John Sergeant

Former BBC journalist John Sergeant was the host of last night's International Information Industry Awards and the IWR editorial team was privileged to spend some time with him.

It would be easy to imagine that a reporter that was in the Vietnam war, has interviewed world leaders like Maggie Thatcher and broken major stories day in, day out would look on the recent past of the news and information sector with rose tinted glasses, not a jot. Sergeant spoke passionately to IWR about the possibilities for information gathering, the exciting possibilities for presenting news online and in broadcast and the incredible skills that information workers today acquire.

Throughout our conversation Sergeant expressed a passionate loyalty to the BBC and a sense of anticipation about the new ways of delivering news and information that are being developed at the Beeb. Information users of all types will be re-assured that Sergeant, a keen user of premium information services, believes paper and broadcast services have a long future ahead in unison with online.

Many who attended the awards told IWR he was the best host yet and it was certainly an entertaining night listening to his tales of life in the front line of national broadcasting.

International Information Industry Awards 2006

Last night the great and the good, the big and the small, the international and the local of the information industry gathered together at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London for the International Information Industry Awards.
Hosted by venerable former BBC journalist John Sergeant the awards were a rollercoaster ride of emotions and all sides of the industry either went home pleased and punch, surprised or determined to come back and sweep up all the awards.
Sergeant was the star of the show with witty stories of the BBC and his life in broadcasting and light entertainment. He revealed a passion for information that a journalist of his stature has developed and that he has account with a certain LexisNexis. No doubt the other vendors present at the awards will all be offering him favourable rates to switch accounts.
Amongst the winners were Rachael Kolsky, IWR info pro of the year, SiteKit, Eugene Garfield picked up a life time achievement award and promised to carry on for many more years to come. MPS Technologies and Trexy also picked up a gong. Full details will appear in the January issue of IWR.

David Tebbutt on OPML

"Its a complete mine field, its not the best document area. OPML comes from all sorts of sources, mind mappers, organisers, these squirt out OPML.
"OPML is a plain text file of, Outline Processor Markup Language, you can see its an outline, its based on RSS. You can output links to HTML pages, text, RSS, there is also a feature called Incluide that allows you to include other OPML files.
"What can you do with OPML, you can share outlines, bookmarks, subscription lists and reading lists. I'd hate to share my bookmarks with anyone, there are yards and yards of them! You can use it as a super aggreagtor so everything I want to see is in one lujmp. Becasue it is RSS you can receive continual updates and it is a one stop shop for your world of information.
Our man then goes into the main OPML tools that he uses.
"Grazer is my favourite way of looking at information. I have a file, who I watch and there are a list of blogs form lots ofr clever people. Megite is another way sharing feeds and it tells me other feeds that may be of interest to me."

Some stand-out highlights from OI 2006 at Olympia

If you're making your way to the Main Hall at Olympia for the Online Information Show this week, here's a few of the big new launches that caught my eye while hiking around the miles of aisles.

• IET/Inspec (Stand 346): The Institution of Engineering & Technology has launched an online archive of Digitised Journal Backfiles, with back issues of some journals dating back to 1872. The Electronics Letters backfrile from 1965-1993 is available now, with the remaining content set for early 2007. IET is also launching two new journals in 2007 that express the zeitgeist: Synthetic Biology and Renewable Power Generation.


• Proquest (Stand 316): To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Literature Online, its academic full-text and reference resource for English language literature, Proquest has hooked up with Oxford University Press to include search results from reference titles in its ORO (Oxford Reference Online) collections. It has also signed a deal with JISC to make House of Commons Parliamentary Papers available to FE and HE institutions.


• Blackwell Publishing (Stand 406): Despite its imminent merger with John Wiley, Blackwell was showing the fruits of its latest development efforts – the launch of Blackwell Reference Online, an online book service covering scholarship across six major disciplines: Business & Economics, History, Language & Linguistics, Literature & Cultural Studies, Philosophy & Religion, and Sociology & Psychology. A link to the website here is not yet operational.


• Chemical Abstract Services (Stand 512): CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, has announced enhancements to its chemical substance nomenclature, available to users from mid-December. Previously, CAS made changes to nomenclature at the end of 5-year collective index periods, but now makes changes "as appropriate to ensure the CAS Registry has the most current, usable information".


• Taylor & Francis (Stand 430): T&F used the show to lift the veils on its new online collection management system, informaworld, which will give access to over 1,100 journals, 10,000 ebooks and 5,000 encyclopedia articles when it comes onstream. Informaworld will allow online access to a library's subscriptions using IP, proxy server and Athens authentication policies, and will include COUNTER-compliant usage stats.


• Wolters Kluwer (Stand 518): WK Health has announced PubFusion 2.0, the latest iteration of its online content management system specifically engineered for commercial publishers, self-publishing societies, research institutions and pharmaceutical companies in the healthcare sector. Enhanced features include version control, collaboration tools, global management and real-time audits.

Blog tracking expters on the IWR stand at Online Information

Information professionals and users looking to sharpen up their usage and tracking of blogs should make thier way to the IWR stand at Online Information today and tomorrow.
Expters from Thomson Scientific and Factiva will be on the stand to offer their expert advice on why information users should track blogs and how best to do it.
The IWR stand (Stand number 200) also features the last two issues, so please pop along and get the latest information.

Online Information 2006 – first view from Olympia

The first thing that strikes you about this year's Online Information Show at Olympia is just how big the brand new IMS Show is. Taking up over a quarter of the floor space in the main hall, this "sister" show has put down a solid marker and looks destined to grow rapidly in future years.

The biggest stands have been taken by some well-known names in content management, EDRMS and enterprise search. These include EMC, Immediacy, Vyre, Contensis, Goss, EIBS and Magpie. Click on the image at left to see a fullsize photo of the hall.

The OI Show's big hitters were all here again – Springer, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Thomson and Proquest making among the strongest impressions. But there was little in the way of excitement on the stands – have the marketing departments in these firms really got no new ideas?

Both Blackwell Publishing and John Wiley were here, but on separate stands – maybe next year the fact that their impending merger will create a much more significant force in the market will be more visually evident.

The show – the biggest for information professionals outside the US - continues through Wednesday and Thursday this week.

Futurology panel sparks lively conference debate

The Online Information 2006 conference, which got off to a very business-oriented start this morning with a keynote speech by Thomas A Stewart, editor of The Harvard Business Review, got into its stride this afternoon with a lively audience-pleasing panel discussion on "Futurology: The Information Agenda in 2010".

Moderated by outgoing conference chairman Martin White, the panel was today's highlight of the Managing Enterprise Information track at the conference. And one of the first points to be made was that the 2010 timeframe in the session's title was a bit misleading.

"That's just a few years away, and that's just short-term planning for most people," said panellist Matt Locke, head of innovation at BBC New Media. "Some companies are looking much further afield, at 2050 and beyond, and looking for signals as to behaviours and trends that could affect organisations by then."

"It's a bit like predicting weather systems, and company 'game changers' are the people who are trying to build umbrellas to protect organisations from the possible storms ahead."

Locke said some events that will affect information professionals were predictable, though the majority are difficult to see in advance. "The year 2012 will be a huge challenge for media firms, as it will be the first truly digital Olympics. Analogue will be switched off, mobiles will have vastly different capabilities and broadband, with much more bandwidth, will reach around 80% of the population. We have been creating business narratives within the BBC to help us respond to that challenge."

Some trends are heading in uncomfortable directions. Clive Holtham, professor of information management at Cass Business School, pointed out that as information becomes more immediate and easily available, users are increasingly getting only part of the picture, and not the "complete perspective" that longer timeframes give.

Globalisation was another key theme. Adrian Dale, editor of the Journal of Information Science at Wiley, said the volume of papers submitted was increasing by 50% per annum, and 75% of the growth was coming from the Far East. "It's a dramatic shift and doesn't bode well for UK or Europe".

Locke said wider cultural changes trends should be watched. "Search is now a mode of behaviour for many and a part of our culture, where once it was the preserve of  information professionals." The BBC had picked up on this trend – 2 of its most successful shows recently were Who Do You Think You Are? and Balderdash and Piffle – both of which asked ordinary people to take part in search-based activities.

Dale said there has been a fundamental shift in "mental models of information". "Previously, people saw it as page-based, but now younger generations are imagining information in their minds in multi-dimensional inter-relational web-based models". That will have effects on how information is accessed and used.

This theme was taken up by audience members who said visualisation of information is likely to be a big area of development, as people learn to get more from information through such things as "ambient" technologies (which allow information to be absorbed and processed in less conscious ways, in much the same way as car drivers process many different sensory data inputs). "We are very much limited by eyes and mice for processing information through computers," noted Locke.

Holtham said he was concerned about the growing lack of awareness of library skills and the importance of archives among students; but Locke felt students were developing new skillsets in accessing information – the importance is developing their critical facilities, and ability to judge and assess information, and check validity by, for example, multi-sourcing.

The quality of this session bodes well for the conference this year – and there's two more days to go, with equally inviting sessions in all three tracks.

Web 2.0 Geoffrey Bilder

Geoffrey is a consultant at Scholarly Information Strategies and former techy at Ingenta. He aims to convince us of some deep trends in Web 2.0 and how to utilise them.
Bilder describes the deployment of tech as having to pass through processes that includes a hype, failure and then re-emergence phase. The trouble with this, he says, is that we focus on one instance of a technology during the hype time. Pointcast, a screensaver news aggregator is the example he uses. "There are some instances of web 2.0 tech out there, some of which are hair brained, others are very good and examples of deep trends."
Describes Web 2.0 affect as "the edge is the new centre", content is being generated around the edges, ie blogs, whcih he describes as the poster child of web 2.0. Reminds the audience that in the first browser allowed you to edit as well as view sites.
Blogging lends itself well to publishing news and for aggregating information, "it is a good infromation architecture".
Wikis, allow users to edit the content, he says as he moves the discussion on. "Wikis should not be confused with Wikipedia, it is an interesting application of wiki technology. Multiple people working on the same document, a very useful technology."
He is demonstrating some wonderful examples of scientists and research groups using wiki technology, and blogs, to communicate.
Contrasts using social bookmarking sites with emailing links, for examplke CiteULike for academia. You can form research groups within these sites
RSS, allows you to see a synthesized version of all the latest content in one place. "These technologies allow you to subscribe to people's brains, that is a useful function. It is a tremondously powerful way for people to share, for the information industry it means you are providing a continuing commentary on topics. It is a new way of asserting yourself into the researcher's lives."
During the questions sessions, Bilder backs up points made by Larry Sanger about experts, talking of people conflating the term expert as academic and authorative as being being authoritarian. Bilder infers the same tone as Sanger, there are many different types of expert and authority.

IWR Blog at Online Information 2006

The IWR team is at the Online Information Conference and show in London this week. No other show and conference has so much in common with Information World Review.
For those of you who can't get into London for the two events we will be blogging from as many of the conference sessions as possible. You will notice that we've already posted three reports on the opening keynote speech by Thomas A Stewart of the Harvard Business Review and Nic Newman of the BBC discussing Web 2.0.
We can't promise to cover every aspect, and we do have a number of interviews and meetings to do for the next issue of Information World Review, but we will put as much information as we can up and we hope its usefuk. Please use the comment functions to let us know.

Web 2.0 Stuart Kauder, CEO, Accoona, France

New business models in a Web 2.0 world is the title of Kauder's presentation. He opens by discussing the growth rates of online advertising, with relevancy the key and the different advertising models that exist online.
Advertising is business model number one, membership is the second bsuiness model. He's using old dot.com era stories, Salon.com which charged readers from the outset and bombed, but has since re-emerged as a major technology information site. He is describing the model US sports channel uses where magazine subscribers get access to a online channel called the Insider. Revenue is generated by the subscription and ad sales within the magazine.

Web 2.0 Nic Newman of the BBC

Search and Web 2.0 Nic Newman, Project Lead BBC Search opens the debate. Web 2.0 is useful for the BBC for where we need to get to with our services, he says to open his speech, talking of the cross media future of the broadcaster.
BBC calls search find and is becoming more and more important in the digital age. Newman connects find to play and share, which is the BBC strategy for Web 2.0.
"our whole business is being changed by the deluge of digital content. It used to be that people could always find BBC content, it was number one or two on the dial, but now with so many channel, and the ways people find content has come under strain," he says.
The on-demand wave of media is really going to make search struggle. "Huge amounts of user generated content is being hosted on the BBC website, where do we list that material. The next big thing is to open up the archives, 70-80 years worth of content, how on earth are we going to list all that, search is a key part of that future."
The deluge of digital media content is driving the need for more effective tagging and searching, hs slide states. Technology will be needed to automate indexing adn unlock value of media archives, human's just can't keep up.
"We need to come up with better ways for tagging content, and using some of the users of our content to help with that process. On toip of that we can build fantastic new interfaces to help people find content they are looking for, but also serendipity for discovering other material.
"We are the bigest content site in the UK, 50% of UK online users come to a BBC site every week. There will be many different routes in to content, tv, radio programmes will need to have appropriate luggage tags to help people find it.
"A sopecific example of this is out podcast, only 20% of people using the Today programme podcast find it through the BBC interface, 80% come from another interface, mainly Apple iTunes."
"Once you have great content, all episodes, all assets, transcripts, images must be tied together with tagging to bring it all together. In the play part, the appropriate device and how do we allow people to share, so they can post on blogs and create links. The central image is that we have to think of a programme like The Power of Nightmare, in the new world that programme has the potential to be enjoyed for decades to come."
Demonstrates an example of NHS Direct being integrated into a folksonomic search on the BBC site. His examples use a lot of community ideas, young mothers creating areas of baby related shows and content that would be useful to other mothers.
"The push side of recommending side of this is very important to the BBC and there is a huge overlap with search navigation, we expect our search interfaces to push content in the future. In the future there will be overlays to add personal preferred sites on top of BBC content you are looking at. We can expose other experiences. We want to combine our own editorial skills with the wisdom of the crowds. We also want to take into account what people are doing. We can make sure the right types of sites are reaching them."
Newman is also looking to use ratings by users for film ratings for example.
Currently piloting an anotatable audio project, this will enable users to tag elements of an interview on the Today programme for example. That information will then put back into the search results.
"We are going to have spend a lot more time thinking about how we tag our content and join up process right back in the production process.
"Search will become crucial in the fabric of our interfaces. We want to re-use all the user generated information we generate to enable people to have richer and more relevant experiences going forward."

Knowledge management

Stewart has now moved onto knowledge management (km). He's using a case study from a copier machine company that had a knowledge competition to answer questions.
The second placed person is the most interesting, a single mum that sat next to the winner, a rebel. An example of tacit knowledge, the most difficult problem for KM is how you manage tacit knowledge, he says. The work of km has gine into explicit knowledge and not people with tacit knowledge. This has created databases and information centres that no one goes to.
Managing explicit knowledge leaves you unprepared for a world of change, as you are looking at the information of the past.
Challenge for the next five years is the latest slide, the challenges are:
1 speed - "the world never slows down, your email fills, and markets are now 24/7. As things speed up you are more likely to make a mistake". The business challenges of speed is really interesting, he says and is inferring this is a role for information professionals
2 Customer power - "every insustry I know is being taken over by its customers, how do you manage that?" "Customers know more and mopre, the price game of poker has gone away. French cement company LeFarge has a great KM enviroment using councils, but the backbone is the customer visit that involves interviews, sales people are amazed that price is never mentioned."
3 Low cost competition - the threat of low price start ups or just good enough challengers
4 decision making under uncertainty and management without supervision: management has been about controlling risk, but there are risks that you cannot control, you cannot put odds on it, he says. "Most of what we know about management doesn't help us, increasingly this is the world we live in." Tech means we are more powerful individuals at work.
He has gone back to what creates the knowledge and then you can use to support your organisation, his opening theme.

Thomas A Stewart

The second pillar of the knowledge econmomy, knowledge assets. How do you go to market, an asset is something that transforms inputs, water goes into a hydro electricity plant, electricity comes out. Knowledge assets include lawyers taking facts of a case and "distorts them" to win the case.
You have to think of what are we selling as an info pro. "I recomment you talk to people about why do they buy from you, there are rivals and then look for attributes, such as whether you are fast, innovative and reliable."
Ask the whole organisation he says, especially sales people, and try to get some understanding for what the attributes are aqnd then you can ask what makes you innovative.
You can then get to the intellectual capital model and then you can respond.
There are three basic forms of intellectual capital:
1 human capital
2 structural capital
3 customer capital
Customer capital is where they know everything about you, all of these can be applied to an organisation, every company has all three of these.
A few people have left, he doesn't have them as riverted as last year's keynote on the Cluetrain Manifesto by David Weinberger.

Online Information Keynote

We have to follow the money in the knowledge economy, opens the Editor of the Havard Business Review Thomas A Stewart. Knowledge is as fundimental as electricity.
He talks of knowledge as something we buy and sell, it is all sounding very American and capitalist, but the auditorium is full and listening attentivly.
His slide breaks information down into three strategies:
1 instilled knowledge (smart products)
2 distilled knowledge (knowledge as a product)
3 Black box strategies (knowledge services)
Discusses how different sectors have become knowledge/information suppliers through re-sellling the information they create in their main business, "selling what they know" for examp[le shipping insurers, bankers and office suppliers who have all become information vendors.
Mastercard used anti-fraud department providing information from knowledge collected as "you know this [in one department], why don't we".
Instilled knowledge, is information you "stick into something", ie a mobile phone collects data on numbers, times of calls, mobiles are knowledge products, companies can stick more and more knowledge into the devices they sell.
Every company needs to have an explicit conversation about its information.

Campaigners continue to target Government

Today's Guardian newspaper reports that veteren Freedom of Information Act campaigner Maurice Frankel has writter to MPs calling on them not to dilute the the Freedom of Information Act.

Frankel is director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, he told the newspaper, "We are particularly alarmed at the speed with which the proposals appear to be moving towards implementation... there is no reason why the issue should be dealt with in such haste."

As reported in the November issue of IWR, ministers are seeking to rush the proposals which will drastically dilute the law and allow the Labour government to cover up its blunders. Lord Falconer said last month he was "minded to accept the proposals" and is now seeking early parliamentary approval. Frankel points out that Baroness Ashton, a minister at the Department of Constitutional Affairs promised full public consultation before any reforms to the act before changes were made. "This is an important commitment which would normally be regarded as binding. We urge you to ensure that it is honoured," Frankel said in his letter to MPs.

It is proposed that the time it takes to read, consider and consult on requests would be added to the cost, so more requests are likely to be refused for exceeding their limit.

The other change would be to treat all requests made by an organisation or individual over a three-month period as one request and count the combined cost against the limits. This would mean that an organisation such as the BBC could make only one request every three months.

The changes were recommended in a report for the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) by Frontier Economics, a consultancy where former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull is a non-executive director.

Are you going to Online Information?

Are you going to Online Information next week? As a one-stop-shop to catch up on all the important developments in the information industry, the conference is pretty unbeatable. Every year brings fresh insights and clues to where our jobs and our industry are heading.

Rather than just taking sessions at face value, serendipitous encounters with strangers are often a great opportunity to exchange views on what you just heard. So much better than just going along with a colleague and following the same old thought patterns. You can do that back at the office.

With three streams running much of the time, it's difficult to know which to attend. Do you go for career development or social software? The conference organisers have done a great job of trying to avoid conflict but, sometimes, the choices are tough. Maybe it's an idea to look in the proceedings and see which session has the best documentation, then go for the other one.

It's worth spending time on the conference guide and mapping your best route through the sessions. Sometimes you'll find that a speaker in a session is also involved in a round table or a Q&A, which is one way of partially overcoming the overlapping sessions problem. It does create a new problem though. It diminishes still further the time you have for the main exhibition.

If you go, do have a good time. And, if you're following Web 2.0, search/discovery, social software or career development, keep your eyes peeled. You may want to meet/avoid me.

Collaboration creates new German chemistry portal

Through the collaborative efforts of three Germanic based organisations a new chemistry information and knowledge platform www.chem.de has been launched, writes Daniel Griffin.

The partnership consists of the German chemical society - Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh), Europe’s largest chemical society with 27,000 members; the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) Hannover and Fiz Chemie, a non profit making entity that provides chemistry information services in the fields of science, education and technology. The initiative received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The jointly operated resource will siphon information from each of the partners own digital content repositories and is intended to be used by those operating in the German and European professional education, training, research and conference fields. Users will be able to view both German and English language versions and there is free basic access for non subscribers.

The data will range from chemistry-based information on research projects, e-learning courses to conference data and meeting activities in chemistry. Other features will include a discussion forum for the community with search and information updates also present.

The service will be running at next weeks Online Information 2006 exhibition at Kensington Olympia.

JISC invests in capital

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced the successful bids for their capital programme funding initiative. The pot of £5.5 million has now been allocated to 27 projects for e-learning, e-infrastructure and repositories and preservation programmes. JISC is a committee organisation for the UK Higher (HE) and Further Education (FE) funding bodies that delivers Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

JISC’s head of development, Sarah Porter said, “These projects, the first to be funded through the capital programme will enhance our core activities as well as further supporting the education and research community’s engagement with ICT.”

The repositories and preservation programme received funding for 11 projects and will be managed by the Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access (SHERPA) partnership at the University of Nottingham. The project will support and advise all HE and FE institutions in England and Wales for developing and implementing digital repositories.

Other initiatives aim to enhance the national e-infrastructure of access management and build upon the foundations laid out by previously funded JISC programmes. Focus will be on security and identity management. This initiative will be led by Cardiff and Leeds Universities respectively and partnered by the London School of Economics (LSE).

In the e-learning field 13 projects will receive investment for linking with the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) Lifelong Learning Network, with particular attention spent on the exploration of technological potential in enhancing learning and teaching by linking FE and HE institutions together.

December date likely for Gowers report

Experts on the Intellectual Property (IP) law debate gathered today at the British Library to consider the implications and position the Gowers Review will take, writes Daniel Griffin.

However the first question on everyone’s lips was just when is the report by the former Financial Times editor going to be published? As the initial consultation period has been fairly open, the Government have been keeping their cards close to their chest on an announcement.

General consensus amongst the specialists was it will be no later than December 13 and likely to be mentioned in Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown’s pre-budget report, especially if there are significant financial implications.

The experts attending the British Library round table discussion ranged from a patent lawyer, inventor Roland Hill and assorted press as well as those from the British Library. The national library maintained its consistent approach of “honest broker” between commercial gain and public needs. Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the library highlighted the differences in culture and approach between the “born digital” and “digital immigrant” generations to the wider Intellectual Property (IP) debate.

A lively discussion on the wider implications of IP highlighted that it’s hoped Gowers will address. The business community was criticised for its lack of imagination in realising the entrepreneurial potential in the digital arena. Similarly European governments and IP owners themselves didn’t fair better with several voices advocating the Chancellor could position himself as a potential champion of fair IP rights and lead the UK’s example with wider international trade issues at the centre.

All agreed that the current state is greatly in need of an overhaul, and review, let’s hope that Gower’s delivers and sets a precedent for how to truly deal with IP effectively that pleases all sides.   

Happy families following Blackwell sell off

The saga of the Blackwell family’s quarrel on how best to use their business assets seems to have ended with a degree of harmony, following the successful bid of £572m by John Wiley & Sons for Blackwell Publishing.

The long-running feud between controlling family members of Blackwell Publishing it would seem have at least now been calmed. Financial newspaper the FT reports that after initial moves by Taylor & Francis to buy the organisation in 2002 for £300m backed by Blackwell’s then group chairman, Toby Blackwell, were originally scuppered by other major shareholders in the family, including Nigel Blackwell, the group’s current chairman.

Difficulties also arose when a deal to sell the Blackwell book shop chain, a separate company, to Blackwell Publishing, saw several family members in key share ownership positions incite another rebellion to keep control of the chain in 2004. Toby Blackwell’s now stands to make £95m to Nigel Blackwell’s £100m. Electronic Publishing Services (EPS) pointing out that the current deal has vindicated his original position in its latest report.

After the official announcement of the acquisition, market commentators are looking with interest into the implications for both companies with EPS, stating “Blackwell will provide Wiley with higher exposure in the higher education market with its textbooks and course materials; add some weight in professional publishing and make Wiley a much bigger stake holder in STM and the journals market.”

The deal which is due for completion in early 2007 will ensure that Wiley becomes an even bigger player in scientific publishing circles, second only to Reed Elsevier. 

Wiley acquires Blackwell in major scientific information market consolidation

Scientific publisher John Wiley & Sons has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire rival Blackwell Publishing. The shock announcement will see the two publishing houses join forces in a deal said to be worth £572 million.

Wiley will acquire the outstanding shares in Blackwell Publishing, a separate company from the Blackwell book shop chain, although Blackwell family members serve on both company boards.

Wiley said in a statement that it has received "irrevocable commitments from principal shareholders to sell their shares to Wiley". The deal is expected to close by the beginning of 2007. 

Blackwell revenues were approximately £210 million in 2005, on a par with Wiley's scientific, technical and medical business. William J Pesce, president and chief exec of Wiley described the deal as: "a rare opportunity with highly favourable, long term strategic implications".  Nigel Blackwell, chairman of Blackwell Publishing said: "Wiley and Blackwell are two great firms sharing the same cultural value." 

The combined publishing business will produce around 1,250 peer reviewed journals, as well as books and a strong online presence.

In May of this year Blackwell CEO Rene Olivieri denied rumours of a sell off to IWR following reports of discussions with major banks.

Are we really smarter than me?

Are you a member of the elite? You're about to find out. Starting this week Pearson Education (whose own website is strangely silent on the subject) is sending messages to more than a million business professionals and scholars "inviting them to collectively write
and edit a book, tentatively titled We Are Smarter Than Me."

The initiative started in October when the blogosphere was cranked up to talk about it. The idea is that all these contributors would bang their ideas into a wiki and this would be turned into a book on "how Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks,
wikis and blogs can benefit the business enterprise."

It's to be published in the Autumn of 2007. Hohoho. Be easier to nip over to O'Reilly and download its Web 2.0 report then spend the next year making things happen at your workplace.

This looks like a horrible clash of the old and the new. Old publishing with its long lead-times and new media which just gets on with it. But, hey, it's all being done in a wiki, so that makes it okay.

The premise of the book, according to the publisher, comes from James Surowiecki's 2005 book, The Wisdom of Crowds. In it, claims Pearson, he "explored the idea that large groups of people working together can be “smarter” than an elite few".

Hmmm. I'm not sure that's what he claimed. I thought it was that the crowd could be smarter than the elite few. The phrase "working together" rather spoils things. The whole point of a crowd's smartness is that it is the aggregate of the differing views that delivers a result. Consensus - implied by "working together" - will deliver mush. The penny dropped for Kathy Sierra when she listened to Surowiecki's own explanation.

Williams Lea snaps up TSO

Williams Lea is set to dominate the UK public sector publishing market after acquiring The Stationery Office (TSO) in a deal worth around £120m.

TSO is the UK’s largest publisher by volume and is currently owned by venture capital group Apax Partners. It is the leading public sector document and publishing services brand, and has trade titles such as the Highway Code.

Williams Lea, founded in London in 1820 as a printing business, now supplies information management and business process services to investment banks, legal firms, telecoms and car manufacturers. It is majority owned by DHL parent Deutsche Post.

The deal, expected to be completed within two months subject to competition clearance, launches Williams Lea into the public sector outsourcing market, covering publishing and wider business processes.

Williams Lea chief marketing officer Melanie Fitzpatrick said TSO would remain as a separate organisation and retain its own branding and identity.

“The main reason we have bought it is to extend our proposition to the public sector. It’s very complementary and a good fit with Williams Lea.”

TSO will trade as the public sector division of Williams Lea, headed up by existing chief executive Richard Dell. “It’s business as usual,” Fitzpatrick said.

OI Show signals time to think business

The Online Information show is now less than a fortnight away, and while media attention is likely to be focused on the launch of the adjacent IMS show, don't forget there's still a big contingent of business information suppliers to be found among the throng of STM and academic publishers.

Perhaps the most well-known of all the company and business information suppliers on the floor of the show is LexisNexis. It will be showing a range of own-brands - MarketImpact, Know Your Customer, and Company Dossier among them – that will be of interest to anyone looking for business information on potential customers and new clients.

Companies House will also have a stand. It is the agency entrusted to examine and hold all documents under relevant Companies Act legislation – provisions of the 1985 Act are set to be expanded by the Companies Act 2006, which was passed a week ago today.

Hemscott will be showing an add-in module for Company Guru, its online database of UK companies. The Boardroom Guru module is a flip-sounding name that promises to "enable clients to dig even deeper into the board structure of UK companies". Hemscott's offering a 10% discount to any existing or new customers who sign-up after a demo of the module at the show. Also look out for the Bigdough Capital Markets database, which has contact details, investment strategies and shareholdings of over 40,000 fund managers.

RM Group, which specialises in UK business data, company formation documents and European trademark registration through its Armadillo range, will be busy on the floor showing its Irish Company Document Downloads service and an expanded version of its Anti-Money Laundering package.

RM's free search tool for Armadillo is also a finalist in the Best Business Information Product at the International Information Industry Awards on the Wednesday evening of the show.

Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing will be showing Spanish and Dutch extensions to Mint, its range of company information services aimed at sales and marketing professionals. Mint Portal will also be unveiled, giving users business news feeds and access to some free company data.

Just notice how that word "free" keeps creeping back into the equation for so many business information companies, many of whom have never lived down the trauma of Hoover's, which originally took a shot at an advertiser supported revenue model for free business information online, before being acquired by and absorbed into D&B's paid-for online operations.

Growth has been difficult in recent years in a highly competitive sector, with many of the big players going global to find new business. D&B announced earlier this year it was betting on a big expansion in China, while InfoUSA (parent company of OneSource) said it is expanding its presence in Mexico, India, the Asia-Pacific region, and Brazil.

By the way, BvD will be sponsoring the IWR Information Professional of the Year award at the III show, alongside UK and Irish business information supplier ICC, which is sponsoring the Best Team in a Business Environment award.

Open Access resources could mean journal subscriptions cancelled

A recent study conducted by consultants Scholarly Information Strategies which was commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) has examined library purchasing preferences. The study has exposed a flaw in previous claims that librarians would continue to subscribe to journals even if content became freely available from non-publisher based sources such as institutional archives. In fact, the results show a tendency that libraries may switch to open free resources and dump their traditional journal subscriptions, writes Daniel Griffin.

Of the 400 librarians who took part in the international study. Key factors in library decision making is based on the length of time an embargo period lasts on a research paper, and whether the information is peer-reviewed. According to the survey, these two key points are the major influences in library decision making and will be the reference points on whether a journal subscription is renewed or cancelled.

Chris Beckett, Director, Scholarly Information Strategies commented “Overall, librarians are very sensitive to quality, how quickly the content is made available, the version of the content and the content cost”.

A full analysis of this report will feature in the December issue of IWR out November 27, click here to register for your copy.

Why was Microsoft at the Web 2.0 Summit?

The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco sounded like the last place Microsoft's Ray Ozzie would want to be this week. After all, the company made the big announcement that its next two cash cows, Vista and Office 2007, have been herded into manufacturing.

I was interested to read what Ray Ozzie had to say to the delegates because, sticking with farmyard analogies, it struck me he was like a visitor to a free range chicken farm trailing a fox on a leash.

Surrounded by pushers of the Web 2.0 vision of a future of cuddly, sharing, always-on, collaborative and cooperative software, built on open standards and with as much 'free' as possible, he must have a) felt out of it or b) known he was part of it but couldn't admit it. How could he? Microsoft will spend the next eighteen months or so on a sales/upgrade spree offering a "safe environment" for internet users. Not to mention something else for "half a billion users in the Office market."

He talked of moving to online, rather than DVD, software delivery. More a commercial statement than a Web 2.0 one. He pointed out that a good browser-based word processor shouldn't just be a clone of a desktop application. True. He talked of the collaborative aspects of web applications. True. He talked of the importance of web-connected mobile devices. Erm, true. There was more, but you get the flavour. Largely platitudinous, designed not to rock any boats nor give anything much away.

For all we know, Microsoft may have a Web 2.0 skunkworks all ready to unleash itself as soon as the company senses resistance to traditional application purchases.

I wonder if it will be called Microsoft 2.0?

BiBC revolutionises broadcast archive access

The British Internet Broadcasting Company (BiBC) has announced plans to launch an online digital distribution service for content owners such as libraries and universities, writes Daniel Griffin.

Currently it is still standard practice for libraries to circulate their content material in hard copy formats, including video tape or DVD. This process can be costly and time consuming for both the organisation and the users but until recently they have had little choice.

Demand for more audio and visual resources in addition to traditional forms of paper-based information is on the increase, as modern students and researchers look to use video archives as original source material. 

Paul Hague, Managing Director of BiBC told IWR “it astonishes me that in the digital age in which we live, content owners are still distributing broadcast material manually, spending a fortune on transport costs, when the process lends itself to digitisation.”

ReelMaster, based on BiBC’s MediaMaster technology is intended to be a managed service solution; the service provides the process of digitising content as well as the web-based delivery and payment method. For researchers the relevant information is immediately accessible and searchable through the website without depending on the postal service. Content can then be accessed through a variety of hardware ranging from a fixed multi-media base or mobile devices.

Gates Foundation donates $1.2 million to OCLC to promote value of libraries

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have this week pledged a $1.2 million grant to the OCLC to promote the value of libraries in a national campaign throughout the U.S, which could be seen as another snub to the US government, writes Daniel Griffin.

Gates has been showing increasing interest in the library sector of late. Last year he agreed a major digitisation deal with the British Library and now his charitable arm is looking to improve public access to libraries, IWR would like to know, just what is driving the sudden passion for libraries in the world of Bill Gates.

The funds will be used by OCLC, a library automation and database specialist that is strong in academic circles, in conducting research and development strategies to enhance user perceptions of library value and the necessity of supporting new initiatives to meet user expectations and ever changing demands.

Studies in the U.S. indicate that over the next five years libraries will struggle to provide improvements to facilities, deliver electronic collections and internet services. But the U.S. public share a nostalgic perception of library services viewing them as predominately book-based, even though 99 % of libraries provide free internet access and other online services.   

Jill Nishi, Manager of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said “Libraries provide opportunities for education and advancement, especially for those in rural or otherwise underserved areas in this country”.

Informa reject Springer bid

Informa, parent company of the academic publisher Taylor & Francis group, have announced their rejection of Springer Science Business Media’s (SSBM) acquisition offer of 630 pence per share in recent takeover talks which according to FT.com today was because it "significantly undervalues Informa and its future prospects".

Springer, the scientific, technical and medical (STM) and business publishing group made the offer last month in an attempt to create a powerful organisation to rival the likes of market leader Reed Elsevier, the world’s principal STM publisher and would have been worth around £4bn. The takeover bid is believed to have been launched by Springer’s chief shareholders, the private equity groups Candover and Cinven who had confirmed they were working with UBS the investment bank with debt financing in place with Barclays Bank.

The initial bid raised eyebrows in the industry as it was expected Informa would move to take over Springer after making a number of acquisitions since 2005 – the largest being events company IIR Holdings for £784m paid in cash to its owner Lord Laidlaw, the Conservative Party Peer.

Frivolous use damages Freedom of Information Act

Today's November issue front page story on the Labour government planning to reduce access to public information, is a sad tale of a government out of touch and the mis-use of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The box text on Frivolous Requests is both funny and saddening. Using FoI to trace bachelors within the Hampshire constabulary, or the number of times people have been charged with having sex with animals in Wale,  merely adds fuel to the argument of this government that it is correct in reducing our free rights to information.  There could be a genuine reason behind researching how much is spent on a particular brand of chocolate, but why was it narrowed down to one brand?

If there are to be changes made to FoI we need to see a much wider range of statistics on how the act is being used, not just a set of hand picked queries bound to anger the readership of the Daily Mail. 

This government has no respect for the public and their right to information, that was clearly seen in the watered down nature of the original FoI, and now they plan to reduce our rights even further. Information professionals need to be front line fighters to ensure the information they manage is freely available to the public and not abused by the Labour party.

Scholarpedia is a wiki form of open access

Could this be another milestone in the evolution of academic publishing? Scholarpedia is the first "free peer reviewed encyclopedia" – a kind of morphing of open access publishing with wiki technology.

Initial reactions may be: "Oh god, not another Wikipedia wannabe!", especially as the ink is barely dry on Larry Sanger's Citizendium manifesto, which he described as a "progressive fork" of the Mother of All Free Online Encyclopedias. But this one could be very different.

Although it was suffering from a few gremlins when we took a look, it has quite a potential to disrupt existing publishing models. For a start it takes the headache out of having to set up and maintain an online publishing operation if you're an academic or group of scholars inclined to develop your own OA journal.

Eugene M Izhikevich, editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia, points out its based on the same MediaWiki technology engine behind Wikipedia, and that's now a pretty proven force. The difference with Wikipedia is that each article in the encyclopedia has an expert editor attached to it as a "curator", who approves all changes and effectively ensures the actual article is an approved version.

What sets it apart from Citizendium is that it is not as elitist. Anyone can suggest changes to an article, and there's an anonymous forum for initial peer review. It appears far more inclusive and less obsessed with creating something worthy of "intellectuals".

With concerns continuing to mount about errors in Wikipedia (many put there for malicious reasons) and even hackers using it to hide malware, then something more managed and controlled like this may well be an answer to feely available scholarship online.

Scholarpedia has also narrowed its initial ambitions by restricting itself to just three disciplines: Computational Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems, and Computational Intelligence. Izhikevich describes them as "seeds" that could branch out into related disciplines. Then all sorts of fields could come into play. Few people expected Wikipedia to grow into the phenomenon it has become.

Will Scholarpedia be the second generation wiki that really makes the grade?

The wiki comes of age?

It's been quite a month for the wiki community. A kind of coming of age. SystemOne came out of the shadows, as did Itensil. SocialText officially released its 2.0 version and now it has a version that integrates with Microsoft's Sharepoint. Then to crown it all, Google went and bought JotSpot.

SystemOne and Itensil are wikis that hope to be better known for their discovery and workflow respectively. Both are fundamentally wikis but each has been extended in extremely useful ways. SystemOne shows you all the documents which relate to what you're working on at any moment. Itensil lets you embed your wiki work inside permanent or ad hoc workflow processes.

By moving to Google, JotSpot appears to have consolidated its position in the consumer space. Some of its more corporate clients are seriously considering a move to Socialtext or Atlassian's Confluence. Apparently, the idea of Google hosting company information does not appeal. They would prefer, it seems, to pay their supplier to host their wiki and its data. Some will take the open source, appliance or self-install route with Socialtext. The same, or similar, seems to apply to Atlassian, although it no longer has an appliance.

Dave Girouard, Vice President and General Manager, Google Enterprise, was quick to blog, "We're excited about what that could mean for our enterprise customers." But that does rather read as if it came straight out of the PR101 handbook.

For IWR readers the most interesting aspect of all these recent developments is that the wiki now appears to be emerging as a genuine, respectable, collaboration tool. And Socialtext's Sharepoint version, Socialpoint, makes a huge amount of sense commercially because of the massive grip Microsoft still has within organisations.

STN load latest Derwent

An upgraded Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) is now be available on FIZ Karlsruhe Scientific & Technical Information Network (STN), writes Daniel Griffin.

The enhanced service will offer around 3/4 million abstracts from 1995-99 and an additional backfile of chemical structure indexes, featuring original abstracts and patent titles, including the full names and addresses of inventors and patent agents as well as United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent classifications.

With the additional content there is a new structure for users, the first component - Invention constitutes traditional DWPI content whilst in addition the Members area consists of new information from associated publications in the patent record database, including improved structure for access and use.

David Brown, Executive Vice President, Corporate Markets at Thomson Scientific commented, “This enhanced file extends the functionality, content breadth and performance, of  DWPI.”

DWPI is Thomson’s database resource for value-added patent information used worldwide by patent organisations and researchers.

Socialtext releases SocialPoint, and seeks to lure JotSpot customers

Socialtext, the Californian based enterprise social software producer have released their new enterprise wiki service SocialPoint, which integrates with Microsoft Sharepoint technology, dominant Microsoft server technology platform, writes Daniel Griffin.

The social software allows information sharing across large groups. SocialPoint is able to open up Sharepoint to multiple authenticated wikis. SocialPoint integrated wiki web services will display changes in the wiki as well as the opportunity to edit them through large enterprise user groups, whether business or academic.

CEO of Socialtext, Ross Mayfield stated, “SocialPoint provides Microsoft SharePoint customers with a trusted wiki solution, by extending its functionality in a critically important area”

In a sign of how important Web 2.0 technology is becoming search engine Google has acquired JotSpot a rival wiki-centric company, Socialtext sprang to announce plans for a freely hosted wiki programme for JotSpot customers. “Our experience has been that JotSpot customers convert to Socialtext when they realise they need a real business-class wiki said Mayfield.

In a similar move competitors Atlassian have also offered JotSpot users a 25% discount if they migrate to their Confluence enterprise wiki.