Tuesday 11 December 2007

Has this worked?

Feedback please - was this a useful exercise or would you have just preferred the normal write up in the staff newsletter?

Conference Round-up

Only time will tell, but I can’t help thinking that this might be the pinnacle of the Web 2.0 and social networking tools bubble and it will be interesting to see what happens over the next year to eighteen months.

One message which was repeated several times, in different contexts was the need to actually use and engage with the different applications in order to fully explore their potential and make judgements regarding their use or otherwise to support existing services or provide new ones. Over the next few months I am going to try and put this into practice, although for the life of me I can’t see the value of Twitter, but I might yet be converted?

Privacy is going to be a long term issue I think. In the years to come will people regret being quite so open and honest on Face book, Fwitter, etc., ?

For me the conference has proved that Web 2.0 and its associated tools and networks can successfully provide new and different ways to communicate and disseminate information.

Probably, unsurprisingly, I had only been thinking about this prior to the conference in terms the tools commonly used by students, like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. However, the presentations proved the value of these tools to support business as well either inside or outside the firewall.


Other Conference Blogs
Information Today
Information World Review

Photos
Conference Photos via Flickr

Day 3 - 6th December 2007

2nd European User Group
6th December 2007
Not really suitable for the blog - details being circulated internally.

Did you know?
JSTOR have their own page on FaceBook? You can add an application within Facebook which enables you to search JSTOR directly from your profile page.

Day Two - 5th December 2007

Overview
A very interesting and busy day, by the end of which my brain had quietly turned to mush, hence writing this up late. Very worthwhile and thought provoking.

A phrase which has cropped up several times in different presentations - “content is not King” “context is King”? Which is logical to a certain extent. But can you really divorce one from another, especially with the idiosyncrasies of the English language? Or am I thinking too much like a librarian?

Day Two - 5th December 2007

The Exhibition
Despite promises to myself that I wouldn’t end up collecting lots of stuff I seem to have ended up with a handful of pens, post-it notes and notepads. Too many years spent working for a charity without a stationary budget has obviously had a lasting effect on me.

Who's Who and Who Was Who

This is a successful resource for us via Credo Reference so I was very keen to see the product now that exclusive rights have been moved to Oxford University Press. The preview site looks very good, just waiting for the JISC pricing to be available.

The Carlyle Letters Online
The letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle from Duke University Press, could be useful for the MA in Victorian Studies? Freely available

IBSS
When we move the platform from SilverPlatter to OvidSP worth doing some publicity? Useful guides and posters available from IBSS for a range of different subject areas.

Day 2 - 5th December 2007

Service Innovation - Tools and EResources for Library Users

David Clay - University of Liverpool
Providing User Access to Bibliometric Tools

This paper looked at the work Liverpool University Library undertook to support the University’s RAE submission. This work included providing impact factors and citation counts for individual articles and checking all the data submitted to the RAE.
Liverpool University Library is development partner with Scopus, and it was interesting to see the ways Scopus can be used provide this the majority of this data.

(Full paper available in the conference proceedings)


Niels Jorgen Blaabjerg - Aalborg University Library
It’s not about the Library, it’s about what the students need! - Supportive Roles and systems in Students’ Interaction with information
The power point presentation http://www.learningobjectsweb.dk/pdf/Blaabjerg_Hansen_Oegaard_Online2007.pdf

Discusses the creation of a video to support information literacy in Denmark. See:

http://www.aub.aau.dk/swim2/1024/start.html
http://www.learningobjects.web.dk/

(Full paper available in the conference proceedings)

Day 2 - 5th December 2007

5/12/07 - Tools and EResources for the Librarian

Carol Tenopir and David Nicholas
What does usage data tell us about our users?
This presentation was very data-rich and you need to read the paper and/or powerpoint to ready do it justice. The first part of the presentation looked at the longitudinal study (over 30 years) carried out by Carol Tenopir and her team, which looks at not only the journal articles which are photocopied and downloaded, but what they do with them next. David Nicholas talked about deep-log analysis, which provides data on how users interact with e-journal databases.

Interesting fact: Statistics taken been 2004-2006 from academics and students at universities in the USA and Australia as part of this study found that:

77% of under 30 year olds prefer to print out rather than read from the screen
83% of over 60 year olds prefer to print out rather than read from the screen

It looks like the majority (regardless of age) still prefer to do concentrated reading from paper documents rather than on screen.


(Full paper available in the conference proceedings)

Also see:
Nicholas, David and Jamali, Hamid, R. Diversity in the Information Seeking Behaviour of the Virtual Scholar: Institutional Comparisons. Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2007, pp.629-638.

Ian Rowlands
How the “Google Generation” searches or information and the implications for research collections.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a copy of this presentation in the conference proceedings nor did a powerpoint presentation accompany Ian Rowlands talk, apologies to colleagues who I know were very interested in this presentation. However, the research discussed will soon be disseminated to the community via the normal channels. Further information can be found at http://www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour.html

Rowlands defined the “Google generation” as anyone born after 1993, and who has grown-up with computers and doesn’t have a memory of life before the internet. The research (which was funded by the British Library) aims to anticipate the needs of the Google generation between 2012-2017.

See Also: Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2007. For other articles of relevance.

Monday 10 December 2007

Day 2 - 5th December 2007

The Age of Knowledge Management: Cafes and Communities

David Gurteen
The Emergence of Social KM

Provided a very interesting overview of the history of Knowledge Management and a frank assessment of why KM didn’t fulfil its potential, largely it could be argued, because people were being asked to perform extra tasks, which didn’t become embedded as normal work practices. David suggested that “KM 2.0” a softer, people-centric social phenomena, has the potential to work because people want to engage with it - back to The Muppet Wikia again?

(Abstract available in the conference proceedings)

Lilia Efimova
Getting Value from employee weblogs: a knowledge management approach

Her blog: mathemagenic

Lilia’s presentation highlighted how staff blogs can change, and improve the public perception of a company - in this case Microsoft. Lilia argued that the blogs of individual Microsoft staff have helped to positively promote the work of Microsoft and reduce misunderstandings about how the system works.

(Abstract available in the conference proceedings)

Lee Bryant - Headshift
Informal Knowledge Sharing with Social Tools
This presentation looked at how social networking tools are changing communication channels and the potential for further change in the future. For example, will it reduce e-mail traffic overtime? Will general information (communications between one person to many) move from being e-mail based to RSS based, and e-mail remain for one-to-one communication?

Bryant suggests that the social network tools can be thought of in layers or as a “social tack” (with personal tools at the top and Public feeds at the bottom).

Personal Tools (netvibes, IGoogle)
Group Collaboration (wikis)
Blogs and networks
Bookmarks and tags (del.ici.ous, connotea)
Public Feeds and Flows (via RSS)

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Award for the most pervasive web 2.0 tool?

Facebook, or personal profile sites, I think, for cropping up all over the place, including this from today’s Evening Standard about Anne Darwin (who’s husband has surfaced again after 5 years shortly after she moved to Panama) which caught my eye.

“Mrs Darwin’s entry on Facebook was removed last night - it had included a photograph of her with two cats - and had details posted by members of her immediate family. To remove a posting requires the email address and secret password”
Mendick, Robert & Lefley, Jack. The Evening Standard, 4th December 2007, p.5.

It’s not the first time I have seen Facebook quoted as a source in newspaper article, but it highlights the vulnerability of adding personal information to social networking sites - not to mention someone’s very quick thinking to remove the profile.

4/12/07 - Day One overview

Day 1 - Tuesday 4th December
Overview

As the day progressed, I ended up thinking more and more about “Knowledge Management” as it appeared in difference guises throughout the day. Knowledge Management was undoubtedly THE buzz word a few years ago but didn’t really to take off. However, the Wiki seems to have helped to changed this. The Muppet Wikia (created by people with a hobby or should it be an obsession?) and ERM’s Minerva (created solely for competitive advantage) are basically using the same technology to disseminate and collate information but for very different purposes and audiences.

Finally……..
I now know how a library book feels. The ubiquitous name badge includes a barcode which has be scanned by conference staff before delegates can enter any conference room or the exhibition. Wonder what they are going to do with all the data?

4/12/07 - Web 2.0 in Action - Bonnie Cheuk

Bonnie Cheuk
It’s more than technology: How ERM (Environmental Resources Management) has embraced Web 2.0 to address environmental issues.

This presentation was fascinated as it described ERM’s experiences of using web 2.0 tools to create Minerva an internal communication space only available to staff (I think the technical term is Enterprise 2.0, because it remains inside the firewall). ERM is a global company and Minerva was set up with the aim of connecting employees and sharing knowledge between offices.

Within Minerva:
- Every member of staff has a profile
- Online collaborative sites
- CEO blog
- ERM’s Wiki Wiki
- Urgent message - an opportunity for all staff to appeal for help from colleagues on Minerva’s homepage

Minerva provided challenges for senior managers who needed to adapt to staff being able to respond directly. For example, to encourage staff to participate in Minerva, a prize draw for 2 round-the-world travel tickets was initiated. A Staff member added comments to the CEOs blog pointing out that this prize might not be appropriate for a company who business is the environment - as a result there is now a discussion forum and blog about the company’s carbon footprint.

Ultimately Minerva is a business tool, which aims to give ERM the competitive advantage within the industry because it is able to harness its staff knowledge and potential in ways not available before.

4/12/07 - Web 2.0 in Action - Anne Welsh

Tuesday 4th December 4pm - 5.30pm
Web 2.0 in Action


Anne Welsh
We’ve got the technology, now how do we find the time?

Ideally for the final presentation of the day Anne summarised her paper using short pithy bullet points, which illustrated how Drugscope managed to use Web 2.0 tools with very little money or staff time:

Anne’s Web 2.0 Tips
1. Make time for development ideas - even if it is only 10 minutes a week, and have a wish list of technology or tools you would like to use
2. Think big……then scale to suit your resources
3. Keep up with new technology - it may became more relevant over time
4. Make friends with feeds (RSS feeds saved Drugscope the equivalent of 2 staff days a week manually looking for relevant articles)
5. Reuse and Repurpose by adding the same or modified content in different environments for different customers, (blogs, reading lists, website, etc.,)

2.0 for All?
Don’t just do it because everyone else is doing it - do it because it meets your business needs for efficiency and time.

(Full paper available in the conference proceedings)

4/12/07 - Tools, Technologies and the Costs of Web 2.0

Tuesday 4th December
Tools, Technologies and Costs of Web 2.0

Karen Blakeman gave a very clear and precise run down of the tools and technologies which underpin Web 2.0, interesting, but not the wisest choice for me to make as it didn’t really cover anything new. It was a pity Phil Bradley was unable to attend the session as billed.

4/12/07 - Library 2.0 - Fact or Fiction

Tuesday 4th December
Library 2.0 - Fact or Fiction?

DRAFT

Track keynote: A tech forecast: Library 2.0 in the real world
Stephen Abram

In a nutshell, it was a very blunt message to librarians - Web 2.0 exists - “get on board or get out the profession”.

For further information try searching for “here comes another bubble” on YouTube - not sure all the content is copyright cleared so I am not putting a direct link in the blog.

Interesting fact - the reference library in Second Life gets 5,000 visits every night.

Philippa Levy
Web 2.0 and the Information Commons: A Learning and Teaching Perspective
Philippa Levy gave the academic perspective on the new Information Commons building at Sheffield and how important a physical space is to support students.

4/12/07 - Keynote Speech

Tuesday 4th December
Keynote Speech - Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia and Wikia
Web 2.0 in action: Free culture and community on the move


At one point early in his speech Jimmy Wales described the Wikipedia as the “Red Cross” for information because it is a not for profit organisation, and survives primarily on small donations of between $50 and $100 dollars and without large corporate sponsors or advertisers.

The highlight of his speech for librarians - especially for those involved in information skills - was Wales’ belief in information literacy and an acknowledgement of the importance of checking the sources in Wikipedia. He also seemed to suggest that Wikipedia was unsuitable as a source of reference for school projects much beyond year 8 or 9.

One interesting new development which I hadn’t heard of before from the Wiki foundation is Wikia, a separate organisation which aims to “build the rest of the library”, including the types of reference books which probably wouldn’t be considered viable as economic models for commercial publishers. The example he gave was The Muppet Wikia which contains 15,271 about the Muppets written primarily by a core community of 30 people (who like the Muppets - a lot).

Overall, his speech tended to stress the humanitarian, philanthropic intentions of the Wiki foundation, with clips from a film called “truth in democracy” which will be launched next year, showing how Wikipedia is reaching out to technology poor communities around the world. Just in case we missed the humanitarian message the presentation included a picture of Jimmy Wales with Bono (although I have a feeling it might have been his screen saver) as it wasn’t alluded to during the speech.

4/12/07 - Conference Welcome

The conference is a sell-out with delegates from 101 countries, coming for afar a field as Korea and Peru. Conference chair (Alan Dale) in his opening speech believed that we will look back on 2007 as a watershed year for information provision - even the “dawn of a new era”. This change provides challenges and opportunities for information professionals to work in new ways. He cited Lynne Brindley’s recent speech (posted on YouTube by CILIP) at the Umbrella conference as a good example of how we need to be adapting.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Arrived.....

Safely, hotel seems very nice (even has a gift shop!), TV includes 2 Uzbekistan TV channels, a German, Japanese and Italian channel and best of all a Golf channel…..

Podcast - Building the Academic Library 2.0

Draft

Meredith Farkas
Building the Academic Library 2.0

This podcast, taken from the Building the Academic Library 2.0 conference which took place recently at the University of California, Berkeley, covers the conference opening and keynote speech by Meredith Farkas. Meredith is probably best know for creating the online course 5 weeks to a social library which ran earlier this year. I haven’t finished the podcast yet, (it is over 1 hour long) but so far she has provided some interesting examples of how libraries are reaching out to their customers:

A US college ran a survey and found that students first port of call when they got a new essay title was to ring their parents for help. In response, the library now runs breakfast orientation sessions for parents, to make sure they are aware of all the resources available to their children.

A US librarian is using her Facebook profile to interact directly with students, through her profile they can make requests for new book purchases. She then alerts them via Facebook when the books are available in the library.

I must go back to this later.

Letting the iPod take the strain

Rather use the train journey to London to catch up on library reading and carrying a pile of papers with me, I used the journey to catch up on my podcast listening. I subscribed to the JISC podcasts several months ago, but have about 10 (and all the annual review interviews) to catch up on, plus some new library and web 2.0 programmes I found on iTunes.

Listening to podcasts for work, via my iPod (rather than just entertainment) represents an interesting blurring of the lines between work and leisure. Although I could download the work related podcasts onto my work computer, I suspect I wouldn’t find a good time just to sit and listen to them at work. So does this mean I will be listening to the work-related podcasts while walking or travelling outside work instead of the Archers or Cast On or Mark Kermode’s film reviews? Probably not, but I need to make sure I fit them in somehow - podcast coffee breaks, maybe?

Monday 26 November 2007

To start things off

Thank you for looking at the blog - as I said in my e-mail - WiFi hotspots permitting I will be sending postings during the conference. (I have just joined the Facebook group for the conference and apparently there will be WiFi hotspots in all the conference rooms so it should be OK). It looks like the Facebook group could provide some useful pre-conference information.

There will be an official blog (and many unofficial blogs) for the conference plus photographs will be available via Flickr. I will add links to these on the blog homepage in due course.