digital archiving - it's not that simple

Contrary to naive claims that since disk drives are inexpensive digital archiving won't be a costly affair, Computerworld explores the two most pressing issues affecting digital preservation today: a lack of standards during both the content creation and storage phases and the high costs of on-going digital preservation. This article, Digital crisis: Motion pictures may fade to black should be a wake up call to us in the information professions that we face the same issues and need to move much more quickly in creating and adopting standards as well as forming partnerships to spread the responsibility of digital preservation efforts given the unsustainability, both technologically and monetarily, of many of our current models.

the power of "influencer"

Many books in the management sector are of dubious value given that they are filled with anecdotal information that has no real evidence to back up the findings. Thankfully, Influencer by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler doesn't fall into that category. Although laden with stories, their book is based on actual research into how people successfully influence situations. In our organizations, we'd do well to put into practice some of the advice in this book such as

1. focus on the critical behaviors we want to change and not try to change everything at once,
2. use experience to change thoughts and actions, and
3. use multiple sources of influence to create an environment where change must occur.

Although much of the information in the book might fall into what many would call "common sense," it sometimes help to have that gathered up into a nice neat package that reminds of what we should "commonly" know.