Research is changing.....

I am currently studying for a Certificate in Criminal Intelligence and this semester am doing a subject called Strategic Intelligence Practice. I was reading my study materials last night and was amazed at the all too familiar issues raised by the authors in regards to intelligence analysts. They are facing a challenge to retain their place in organisations due to access to the internet and open source intelligence materials. Educators are impressing on analysts the importance of adding value to their products by including recommendations in their assessments. There are several reasons why they have been reluctant to do this in the past and due to the increase in freely available material, policy makers and managers have started doing their own research and bypassing intelligence analysts.

They face the same dilemma as librarians, is it our job to answer client questions or provide access to sources only. Analysts know that forecasting is difficult to guarantee and so may prefer to provide facts and conclusions and stop short at supplying recommendations. We are often faced with a similar problem with clients asking a research query (often one they don't fully understand) and hoping we'll provide an answer rather than advise them on sources to consult.

It seems that intelligence analysts are striving to gain recognition as a profession, such as librarians (yes, we got a mention), lawyers and doctors have. Much of what they do is very similar to our research function. They liaise with clients within an organisation, gather information, data and intelligence (all of the usual problems with definitions apply) and organise that material into a strategic intelligence assessment or some other type of product or report. The tools, raw data and methods they work with may differ from ours but the imperitive to market themselves, increase their skills and gain recognition are very similar to ours.

MindMeister

I have been using Mindmeister to create diagrams (Futures Wheels to be exact) for my uni assignment and it is so easy and quite fun. I wonder if I could use it to make sense of all of the 'things', plans, to do lists and projects floating around in my head? I can't wait till I have finished studying this semester so I can play around with web 2.0 tools without feeling like I am wasting precious study time. It'll be great to get back to blogging, flickr etc

Roll on November and spring!!!

Tangler

I joined Tangler at Bibliothekia's suggestion and read the posts on the Library 2.0 Forum. I can see heaps of potential in this technology at home and at work. Again it depends on the uptake of library colleagues, friends and clients for its success.

I found a good one! eBookee It has lists of eBooks by subject, including law and even some tax texts. Lots of computer books - no suprise there!! The site links out to eBook sites like iFree

ATOLearning exercise:

1. Go to www.ebookee.com
2. Have a look at the ebooks that are available on the site (encyclopedias, classics)
3. Check out the 'free magazine subscriptions'
4. Read about Amazon's Kindle

Enjoy!!

Thing #47: New Web 2.0 site

I don't know if this classifies as web 2.0 but it is neat anyway and is designed to look like a lot of the sites that we have discovered through Learning 2.0/2.1. Service Central is a site where you log a job that you need a trades person, professional or provider for and they arrange for several services who are able to do the work in your area to contact you. It is a great time saver if it works, as you are not calling hundreds of numbers to find a company that does your size job, covers your area and has the time to do it. As far as I can see it covers Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney at least. It also has an option for sharing your experience and feedback with others so it fulfills that social networking criteria at least. I can see more and more services like this popping up as the MySpace generation grows up expecting better online access to everything. Now I know this isn't really work related so I will try to come up with something else with exercises that can be followed :-)

Thing #46: Review Things 11 - 14

Thing #11. LibraryThing. I still like this site and have my books displayed on my blog but haven't added to it for ages.

Thing #12. Rollyo. I don't remember this from the first time around and can't see much of a use for it at work. I have signed up though and will have a play around at home when I get a chance, just in case I am missing something!

Thing #13. Del.icio.us. I have added heaps of sites to my del.icio.us account and have started suggesting sites for the LIS account so that I can add a 'search bookmarks' button on my wiki pages. It is a pretty useful tool, especially with the options that tagging provides.

Thing #14. Technorati. I thought I had signed up for this but couldn't find any records for a password or logon so signed up again. Have yet to investigate it's potential but it may be easier to use for finding and receiving RSS Feeds hopefully.

Thing #46: Review Things 1 - 10

I think the zoho page with the review of 23 things is quite old and we started the 'things' after these 'updates' were written. So the changes to the services are not too relevant but it is useful to review all of the technologies we learnt and think about which ones I have used and which ones I had forgotten about.

Thing #3: Blogger. I am still blogging happily away and hope to soon be using it more often at work with the introduction of the ATO's eLibraryBlog.

Thing #5: Flickr. I was using flickr already and continue to use it to share photos with my friends, family and contacts. I am about to start a photography course so anticipate that it'll get a lot more use soon!

Thing #8: Blogglines. I set up a bloglines ages ago with RSS Feeds from friends blogs and library and art sites. To be honest I haven't looked at it for months. I think I had just too much stuff saved and also have similar services in iGoogle and Pageflakes.

Thing #9: Finding RSS. I checked Technorati today looking for Australian Law blogs to add to the LSB Blog blogroll. I will make a note to check out the others mentioned also to see if they find different content. I am going to try out Google Reader also as it is useful to have all of the tools under one umbrella to cut down on logins and passwords.

Thing #10: Generators.