Blogs for Personal/Small Group KM.
In a post entitled Benefits of Blogging for Law Firm Librarians, Cindy Chick provides another example of the use of blogs for knowledge management:
Since
blogs are full-text searchable, and allow categorization by topic, blog
software/services can be a great way to create a shared, reference
database, without those old 3 x 5 cards!
Cindy is onto
something. One lawyer/blogger who uses his site for marketing told me
over a year ago that even if he got zero new clients from the blog,
he's keep it up anyway, because he found it so useful as a personal
knowledge management tool. It makes it easier for him to archive
information relevant to his area of legal practice and access it when
he wants. The fact that it helps him maintain his reputation as one of
the country's top experts is just a bonus.
Are there more powerful KM tools out there? Sure, but there are few
if any that can match the ease of use of blogs. A decent tool that
people understand and use is superior to one that's theoretically more
powerful, but so complex that no one uses it.
The fact that blogs are so much cheaper than competing KM solutions is just another of those little blog bonuses.
Are blogs right for every KM application? Of course not, but as the
experience of Cindy Chick and others has shown, they are perfect for
some people and some groups.
[Netlawblog]