A library community in Ning

If you've not been near Ning for a while, you'll find it has a new skin. On the surface, it's now a dead easy to build and use community website. And it's free.

(It used to be a mashup-building site for propellor heads. The techie stuff is still there, but you don't need to go near it.)

Jenny Levine, through her blog The Shifted Librarian, has been showing librarians how they can extend their services beyond the conventional boundaries of place and time. She doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk as well. She is authoritative on both library and technology matters. And now she's leap-frogged the usual internal processes to create an experimental community presence for the American Library Association.

If you include me, 97 people have signed up already. And it was only launched three days ago. Members can include their profiles and photos, write blog posts, contribute to forums, link up to each other and, of course, have conversations. Although targeted at members of the ALA, anyone can join and see what's going on.

The Ning sites score because they are focused. This one is for librarians and for those interested in the subject.

Here's what Ning has to say about itself:

Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.

You can make it public or private and for anything - and anyone - you'd like.

Why not see if there are any groups centred around your interests and, if not, create one?

One warning: if you make it private, you can't provide public RSS feeds. You have to make do with email notifications of new postings. Fortunately, the ALA's Ning site is public so you can take feeds from various places, including the blog and the forum, and see what's going on without even signing up.

The Green Book Webinar is next step in developing e-learning for LexisNexis

LexisNexis, one of the leading legal and financial information providers, have announced the launch of their first webinar in mid-April. Intended for their legal professional clients, it will coincide with the launch of the 2007 edition of The Civil Court Practice or as it’s also known, the “Green Book”. The broadcast will feature a pre-recorded presentation on recent developments from the Rt Hon The Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury who is Editor in Chief, before the main three live lectures are shown. These will be panelled by Green Book senior contributing editor David Di Mambo as well as editorial board members David Greene and Master Leslie.

LexisNexis emerging products specialist, Ann Hemming said “e-learning has raised some interesting questions over how to provide additional value to our customers. LexisNexis believes that providing live and recorded webinars will offer our customers opportunities to interact with our editors and authors and gain CPD points in a convenient and cost effective manner”.

Viewers will be able to question the panel either during the live session or by submitting questions prior to the broadcast, furthermore LexisNexis inform us there will be the opportunity for users to gain two CPD points (a total of 16 is needed per year for certain legal professionals in England and Wales) if they stick around after the show and finish a series of multiple choice questions online.

Hemming joined LexisNexis in December last year with the remit of developing an e-learning strategy for the organisation also said, “Webinars are easy to access and will prove popular with legal professionals who will benefit greatly from the insight offered by our high profile speakers.”

Government accused of neglecting nanosafety research, whilst applications for funding remain low

As part of a review of commitments made to bolster nanotechnology in 2005, the Council for Science and Technology (CST) has said that the UK government has failed to provide adequate funding for research into the possible risks of nanotech as well as jeopardising the UK’s position as world leaders in the field, bbc.co.uk reported today.

The original report was commissioned by the government from the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering and was published in 2004; it highlighted the opportunities for nanotech as well as risks of the developing technology.

It was revealed that of £90 million spent on research and the promotion of commercial nanoproducts, in 2004 alone, only £600,000 was spent on researching the impact of nanoscience over a five year period.

The new review did get some recognition for making inroads in researching the measuring and minimising of workplace exposure to nanomaterials as opposed to the wider areas of environmental and health implications. However comments made by Professor Sir John Beringer, Chair of the CST review were critical “The government made a very clear commitment that research needed to be done to understand more about the toxicology and possible risks that may arise from some of the nanotechnologies, but there has been virtually nothing done by government to resolve this problem.”

Part of the problem seems that funding for this particular sector of nanotechnology has not been applied for by researchers, Malcolm Wicks, Minister for Science and Innovation believes this is in part due to the prioritising of “more pressing research” he said “Our focus so far has been on the areas which needed to be addressed first, such as the measurement and characterisation of nanoscale materials, and the exposure of laboratory and manufacturing staff,” One would think this was pretty reasonable when researching a radical new technology, however he went on to say, “Research is underway into potential health and environmental hazards but we are disappointed that few researchers wishing to investigate the implications to human health have applied for the funding that is available.”

Meanwhile the BBC article reported the CST review is critical of the strategy used by government in allocating funds, saying that, “rather than outlining a systematic research programme to examine these potential risks, the government has relied on a reactive and ad hoc funding programme that has failed to deliver”. Sir John commented further saying “The safe development of a new technology should not depend on whether an academic wins a highly competitive research grant”.   

Free up access to archives for all

As the Blair administration prepares to leave the stage, one has to wonder why a decade of centre-left government in the UK has failed to foster a new information era. OK, some measures, long overdue, were delivered – like the Freedom of Information Act – and then scaled back on cost grounds. Hardly a sign of principled advancement.

Mostly it has been a case of the dog that didn't bark. No leadership on making publicly funded research freely available – and damn the shareholders of all the publishing houses who are making money from it. Nor any leadership on supporting homegrown British information industries. Just wasted years.

One can hope that the next government will act, and act decisively, to support the freeing up of information locked away in government bodies, which the people of the country actually own. No more privitisation of intelligence resources, should be the cry. Let all have access, freely, and let people create businesses and livelihoods around doing creative things with that information.

Google recently demonstrated how demand for information soars exponentially through freer access. It digitised over 100 films from the US National Archives – including a selection from the NASA History of Space Flight (1962-1981), United Newsreel reports from the World War 2, and Department of the Interior films from 1916 to 1970, showing a range of public service projects. These are available on Google Video.

James Hastings, director of access programmes at the National Archives, has told the New York Times that once these had been made available, requests jumped from 200 per annum to over 200,000 a year. A thousand fold.

Archives that make themselves available online will establish themselves in the lead. Think Google Book Project; or think Time magazine's excellent free cover and content archive (which is also a great marketing tool for an iconic magazine with global appeal).

Will the entrenched fat cats of the information industry continue to enjoy the supine support of government once Blair has gone? I, for one, hope not.

Grazr gives you power without responsibility

Grazr is an attractive little viewer for XML and OPML information. Until recently, you needed to find yourself a host machine on which to store the files to be viewed. This was usually okay for the technically-minded because they generally knew where to find such storage (the company server, an ISP server or their blogging platform) and how to upload the files. It was nigh on impossible for anyone else.

Well, a whole bunch of things have happened in the Grazr world recently, the best of which is free hosting for your files and the most astonishingly easy way to create a browser reader for them. This morning David Terrar, a software as a service supplier (but not a techie), blogs about how he got going with Grazr in just a few minutes.

So, providing you have web access, you can provide reading lists or information feed lists more or less at the drop of a hat and without involvement of technical staff or consuming computer resources.

From a standing start last June, Grazr has made some amazing progress. Earlier this month it received $1.5M in series A funding and welcomed Dan Bricklin (programmer of the first spreadsheet, VisiCalc) onto the board. It also developed a simple scripting language with which you can embed extra elements, such as searches, right inside Grazr and now it has incorporated the JavaScript programming language. These last two developments are in the public beta release. Here's a simple example which searches Google blogs:

German media giant has its eye on Thomson Learning

One of Germany's largest media companies, Bertelsmann is considering the acquisition of Thomson Learning, which the Thomson corporation put up for sale late last year because it feels the academic electronic content and text book publisher does not fit with its strategy.

Bertelsmann has entered into an agreement with Citigroup Private Equity and Morgan Stanley Principal Investments to form a fund of £2.5bn which will allow Bertelsmann to take a minority share in information companies with a view to an outright acquisition at a later date.

According to the Financial Times Thomson Learning is the first acquisition the new team has in mind. Bertelsmann already owns RTL Television, which Channel 5 is part of and the publishing company Random House. The media giant will add 500m Euros to the fund with the rest being supplied by the funding companies.

Blog awards miss the point

Tomorrow is the closing date for the 2007 Brit Blog Awards. No industry can exist these days without an award ceremony it seems. Sadly these awards, sponsored by web search provider Ask and organised by one of London's free newspapers has failed to recognise that blogging has taken off and offers a whole array of communities the chance to communicate.

There are categories for technology, sport, fashion, politics, arts & entertainment; travel, youth and weird and wonderful.

Perhaps because the organisers, the Metro newspaper and its parent the derisive Daily Mail have a poor track record at good news reporting there is no category for news, nor is there a category for business blogs, science and culture. Any one who has picked up either of these papers will be aware of their inabilities in these areas; and therefore it is perhaps sensible that they don't try to judge quality bloggers in these areas.

But the truth is, blogging has become a serious platform for creating, sharing and delivering information and if it is to have an awards ceremony, it needs one that has credibility.