Tweeters and non-Tweeters

It is well worth repeating the cliché - internet has transformed our lives. Information, news, file-sharing, catch up television, blogs, entertainment and social networking. Layer upon layer, it is a world unto itself.
While this virtual world exposes us to new challenges and conflicts, it also dangerously divides our real world into separate sects.
A YouGov survey of almost 2000 adults have revealed varying attitude towards social media. While many welcomed its adoption in business, 71% respondents said teaching social media technologies such as Twitter in schools is "inappropriate".
Meanwhile, the old school of thought is still prevalent- 50% of the UK workforce are banned from using social media in the workplace- presumably for productivity reasons. Contrarily, 20% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that a corporate Facebook would be better for sharing information and collaborating on projects.
As I have always argued, the majority of respondents who were inclined towards social media in the workplace were Generation Y-ers. This reflects how the young have changed the way they communicate.
Traditional organisations must provide social media platform to its employees for sharing ideas and views and to collaborate in a medium of their choice. Social media sites are not just a means to connect or not just used to advertise the positive aspect of one's life. Today, they are beyond a mere public relations weapon of every individual.
Several Tweeters have a fan-following for their valuable information, some human resource departments vet people by tracking their social media activity. Ambitious companies have extended their online presence with the use of these tools and even promoted products and services through them.
Business social media site LinkedIn boasts of 40 million plus members. This shows the importance of these applications and the role they are likely to play in future generations' personal and professional lives. Social networking sites such as Facebook host a multitude of groups fighting for social, economic and environmental causes. And that is why, it is important to allow children familiarise themselves with these technologies which they have a great aptitude and appetite for.
What is also shocking about the survey is that 6% have admitted that they'd go as far as not taking a job if social media tools were not made available to them. Although nominal, it reflects the division in ideologies. Besides, a survey of even younger sample could provide more alarming insights.
It must be about a happy marriage- making social media technologies a tool to achieve traditional objectives- than slipping into a divided society of Tweeters and non-Tweeters.

Facebook works hard to avoid losing face

Information professionals with an interest in privacy issues will be following the data trials and tribulations of social networking phenomena with some interest. The story so far goes something like this. A couple of weeks ago the company released an updated terms of service but then on February 18 decided to revert to the previous version. Why? Because Facebook has apparently received complaints from some users that revised terms appeared to imply that the company would keep personal data even if the account had been deleted. So the old terms were out back while a redrafting process took place.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used his blog to explain what was going on. This issue has clearly caused some soul searching. Now Facebook says it is "reaching out to respected organizations to get their input" and Zuckerberg reckons that much of the language is "overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long".
With Facebook such a dominant force in the social networking space the outcome of this episode is bound to leave its mark.
Zuckerberg wrote: "Our terms aren't just a document that protects our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service."
It would be interesting to know where information professionals on Facebook agree with Zuckerberg. Would privacy issues cause them to stop using Facebook or use it in a different way? Or is this just part of the price you are prepared to pay for using the tool?

In search of a competitive edge

Corporates appear to be sold on the idea of Web 2.0. More than three-quarters of executives who responded to a McKinsey survey say they plan to maintain or increase their investments in technology trends that encourage user collaboration, such as peer-to-peer networking, social networks, and web services.
More than half say they are pleased with their past internet investments, though some regret not boosting their own capabilities to exploit technology. So there are still people out there who ask their secretaries to print out their emails. Surely not.
Anyway it will be interesting to see how the results of the McKinsey survey contrast with research due out later in the year by TFPL and the Edinburgh-based Napier University School of Computing.
TFPL's Melanie Goody says that the idea of the research is to look at the risk and opportunities of social networking tool in the business market. At the moment most of what we think we know about the impact of social computing comes from anecdotal evidence, although last year the British Computer Society (BCS) estimated that £130m a day is being lost due to employee engagement with social networking sites.
The TFPL/Napier research (results in the autumn) is designed to look at the use of social tools such as Facebook, blogs and microblogs, plus more formal collaborative platforms such as Sharepoint (in which TFPL has a particular interest).
Out of the research it may be possible to start to formulate policies on acceptable use, workplace bullying and damage to corporate brand. Of particular interest to information professionals are subjects such as corporate confidentiality and the archiving of valuable employee exchanges which has to date received little attention.
Enterprises still have a lot to learn about web 2.0 and its role in the work environment. While there may be opportunities there has been a lot of focus on the downside risks. The McKinsey survey talks about the possibility of these technologies providing a sustained competitive edge. If that is the case then businesses will definitely be interested.

Net Neutrality and a Green Paper

Information World Review covered Network Neutrality a fair bit in 2006. It was a time when congress was thinking of reworking the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act 2006. Over a million Americans wrote to Congress demanding that net neutrality be enshrined into the new laws. That was the last thing that major telco and cable companies wanted. They hankered after a two-speed internet: fast for them and slow for everyone else.

What happened? Nothing. No-one won except, of course, the status quo was maintained. Oh, and as far as the FTC was concerned, the market could sort itself out.

A couple of days ago senators Ed Markey (Democrat) and Chip Pickering (Republican) reignited the debate by introducing their Internet Freedom Preservation Act 2008. According to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, this will "ensure that open, free and accessible Internet we have known for years will continue to be open to innovation, free from the control of telephone and cable companies and accessible to everyone."

Brace yourself for a bumpy ride as the various special interest groups restart their lobbying activities.

Thus far Congress has not prostrated itself before the communications giants. What would happen, I wonder, if these proposals were put in front of the UK government? We might get a clue soon as the DCMS unveils its green paper on internet piracy. It wants ISPs to monitor traffic and take action against anyone downloading copyright material.

Hmmm. To do that successfully, wouldn't they happen to need exactly the same packet sniffing capabilities that could act as the basis for a multi-tiered internet? As I say, it must be a coincidence. What isn't a coincidence is that the drivers for this initiative are large media and entertainment corporations.

Isn't it interesting that the US bill is for the people and will be attacked by the corporations with vested interests. But in the UK it is exactly the other way round. Quite regardless of this fundamental distinction, it will be interesting to watch the progress of the two proposals through their respective administrations.

You pay for what you get

Civil servants are reeling in the wake of the horrific news that CDs containing the records of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) database have been lost, and the futher news of DVLA data being lost. The full cost to tax paying members of the public may not be fully realised for years to come.

This debacle is not only an example of incredibly poor information management, but also a sign of a wider problem in the UK, that you get what you pay for. Or in this case you don't get what you pay for. 

Information management is, or rather was, at the heart of British life. Travel to former colonies like India or Australia and they'll gladly inform you of the regimented behaviour towards information that led to government structures that have served the sub-continent and prison colony well to date. Yet, those standards have dropped.

An IWR reporter remarked as we debated the issue, how come information of this value was so easy to simply download and burn to a CD?  Technology preventing such blunders is not new and is a basic function of many information management systems.

Revelations of the missing information came a day after a report on the BBC's Today programme that the Driving Standards Agency and vehicle licensing body the DVLA employees take on average three weeks sick leave a year. Missing information and low staff moral are examples of a civil service that is poorly funded and poorly managed.

It is too easy to wag the finger of blame at civil servants, when in truth a much wider debate needs to take place.  As tax payers and child benefit recipients we are angry and worried, as information professionals we are dumbfounded that such lapses could have occurred.  What of our role as citizens?  Since the 1980s we've wanted a John Lewis service, but only paid Tesco value brand prices.  If you want John Lewis quality, you pay John Lewis prices.  On the high street this modus operandi fits well with the public, as they choose when they want quality and when they want to increase their spending. So why is it that we expect our state services to manage high level information on a low level budget?

This needs to be a debate about our society and its values, literally, as well as an improvement in information management.

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.

Our tax levels cause disasters like HMRC

I was meant to be going to the House of Lords tonight. No I haven't spent the missing IWR marketing budget on a Labour party donation and offer of a peerage from Tony Blair. Tonight's rare opportunity to entered the hallowed chambers of the Lords was for the launch of Information Matters, a guide to good information management practise.

Obviously this has become a bit of a hot potato subject for the powers of Whitehall and I was not totally surprised to hear that the event has been "postponed", I am though disappointed, now I really will have donate money to some political party that will change its policies from day to day to suit its sponsors!

But cynical disbelief in political parties aside, the debacle at HMRC is not an opportunity to clobber the current Labour government, they can do that on their own. This now needs to be a debate about the quality of service we desire. The mistakes that took place at HMRC happened because of poor policy and in all likelihood, a demotivated and under appreciated and underpaid staff. These factors in any organisation will lead to a disaster.

Sadly as a nation we are demanding a John Lewis service, yet only prepared to pay a Tesco budget brand price for it. Our government and political parties fear spending public money, or worse, the public and the Daily Mail discovering that public money has been spent. Yet cuts in budgets and over stretched departments have led to this scenario and could lead to more.

It is ridiculous that a country as rich as the UK that is experiencing unparallelled levels of growth is trying to run its infrastructure, which after all is what our civil service is, on a shoestring. We have politicians tempting us with tax cuts, yet clearly they cannot balance the books with the revenue they have, how will public information be well managed and secured in a state that has even less revenue coming in?

The awful mess at the HMRC needs to spark a debate about how we want our nation to operate. Groups and parts of the media are quick to call for changes to immigration levels, but lets have a debate about the quality of our services, all of them, whether its schools and hospitals to departments looking after taxation or defence. We cannot lower taxes when our troops are being put at risk in Iraq to secure oil in ill equipped vehicles and our civil service is making basic mistakes with valuable data.

It may not be a popular move, but as a European nation that expects its authorities to provide child benefit, shouldn't we at least pay a proper level of taxation to meet those expectations?

Blackwell's boss resigns

René Olivieri, chief operating officer at Wiley-Blackwell, the academic book and journals publisher has resigned, reports The Bookseller.

Olivieri was ceo of Blackwell when the company merged with Wiley in a surprise move last November. Since the merger Olivieri has been heading up the transition team as chief operating officer, a role he has held since May.

He has had a long and illustrious career at the Oxford based publisher, starting out as a publisher in the 1980s, before becoming an editorial direct, deputy md, and managing director. The Bookseller reports he became ceo of Blackwell Science in 2000 and stepped into the role of Blackwell Publishing ceo a year later.

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.

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.

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.

JISC Digitisation Conference

IWR is in the Welsh capital Cardiff for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digitisation Conference, which has been opened by Carwyn Jones of the Welsh Assembly.

The event is the launch pad for the digitisation strategy from the education group; and will also show case the work that has already been carried out and to analyse the role of JISC as the conduit to academic digitisation and what lessons the organisation  and academia have learnt so far.

Based at the St David's Hotel on the regenerated Cardiff Bay area, this gleaming white tower is an example of the new Wales and the new Cardiff, a country at the forefront of technology and the cultural landscape, whether its the location for Dr Who or ground breaking broadband and content strategies.

The conference has launched a blog for the event and is asking attendees and members of the information community to contribute to the debate.

The event has attracted leading members of the information community from universities in Manchester and Oxford as well as the Open University.

Flood risk information could be revealed by Environment Agency, reveals Guardian

Daily newspaper The Guardian is still pursuing its worthy campaign Free our Data, which highlights how much information the government creates and then either never makes available to information professionals and consumers or does so at restrictively high prices.

Today's issue of the newspaper rather timely reveals how the Environment Agency forced an online information provider to remove flood information from its service which the company had gained from the Environment Agency. It did this as large parts of Yorkshire look more like Bangladesh as climate change wrought terrible rain and flooding on the region.

OnOneMap.com uses Google maps to offer a mash-up service that over lays information onto the maps such as properties for sale and let, the location of schools, supermarkets and mobile phones. To improve its service further, OnOneMap carried out a data scrape of the Environment Agency and collated together a layer of flood information, which, with no surprise created massive interest.

Just days before the heavens opened and flooded large parts of the UK, the Environment Agency demanded that the data be removed because of an infringement of "database copyright".

Guardian journalist Charles Arthur describes the need for this service and its use public information as an opportunity to save public money as there is a reduced need to use emergency services if houses in high flood risk areas are, effectively abandoned, especially when this information has been left out of the new Home Information Packs.

It’s a compelling story and The Guardian should be saluted for continuing this campaign, read the full story here:

Open source community fear Mac users will be shut out of BBC

Users of Apple Macintosh computers and open source operating systems may be prevented from using BBC information and content once the public broadcaster's iPlayer is launched later this year. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) is threatening to take its complaint to the European Commission.

OSC believes that by developing the iPlayer with computing giants Microsoft the BBC is forcing people to use Bill Gates' operating system. The iPlayer will allow searchers to download and watch BBC content on their own computers for up to 30 days after it was first broadcast. 

A statement from the BBC in response to the OSC complaint said, "The BBC aims to make its content as widely available as possible and has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services". OSC though believes the iPlayer will only work on computers that use the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The BBC has opted to work with Microsoft because of the digital rights management (DRM) technology it has to offer which allows BBC information to be downloaded, but cannot be copied to a DVD and will automatically delete after 30 days.

OSC has taken its complaint to the BBC Trust, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Ofcom, the telecoms and broadcasting  regulator. It said its next step is to take the complaint to Europe.

Microsoft is also a key partner for the British Library.