The best training in the world may not always be enough when you're staffing a reference desk that serves the general public. From contextualizing to active listening to polite deflecting, Bob Duckett draws on his years of experience to provide tips for handling the wide range of questions that land at the public reference desk.
 
What's Inside: On being asked about shipping routes to West Africa, and wondering what source to seek, I was saved by the enquirer volunteering that he wanted to work his passage and happy being given Jobs Abroad from off the open shelves.

In the first two parts of this three-part series, Patrick Walsh has traced the evolution of organisational intranets from the baby steps of 'Intranet Zero' through its current 1.0 state, but believes that the collaborative approach hyped as 'Intranet 2.0' is a misnomer. He describes what a true 2.0 intranet must include and points to the future of successful intranets as truly integrated Enterprise Information Systems.
 
What's Inside: 'The perceptions of senior managers are generally not all that positive for intranets anyway and it now seems that the greatly heralded saviour of all things intranet, intranet 2.0, is rapidly going the same way. Without the full support of management, any new intranet initiative is doomed to failure'
 

Competitive intelligence may have a bit of a cloak and dagger reputation, conjuring up images of secretive sleuthing. But Ellen Naylor makes a strong argument that Cooperative Intelligence - that is, voluntarily sharing information with others in our increasingly connected digital world - may yield better results for customers and companies in the end.
 
What's Inside: As I conduct my research, I often share some of my findings to those I am interviewing which often cause them to open up in ways that surprise me! I apply cooperative intelligence practices with my LinkedIn and Twitter connections. I have helped some LinkedIn folks find work, and answered questions under the Q&A in LinkedIn Groups.

Just because we're surrounded by news of digital media and resources doesn't mean that print has gone away; far from it. Sue Greenwood reminds us that for many people in the world, information access still means reading a paper (or blackboard) and describes how her company, Sweeble, seeks to put the means of production into the hands of those making the news.
 
What's Inside: 'The most active people in local communities aren't bloggers. They're the couple running the PTA and the under-13 football team; they're the village society committee, the book-club mums, the scout leaders, the charity volunteer...These are the people who generate the local events that used to fill pages of local newspapers. They often know most about what's happening locally and they may already be writing about it in parish newsletters or on school websites.'

In an age when cloud storage architecture is becoming more robust, offering not just cost savings but reliability, information professionals are playing a bigger role in determining how enterprise information is getting stored in the cloud. Jennifer Smith offers a common sense checklist of attributes and questions to assess hosted providers, along with tips for the types of answers to look for.
 
What's Inside: 'Like cheap wine and cheap shoes, cheap hosting is best avoided. Your information is a critical asset and you need to ensure it is hosted by a company with the resources to store it securely.'