1. Laura Larsson Cedar Collaboration November 6, 2004
Overview of Knowledge Acquisition, Organization, Use and Dissemination Techniques
Laura Larsson
Cedar Collaboration
November 6, 2004

2. All men (humans) by nature desire to know.
(Aristotle, Metaphysics)
All people by nature desire to know. And as we know, we retrieve information that we then have to do something with.

3. Agenda/Objectives
Describe several techniques for acquiring, organizing, collaborating around, conveying/disseminating and securing personal knowledge
Discussion: What information management methods do you use?
Agenda/Objectives
Many of these have already been alluded to today, or will be in the training sessions given by my colleagues.
You’re going to be given quite a bit of information about tools for finding, organizing and using public health content. My role is to help you figure out ways of organizing your information using good quality software applications.
If we have time I hope to ask you to share how you find, organize, use and disseminate information.

4. Acquiring information and ideas
Formulate your question
Search your office for articles, books and reports
Discuss the question with nearby colleagues
Search the Web
Search online factual databases like PubMed
Visit a nearby academic library
Post your question to one or more Listservs or forums (social networking)
Contact a librarian to get additional help
Acquiring information and ideas: Generally speaking most people begin looking for information on their computers and in their offices before they go to colleagues or searching the Web.
Harry Bruce, iSchool, University of Washington defines “A personal information collection is defined as the space we turn to first when we need information to do a task or pursue an interest. It is a collection of information sources and channels that we as individuals have acquired, cultivated, and organized over time and in response to a range of stimuli. It is an organic and dynamic personal construct that we take with us into, and out of, the various information events that frame our daily working and personal lives. Personal information collections include content in various forms (documents, Web pages, mail, notes, calendars, address books, etc.), structures for representing and organizing this information (folder hierarchies, piles, lists, etc.), and pointers to information (people, links, Favourites, etc).” This is a new source that does not appear in your handouts but can be found at: Actually if you type in: Information behaviour that keeps found things found in to google you will find it. It’s the first record.
PubMed is one example of a free online database of citations. CHID (Combined Health Information Database) is another. CHID is really helpful for those doing health promotion and education work.
Academic libraries are valuable resources because most public universities are open to the public. Find, read/copy journal articles, book chapters. Take notes, etc. Academic libraries with their knowledgeable librarians are often good sources of information, especially information that is not available on the Web. Make friends with a librarian, very close friends.
Professional online discussion lists such as PHNUTR-L, PHSW, PNWHEALTH, PHNURSES, and so on are great for asking questions and getting responses – or just for tracking important activities among your colleagues.
Librarians are knowledgeable and can answer most questions most of the time. The best ones are driven by guilt (I.e, they feel guilty if they cannot find an answer for you).

5. What Information Do We Collect When We’re Working on a Project?
Ideas
Notes
Suggestions from colleagues
Documents
Snippets of information
URLs/Web pages
messages
PowerPoint presentations
Quotations
Charts, tables, maps
Images
And so on…
What Information Do We Collect When We’re Working on a Project?
The question should be phrased: What don’t we collect?: As we think our way through a project we may talk with others, refer to the books and papers in our offices, surf the Web, glean through information discussed in the various discussion groups that we belong to, examine PowerPoint discussions we have from workshops, look at images or charts, tables and maps.
Information is everywhere and in many formats. It’s important to be able to manipulate the many different formats that content comes in. Examples include PPT, PDF, JPG, GIF, Doc, HTML as well as the different kinds of information: ideas, notes, snippets, suggestions, messages, quotations, and the like.

6. Evaluating information and ideas
My colleagues will be discussing or have discussed how to evaluate quality and EBPH
Many Web sites dealing with how to determine quality
critical thinking
Evaluating information and ideas: The issue of being able to evaluate the information you collect, use and disseminate is really important. Issues of quality vary with the type of material and with the community of practice. Do keep in mind that there are a number of Web sites that go into detail about how to evaluate the quality of Web and other kinds of documents. My colleagues will be discussing or have discussed how to evaluate quality and EBPH questions.
Critical thinking, constantly asking yourself the motivations for an article, who the author is, who is supporting the site, and so on will make it easier to refer colleagues and clients to good quality information. Evaluation also involves asking critical questions about what you are reading: Why did the author take this position? Why does she disagree with this other expert?

7. To Keep or Not to Keep? That is the (Important) Question
Most information is junk – until we need it (80/20 rule)
Call this unneeded information, “data waste”
Future importance of a piece of information
Information fragmentation
To Keep or Not to Keep? That is the (Important) Question
Future use: information might be useful somewhere at sometime in the future but how do we store it for future retrieval? Most of the information we collect on paper and digitally is junk. We call it “data waste”. But it is only junk until we need it.
Information fragmentation
Only one sentence or phrase might be of interest
What do you need to keep in order to be able to find that piece of information again?
In an Ideal World we would have the right information
at the right time
in the right place
in the right form, and
of sufficient completeness and quality to perform the current activity/project
These requirements are not often met which is why it helps to keep track of useful information over time in appropriate applications.

8. Deciding What to Keep
Difficult decision but is fundamental to personal information management
Part of the whole issue of determining quality
Exacerbating the information glut problem with the apps we add
Get feedback from knowledgeable colleagues
Deciding What to Keep: The decision about what to keep is extremely difficult but is fundamental to personal information management. Part of determining quality, but is also based on our best guess as to what is important to us.
Applications we add to our desktops often exacerbate the information glut problem because they are just one more thing to have to learn to use well. Be careful about what applications you add to your computer.
It helps to rely on professionals that spend their lives finding, organizing, using and disseminating information: librarians, for giving you ideas on information management.

9. So Now We Have It, So What Do We Do With It
So Now We Have It, So What Do We Do With It? Organizing information and ideas
Print it out
Cut and paste
Scan onto paper or digital format
Key it into our PCs, handhelds
Whiteboards
Audio/Voice Recorders
Notebooks (paper) and index cards
Collect in appropriate applications
Dive slate
So Now We Have It, So What Do We Do With It? Organizing information and ideas
Here is a list of ways of collecting information for future use. Which methods do you use?
Printing a document out is generally our preferred method of grabbing information but it does end up as desktop or filing cabinet clutter, especially if we aren’t good about processing the information and then getting rid of it.

10. Dive Slates Dive Slates
If you get your best ideas in the shower then invest in a dive slate. These are used by divers to take notes while underwater. They’re cheap, about $10.00 and work very well. Jot your idea down with the attached pen while showering.

11. (A Few) Methods & Applications for Organizing Information
Desktop folders
Snippet management applications
Bookmark organizers
Citation managers
Personal Information Managers (PIMs)
PDAs
Database managers
Scanners
(A Few) Methods & Applications for Organizing Information: In this section we will talk about organizing information using desktop folders and some of the many thousand applications that help us organize information for future retrieval.
Desktop folders for the documents we create and collect.
Snippet management applications for the little pieces of information we might need and for ideas that we collect.
Bookmark organizers to get us back to really good sites that have information we can use.
Citation managers for managing references for articles or for reference.
PIMs – to keep track of tasks, contacts and where we are supposed to be
PDAs because they enable us to carry around a lot of information with very little weight.
Database managers – help us organize highly structured information
Scanners – facilitate turning paper into digital documents that can be searched.

12. Desktop Folders Organize folders by broad topic
Use a hierarchy to get to the most relevant document
Not critical to use My Documents for content
Desktop Folders: Organize folders by subject or function or project
Be consistent in your naming of files
Avoid repeating information available at a higher or lower level of the hierarchy (I.e., do not use Contacts if you are already in a Contacts folder)
If you work in a busy environment you will likely need between 10 and 30 folders in your personal file plan. Less than 10 is probably too few and more than 30 means you’re a librarian working on way too many projects.
Although many people put documents into the folder called My Documents, you can create a separate folder for important projects, for downloaded content, or even use a separate hard drive for content that you’ve created or use.
We will talk about backing up and archiving old information in this afternoon’s session.
Sometimes helpful to save really important documents to a main frame account since those accounts are backed up nightly.

13. Folder Image
This is a partial list of folders on my D:\ drive. Data is the name of my Disk containing my teaching, learning, project and downloaded materials content as well as other top level folders.
You see three top level: Cedar Collaboration, Downloads and Projects and several sub folders under Current Projects.
sign puts the important items first on the list so I can find them easily. These are the folders I use most often so I put them at the top. Rename any important folders with sign, an exclamation Point or some other symbol from the top line of your keyboard to move them to the top of your hierarchy.
Projects is opened up so that you can see some of the sub-folders. You can see various current projects. Note the dates opposite them. Some dates are deadlines; some are a range. I use the shortest name I can use that still tells me what is in the folder. Windows only allows us 256 characters total so there is some limitation in folder length even with the newer versions of Windows.

14. Snippet Management
Many applications available for collecting bits of text
Unstructured text management
Sticky notes
Snippet Management: A snippet of information is the little bits and pieces of information that you find that you want to use: sentences, quotes, paragraphs, citations, text from articles on Web sites
By unstructured, I mean content that cannot be organized into a formal structure such as you would find in a database.
InfoSelect is only one of many applications that you can purchase or acquire for free and is used as an example since I am familiar with it.

15. InfoSelect Image
InfoSelect is actually a Personal Information Manager (date, tasks, notes, contacts, )
Organize temporally or by topic. I use both.
An add-on application works with Palm OS PDAs to exchange information with your desktop
Although InfoSelect is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) I use it for its great notes section for organizing, managing and retrieving snippets of information.
Use InfoSelect to capture text and pictures from the Web, PowerPoint slides, and so on to organize by topic if you need information on that topic, or by year, month and day if the information is potentially of some interest later on.
A public health nutritionist colleague uses it to capture information from electronic discussion groups, URLs, minutes from conference calls and meetings.
Note that you have a navigation column with arrows and a section for text. InfoSelect is great for capturing text. Content is organized into topics and notes. Notes can be organized by topic or by date and easily rearranged to make the most sense. Note the date stamp. I date stamp everything.
Text can be added by cutting and pasting (my favorite method of adding content). You can also highlight text and click on the InfoSelect lightening bolt on your navigation bar to move the highlighted text to a note.
Add URLs and additional key words if necessary to enhance future retrieval.

16. askSam Image
askSam
Great tool for organizing all types of digital information
Can set up structures to organize either structured and unstructured information
Useful for storage of old messages. Storing old so that I can retrieve it is how I use this application.
askSam has been around for a long time. I like it because I can combine a structure on top of unstructured information. By that I mean I can add a section for additional keywords on top of an unstructured document to add value to that document.
Use it to track all sorts of things. Create a journal of daily events, keep track of information on a house you want to buy, project details.
This is the complete 9-11 Commission report. It can be searched for specific words or phrases.
I use askSam to organize my old messages for future retrieval.

17. OneNote Image
OneNote
Organizes information using a 3-ring notebook metaphor with folders, sections, pages and sub-pages
Use it for organizing content for the various projects that you work on. Create a folder to organize the broad topic. Create sections for organizing all the components: charge/description, people, resources, tasks/todo lists, taking minutes. Then create individual pages for content. Those pages can be dragged to a new location.
Turn on the recorder to capture important content at the same time that you write notes in lectures, meetings.
On Tablet PCs you can handwrite notes in digital ink. This is very handy for capturing ideas and lectures quickly.
Very useful application in that if you can get the presentation in digital format such as PDF, Word or text you can write notes right on the screen using your Tablet PC.
When you cut and paste from the Web, OneNote grabs the URL at the same time so that you are never without a cite to go back to. Does not work in Netscape.

18. Stickies Image Sticky Notes
Yellow stickies that sit on your desktop and remind you to do things
But can be used to capture snippets of information. Capture the information you need in a sticky note quickly and then move it into the preferred application.
These stickies are stacked one on top of another but they could be spread out over my desktop and can sit on top of other applications or under them.
I use them to remind myself to do something such as get a new hard drive or CD-RW, or what my login is on my yahoo account. Note that although I have the login I do not have the password for security purposes.

19. PowerMarks Image
PowerMarks is a bookmark organizer. PowerMarks is my favorite bookmark organizer. I use it daily, well, constantly.
Grab bookmarks in your preferred browser and import them into PowerMarks. Can update PowerMarks constantly with bookmarks from your browser or open PowerMarks and grab URLs from the application.
Organizing bookmarks in your browser is hard work and is not always intuitive. Spending money on an application like PowerMarks that enables you to search for sites you’ve collected by the title, URL, keywords you’ve added and site description makes life a lot easier.
Arrows: 1. Add additional keywords. View a list of already used keywords, not the number of times you have visited the site. This gives you an indication of how important it is to you.
Grabbing a URL for a project. I use Powermarks to capture content for the many projects that I work on. When I start on a new project, I simply do a series of searches, grabbing the URLs that are of interest. Then I add the name of the project to the description field. Then when I want to retrieve those URLs, I just type in the project name and there they are.
Note the name of the project NLM iHSR; tells me how many times I have visited this siteand gives me a list of the keywords that I have used in the past so that I can be consistent

20. PIMs: Outlook
Outlook is an example of this class of PIM tool. It’s very popular and I’m sure most of you use this application already.
Contacts, notes section and a task list
Use for organizing important information that you need to keep with you. It can sync with handheld devices so that key information is always ready for viewing.
Use a program like Outlook to organize critical information (passwords, contacts, tasks)

21. Outlook, continued…
Important to remember that you can add notes and URLs to contacts, tasks, calendar items and notes.

22. PDAs
PDAs are critical devices for carrying around information that you need to keep at hand.
If someone asks a question in a meeting and your site has wireless, you can surf the Web for the information you need to answer that question.
Share information (contact information, files) through the IRDA (infra-red) port
Many different operating systems to choose from
Pocket PCs
Palm OS
Symbian
PDA-phone combos
All contain a PIM with contacts, tasks, calendar items and notes. Word processing and spreadsheet files, games, diet and exercise applications can be added to the device.

23. Database Managers
Database Managers: MS Access, FileMaker Pro, Flat file managers like spreadsheet applications, Others
This image shows a data entry form for one record in one table of a larger database.
Database managers work well for highly structured data elements that have some relationship to one another but not for the kind of information we often use which is unstructured, text-based information.
Using a relational database often means that you need someone with database management skills to help you build the tables, data entry forms and reports. Not a task for the faint-hearted or the busy person since it will take skill and time to get your database correct.

24. Scanning Documents
Flat-top scanners (including scanner/copier/faxer combinations )
Handheld scanners (scanning pens)
Adobe Acrobat Standard software
ScanSoft PaperPort software
Scanning Documents: Going Paperless: Those whose offices contain a lot of paper are turning to scanners to turn their paper documents into PDF or into text to reduce the amount of paper in their offices.
One of the advantages of content in digital format is that many times the content in the files can be searched. Plus they do not take any space on your shelves and are much easier to organize and find.
Adobe Acrobat Standard software can be used to convert paper documents to PDF
ScanSoft PaperPort software also converts scanned documents into PDF for use on your PC, laptop or Tablet PC.

25. Citation Manager Image
Citation managers are a critical tool if you write a lot of articles because they capture citations from key databases like PubMed and reformat cited references depending on the journal you submit to. Many journals have their own method of formatting references.
Also useful for capturing information about articles you’ve read. You can use the Notes field to add your comments about the article. It’s easy to search for content using the built-in search engines in each of the available citation managers.
Examples include EndNote, ProCite and Reference Manager
I am not going to cover citation managers because there are many sites on the Web that will give you specific information about not only how to use a citation manager but also how to import citations from PubMed and other databases into your citation manager. Refer to your Webliography for information about the three citation managers listed in the slide.
Most academic institutions use EndNote as the preferred citation manager. I use ProCite.

26. Analyzing information and ideas
Most practice-specific category of knowledge work
Skills and tools are unique to each community of practice (group of practitioners)
Excel
Relational database managers
Mindmapping applications
Analyzing information and ideas is the most practice-specific category of knowledge work
The professional skills and tools of one community may be useless to another and may even be unique to that profession.
Excel and relational database managers are important analysis tools in public health
Mindmapping applications are not heavily used but are great for visually displaying project information.

27. Conveying Information and Ideas: Sharing/Using Found Information
Most of the tools we discussed today facilitate sharing of information in one way or another
Anything in digital format can be shared
In the current format or converted to another format
Conveying Information and Ideas: Sharing/Using Found Information: Once information is in digital format it can be shared with others either in its current format or converted to another format. One of the key skills is knowing what the common formats are and what to do with them when you get them. How many different formats do you know how to convert from? How would you convert an Excel chart to a jpg, for example? (Answer: Snagit). Can you convert a Word file to PDF? (Answer: Adobe Acrobat Pro)

28. Publishing Tools "productivity" suites MS Office Open Office
Word, MS Publisher, PowerPoint
Open Office
HTML editors like DreamWeaver
Tools for creating elearning
Publishing tools: Most of us are pretty good at creating new knowledge using the various productivity suites such as MS Office, Publisher (newsletters) or perhaps even DreamWeaver (for creating HTML).
OpenOffice: Components: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Database User Tools. Free productivity suite. Open source. Works great. I use it on my Tablet PC. Opens Word documents and converts them to RTF. Open and edit PPT presentations.

29. Collaborating around information and ideas
Personal networks and networking
Discussion lists, chat and Instant Messaging applications
Facilitation tools
Brainstorming
Mind mapping applications
Electronic whiteboards
OneNote
NetMeeting and instant messaging (IM)
TinyURL
Collaborating around information and ideas: The importance of personal networks and networking cannot be understated. Even though we are mostly discussing applications today, your personal networks and skill in networking with colleagues is critically important to your ability to gather, use and disseminate information.
Professional discussion groups are a great way to ask questions and receive valuable information back. Kris mentioned their value in her presentation. Increasingly Instant Messaging has become a popular way of sharing files, URLs and real-time information. I like Yahoo! Because it is easy to join and use. Many quasi-professional groups use Yahoo! for relatively private discussions.
Facilitation tools such as brainstorming software and electronic whiteboards, tele- and videoconferencing systems and, of course, water coolers, hallways and coffee machines are also means of collaborating around and sharing ideas.
OneNote: take a folder and save it in a format that can be read in an , incorporated into a colleague’s OneNote program – or invite colleagues to share in the editing of a folder.
NetMeeting facilitates real-time chat, video and audio conferencing, file transfer and remote desktop sharing in a secure environment.
TinyURL is a site that enables you to turn very long URLs into very small ones. Type in the long URL and out pops a small URL. Very useful for creating URLs in newsletters.

30. Brainstorming/Mindmapping
BrainStorming applications (Brainstormer)
Mindmapping applications
Brainstorming/Mindmapping: BrainStormer is a commercial product that you can use to clarify an issue or problem, generate lots and lots of ideas and/or determine which idea(s) will work best for you or your organization based on your needs.
The next slide will show you a mindmapping application called Inspiration. There are many mindmapping applications but I like this one because it was simple to learn and inexpensive: US $75.

31. Sample Inspiration Mind Map
Sample Inspiration Mind Map: Mind or concept mapping software facilitates the display of information in a graphical format. Three of the most popular mind mapping applications are Inspiration, MindManager and MindMapper. There are many others on the market for you to choose from. These applications can be used to plan and organize projects, create online and face-to-face learning and Web sites, plan PowerPoint and other presentations and if you are a report writer, lay out your report. These applications can also be used as brainstorming, diagramming and outlining tools.
Mind mapping applications can be used for many purposes such as idea generation and brainstorming in groups or individually. Mind mapping applications are very useful for planning and organizing projects. Map the project objectives and processes, resources, milestones and people.
Use a mind mapping application to outline an article or presentation or to design a health promotion media program or elearning effort.
Visual displays of information are meaningful to those of us who are visual and can go a long way to explaining ideas without having to use a lot of words. Mind mapping applications help you effectively express your ideas and better understand those of your colleagues. There is nothing like a picture to express and visualize an idea. Inspiration is particularly fun to use because it includes graphics that better express ideas in your mind map than text would.
This diagram of planning for a new Web site is pretty easy to understand. Start at the top left and wind down to Celebrate!

32. Securing information and ideas
Will discuss in my afternoon session
Securing information and ideas: Keeping information safe and secure is also something you need to think about. We will discuss this topic this afternoon.

33. What methods do you use to find, organize, use and disseminate information?
Please feel free to discuss information methods you use that we did not discuss today.

34. If it's green, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry.
If it has numbers, it's math.
If it doesn't work, it's technology.
--Unknown
Just a little humor to finish off this section. Actually, if it’s numbers it’s more likely to be statistics or epidemiology if we are discussing public health.
We know that sometimes technology doesn’t work but increasingly it is our lack of knowledge or understanding about how an application works that causes us grief.
It takes between 40 and 80 hours spread over time to really get to know an application. By that I mean the 10-15% of an application that most people ever really use.
Read the help file if you want to do something with an application and it’s not immediately obvious how to do it.

35. Contact Information
Laura Larsson
Cedar Collaboration or