SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: self confidence and experie
Re: SIGIA-L: self confidence and experience vs. research
From: James Weinheimer (j.weinheimer_at_jlw-dmg.net)
Date: Wed Mar 20 2002 - 13:08:44 EST
My own experience as a librarian/cataloger is that I can say something which
has been known for hundreds of years, if not more, and people still don't
want to believe it. This is based on scientific research, confirmed over and
over from the beginning up to the present day, and yet, people just choose
not to believe it. I can overwhelm them with facts, statistics, and so on,
but....
This is a normal situation for a librarian though. Even though people come
to you as a last resort, when they are half-crazy that they can't find
something, and you find it in 30 seconds for them, but they still won't
listen to you when you speak about information organization and retrieval!
Jim Weinheimer
----- Original Message -----
From: Fiorito, David <DFiorito_at_IKON.com>
To: sigia-l <sigia-l_at_asis.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:16 PM
Subject: SIGIA-L: self confidence and experience vs. research
> My experience has been this - I can make a statement with the full backing
> of my self confidence and experience and still have it challenged. The
> folks I work for constantly ask - "Has anyone studied that?"
>
> Its a power thing - they have an idea that is different from mine and they
> do not have the experience to back it up so they force me to defend my
> experience with external validation. Over the course of my tenure with my
> current employer this has happened less frequently, but it still happens.
>
> There is nothing like a good quote from a well known and trusted source to
> make your idea stick.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ziya Oz [mailto:ziyaoz_at_earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 1:14 AM
> To: sigia-l
> Subject: Re: SIGIA-L: Summit - Krug's favorite research
>
>
> Christina Wodtke wrote:
>
> > there might be a connection between confidence and a belief in project
> > leaders that they know everything already and research has nothing to
> teach
> > them.
>
> Of course, I said 'self-confidence and experience' which is not the same
as
> 'confidence and a belief'. But the main point was the inverse
*relationship*
> -- a proportional vector, if you will. The more self-confidence and
> experience one may have, the less need there may be for validation. This
is
> a proportional curve. A tendency. Rather than a binary absolute, as in
> 'research has nothing to teach them.'
>
> Sometimes I look at 'research' and I'm bewildered by the obviousness and
> artificiality of it all. And then I wonder just for whose benefit money
was
> spent on conducting it. But that's just me. If it makes you happy, go for
it
> :-)
>
> > This doesn't apply to Mr.. Krug, interestingly enough.. he was the most
> > modest and engaged keynote I have ever seen, and said clearly that he
> learns
> > endlessly from usability tests.
>
> Is this the same Mr..Krug who just said in a previous post:
>
> "...what people were taking me to task for was the fact that I said I
don't
> feel like I've seen too many others that were really useful to me
> professionally. (Not, as I tried to make clear, that I'm not glad that
there
> are lots of people doing research. Just that I'm always surprised that I
> can't point to more studies that I feel have helped me do what I do
better,
> or helped answer the nagging questions that I run into time and again."
>
> Hmmm.
>
> Best,
>
> Ziya
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