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Dear Colleagues,

Sue Vickers-Thompson asks a good question:

"I'm looking for some best practice advice that might also help us in
this list. I have volunteered to set up a central, electronic collection
of our workshops etc., which we run for tutors and would appreciate
advice or experiences from those who have already tried this. Whilst
conferences or listserves are often useful, they are difficult to index
- I have major difficulties in saving valuable references from this one!
- and I wondered how others saved and indexed/annotated information both
for themselves and for others to use. I'd appreciate ideas on both what
has been found useful and what hasn't worked so that I don't try and
reinvent the wheel!"

My solution is basic and workable.

I copy and paste significant notes into an MS Word document, label it,
and collect related documents in one of several libraries. I keep one
library for articles. This library contains labeled folders on different
themes and topics. I also place download articles in .pdf format or
other forms here. Since I use a Mac, my file name boxes are limited
in size, so I label them with author last name, year, first word of title
(other than "the," "a," or "an"). If I have many articles on a theme,
I set up a thematic bibliography inside the file so I can see what I have
and use it to seek articles.

There are other libraries for other purposes. One involves email lists. For
these, I track and harvest useful thread contributions, placing them
chronologically in a document with relevant headers and author information.
I write my own posts in an emailer. These are kept in a folder labeled
by subject head title key word and date.

Eudora has a good mailbox system. This is useful for ongoing
correspondence where it may not be necessary to save things once
the conversation or project is finished. If things should be saved, I
copy and paste into a word document.

Mac has a great feature called indexing. This allows me to search the
contents of individual documents as well as using the normal label
information for external search.

The system is not perfect, but it covers most needs. The great advantage
is that it is simple and workable. As long as I track and label things, they
are easy to find when I need them.

Best regards,

--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University

I have just heard that Reg Revans, the originator of action learning
sets, died yesterday. He was in his nineties. The first time that I met
Reg was when, as a PhD studentin 1988, I attended a conference here in
Hull. He took time to attend my presentation and then to meet me
afterwards to talk with me about my work, pointing out areas where he
had done similar work many years before!

Less than three years ago, the Reg Revans Organisation Learning Centre
was set up as a tribute to the influence of his ideas. I understand
that he had published a book in the last few years which revisited
those early ideas that were 'too radical' for Manchester University
(they sacked him because of this!). The extent to which those ideas are
now in mainstream use is a reflection of the significance of his work.

I don't know how accurate my description of Reg's background is, and
would be interested to hear from others who have been influenced by
Reg's ideas.

Best wishes,

Wendy

The Revans collection at the University of Salford is a special
collection that those interested in Reg's work might visit.
http://www.isd.salford.ac.uk/specollect/revans.php

Cybercollegially,
Charles Wankel

-----Original Message-----

I have just heard that Reg Revans, the originator of action learning
sets, died yesterday.

I don't know how accurate my description of Reg's background is, and
would be interested to hear from others who have been influenced by
Reg's ideas.

Wendy