AASHTO RAC TKN Task Force

September 3, 2009

Conference Call: (360) 709-8060 , access code 1072626

Attending: Leni Oman, Barbara Post, Dale Steele, Laura Wilt, Lynn Matis, Maggie Sacco, Marie Manthe, Ron Curb, Sandy Brady, Rita Evans, Bob Cullen

Unable to attend: Amanda Wilson

Action Items

1)Prepare NCHRP problem statements for submission on or before September 15th. Rita and Leni leads.

2)Ideas for LIST poster session are being sought. Contact Ken Winter.

3)Invite Frances Harrison, Kendra Levine and possibly others for the discussion on integrating the data and information systems communities into the TKN activity. DONE.

4)Ask RAC Leadership about interest in a webinar about the National Agriculture Library and National Library of Medicine (given by representatives from their organization). Leni will ask.

5)Send note to Regional TKN Chairs and Library Connectivity PFS about survey on current practice. Leni will do. DONE

6)Future: Gap analysis of information outreach needs: a)compare what we have to our goals and priorities – what’s missing;b)consider what we need to reach out to the states and transportation organizations not currently participating in the library/TKN/information sharing communities

Meeting Notes

Quick Updates

a)National RAC/TRB State Representatives Meeting

Presentation to NRAC/TRB State Reps on 20-75 and Transportation Knowledge Networks

Specific comments on feedback from the audience is included at the end of this document. In general, feedback was positive, that attendees understood the TKN concept a bit better but they still had questions, and that it was an awful lot of information in a short time. The facts about the amount of time spent searching and how much information is unmanaged are attention-getting. Specific examples to illustrate the problem and or describe the improvement are beneficial. We will work to incorporate the improvements suggested for a presentation to the Librarian Roundtable on December 10th.

International Scan on Transportation Research Management

As part of the presentation on the International Scan on Research Management, Glenn Roberts mentioned an effort to improve collaboration with international partners. Early scoping is underway to set up a meeting of information providers to facilitate better sharing of information resources.

b)TRB LIST and Joint Summer Meeting

NEEDS WORK STILL, NEED TO FIND LIST MINUTES: Collaborative opportunities with other TRB Committees – Matt Barrett and Kendra Levine are working on the new communication initiative. John Cherney is the rep for LIST.

Data section goals

  • Data for decision-makers
  • Cyber –security including emergency management
  • Climate Change and Sustainability
  • Reauthorization – getting the most effective financial info for decision-making

SEEKING EXAMPLES: LIST is looking for posters for a session at the TRB Annual Meeting. Examples of in-depth topical reports (synthesis reports) and literature searches are particularly welcome (particularly interdisciplinary). Send your ideas to: (placeholder: Ken Winters)

Examples of the synthesis reports were shared:

  • WisDOT Transportation Synthesis Reports:
  • WSDOT’s Synthesis Reports:

Research Ideas

Identify and discuss research problem statements for NCHRP (due September 15th) and proposals for the scanning programs.

Domestic Scan – yes, develop. Leni will draft a proposal for scanning knowledge network use and practice within US industry. Rita will contribute. Bob C may join in if possible. Focus on industry. Trying to track down solicitation, have contacted TRB staff on project.

International Scan, submissions due September 30th. While we think it would be beneficial to look at Transportation Knowledge Networks in other countries, we are opting to focus our effort this year on the request to the Domestic Scan program.

NCHRP – Due September 15th

Two problem statements will be developed:

1)What’s the fate of our transportation information?

Rita Evans, lead. Dale Steele, Lynn Matis, Leni Oman support and review.

This problem statement will propose a project to investigate the fate of our transportation information resources today and propose a strategy that is more sustainable and supports succession and more remote access by the workforce.

Studies tell us that 80% of most organizations’ information is unmanaged. This is costly and ineffective. We need to be able to rely on an information pipeline, have planned redundancy but not duplication of unnecessary effort. What are our working assumptions (the NTL is the digital repository) and what’s really going on? What’s going into TRIS, NTL, where are we sending documents? What’s the maintenance strategy for electronic documents? How should we modernize? What are the resources needed to do this?We need to make sure our information is accessible. Consider framing around transportation research reports or other documents commonly used by the problem statement reviewers (state DOT RAC Members and SCOR members).

Resource: Best Practices Exchangea website dedicated to information about the Best Practices Exchange Conferences and an online community for librarians, archivists, records managers and other information professionals dedicated to managing digital information in state government–

2)Efficient Information Access

Leni Oman, lead. Ron Curb, Rita Evans support and review.

This problem statement will wrap together the two proposals previously submitted to the NCHRP and TCRP Synthesis programs. It will include an inventory of metadata and cataloging schema in use by transportation agencies (agencies only?), propose best management strategies that build on those schema, and develop a toolkit of resources that will be posted on the National Transportation Library website.

RESOURCES

The problem statement form is attached in the email. Guidance for preparing a problem statement can be found at:

To help us keep the audience in mind, here’s a list of RAC Members and SCOR Members.

State of the practice survey

We revisited a July discussion about developing a state of the practice survey.

Notes from July 2nd

How many states have a person focusing on access and delivery of information services? How do we reach those that aren’t connecting? How are current transportation libraries funded? What’s in it for those that aren’t participating? The RAC TKN TF is well positioned to assist in this.

What are the policies that are in place about sharing an organization’s information? If states want information from others to support their work, do they understand that others want theirs?

We may want to do another survey on the state of the state – how are our information services set up and resourced? Is there a legal requirement in your state to share information? What’s the breadth of the information required to be captured.

Questions to transportation organizations – how do you make your information available? How do you access information?

Points of note on why it’s important: cost savings, responsibility to share information within their community and public, do they have a responsibility to academic community (to provide info).

A portion of this will be answered through NCHRP 20-75A (identify information resources within the transportation community in the US). Library Connectivity PFS will augment the study for international resources.

The TKN TF is interested in the information that would be obtained through a survey but feel it is more than we can facilitate at this time. A query will be sent to the TKN Chairs and Library Connectivity PFS to see if there is interest and time for them to take on this task.

Agenda for October 1, 2009

Conference Call: (360) 709-8060 , access code 1072626

1) Updates

  • Meeting on International Information Sharing: Update from Barbara Post
  • CUTC Meeting
  • News on the Surface Transportation Authorization Act
  • Feedback from TKNs and PFS regarding the survey

2) Outreach materials

Review economic benefits of information sharing paper

3) Collaborating with transportation data and information technology partners

  • Wisconsin DOT’s partnership
  • WSDOT Data Catalog
  • WTKN request to the TRB Data Section
  • TKN TF request to AASHTO Subcommittee on Information Systems

Suggested outcomes

1)a better idea ofspecific activities on which we mightpartner to improve user access to data resources

2)a better outreach strategy to the transportation data and information technologycommunity

3)better understanding of our next steps

Invited guests:

  • Frances Harrison, Spypond Partners and TRB Metadata Subcommittee Chair
  • Kendra Levine, University of California –Berkeley, Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library and WTKN Task Lead
  • Johanna Zmud, NuStats, LLC, TRB Data Section Chair
  • Tom Palmerlee, TRB Associate Director Technical Activities Division and beloved information nerd
  • Grant Rodeheaver, WSDOT, Director, Office of Information Technology and member AASHTO Subcommittee on Information Systems

Comments on 20-75/TKN presentation to TRBState Representative

Your presentation was great! - Visuals on connectedness of nodes is helpful. - A network/node graphic illustrating the relative isolation of the major transportation agencies/info services would be helpful– especially juxtaposed to the relative connectedness of Medicine and Agriculture info services…

The message about relative investment is also powerful and illustrates the magnitude of the problem.

Until now, the TKN concept had not gelled with me. Afterwards, I felt I was finally “getting it”…

I did talk with a few folks and generally hear that it was, indeed, a firehose of information. I'm sure several of the slides were difficult to read from the back of the room. I've heard comments from "I understand a little more each time I hear about it" to "I think I'm beginning to understand". Dawn's Amazon analogy resonated (even though we don't find it an exact model).

I talked to a few people also and heard the same comments about how "I understand more each time." One person (from North Carolina I believe) who had attended a regional TKN meeting felt that it was too ambitious to try and tackle publications, gray lit and tacit knowledge. His recommendation was to focus on the gray lit (though he didn't call it that - he called it "mostly electronic and non-cataloged information".)
I agree that there was too much information squeezed into the time slot that we had, though I think the problem statement at the beginning was important - I heard someone say that the statistics about time spent searching for info and the percentage of "hidden" info caught their attention.
I think for the future presentations like this should be less abstract. It struck me how much interest there was in the prior session's discussion about collecting all of the powerpoints from the TRB annual meeting and making them available. This is going to take effort and people understood that and felt it was valuable. This is a very concrete example of the kind of thing that the national and regional TKNs would do and that the national portal infrastructure would support. I also think that Chris Hedges comments were good - that this is really about putting more structure and funding in place to do a better job of the kind of thing that is already being done to capture, catalog and share information.

I agree with the observations that have been made through these emails over the last couple of days. I think progress is being made, but still a ways to go for people to get their minds around this. For me, the Transportation Knowledge Network is an easier concept to understand than Knowledge Management, even though the latter is the foundation for the former. I think people are getting specific knowledge management tools mixed up with knowledge management itself. I tried to reflect this in the question I asked during the panel discussion.

I particularly liked. Chris Hedges description of a TKN (it also matches what Wes expressed as his understanding of TKNs and what they do).

Barring contradictory feedback from attendees, I think the standard message should be statistics from Leni's slides, 20-75 slides, and concrete examples of what TKN can do-- grey literature collection (i.e., powerepoints, etc.), central search, training and webinars on topics like web 2.0 and web 3.0/3D or Section 508 compliance, experts, digitization.
Each example individually is a huge effort, but are repeated motifs in transportation information needs discussions.