For over twenty years, digitisation has been a core element of the modern information landscape. The digital lifecycle is now well defined, and standards and good practice have been developed for most of its key stages. There remains, however, a widespread lack of coordination of digitisation initiatives, both within and across different sectors, and there are disparate approaches to selection criteria. The result is 'silos' of digitised content. Stepping away from the Silos examines the strategic context in the UK since the 1990s and its effect on collaboration and coordination of exemplar digitisation initiatives in higher education and related sectors. It identifies the principal criteria for content selection that are common to the international literature in this field. The outputs of the exemplar projects are examined in relation to these criteria. A range of common practices and patterns in content selection appears to have developed over time, forming a de facto strategy from which several areas of critical mass have emerged. The book discusses the potential to improve strategic collaboration and coordinated selection by building on such a platform, and considers planning options in the context of work on national digitisation strategies in the UK and internationally. - Summarises the rise of publicly funded digitisation in the UK from the 1990s to date and identifies the need to improve coordination and content selection criteria - Reviews the role of digitisation in government and organisational strategies from the 1990s to the present day - Examines the strategic position of collaboration within and across different organisations - Identifies common selection criteria and outlines the coverage of exemplar projects - Discusses the apparent emergence of a de facto selection strategy and the potential for national strategic planning of digitised content based on existing outputs and improved collaboration

An award-winning columnist and journalist describes how businesses that structure their teams into functional departments, or "silos," actually hinder work, cripple innovation, restrict thinking and force normally smart people to ignore risks and opportunities. --

Wool introduced the world of the silo. Shift told the story of its creation. Dust will describe its downfall.

In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platform that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same moment in humanity's broad history, mankind had discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened. This is the sequel to the New York Times best-selling Wool series.

Drive more value from all your marketing and communications channels--together! Demolish your silos and sync all your messaging, strategies, and tactics (really!). Optimize every medium and platform, from iPad and Facebook to TV and direct. This book is a must-read for every senior marketing, communications, and PR decision-maker. It’s not about social media. Or new (or old) media. It’s about results—and there’s only one way to get results. You must finally bite the bullet, tear down your silos, and integrate all your marketing and communications. That’s how you choose the best platforms and messages for each customer. That’s how you make research and metrics work. That’s how you overcome today’s insane levels of complexity and clutter. You’re thinking: Oh, that’s all I need to do? “Just” integrate my whole organization? Are you nuts? No. We’re not. It can be done. This book’s authors have done it. They’ve shown others how to do it. And now they’re going to show you. Step by step. Strategy. Tactics. Research. Metrics. Culture. Social. Mobile. Direct. Broadcast. Print. All of it. With you, the marketing/communications decision-maker, right at the center...right where you belong! Even now, organizational silos prevent most companies from conversing coherently with customers, delivering the right targeted messages, and building real synergies across all their marketing and communications programs. Now, Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston show how to finally break down those silos, bridging traditional and newer disciplines to drive more value from all of them. You’ll learn how to create a flexible marketing hub with integrated spokes including sales, PR, advertising, customer service, HR, social media, and the executive team. Then, you’ll learn how to use your hub to speak cohesively with each customer through the tools and platforms that deliver the best results at the lowest cost. Dietrich and Livingston guide you through hands-on strategic planning, illustrating key points with real case studies and offering practical exercises for applying their principles. You’ll learn how to perform baseline analyses of media from iPad apps to radio, optimize resource allocation, change culture to overcome siloed behavior, use measurement to clear away obstacles, and gain more value from every marketing investment you make. Pull it all together--finally! How to successfully integrate your tactics, tools, messages, and teams Better goals, better results: beyond “SMART” to “SMARTER” Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, evaluate, and reevaluate Better listening: stakeholders, customers, and research that works How to make sure you hear what really matters Four powerful ways to market in the round When to go direct, come from above, use the groundswell, or execute flanking maneuvers

The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost. Their father was a sand diver, one of the elite few who could travel deep beneath the desert floor and bring up the relics and scraps that keep their people alive. But their father is gone. And the world he left behind might be next. Welcome to the world of Sand, a novel by New York Times best-selling author Hugh Howey. Sand is an exploration of lawlessness, the tale of a land ignored. Here is a people left to fend for themselves. Adjust your ker and take a last, deep breath before you enter.

Grady the Hereford cow gets stuck in the silo of Bill and Alyne's farm in Yukon, Oklahoma. Based on an actual event that occurred in 1949.