Crystal Renfro and Mary Axford, co-authors of the blog Academic PKM (http://academicpkm.org) presented a panel at the 2014 Computers in Libraries conference on how their interest in personal knowledge management and productivity helped in their outreach services to faculty and students.

1. RETHINKNG & RETOOLING
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Crystal Renfro and Mary Axford
www.academicpkm.org

2. RESEARCHING OUR USERS
• Our Goal: Focus on increasing researcher productivity
• What We Found:
• TIME: Key constraint our researchers face
• EFFICIENCY: A partial solution for time constraints.
• Wealth of digital data in many different formats makes managing
information more problematic
• Problems of time, information, and organization led us to focus
on personal knowledge management

3. WHAT IS PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT (PKM)?
• Iterative process
• Finding information
• Making sense of the noise around us
• Synthesizing information
• Clarifying in relations to adding our own thoughts
• Focus on most useful info & create something new from it

4. SUPPORTING OUR GRADUATE STUDENTS
• Specific needs:
• Managing competing areas of responsibility
• For many, first time doing research for publication
• Graduate-focused classes developed in collaboration with
Graduate Student Government Association
• Slate of GLUE classes
• Communication certificate
• Specialty classes like productivity skills

5. PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS CLASS
URL: http://libguides.gatech.edu/getresearchdone

6. Usage of Productivity Tools Guide

7. SUPPORTING OUR LIBRARY FACULTY
 Our version of 23 Things in 2008
 Brown bags for GT Technology Exploration
Committee (TEC)
 Planned presentation on research tools for
GT subject librarians

10. WHY OUR BLOG?
WWW.ACADEMICPKM.ORG
• Filtering tool to info on this topic
• Mentions sources we use often
• Includes year long free course, A Year to Improving
Productivity
• Follow by email alert, RSS feed

11. 73
93
66
80
Academic Librarian
Clicking Links
Doing Exercises
Changing Workflow
YEAR OF PRODUCTIVITY SURVEY

12. Research
for blog
Research
Guides
Consulting
with Users

13. RESEARCH MGMT TOOLS

14. BLOG > RESEARCH GUIDE

15. EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES
ISyE
Senior
Design
HTS
Luncheon
Seminar
Grad Tech
Symposium

16. CONTACT US
• Mary Axford
•mary.axford@library.gatech.edu
• Crystal Renfro
•crystal.renfro@library.gatech.edu
• Academic PKM Blog
•http://academicpkm.org