We’re very pleased to announce that the BIR Annual Survey is now available on the journal website. The BIR annual survey is the longest running survey into information management and knowledge management in the commercial sector in the world. This year there has been a significant change to the scope and methodology of the survey, making it more comprehensive than ever. We’re very grateful to Denise Carter of DCision Consult Sàrl for undertaking the research.
Over recent months we have been flagging-up some of the findings of this year’s survey in our posts on this blog. Those issues that have come to the fore in this years research include:
- What value looks like to different organisations/senior managers
- Successful strategies employed for measuring and communicating value (up, down and across organisations)
- Communication methods to reach the right / different audiences in organisations
- Having the right skill set, what that is, how it is deployed
- Keeping up to date with professional trends (info and business)
- What’s on the horizon – info trends, business trends
The full survey results published in the September issue of Business Information Review develop these themes in detail, and are essential reading for everyone in the sector. This year for the first time all CILIP members have access to the survey from the member’s area of the CILIP website; just log-in at the link below:
The September issue of BIR also contains are usual range of articles and columns. Technology unsurprisingly perhaps also features as important in this year survey . This theme is continued through our next article by Virginia Henry entitled People and Tools: Encouraging Rewarding Interaction in the Workplace. Virginia has worked in knowledge, change and learning management for over 14 years. She passes on her insight and expertise in this article that she has developed in getting people to work with technology more effectively. She considers what she has called the ‘humane factor’ and how to incorporate that into successful deployments of technology.
Our third article comes to us from the US. Hal Kirkwood is an associate professor of library science and business information specialist in the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics at Purdue University, in Indiana, USA. His article, Towards a Unified Theory of Business Information, looks at the importance of business information literacy and its impact on developing key competitive intelligence information to aid critical decision making. He attempts to bring all the different aspects of business information together in one framework to aid effective decision-making through providing an accurate context on which to base those decisions on.
Next, we take a look at the impact of ‘Fake news’, how and why it is generated in an article by Dominic Spohr, Media and Communications student at London Metropolitan University, entitled Fake News and Ideological Polarization. This is an interesting article which offers and exploratory look at the effect technology has had on our intake of news and current affairs, how filtering and personalization of news services has created filter bubbles which ensure that only views we agree with, or are from similar perspectives to ours are fed back to us. The implications of these developments are huge and something definitely worth considering the next time we view news sites.
Martin White’s column on Perspectives this time carries on our communication theme from the survey looking particularly at the use of corporate language and the effects specifically of international local languages. As usual Martin’s column is an excellent overview of the subject and quotes from some interesting research papers on the subject.
You can find September’s issues here.