A would-be Gen Y worker speaks out

The Centre for Information Leadership at City University London has put forward its first challenge paper, which looks at whether information and business leaders are prepared for the entry of Generation Y into the workplace.
The paper, entitled "Responding to the Millennial Generation", looks at Generation Y in contrast to its predecessors and highlights the level of individuality and the entrepreneurial spirit of 'digital natives'.
IWR asked intern Jack Phillipps to take a look
As a member of Generation Y myself studying for a university degree and entering the workplace in a year's time I would say I can judge pretty well whether the paper has any validity or is talking utter rubbish. There are several things about this generation that make it completely different from those that have preceded it; the root of these differences is that millennials are the first generation that never been without a computer or a mobile phone to hand.
I myself could not imagine living without the internet, mobile phones and text messaging; they make our lives so much more convenient but while previous generations appreciate the difference between before and after, to Generation Y they have a permanence similar to that of the sun and the moon.
A study in the US found millenials were comfortable with using technology and found novel ways of using it not originally envisaged by the designers; this is Darwinism at its most contemporary. Some other findings were that there was more ethnic diversity, the tendency to sleep with their mobile phones under their pillows and despite a high proportion of unemployment there was confidence about finding a decent job in the future. Another discovery that will surprise no one was the preoccupation with social networking sites, the 21st century form of gossiping.
The white paper makes a number of observations, some valid and others I would disagree with:
• Apart from medicine, the law and the civil service businesses will not be able to give a young twenty something employment for life, it's just not feasible. So Generation Y has naturally adapted to this changing job environment and if they are to stay ahead of the game the larger employers must keep up or they will stagnate.
• No doubt generation Y's individuality will change the expectations they have in relation to the work-life balance; the older generations' ideas of a template for how to use technologies will eventually be outstripped by the millenials who will find other options when present ones bore them.
However there are a few points I would dispute:
• Generation Y needs support in going beyond the initial Google search and weighing evidence from authoritative sources; this claim seems to completely ignore a good number of universities which are making their courses increasingly relevant by showing how to adapt their courses to the job market. The weighing of evidence from authoritative sources is an essential part of my own university degree and I'm sure this cannot be particular to me and my circle of university friends.
• They prefer to deal with folksonomies and tend to rely on cognitive authority. Again, this claim can be viewed as weak because I know from personal experience that university academics spend hours of their time drumming into their students the danger of relying on unreliable sources, so that when we enter a search term into Google we should not select the first site on the list, usually Wikipedia, which academics hate for the fact that anyone and everyone deems themselves an expert in something or other.
This White Paper is an interesting piece which is particularly relevant at the moment with the number of university applicants increasing every year and the economic downturn threatening the job market. While I would say there are flaws in the argument put forward it is a good place to start.

What do you prefer: Artificial intelligence or natural stupidity?

Technology is amazing and we all love it. Only when it works and only when we have it.
When it doesn't work it is more than useless and redundant. It makes life and task more painful than it would have been without the help of "the damn thing in the first place".
Why do we loathe it so much when it goes wrong? Surely the answer is our dependence on it. For most of us it would be a "terrible day" if we forgot our mobile phones before venturing out. Make it a "dreadful day" if it was a smart-phone and one was "on the move" the whole day.
Making technology work is all equations and mathematics. A software works only if the code is right, a site is accessed only if the password is accurate. Our brains have become administrators and house-keepers. Today, we do not know the information per se, but we know where to find that information from.
It is a mobile phone's task to remember the number of our loved ones. It is the sat-nav's task to remind us where to take the next right and it is Microsoft Calendar's task to remember our appointments and "alert" us.
Let's take it a bit further- we don't really have to remember all the spellings- there is an inbuilt auto-correction tool; while searching for a phrase, we do not really need to type the whole phrase, artificial intelligence prompts us to "drag and drop", we do not need to rewrite or reword an article, there is "copy and paste".
It is all good- real time communication, blurring geographical boundaries, liberating information, empowering humankind and creating, managing and organising intellectual property and so on.
The newer and more novel the innovation, the harder we fall for it. Second-gen devices and applications are very attractive and addictive.
I am not patronising life without technology, but it would be interesting to pause and think how much we have started depending on even secondary technological devices and innovations such as faster broadband, plastic money, wi-fi, catch-up television, text-to-voice transcriber, file-sharing, social networking, digital radio, Skype, Second Life, communication devices.
It feels wiser to take pain in remembering (and forgetting) the birthdays of our loved ones genuinely than rendering information technology a more charismatic personality.
Because, sometimes, natural stupidity is more charming than artificial intelligence.

At the heart of the knowledge economy

The 21st century is the era of the information professional. No, not another claim from the editor of IWR after a good lunch (I should be so lucky), but a summary of the prediction of the IBM Data Governance Council.
The council is a US-based industry group whose 50 members include big names from the corporate world including American Express, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Mastercard. Formed three years ago to help the business world take a more disciplined approach to how big companies handle data, it has produced an interesting assessment of life following the credit crunch.
The council concluded that failures in data governance were at the heart of the sub-prime crisis and that a regulatory backlash will see data governance becoming a regulatory requirement in some countries, initially in the banking and financial services industries. There is nothing like imposing a regulatory requirement for hoiking an issue up the corporate agenda. But the council goes even further. It is discussing the idea that the value of data should be recognised in the financial statements and should be treated as an asset on the balance sheet. The accountancy profession has always been a bit wary of intangible assets, with fierce arguments over if and how intellectual property assets such as goodwill, brands, and human capital should be recognised. The credit crunch and the argument over the value of financial instruments has underlined how difficult it is to inform investors about the changing asset values.
In the scenario painted by the council, the quality of data will become a technical reporting metric and key IT performance indicator. New accounting and reporting practices will emerge for measuring and assessing the value of data to help organisations demonstrate how data quality fuels business performance. Crucially the council sees the role of the chief information officer changing - with reporting on data quality and data risk to the board becoming a key task. The CIO will have the mandate to govern the use of information and report on the quality of the information provided to shareholders.
For information professionals it is an exciting idea, putting them at the heart of the knowledge economy and at the centre of corporate life. It is a vision which the profession should try to turn into reality.

Can computers really extract knowledge?

Knowledge management is theoretically impossible. Real knowledge sits between your ears, unseen until it is needed. As happened today. Someone mentioned Battenburg cake to me and all sorts of long forgotten knowledge about tea parties at my grandma's surfaced.

Not exactly a momentous bit of knowledge, but I joined a conversation on the subject on Facebook of all places. (The dyes in the cake are, apparently, dangerous.)

Recently, I visited a company that specialises in testing staff knowledge through questionnaires. The idea is to find out what an employee knows about their job and to determine whether there are any gaps that need filling or good results that need exploiting.

Boards of very large companies have rather taken to this system, a sort of asset register of the staff and their expected performance on the job. They can use it to correct weaknesses or develop strengths. And, should a crisis occurs in a particular department, they can quickly pull up staff information to help them figure out what went wrong.

Test results can also be measured against averaged results for other organisations in the same industry - a sort of performance benchmark.

It all sounds terrific in theory. The underpinning technology is fundamentally sound. But, as always, the acid test is in the implementation. And that involves humans.

By the time the strategy and raw information has found its way to the question designers, all intimacy with the subject matter will have been squeezed out. It's like speaking a foreign language. It doesn't matter how perfect your accent, a native will know you are a foreigner within a very short time.

I've just read a blog post by a member of staff at the receiving end of an assessment run by this particular system. Slightly tidied up and anonymised, he said, "The people who designed the questions and answers knew nothing about my line of work. The end result has been questions that don't make sense or which are so ambiguous that one needs to be a professor of English to understand them".

You can see why I've not mentioned the company name. I will return to it when I've tried the system myself and dug a little deeper into the particular circumstances around the above comment. But it seems clear that one important step was forgotten - did they try the questionnaires out on people who understood the subject before letting it out in the wild?

Bite sized online learning from DTV

In our busy busy world we barely have time to think, let alone reflect and put aside enough time for learning.

As a trainer for many years, I have watched how it has become increasingly difficult to gather executives together for even half a day's training.

Deliverers.online is a company which, for the past ten years, been designing and delivering bespoke corporate communications solutions and programmes to thousands of employees of UK and international brands including AstraZeneca, Schering-Plough, Virgin and HMV.

It recognised that an opportunity exists for highly focused, short and sharp professional development packages. It set about incubating a new company now called Digital Training Videos, or DTV for short. It reckons that an eight to ten minute video can be fitted into anyone's schedule. It's not the same as a live course, with the interaction and live Q&A but it gets key point across in an effective way.

The videos cover topics such as personal and professional development, management, leadership, coaching, communications, customer service, sales, teamwork and sustainability. And, according to the blurb, does this in a "fresh, entertaining, accessible and affordable way". (I'm still waiting for an answer on what 'affordable' means, but the signs are promising.) The videos can provide just in time learning or form part of an employee performance support system (EPSS) for large organisations.

DTV will reveal its first 20 products on April 11th at HRD 2008 at London's ExCel centre.

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Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the blogosphere

Ben Toth reveals how he keeps his information intake healthy and why blogging can be more valuable than social networks such as Facebook.

Q Who are you?
A Ben Toth, 48, domiciled on a farm in Herefordshire. I trained as a librarian at University College
London about 15 years ago. I used to be the director of the NHS National Knowledge Service when it was part of Connecting for Health. The best known service it runs is the National Library for Health (www.library.nhs.uk). Currently, I’m designing the enterprise architecture for the National Institute for Health Research (www.nihr.ac.uk). I’m also writing a book on Health 2.0, which will be published in parts later this year.

Q Where is your blog?
A You’ll find it at http://nelh.blogspot.com

Q Describe your blog and the categories on it
A It’s just a public notebook really. Its content tends to reflect what I’m working on, but it’s mostly about libraries, health and the web. I could use Microsoft Word to keep my notes. I could use del.icio.us. But a blog is more visible and more in the flow of the things I’m reading, which
are almost invariably on the web. A lot of the entries I make are just notings – highlight, right-click and
send to Blogger. I use tags but I’m not very strict about categorising things.

Q How long have you been blogging?
A Since about 2001. Eighteen months ago I lost all my entries and had to start again.

Q What started you blogging?
A I was helping my daughter set up a website as part of a Brownie project she was doing. I couldn’t use the National Electronic Library for Health servers and I didn’t want to manage Apache or pay someone to, so we used Tripod. Which worked, but it was difficult to use. And then I read about Evan Williams’ little project, which became Blogger, had a go with it, and haven’t looked back. It’s become a
habit, and I haven’t got tired of it yet.

Q What bloggers do you watch and link to, and why?
A These days I follow things through RSS if I can, so my blog-watching is mostly via a feed reader. The only blog I regularly visit is Dave Winer’s (www.scripting.com) because he’s taken blog writing to a level where the argument is developed through the day and so needs to be read on the page. I look at Techmeme (www.techmeme.com), but that’s not really a blog. I used to maintain a list of blogs
that I linked to through blogrolling, but I can’t see the point of doing that any more. The social web takes care of that sort of affiliation-showing much better.

Q Do you comment on other blogs?
A I don’t comment much. Sometimes I carp from the sidelines on e-healthinsider (www.e-health-insider.com), but I don’t think there’s much value in commenting or reading comments. That’s not to say that discussion isn’t valuable, but I’d rather read views as blog entries rather than comments on
someone else’s blog.

Q How does your organisation benefit from your blog presence?
A It’s the best way of keeping in touch with what’s going on, and keeping a blog maintains some
visibility to people.

Q How does blogging benefit your career?
A Blogging and RSS are really important for me professionally. They keep me up to date in a way
that nothing else can.

Q What good things have happened to you solely because you blog?
A Making professional contacts that I otherwise wouldn’t have and maintaining ones that might
otherwise have fallen off. In some ways blogging is more useful than LinkedIn and Facebook
as a social networking tool. But it’s really only a matter of time until traditional blogging gets divided
up between Facebook, Vlogging and Twitter.

Q Setting work aside, which blogs do you read just for fun?
A The Fake Steve Jobs blog was great (http://fakesteve.blogspot.com). And when I need a chuckle, I check out the Dilbert RSS feed (http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf ).

What are the blogs in your sector that you trust?
A The reliably interesting starting points on library matters for me are:
■ www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
■ http://orweblog.oclc.org
■ www.philbradley.typepad.com
■ http://tomroper.typepad.com
And Jon Udell is a first-class technologist who happens to like libraries (http://blog.jonudell.net)

IWR Information Professional of the Year Award

The IWR American Psychological Association Information Professional of the Year award has been announced and went, deservedly to Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus for the UKOLN organisation.

The award is judged by a panel of previous winners and the IWR editorial team. As editor of IWR when I judge the award I look for an individual who is pushing the limits of information, technology and making the role of the information professional as far as possible and making it an exciting role.  When looking through the final results I could see that the other judges felt the same way and Brian was an excellent choice.

Brian's role is a national Web co-ordinator, an advisory post funded by the educational body JISC and the Museums, Library and Archives Council (MLA).

In this role Brian is looking at the web as central resource for learning and research in higher education and is looking at ways to make the web a successful resource, which is a challenging role, because the web is still very young and is constantly changing. This can be seen with the recent changes dubbed Web 2.0, therefore Brian is going to be pretty busy for some time to come.

Based at the University of Bath, I know from information professionals I have dealt with in the academic sector that he is very well respected and his thoughts are often the basis for great debate within the industry. Linked to this is his blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the sector.

I hope all IWR readers will join me in congratulating Brian for an award very much well deserved. 

Jimmy Wales on the role of Wikipedia in society

Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia was the keynote speech of Online Information 2007 with a presentation Web 2.0 in action: Free culture & community on the move.

Starts with Britannica editor Charles van Doren 1962, who said the encyclopaedia should be radical, but Wales claims they have been anything but.

Small showing of hands for those that have edited, although Wales believes it’s a good showing, "but not as many as college kids".

I consider us to be the Red Cross of information, he says as he describes its charitable status. Have 10 full time staff and will spend about $2 to 3 million this year, which is tiny compared to the major publishers. Vast majority of the money is from small donations, which he likes because its grass routes and not dependent on advertisers.

Wales talks about the desire to extend the languages that are in use on Wikipedia, including Hindi and Afrikaans.

Wiki is free in the sense of GNU, its free to copy, modify and distribute.

Shows a video of his travels to India and how he learnt that the local communities want to use the English version, as the English language is a route out of poverty. His organisation has been out to South Africa teaching students how to edit Wikipedia. "One of the things we have learnt is that if you can get five to 10 editors working together, it can make a great difference." These groups make progress and then they look towards outreach and who they can include. Hence the organisation has set up an academy to find the founding editors. It has begun in India, with 10-20,000 articles a month being put together by academy organisations.

Wikia is his next subject, a separate organisation with 66 languages, including a 67th, Klingon. Wales goes on to demonstrate using Google search results for Muppets and how the top result is the official site, but the rest of the results are from web based conversation, ie Wikipedia pages, forums and fan sites. He demonstrates an article on the Ford motor company and how on Muppet Wiki site, there is an article on Muppet Ford ads and how this demonstrates this level of information would never have been available before.

The search engine is a political statement, in a small P sense, Wales says. The proprietary software of the main players is a mystery in that people have no control of the accountability. The Wikia search will publish its algorithm.

Wales believes that the trust of social networks and setting up trusted networks can be utilised in search. .

On the role of collaboration, he asks the audience to imagine that they are designing a restaurants, discussing the idea that we trust the people around us, we don't put people in cages in restaurants because they will be using knives.
The wiki philosophy is to allow people to do good.

Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the blogosphere - Lorcan Dempsey

Lorcan Dempsey has worked for JISC and libraries on both sides of the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. As a member of the National Information Standards Organisation, his blog on networked information and digital libraries is well followed.

Q Who are you?
A I work in Dublin, Ohio, was born in Dublin, Ireland, and spent a long time in between in the UK. I am lucky to have what I believe to be one of the most interesting jobs in the library world. I am responsible for the programmes and research area within OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). I also help shape OCLC strategic direction.

Q Where can we find your blog?
A http://orweblog.oclc.org

Q Describe your blog?
A I say that it is about “libraries, networks and services”. I suppose that over time it has become more general. At first it had more of a technical slant; now it ranges more widely. I tend to talk about how networks are reconfiguring library services and I have some recurrent threads. These include:

Making data work harder.
We invest a lot in bibliographic data and need to use it more imaginatively in our systems and services.
Moving to the network level.
No single website is the sole focus of a user’s attention. The network is the focus of attention. And a major part of our network use revolves around significant network-level services ­ Amazon, Google, IMDB, and so on. These match supply and demand in efficient ways. The real message of Web 2.0 is the emergence of this pattern of service: data hubs with strong gravitational pull generated through network effects.
Being in the flow.
The focus of attention has shifted from website to workflow. The network is not so much about finding things as getting things done, and we have increasingly rich support for “networkflow”. We may construct our personal digital identities around services in the browser or on the network (RSS aggregators, social networking sites, bookmarks, etc), and we use prefabricated workflows (course management system, customer relationship management system, and so on).

Q How long have you been blogging?
A Almost four years.

Q What started you blogging?
A After I arrived in OCLC I tended to send out a lot of emails. A colleague suggested that a blog might be a better model.

Q Do you comment on other blogs and what is the value of it?
A The comments on some blogs seem more important than on others.

Q What are the blogs in your sector that you trust?
A I keep a wide range of feeds in my aggregator and will focus on different ones from time to time. Again, I tend to be more interested in “voice” or those from whom I can learn something. From a library point of view, I look at Caveat Lector (http://cavlec.yarinareth.net) and ACRLog (www.acrlblog.org).

Alma Swan’s new blog, OptimalScholarship (http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com) and eFoundations (http://efoundations.typepad.com) from Andy Powell and Pete Johnston, are informative and provocative. I find PlanetCode4Lib (http://planet.code4lib.org) an efficient and useful way of keeping up with a range of stuff.

Q What good things have happened to you that could only have happened because of your blogging?
A I have always contributed to the professional literature. But I find that blogging is quite liberating: it is much easier to write blog entries than longer pieces. It has made me write more quickly and to think about short communications.

Q Which blogs do you read just for fun?
A I look at John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 (http://memex.naughtons.org) and William Gibson’s blog (www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp), and the pictures in YarnStorm (http://yarnstorm.blogs.com) make me smile.

A chance to help Mariella

Dear Mariella,

Enjoyed the repeat of your Open Book programme today. I'd sneaked away from the computer for a bit and up you popped on the radio. It was interesting to get your take on the world of social computing. Like many people who aren't involved, your incomprehension was quite a treat. Afterwards I wondered if you were doing it on purpose to wind up two of your guests,  Victoria Barnsley, boss of Harper Collins,and David Freeman, founder of Meet The Author.

Since I write for information professionals who are interested in both books and technology, I thought it might be interesting to get a conversation going on the value, or otherwise, of the internet to book authors.

Of course, this blog post could just languish, like most do, or it might trigger some interesting feedback. That's the nature of the web. People take a look at stuff and, in moments, decide whether to linger or move on.

The note below is to put my readers in the picture. Feel free to join in.

All the best,

David

The programme involved two websites: Authonomy, from Harper Collins, which will give authors a place to upload 10,000 of their words so that visitors can decide whether it's any good; while Meet The Author plays recordings of authors talking about their work.

Mariella suggested to Victoria that Authonomy was "just a cynical way to get the general public to do the work for you" and "ultimately it's a way of you getting your paws onto new work and creating a degree of ownership  over it before you've had to commit to it financially in any way." Ouch.

The answer is, of course, that people have a chance to make an impression and get picked up for consideration by Harper Collins or, indeed, any other agent or publisher who happens by.

Mariella found it hard to believe that that Harper Collins would not be "upset" if another publisher snitched talent from the Authonomy site. Victoria suggested that this would prove that the site was a huge success. Mariella retorted with, "but isn't it just like a talent show for authors. Like something you'd expect to see on ITV?" She threw the same accusation at David Freeman.

Not surprisingly, both speakers more or less agreed with her. Victoria noted that tens of thousands of authors might get read who otherwise would have been ignored. David suggested that if publishers and agents liked the author's pitch, they might ask to see their work.

In the end, good writing is essential to being published. But these two sites offer much needed visibility and promotion for unknown authors, a way to emerge from the fog that surrounds agents and commissioning editors.

But in publishing, as in the rest of life, the democracy inherent in the internet is a bit hard to get to grips with. It may be a little threatening to people in conventional positions of power.

Would anyone care to comment?

PS I just checked out the 'Meet The Author' site and it operates on vanity publishing lines rather than YouTube. Authors pay for the privilege. I suspect this will not be the case with Authonomy.

Specialist publishers ride high at Frankfurt Book Fair

At a major international publishing event like the Frankfurt Book Fair the bright lights of trade publishing and all its household star names could easily drown out the academic and scientific publishers. But this has not been the case.

Talk at the event, in all circles, is about books and technology, in particular search and eBook readers. On both subjects the specialist publishers are leading the way and the trade publishers salute them.

Amazon and Sony were expected to steal the show with their eBook
readers, they are instead conspiquous in their absence, but that has
not stopped publishers and technology providers from talking about the
devices and their potential.

I was particularly interested in a conversation I had with sceintific,
technical and medical publishers WIley where they hinted that they and
other specialists may get involved in driving the adoption of eBook readers.
Could we see the eBook reader adopt a similar model to the mobile phone
where users sign up to a subscription service, content of a particular
kind in this case, and in return they get a sleek and sexy device? Its
certainly worked for the mobile industry, which now resembled the car
world with its emphasis on styling and marketing.

But such a move could also be a blind alley, as one expert said to me,
these devices don't support the interlinking and interactivity that
content users are currently enjoying with the web.

During the fair Google, Ingram Digital Group and Amazon have all used the scientific and academic publishers as case study beacons for just what can be done with books on the web.

Geographically the Far East is the leading adopter as its markets radically develop according to Mark Carden, Ingram senior vp.

Perhaps Amazon spread rumours of a possible launch to see if there was real interest, well if the level of conversation we've heard is anything to go by, the eBook reader is in demand.

The IWR Professional of the Year

Are you an outstanding information professional? Do you know one, or does a member of your team deserve the highest accolade?

If the answer is yes, then nominate yourself or your colleague for the IWR Information Professional of the Year Award 2007. The award, which has been presented by this title for the last seven years, offers recognition for the individual who has made the most outstanding contribution to the
profession in the last 12 months.

Your nomination could be for a colleague who has demonstrated best practice, led a project or developed a new information resource for your organisation, and its users and clients. Past winners have demonstrated how an information division can collaborate with a myriad of departments across the company or even between different companies and organisations.

The winner of the 2007 IWR Information Professional of the Year Award will find themselves in excellent company. Past winners include Rachel Kolsky of global insurance group AIG; Neil Infield, now at the British Library; and Roddy McLeod at Heriot-Watt University.

IWR will select the winner after close consultation with a panel of previous winners. The trophy will be presented at the Online Information Conference on 4 December 2007 and, as part of the award, the lucky winner will pick up a free delegate place to this year’s conference.

To enter yourself or a member of your team for this prestigious award, email the editor of IWR, Mark Chillingworth – mark.chillingworth@incisivemedia.com – detailing the achievements of your nominee.

Fair use benefits the economy, so Free Our Data Mr Brown

A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned  $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.

Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.

Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers. 

Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.

The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.

IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.

Partying like 1999

Earlier this week PaidContent.org launched its UK and European information service at a swanky Scottish bar in, err, London.  IWR went along and once underneath the deer antler chandelier it was as if a time and space wormhole had opened up and we were transported back to 1999 and they heady dot com boom.

The zeitgeist was unmistakable, young trendy professionals in Chris Evans glasses, sharp suits, bright shirts and an excitable level of conversation about "content" and "funding". It was uncanny. The headache's from the launch parties of Boo.com, Handbag.com and anything you like .com have only just cleared at the IWR Editor's desk and all of a sudden I get the feeling that it is all about to happen again.

The last web boom rapidly replaced CD-Rom in the professional information space and for those of us commentating on it for the traditional information sector, we were regularly told our days were numbered and the geeks would inherit the earth. In many ways everything has changed, yet also, nothing has changed.  Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia are significant changes, but despite falling ad revenues, the stalwarts of information still remain kings of the jungle.

Interestingly at this party, fund toting entrepreneurs didn't make the same mistake of predicting the demise of traditional information providers; instead I heard many conversations about partnerships, relationships and hosts. Kewego, just one of the bright (complete with lime green logo) Web 2.0 start ups present talked of the importance of the "content owners" and rattled off the names of respected information providers. The general feeling I left with is that if we are about to start partying again, but the difference is not that the new players think they have all the answers and will replace our libraries, publishing houses and research departments, instead they see themselves as a component and supplier.

Widgets is a term used widely in the blog world and already newspaper groups are adding widgets to their online portfolios. The next information wave appears to be about a wealth of new ("funded" and partying) companies offering to add their widget to your information. For information professionals this means understanding what a widget is, what it offers your users and negotiating a good deal for all parties involved.

Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the Blogosphere - James Mullan

From this month onwards the Blogosphere print title page will be dedicated to information professionals who are shaping the blogosphere. Each month, one of your peers will explain why they blog and what benefits it provides, and reveal which bloggers they trust, or just plain enjoy.

Q Who are you?
A James Mullan, 32. It’s hard to have hobbies when you have a two-year-old child, but my ultimate goal is to catch up on sleep. I also enjoy going to the gym; in particular running. I’ve participated in a number of 10k races for charity. I also enjoy reading (not just RSS feeds), blogging (obviously), film and TV, and travelling. I’m currently Information Officer at CMS Cameron McKenna, where I have responsibility for the Library Management System, Internal Portal Pages, the production of statistics and several other applications.

Q Where can we find your blog?
A http://ligissues.blogspot.com

Q Describe your blog?
A It’s a bit of a mish-mash really, but I’m particularly interested in Web 2.0 and the impact it has on law libraries. I have posted about Facebook, Delicious, Second Life, lawyers use of online databases, Librarian 2.0, social media and social networking. Where possible I will post about how legal publishers are using Web 2.0, as I see this as a developing area for legal publishers, but one whose benefits are not fully understood.

Q How long have you been blogging?
A Eight months externally, three months internally

Q What started you blogging?
A I’m the chair of a British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Committee, which works closely with publishers. One of the concerns myself and another member had is that we weren’t advertising the work we did and thought a blog might be the ideal solution as it would allow members to view posts just on issues relating to particular publishers. As it turned out, the blog became much more personal. To supplement this, we launched the BIALL Blog in May 2007 – the official BIALL Blog – which myself and a number of other BIALL committee chairs administer.

Q Do you comment on other blogs?
A I try to comment wherever possible on posts I find interesting. The problem with commenting is that there are a number of blogging platforms available, some of which ask you to log in while others don’t, so immediately there is a barrier to commenting. Blogs that have comment moderation enabled can also be frustrating because blogging is so immediate you want to see your comment immediately. Unfortunately, because of spam this isn’t possible. Commenting is important because blogging shouldn’t be done in isolation. Building this ‘collaborative community’ is one reason why I try to comment on other blogs. Having said that, I don’t see any value in commenting for the sake of it.

Q How does your organisation benefit from your presence in the blogosphere?
A In several ways. One of the benefits is that I am now considered a ‘subject matter expert’ on blogging to the extent that I work closely with a number of other groups developing blogs. The other benefit is exposure to information. I ‘unofficially’ monitor blogs for anything that may be of interest to my colleagues; for instance, where CMS Cameron McKenna may have been posted about.

Q Which blogs do you trust?
A Information Overlord and Binary Law – I consider these the most trustworthy. Trust is an interesting concept within blogging. I guess it comes down to whether you can rely on what the blogger has posted about.

Q How does it benefit your career?
A My blog has exposed me to many individuals and organisations. I’m writing for Information World Review for a start! Blogging can be hugely beneficial in terms of
exposure, but it is time-consuming.

Q What good things have come about because of your blogging?
A I’ve met a lot of people I would never have met otherwise. I’ve also spoken at a Knowledge Management Conference on Blogs, Wikis and Social Media, which I would have never imagined doing pre-blogging.

Q Which blogs do you read for fun?
A Police Camera Action – for insight into the work of the police. http://policecamerapaperwork.blogspot.com
Lifehacker – because there is no way you can’t. http://lifehacker.com
The Dilbert Blog – for my daily laugh http://dilbertblog.typepad.com

Q What bloggers do you watch and link to?
A Enquiring minds want to know http://enquiring-minds.blogspot.com
Lore Librarian http://lorelibrarian.blogspot.com
Lo-Fi Librarian www.lo-fi-librarian.co.uk
Library Etc http://neilstewart.wordpress.com
Jennie Law http://jennielaw.blogspot.com
Information Overlord www.informationoverlord.co.uk

Union group warns of Facebook sackings

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned Facebook users to be careful and for employers not to sack workers for using the social networking tool in work time.

The TUC has written a guide on acceptable Facebook usage in the workplace in response to growing unease from organisations that Facebook is reducing productivity in the workplace. Facebook has become popular for social and professional networking.

Staff across the UK have already faced discipline or sackings because of the overuse of Facebook at work. Daily newspaper The Guardian reports that employees of Kent county council have been sacked.

With 3.5 million registered users in the UK the TUC describes Facebook as an accident waiting to happen. "Simply cracking down on the use of new web tools like Facebook is not a sensible solution to a problem, which in only going to get bigger," said Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC. Instead he advises, "It is better to invest a little time in working out sensible conduct guidelines, so that there don't need to be any nasty surprises for staff and employees."

These are a set of good suggestions, so far IWR has not come across any figures which show how much work time and productivity has been lost to Facebook, but we have heard anecdotal evidence of sales being lost and workers spending considerable amounts of work time within social networks.

Policing social networks will be hard. IWR and many titles have promoted them as useful tools in the information landscape. Unlike games or even YouTube, it is difficult to see where using Facebook is purely for pleasure and where is a useful corporate tool. Add into the confusion the fact that many managers are using these tools to communicate with their teams both about corporate and social issues and the blur gets even fuzzier.

Ultimately, it will have to come from the top down within the organisation. Managers should be involved with these tools in order to garner the best from them, but they should also set the parameters for staff's usage and enforce it, before UK Plc is ground to halt by a winter of disreputable content.

Liberate information and join the Free Our Data Campaign

IWR has been keeping an eye on the Free Our Data campaign which the Technology supplement of daily newspaper The Guardian has been running. We've been watching it and supporting it. Now Charles Arthur, editor of the Technology Guardian supplement, has asked IWR and its readers to join the campaign.

"The more people and organisations we have on board, the better our chances of success," he said. The campaign seeks to make data which the public has paid for freely available, which will then stimulate new information resources for information professionals and the public alike to use.

The campaign uses a blog as its central repository and communications point, so its easy for all of us to add more information to the cause. So if you know of examples of government information costing you or your organisation, despite having already paid for it once through your taxes, let the campaign know. "If everyone joins, it would be sort of hard for the government to ignore," Arthur adds.

The campaign, which has been running since 2006 ,has highlighted some interesting disparities in

Whitehall

's information policies. Ordnance Survey (OS), known for its maps has been revealed to charging British citizens repeatedly for geographic information that is already funded by the public purse. It has been revealed that local authorities pay the OS for map information during the planning application process, planning authorities also pay separately for the same map information. During the campaign it has been revealed that a total of eight separate payments arrive at the OS as part of a planning application.

There are bound to be many more cases like this and it would be great if Information World Review and its readers can be part of a campaign to make the information we already own more easily available.

Springer survey salutes Springer eBooks!

A survey sponsored by scientific publisher Springer about Springer has, unsurprisingly, come out in favour of the Springer eBook service SpringerLink.

Six international universities were questioned as users of the Springerlink eBook program. According to Springer they said the eBook enhanced user access with greater functionality, more categories of information and "provided clear advantages over print publications". Information professionals also told the Attfield Dykstra and Partners, who carried out survey that not physically handling the book for archiving had cost advantages. Is there anything new here yet?

Further ground breaking insights included "back-end efficiencies" from the "lack of storage requirements". No mention of the cost of servers.

The universities involved in the survey were the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; University of Florida; University Library of Turku, Finland; Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) Amsterdam, The Netherlands; University of Muenster, Germany, General and Medical Library; and Victoria University, Australia.

In a statement Olaf Ernst, Vice President eProduct Management said, “This survey is instrumental to Springer in continuing to build our eBook program, and catering to the needs of our subscribers."

He went on to say that “The future is bright for eBooks in the academic realm".

Business models and sustainability. How do we maintain and develop e-content?

Catherine Draycott, chair of British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) and the Wellcome Trust discusses how difficult it can be for image libraries within an organisation, including museums because there is often a need to generate a profit. She wants the industry and BAPLA to consider new models where there is an exchange between the academic community and the image provider, whether it is partnership or digitisation benefits or other ways of sharing revenue.

Wellcome now makes its images available under Creative Commons and a large percentage of the royalties goes to the creators. They have gone to the attribution model, because it is in line with the Wellcome's OA policies and the policy applies to the images on the Wellcome trust. If the images are for teaching, academic research and non-commercial publication the fee is waived.

Intelligent Television a documentary company that looks to make educational material more widely available, chief exec Peter Kaufman begins talking about screen based visual material, which is what a TV producer considers and so do information professionals. Gartner believe that paid search is a $15bn industry. The JISC digitisation strategy doesn't talk about free  and open access and focuses on business models and public private partnership and Peter Kaufman thinks that is a practical approach.

In the Q&A Draycott describes an idea of using the same metric as PR companies use to quantify the value of media coverage compared to the cost of an advertisement, to the re-use of images from an image library and how that may be useful for archive holders, especially as they are subsidising commercial organisations by providing the images.

Online information could be the education utility of the future

Chris Batt, chief exec of MLA has a hard hitting presentation.

Libraries contain the raw material of the future, Batt says, and describes knowledge as being about learning, cultural identity, social development, and it has to be available to everyone.

"Understanding builds empowerment and cohesion and Batt considers this his aspiration. Our mission is to help people to take learning journeys, whether it’s the time of the next bus out of

Cardiff

or genetics. Being motivated will encourage people to carry on learning.

The only successful technology are the ones that are invisible, no one worries about how the TV or telephone works. Batt points out that presentation is the most important thing to the user and he shows and criticises examples of an archive page and the 24 Hour Museum page, both of which he states do not demonstrate to the user what they can do there.

Museums, libraries and archives have collections and customers, there role is to be the connections between the two. Collections are cared for by cultural heritage, education and research and they are passionate about it. Batt believes users though "don't give a toss" about whether these things are cultural heritage, education or research, they just want stuff they need.

Public Catalogues Foundation, could be a fantastic digital resource, it’s a collection of images of the publicly owned oil paintings in Great Britiain, county by country in the

UK

.

Batt ends on the statement, compared with fighting a war, the costs are minute and the benefits infinite. He believes the strategic e-Content

Alliance

is very important. Content in a networked environment is more important than institutes. An image of a little girl at a library hit home as Batt reminds every one that what they do now is important for her future. He wants knowledge as a utility, as trusted and as accessible and invisible as pure running water.