Content Management, Office Space,
and DENR Sustainability

As office space becomes more of a premium, what are you going to do with the papers/reports in your office? Where will they be kept so that future DENR employees can find them?

To help you relate to the problem, let me give you an example. When was the last time you needed to write a report for DENR? You needed a little background information on your topic. You may have the last report on the same topic or maybe not. How many places did you visit to find the information you needed? Most importantly, will it be there when the next DENR employee needs it; and when you write your report, who will be able to find it? How do you send information to the next generation of DENR employees? Is your content sustainable?

I recommend the library
as a place to store scanned information needed in the future especially older technical reports.

Librarians saved and retrieved content for decades before information technology (IT) came onto the scene. Now they use IT to do it faster. Starting in the late 1960s librarians made their card catalog "machine readable." In essence, the metadata of author, title and subject were put into database fields and made searchable.

Today software giants add a bit of software that scans the content looking for the author, title and subject to create the metadata for searching. They call it enterprise content management (ECM). Ken Cougdon, who writes the “Technology Update Column” for Integrative Solutions Magazine pointed out one flaw in ECM that the software giants of the industry are scrambling to solve. The scanners cannot find the metadata of “unstructured content” (July 2007 pp.44). If every title in the stack of paper being scanned is in a different place, the content is not structured. This list of unstructured content is long with maps being one example.

From today forward some content may be structured to suit the scanner, but yesterdays documents were not. The ECM giants are presently buying each other out trying to buy the solution to their problem. They have yet to find it (Integrative Solutions Magazine July 2007 pp.44).

For older content people-entered metadata is the best. Librarians are well practiced at it. Their systems are in place. They need only a working relationship with the producers of the information.

Speaking of a relationship if you would like your publicly available database information to have national recognition add it to this site.

State Agency Databases

Scanners Cannot Read

By the way, scanners are even having trouble reading words. See this site for more information on reading words in old books and a collaborative service that is working to solve the problem:

reCaptcha

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Creating
Successfully
Searchable Databases

Retrieving content has come a long way. With the advent of the online searchable databases and library catalogs, users of the content should be able to find content easily.

As in the case of ECM, librarians have more experience delivering content to the database user. If the metadata does not contain the user's search term, the content may not be retrieved. If the search engine is strong like Google's, the full text is searchable and too many items are retrieved.

In the absence of a librarian, a thesaurus can be added to the database to show the user the synonyms contained in the metadata for his or her search word. Specialized vocabulary, like DENR's, cannot be found in a general thesaurus, but the company linked below claims that they can develop a specialized thesaurus for any company.

The library has a free trial until Nov. 10 for anyone who uses this link.

Please fill out the information request at the beginning of the link. It may influence them to develop a strategy to help “companies” such as DENR.

Visual Thesaurus

Searching: Library/
Museum Style

The Rochester Museum and Science Center and its library combined their collections. Traditional (doc,EXCEL), and unusual files (WMA and WMV) were coded into the software and thesaurus-like capabilities were added to help the user retrieve content.

Try searching "Rattle Snake Pete" or "map" in the link below. Notice the center of the screen has a relevancy ranked list of everything in the library and the museum. On the right you can choose Library or Museum.

Also, on the right you see related words that broaden your search to areas you may not have thought about. The left portion of the screen or the “discover” area suggests more related words to narrow your search to more specific topics.

The library's cataloger manages all of these records in the catalog. Will the user find what they need? YES!

Rochester Catalog

Save the Date:

DENR "Graduate" Presentation

Oct. 23 at 12pm (bring your lunch):

If you would like to experience the difference a citizen educated by DENR can make to help the environment, come to the library to see David Barnes' 20 minute presentation (questions following) that he is offering to church groups and high school students.
The DVD that he produced includes a parable and original music played by his family members.

David is a certified N.C. Environmental Educator and Forest Steward, a tree farmer and a residential building instructor at Johnston Community College. He won the county's Soil and Water Conservation District River Friendly Farmer Award for 2007.

Thank You

A big thank you to all of the units and divisions that sent the library contacts to collect documents for the the DENR Library and the State Document Clearinghouse. Future DENR employees will appreciate your efforts.  

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Water: the fate of our most precious resource by John Carson's and Marq de Valliers.
Simply put, this book relates the state of the worlds diminishing water resources. In doing so the authors reveal mismanagement pitfalls.

Boundaries of Home: Bioregional Mapping Power! by  Doug Aberley. Quoting an Amazon reviewer, this book “aims to inspire and stimulate the building of new, ecologically sustainable cultures and communities.” The chapter titles will surprise you. For example: “Eye Memory: The Inspiration of Aboriginal Mapping” and "Mapping the Experience of Place"

What Can I Do?: An Alpha-bet For Living by Lisa Harrow.
Without being overwhelming Lisa Harrow helps the reader find a path to places where they can help the environment.

If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World's People by David Smith and Shelagh Armstrong.   Starting with a village of 100 people Armstrong translates what population growth will do to a village over time. One only needs to add zeros to see what population growth will do to the world.

Content Management Bible
by Bob Boika. Referring to content management Boika said, "it is an ongoing process of knowing your information and your audiences and how to match the two in a set of publications."

Save the link

Below is a new way to search the the DENR Library thanks to the Google Books Project. More books will be added weekly. For more newly purchased books search "new".

The DENR Librarian's Library

Be aware that DENR Library is specialized, so Google cannot post the entire library at this time. The library catalog has a more complete database.

Save the Link

DENR Library Catalog

Save the Dates:

Annual South Mountain Crafts Sale*

When:

Oct. 29-30
7:00AM to 7:00PM

Oct. 31 7AM to 3PM

Where: In the Ground Floor Hearing Room

Artisans work with the Riddle, Caswell and Murdock Developmental Centers to create works of art from recyclables and donated materials.

The products are beautiful, practical, whimsical, affordable and just in time for the holidays.

*sponsored by your library

To contact the Library:

Call: (919) 715-4161
Email:Mary.Tucker

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