The Future of Information Activities in the CGIAR: A System-Wide Strategy

Revised draft of a systemwide information and communication strategy by the Center Directors' Committee on Information, Documentation and Training, chaired by Roberto Lenton. The paper was prepared on the basis of an ISNAR workshop in June 1994. An earlier draft was discussed at TAC 64, and this one at TAC 65 in October 1994. TAC made an interim comment, included in the report of TAC 65.The strategy sets out the information needs of the CGIAR during the 1990s, and the opportunities new information and communications technologies represent for improving joint action and collaboration among IARCS, and between IARCs and their partners outside the CGIAR System. There is also a memorandum from CBC Chair, Bonte-Friedheim, transmitting the paper and describing its progress.Agenda document at TAC 64 and 65

Documentation: Motivation and training or automation

The road blocks and mental blocks in areas where automation is not taking care of basic documentation problems are discussed. Original project documentation, documentation for project maintenance, and comparison of preliminary and final documentation are described. The use of flow charts is also mentioned

Training communities in documentation and technology: The Language Documentation Training Center model

Language documentation is increasingly seen as a collaborative process, engaging community members as active participants. Collaborative research produces better documentation that is valuable for both the academic community and the speakers. However, in many communities, speakers and language advocates lack the skills necessary to fully engage in collaborative projects. One way to overcome this barrier is to provide language documentation training to community members. Such training should teach participants how to ethically and comprehensively complete every stage of the documentation process while offering opportunity for theoretical discussion and practical application. In this paper, we offer one possible model for community-based training in language documentation and conservation that focuses on bidirectional learning and capacity building. We describe a training workshop that was held in 2018 in Kupang, the capital of Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) province. A collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i, Leiden University, and Artha Wacana Christian University, this workshop implemented a model based on the practices of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC), an organization devoted to training speakers to document their own languages. We detail the NTT workshop itself, summarize post-workshop feedback, and offer suggestions to others looking to provide similar training in speaker communities.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Massimiliano Balduzzi: Research in Physical Training for Performers

This essay begins the process of contextualizing and analyzing Massimiliano Balduzzi’s solo physical training practice by introducing six newly created video documents. It locates Balduzzi’s work in a wider historical and artistic context – touching upon the work of Konstantin Stanislavski, Jerzy Grotowski, and Eugenio Barba, as well as acrobatics, martial arts, and Balinese dance – while arguing that the documented physical training constitutes an original research contribution to the field of embodied technique. The essay has three main purposes: First, to give verbal articulation to some important aspects of Balduzzi’s practice, as he begins to teach more widely in New York City and beyond. Second, to test and develop a theoretical framework that conceives of embodied technique as a field of knowledge in which rigorously framed research can and does give rise to new knowledge in the form of new technique. Third, to explore the epistemological status of multimedia documentation through a focused case study. Each of these goals has the potential to expand and clarify current discussions of actor and performer training, movement analysis and documentation, and practice-as-research

Lab notebooks as scientific communication: investigating development from undergraduate courses to graduate research

In experimental physics, lab notebooks play an essential role in the research process. For all of the ubiquity of lab notebooks, little formal attention has been paid to addressing what is considered `best practice' for scientific documentation and how researchers come to learn these practices in experimental physics. Using interviews with practicing researchers, namely physics graduate students, we explore the different experiences researchers had in learning how to effectively use a notebook for scientific documentation. We find that very few of those interviewed thought that their undergraduate lab classes successfully taught them the benefit of maintaining a lab notebook. Most described training in lab notebook use as either ineffective or outright missing from their undergraduate lab course experience. Furthermore, a large majority of those interviewed explained that they did not receive any formal training in maintaining a lab notebook during their graduate school experience and received little to no feedback from their advisors on these records. Many of the interviewees describe learning the purpose of, and how to maintain, these kinds of lab records only after having a period of trial and error, having already started doing research in their graduate program. Despite the central role of scientific documentation in the research enterprise, these physics graduate students did not gain skills in documentation through formal instruction, but rather through informal hands-on practice.Comment: 10 page

GREMEX update (Goddard research engineering management exercise)

Management simulation techniques offer training in management problems. Exercise was developed to provide experience in research and development project decision making from management rather than technological perspective. Program and documentation have been revised innumerable times in past. Described report is revised version as it exists to date

Process Documentation and Cross Training for Offices

This blog entry summarizes what process documentation and cross training is, and how to implement both concurrently. Process documentation and cross training consume office time, but having processes documented and the office cross train help transition new employees and current employees taking on new tasks. This process works for both large and small offices, and will prevent single point of failure situations, where one person is the only person responsible for something, and if that person leaves, no one has a clue what to do

Master of Social Work Student Perception in Access to Documentation Training in Social Work Programs

This study explored the Master of Social Work (MSW) student perception of access to documentation training in their program. When a student graduates with a degree, there is an expected level of competency in regards to documentation when entering the field. Currently, there is literature available about the risk of poor documentation and the need for additional documentation training in the field of social work but the literature focusing on the perceptions of the student is very limited. The study contributed to the academic literature on social work documentation by providing awareness of the student perception of where they received documentation training in their graduate program. The research design for this study is qualitative and exploratory due to insignificant literature available. A survey was administered to graduating MSW students through a California State University School of Social Work. The findings suggested that MSW students would benefit from additional clinical documentation training from their MSW program since the student perceptions are there is limited access to training within the program. There are numerous of implications to the field of social work in regards to the lack of documentation training in MSW programs. The absence of training from students may include not having a full understanding of risk management that corresponds with documentation and will have to assume to be ethically responsible for when the student graduates from their program. This can be detrimental to the student’s professional development and can overall create a decrease in the quality of graduating MSW students

IMIS: Integrated Maintenance Information System. A maintenance information delivery concept

The Integrated Maintenance Information System (IMIS) will optimize the use of available manpower, enhance technical performance, improve training, and reduce the support equipment and documentation needed for deployment. It will serve as the technician's single, integrated source of all the technical information required to perform modern aircraft maintenance