies and/or operations. With this posting, I’m focusing on a project that involved a research library archives department whose staff members were charged with creating a Digital Archives for enterprise-wide born-digital administrative content management.

Please feel free to contact me if you wish to receive any of the NLI documents described later in this posting.

Our responsibilities focused primarily on assisting Archives staff members in getting up to speed on the emerging XML family of services, SOA, Web Services, the difference between XML and XML native capabilities, taxonomies, thesauri, Ontologies and so forth.

Our Northern Lights activities and contributions included:
1. A one-day workshop related to “Current Trends in IT and what they mean to Information Managers”.
This included not only Archives staff members, but the Archives Director also invited the metadata librarian, campus ITS staff members, and the IT staff member from the College of Arts and Sciences. Shared discussion among the attendees set the stage for what was currently possible, when new relevant ITS implementations might occur, the interrelationship of the Library’s Repository and the Administrative Digital Content Management System as well as how the attendees might be working together in the future.

2. A series of Content Management Documents that Archives staff members used as beginning points for discussing and understanding together the emerging Content Management capabilities. The document series included:
a. Content Methods -- a detailed overview of the logical segments of CMS and available types of systems designed to manage content (structured information) in distributed, digital environments.

b. CM Types – an overview of various types of CMS, the difference in designs, specific differences in component-based, composition-based and schema-based types and how the latter relates to analyzing a body of content.

c. CM Type Detail – a detailed exploration of the three main types of CMS, including details of their design as well as how and when to implement them.

d. CM Access Structures – a detailed overview of access structures and the organizing tools used to work with a body of content. These value-added structures support the basic CMS functionality, enable the rapid, precise discovery of relevant content facilitate contributions, enable repurposing and reuse and, in general, allow the content to be managed to maximize investments.

e. CM Repository – an overview of the heart of the CMS, the repository, the place where content is stored and managed, The document looks at the repository, its characteristics, its components, its critical role in storing the structures that make up the explicit content model and the various storage options available.

f. CMS Relational Databases versus OO-XMLDG – an overview, comparison and contrast of the repository component of the Management Module of CMS, specifically the different approaches to data handling found in relational databases and XML/OO databases when the latter act as repositories for content management systems.

g. Readiness – a detailed overview of skills and knowledge the staff members need to create a new version of archives in a digital age, to change the way they work, to transfer their skills into components of systems and to help users organize and structure their own information in a way that enables the users to manage their own content, enables Archives staff members to fulfill their mission in a new, active way and that enables the enterprise to leverage every dollar it spends on the application of information management skills. In essence, the document is about how to prepare for changing the way that staff members and users work.

3. Readings – we also provided a list of other relevant sources designed to provide a further context for current discussions of Content Management Systems relevant to the emerging XML native environment.

4. Wiki – we made two site visits to get the process going and then provided a Wiki for Archives staff members to share and discuss what they were learning as well as resolving problems they discovered during the project. We also participated in the Wiki discussions in responding to questions, guiding discussions, suggesting approaches and so forth. This proved not only to be cost effective, but also to provide a rich learning and application-testing environment.

5. Testing Applications – Archives staff members also undertook testing of Open Source content management systems like Greenstone to gain hand-on experience in the use of relevant Open Source software in terms of the further design and development of the “Digital Archives” enterprise-wide administrative content model.

As our NLI participation in the Project ended, Archives staff members began the design the next phase of their work – i.e., participation with the College of Arts and Sciences to respond to the CAS Dean’s desire to create a new way for College members to work together – named at that time the “Paperless Office” – in a born digital working environment.

Post Hiatus Thoughts

I've just completed a relatively long hiatus focused on reading about emerging technologies and what, particularly, libraries are up to. I also started a wiki for a workgroup I'm part of and began doing some different forms of ipoding. Finally, my partner (Sharon Schmitt) and I are looking at the importance of value chains and possible infrastructure investments when considering the application of emerging technologies. Each experience was kind of new and different and, even though we've been thinking about value chains for quite a while, looking at how they might work with emerging technologies is a new brain exercise. The wiki gave us a new way of working together. IPoding is not only fun but also means I can travel around with one less device — namely my Palm — at least for a while. I got my digital camera to work. I didn't succeed in understanding how to share a document through the public folder in my .mac account and I still can't figure out the intracies of podcasting. All in all, it was almost all fruitful with just a bit of frustrating. But I learned some new ways of working and had fun at the same time. In general, trying things out rather than reading about them always shows me something I couldn't see or understand any other way. This is perhaps a small metaphor for thinking about how to move into the future.

Faceted Navigation

Link:Faceted Navigation from KM World

Brief Description:

Faceted indexing has been part of the panoply of library and information science control mechanisms for decades. Many of these conceptual models are good fits with web-based information and knowledge management systems -- and are being rediscovered and applied anew, particularly in business-oriented knowledge management. Reviewing articles like this is helpful to anyone interested in more powerful systems.

User-Centered Design (UCD)

Link: Digital Web Magazine - Articles by Topic : User-Centered Design (UCD).

I'll be looking at these articles, comparing them to NLI's user-framed, value-adding tool. I think it's important to see the various approaches to engaging with users. Our experience over the last ten years has demonstrated how many positive things happen when staff members leave their place of work and go out to talk to users about how they do their work, make decisions, make meaning and create new knowledge.

Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content

Link: Digital Web Magazine - Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content.

This is another slant on new approaches to content, content access and -- possibly -- content design.

Knowledge Organizing Systems

Download kos_jodi_v4i4.pdf

This is a download from the Journal of Digital Information that provides examples of ongoing research and development related to knowledge organizing systems. We can begin to see how much richer discovery and learning environments are becoming. The question is, of course, what do we begin to do today in libraries and museums to participate in the implementation of these research efforts as they become operational?

Managing Change in Libraries and Museums

I've begun research and interviews for a new book on Managing Change in Museums and Libraries. I've had a career-long interest in how staff members in libraries (and then museums) manage change and a lot of our Northern Lights work revolves around organizations in transition. It's pretty clear that today's emerging technologies are moving us rapidly in the direction of rich content, tailored instructional technologies, knowledge management via the semantic web and network effects in which users enrich provider websites — not to mention blogs, wiki's, syndication, ipoding and more. In my initial interviews, I'm asking people about: 1) Major trends and forces; 2) Impact of technology over the next few years; 3) Types and examples of major changes you've been involved in and how you went about it; 4) User relations; 5) Value you are adding; 6) Facilities and space; and 7) Tools you would like to see for managing change; and 8) Your view of library or museum culture related to change.

If you'd like to participate, please feel free to email me and we can set up a time to talk. I would surely appreciate it!

Northern Lights & ARL's LibQUAL

A friend of mine emailed me to say "I do not understand what you mean by user discussions and profiling. I read your mention of it on your blog, but I am still a bit vague about what you mean. We have been doing focus group sessions with our users and we have the results of LibQUAL."

At Northern Lights our experience is that attitudes or opinions can be quite different from behaviors -- and in focusing on behaviors staff members gain a more realistic understanding of how to leverage the library's investment of scarce resources -- as well as building face to face working relationships that are increasingly beneficial over time.

We show staff members how to explore these behaviors in face to face interview dialogues. The focus is not on the organization. In fact, we ask staff members not to talk about their organization or services. The focus, rather, is on the user, what she or he is doing today and how they expect to be doing their intellectual work into the future.

We provide an up-to-date landscape review to explore potential changes in information behaviors and to test the fit of external and internal trends with individual information seeking and use behaviors. And, as the interview discussions proceed, we provide a framework for comparing behaviors and identifying patterns of use a campus, for example, in consideration of possible leveraged changes in services and programs.

So, while LibQUAL solicits opinions about library services via a survey instrument, the NLI methodology has library staff members identifying information seeking and use behaviors via face to face interview discussions. With LibQUAL, the focus is on the library. With NLI, the focus is on the "user" -- the faculty member, student, staff member and/or administrator. With LibQUAL, you get a sense of where library services stand. With NLI, you get a sense of where your users are and where they are going in terms of how, where and when they do their intellectual work.

Patterns & People - OCLC's Pattern Recognition Report

Early this year, OCLC released a major landscape report titled "Pattern Recognition: The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan. The basic message about libraries and, perhaps, librarians is that they are increasingly marginalized. George Needham, in a followup presentation, states that the scan's only value is how "you and the rest of our colleagues apply it, challenge it, refine it.

From my perspective, the striking thing about this effort and the discussions it is provoking and supporting is that there are no current or potential users in the picture -- except as they are seen through a library person's eyes. In 1992, at Case Western Reserve University, we developed a program statement for a new "library of the future" drawing from library staff member discussions with over 500 students, faculty members and staff members. We talked with these folks about how they did their intellectual work, how they were using new information technologies, with whom were they communicating and collaborating, as well as how they were teaching, learning and researching. There were other discussion question as well and a value-adding analysis framework for our own form of pattern identification.

Since then, my NLI partner Sharon Schmitt and I have refined and applied this approach over and over with a variety of clients from libraries, museums, archives, universities and other nonprofits. It always works. And, there is always a user desire and need for the intellectual control mechanisms that professionalss have been responsible for developing, for support in creating new knowledge, making meaning, solving problems and making decisions. My dream is to propogate these kinds of discussions and analyses across the country and around the world.

Current landscapes are essential. We always do them for a new client and project. The other side of the coin -- understanding what "users" are doing -- is equally important. If we ask the right questions, analyze the results from the perspective of how we can add value and use disciplined strategic thinking to leverage our investments, we will be creating sustainable and indispensable organizations -- moving away from marginalization.

New Opportunities & Relationships

In the last couple of weeks, I've had the pleasure of talking with a number of longtime colleagues and friends about the opportunities they see today to create something new for their organizations and the folks their organizations serve. At the same time, I've begun the analysis of interview discussions that we've begun with college administrators about how they do their work, communicate, collaborate, make decisions and solve problems. This is by way of designing and implementing systems that can help these people do their work differently in the digital environment.

The interview discussion is the core activity in our NLI "Understanding and Managing Transforming Change Toolkit." The premise is pretty simple -- though it takes a bit of preparation and practice --providing the grist for some very sophisticated analysis and design. The thing about these interview discussions -- and why they have something to do with new opportunities -- is that when you sit and talk with people about how they do their work, communicate, colaborate, make decisions and solve problems you learn things you can't learn any other way. And, you come to know the people you're serving (and they to know you) in fundamentally beneficial ways.

New opportunities are often about what people can do differently as a result of the availability of new tools, new systems and new investments in infrastructures. Some differences come from the experience of early adoptors, their interest in innovating and the diffusion of that innovation to their colleagues or their work. Some differences come from the potential to add value to those you serve in different ways and through a different mix of value adding processes.

I am reminded anew that the dream of new opportunities can be realized if we invest the time and preparation to view assessment, design, implementation and evaluation as a face-to-face ongoing relationship.