Working with what you already have ... improving findability across your organisation Kate Simpson Saturday 16 June 2007 BIALL Sheffield 2007

Good Morning Sheffield

I’m new to this so please be gentle...

A little bit about me

My name is: Kate Simpson

Law degree

LPC

to jumping off a cliff

Tangledom Ltd

information architecture?

it’s what you all instinctively know & do every day

findability

working with what you already have

improving findability across your organisation

DMS  versioning & central storage

CMS  publish & distribute

[ intranet etc ]  view & share

search  find & reuse

integrate  PMS, library, billing, research, e-mail...

 and now?

taxo mgt  organise & structure

single search  the ‘google’ effect

system [bloat] + information [bloat]

“ ... access to over 4.1 billion documents from more than 32,000 sources ...”

tangledom: the state we’re in

So what do we do?

Reduce the number of systems

Reduce the amount of information

Are these really solutions to our tangled times?

I’d suggest not

Let’s Get Smarter

1. Smarter Us & Smarter Users

Looking at...

How well our systems have been deployed & integrated

Using all the best features that we could/should

Keeping our systems up to date & relevant

Approach  System Gap Analysis

what we have deployed vs.

what all the possible features of the system are

system features deployed ....... ....... ....... further system features not yet deployed ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... prioritised system features to deploy

system features deployed

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further system features not yet deployed

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How do we decide which features to use?

understand system capabilities

understand our users’ needs

understand our information requirements

Let’s Get Smarter

2. Smarter Systems

Looking at...

The features that aren’t working as intended (or promised)

The problems our users are experiencing

And why

The information that still isn’t being found

And why

Approach  Optimise System Features

what we have deployed vs.

the problems we’re still having

system features deployed ....... ....... ....... problems/ difficulties with the system ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... prioritised system features to be fixed

system features deployed

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problems/ difficulties with the system

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How do we decide which features to fix?

understand how the system is supposed to work

understand the problems our users are having

understand the potential solutions

Let’s Get Smarter

3. Smarter Information

Looking at...

How ‘out of sync’ the metadata is between systems

How systematically metadata is being applied

How helpful our taxonomies really are or could be

Approach  Metadata Gap Analysis

what metadata is being captured and applied

(in each system) vs.

where you want to be

metadata being captured ....... ....... ....... where we want to be ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... prioritised metadata to be developed and captured

metadata being captured

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where we want to be

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How do we decide what to do and when?

understand the business context

understand our users

understand our information

My point?

Findability

Smarter users

Smarter systems

Smarter information

Understand our systems

Understand our users

Understand our information

Understand our business context

not easy not simple but essential

Thanks for listening

feel free to drop me a line: [email_address]