Sims Learning Connections

This is a bit closer to a proper introduction to my Informal Learning List “drill-down #2″ on content findability. Yesterday’s post jumped right in without doing some of the set-up that I’d like to tackle now.

First, why the pseudo-word “findability”?
Answer:

1. Blame others before me, reference Wikipedia’s Findability page, begun in 2004
2. I am more interested in ‘finding’ than in ‘searching’. I’m not certain where I picked this phrase up; however, a quick web search suggests it may be an Elliott-ism that stuck to me. Reference this, also from 2004:
   

   We had a great dialogue at our e-Learning CONSORTIUM meeting about the shift in focus to FINDING things rather than SEARCHING. Most of our workers want to “just FIND it”. They are not that interested in spending time searching.

3. ‘Finding’ should be a partnership between those looking for content and those creating and managing content. There is much that both the consumer and the provider can do on behalf of making content easier to find, i.e. to improve ‘findability’.

Second, isn’t this all just about information access? I thought this blog was dedicated to learning? Isn’t there a distinction between (even) informal learning and straight information access? If I look up a phone number have I really ‘learned’?

Answer: I’m going to largely dodge this one for now and hide behind: if it serves the employee, and allows them to better serve their customers, then I’m all for “it” and for personally contributing to making “it” better…whether we label “it” as ‘informal learning’, ‘performance support’ or just ‘information access’. I also vaguely recall this already being debated in the learning community’s blogs before; however, a quick search didn’t come up with a reference (recursion alert, laugh).

Side note: an Elliott-ism that I do have a stronger opinion on is the phrase “fingertip knowledge.” In my opinion, whatever lies at our fingertips can never truly be “knowledge” but rather, at best, “information.”

I’ll close for now, knowing I’ve still yet to fully properly introduce the topic: however, I’ve come closer to what I had in mind. In the next post in this series, I’ll run through some of the basics relative to browse versus search versus navigation, the various flavors of search, and some of my long-standing opinions in this area.