theorywatch

Since I’ve been rather desultory in blogging lately (well, actually, more like delinquent, someone asked me recently if I was going to move to micro-blogging, and my answer was no, no, no— I can barely manage the meso-blogging, and my preference would be to do macro-blogging, like Richard Cox, who did an exemplary job on all things archival, though, sadly, he discontinued his blog this past spring), I thought I’d do a quick catch-up post today.

Anyway…. what I did was to work and work on my theory functions model, which wasn’t general enough to accommodate all the “types” of theories that I was hoping to use it for. So now I have a revised model, which is much more interesting than the old one, and which I hope to start sharing very soon as I start to submit for publication. Whew! “All models are wrong, etc.,” but when it’s your model that’s wrong (and you realize that you’re the only one interested enough to try to improve it) , that’s a challenge! Hopefully it will start to become more useful now. I’ve already submitted a session paper to the AERA conference in Denver next spring, introducing the revised model, as that seems the group most likely to be interested in a “theory functions model’ that integrates practice theory into a functional model of theoretical development.

In the course of doing this, I did a lot of innovation-related reading, in the fields of defense, finance, healthcare, law, software, technology, and theology. So much for thinking that, just because I have a “terminal” degree in “information transfer,” there isn’t a whole lot of relevant diffusion-related literature to which I’d never been exposed in grad school! The diffusion of military doctrine was particularly interesting, as I’d already run across a bit of that at Cornell University Press, which has a formidable security studies series, under the direction of their equally formidable executive editor Roger Haydon.

I organized the “Innovation” track for the KPM Symposium here in Tulsa, which had some wonderful speakers (on all tracks!) We had former NASA mission control insider Jim O’Neal as keynote speaker, and he talked about “lessons learned and unlearned” from the Apollo 13 moon mission, which was a riveting presentation, and very relevant to knowledge management research. Organizers Chuck Tryon and Suliman Hawamdeh (my senior colleague) did a brilliant job of orchestrating this event, which also celebrated the first anniversary of the opening of our new Learning Center here on the OU-Tulsa campus.

Supervised an excellent student internship at the innovative and well-managed Hardesty Regional Library here in Tulsa: what a great learning experience for both the student and myself!

Wrote some references for various students and former students, who are seeking scholarships and new jobs. Always was a bit reluctant to “bother” my own faculty mentors at Syracuse with this type of activity (though they were always kind and helpful about it!), but now I realize that they really must not have minded, because I am delighted to do this for my folks here. (And it helps me track what’s actually being looked for, which is good for helping other students in future.) Who knew??!!!

Prepared for the “Design and Implementation of Web-Based Information Services” course, which now includes some cool new ideas about discovery tools and inquiry tools that I’m anxious to try out, since I know that there’s a pretty high level of talent and interest in those people coming into the class this fall.

Also had a two-week vacation with my absolute favorite doctoral student (aka Jon, my husband, who’s enjoying his well-earned early retirement from IBM by being a hardworking graduate assistant at the School of Education at OSU), to Albuquerque, Palm Springs, Tucson, and to Marfa, Texas (to visit the famous Chinati Foundation there, not the Marfa lights, despite my dark and dubious tabloidish past.)

And I came up with some other ideas…..

theory