Transcript Trends in Business Information Provision and Use

Trends in Business Information
Provision and Use
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The
Leading Magazine for
Information Professionals
Agenda
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Why so much change
Major trends
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Technology
People
How to manage change
Why so much change
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Explosion in amount and types of information
available
Increased availability and accessibility
Expanded bandwidth
Empowerment of just about everybody
Internet everywhere
Implications of change
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Greater global reach
Change in business information life cycle
Information overload/overlook
More time required for research
More attention to analysis
Information flows faster
Evaluation of sources is more difficult
Two Faces of Trends
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Technology
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People
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This is usually the focus of talks about trends
New products, gizmos and gadgets
Going mobile
New perceptions of technology and its place in
their lives, ubiquitous computing
Integration of technology into just about
everything
Major trends
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Consolidation
Visualization
Deep Web
Specialized search engines
Advanced search
Data disappearance, reappearance, and
duplication
More sources and formats
Consolidation
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Consolidation of companies providing
premium information
Thomson, Reed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer
More barriers to starting new premium content
databases
Hard to get name recognition, unless you’re
Google
Pricing issues
Consolidation
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Web search engines are also consolidating
Google buys Blogger, YouTube
Yahoo buys Flickr, AltaVista, AllTheWeb
Ask buys Teoma, Bloglines
Web search companies aren’t about search
anymore
Web as platform
Visualization
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The “delisting” of information
Seeing information in map format, as graphs,
in patterns, with color
Groxis & EBSCO
Clustering
Vivisimo
Image searching
Deep Web
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Deep, invisible, hidden Web
Paradox
More information is surfaced
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More information is hidden
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Pay per view, privacy, redacted
Some things remain the same
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Formats, language, company
Dynamic databases, registration pages
Specialized search engines
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It’s not just Google
Yahoo, MSN (Live Search), Ask
Exalead
ZoomInfo, Zabasearch
Country-specific search engines
News – and not just in English
Portals – Finance, LII, libraries
Advanced search
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Web search engines
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Premium sources trying to look more like
Web search engines
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Advanced page
Use syntax
Factiva Search 2.0
Trying for the ultimate intuitive interface
Data disappears, reappears, duplicates
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Information that is purposely removed
Information that is unintentionally removed
Finding the same data over and over and
over again
Finding no data
More data sources, formats
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Incrementally increasing amount of data
Not just HTML, can find PDFs, spreadsheets,
word-processed documents, slide shows and
photos
How to manage change
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Be honest with yourself and clientele about
how much you can find, what it will cost, and
whether you can meet a given deadline
Be aware of peripheral sources, not
everything is on the Internet, look at
alternative sources
Distinguish yourself from Google
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Use premium content information
Use competitive intelligence techniques
Use relationships
Use multiple web search engines
Use critical thinking
Info pros skill set
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Research isn’t enough
Analysis, synthesis
Executive summary
Critical thinking
Worldview
Peripheral vision
Technical trends
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Incorporate into research routine without
losing traditional skill sets
Integrate them when appropriate, don’t use
new technologies just because they’re new
People trends
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Everyone can do research on the Internet
Not everyone can do it well
Effective research requires an understanding
of sources as well as the technicalities of
search
Change is the only constant
Contact Details
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Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for
Information Professionals
[email protected]
www.onlinemag.net