[Sigia-l] Knowledge Base Editor's Digest: New entries

[jean.graef]

[Forwarded because of HTML coding.  Dick Hill]

The January 2005  issue of the Knowledge Base Editor's Digest
http://www.montagueinfotech.com/digest/new.htm has the following new items:
"Search and retrieval metrics" (abstract)
Responses to a query about how to assess intranet search engine satisfaction
as well as two recent studies of search engine use by the public. An
intriguing question is why employees seem to be less satisfied with site
search and intranet search than they are with public search engines like
Google. Montague Institute Review 1/24/2005 
"Indexing images" (abstract)
The Internet is changing the way images are distributed, and that affects
the way images are indexed. This Member Q&A article summarizes responses to
a query about indexing tools and navigation schemes. We compare three
different indexing approaches: stock photography, image search engines, and
photo sharing Web sites. Montague Institute Review 1/26/2005 
"Search engine users" (full text)
Respondents to this survey were extremely positive about search engines, but
only 38% of them were aware of the distinction between paid or “sponsored”
results and unpaid results. And only one in six said they can always tell
which results are paid or sponsored and which are not. This finding is
ironic, since nearly half of all users say they would stop using search
engines if they thought engines were not being clear about how they
presented paid results. You can download not only the full report but also a
list of all the questions in the survey. 1/23/2005 
"Why search fails: Technical and political pitfalls to avoid" (slides)
Avi Rappoport gives some of the reasons why intranet search engines fail to
live up to user expectations. These include: Difficulty in getting
permission to access internal content; Useless content swamps the good
stuff; Confusing search results; Lack of user training, usability testing,
and meaningful metrics; Poorly designed search and results pages; "Cool
ideas that fizzled." 5/12/2004 
"Bookmark, Classify and Share: A mini-ethnography of social practices in a
distributed classification community" (full text)
Working within the constraints of a very limited data sample, this study
attempts to identify some of the information management and meaning
construction practices of an online distributed classification (a.k.a. free
tagging or ethnoclassification) community. Specifically, this study seeks to
investigate the social and communicative practices that emerge when users
are encouraged to share web links with one another by using a metadata
keyword, or tag, to demark a social group, apart from using other tags to
classify links according to an emergent taxonomy. 12/27/2004 
"Why doesn't your ROI add up?" (full text)
Seven tips to see if your metrics are worthwhile. Number five (factor in the
productivity discount) is particularly interesting. If your productivity ROI
depends on white-collar types, watch out. Time savings on the assembly line
go straight to the bottom line, but time saved by sales people is only
produtive if they produce more revenue. Darwin magazine 3/1/2002 
"A fresh look at ROI" full text
When applied to "soft" investments like training and education, traditional
ROI measures may not work well. Different metrics are needed for the
training manager, the business unit manager, corporate staff, and senior
management. Unless your training unit sells training for a fee--generating
its own revenues--the returns on training investment come from satisfying
the needs of business unit managers. Tying training results to business
results is more useful than coming up with pseudo-ROI figures. Learning
Circuits 1/1/2001 
 
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Jean Graef
The Montague Institute
jean.graef at montague.com
www.montague.com
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