… WatsINFO and what you can do with it.

WatsINFO is the Thomas J. Watson Library information clearinghouse for staff members.
It is in the form of a “blog”, i.e. a website where you can “post” information and discussion relevant to staff activities. Examples of what should go here: meeting minutes, tips on using Watson resources, discussions and comments on projects, step-by-step instructions, conference/workshop reports. One thing you cannot do is upload documents to WatsINFO

When you create (“post”) an entry, you should assign it to one or more of the available categories.  Their number is limited.  If you believe that a category was left out please contact WatsINFO administrators.  

Searching is the primary information retrieval mechanism of WatsINFO. If you want your entry to be found by others and, most important, yourself (otherwise, what’s the point!), make sure it contains relevant keywords. You can put additional keywords at the end of you entry, but don’t overdo it; use common sense. We suggest you do not abbreviate terms (e.g., use “Circulation” instead of “Circ”) unless it is the accepted form of the name/team/concept (e.g., “ERIT” for “E-Resources Instruction Team”).

One particular type of keyword that should be present in your entry is the name of a relevant Project or Committee. Make sure you use the name form listed on WatsINFO Projects & Committees page. If you want to add a name to this list, please contact WatsINFO administrators listed here.

Your entry can be as fragmentary as you wish, but please remember that an entry can only be retrieved (found) based on the information it contains.

All posts longer than a paragraph should begin with a sentence summarizing the post, followed by a “more” tag, followed by the body of the post.

Meeting minutes should be kept separate from policies/workflows created/approved in that meeting. Note that the policy or workflow was created or approved, and link to a separate post for the details of the policy/workflow, so that it can be easily updated if necessary. Meeting minutes should also avoid the narrative content of a meeting; they can simply be an annotated agenda, with attendees, action items and decisions broken out.

You can edit any WatsINFO entry, including those created by your co-workers. Please be careful changing or removing any existing information.  If you are looking at an older post and see that it would make more sense in a new category, please feel free to add that category.

Don’t delete obsolete posts. If an entire post is obsolete, edit the title of the post so that it ends with “—OBSOLETE”. If part of a post is obsolete, strikethrough the obsolete part and annotate with your initials and date if it’s a significantly large change

If there is a significant change to a workflow post, you can and should edit the date of the posting so that it will appear ahead of previous posts on the subject.

RSS feeds for WatsINFO:
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a way to be automatically notified of changes to a web site, through a “feed reader”, so you don’t have to constantly check to see the latest updates. Unfortunately, since WatsINFO is a private blog, most feed readers won’t work for us at this time. However, we can use the Live Bookmarks feature of Internet Explorer 7. Click on the link on the left side of this page (next to the orange square icon) to go to the RSS feed for Entries. Once you are there, click on the yellow star with the green plus sign at the top left of your screen–it will ask you how you want to label the feed, and then tell you you’ve successfully subscribed. Repeat this procedure for the Comments link. Then you can click on the yellow star and select Feeds to see all your feeds. If you would like to use this feature and do not yet have IE7, let Oleg know. (Note: if you find you are getting too many notifications to keep up with, you can always unsubscribe.)