Merry Christmas!

Business librarians will be around until 12 noon on Christmas Eve and back again on Wednesday 4th Jan. If you have any enquiries over the holiday please email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Don't cite Wikipedia!

Who says you shouldn't cite Wikipedia? The founder of Wikipedia, no less. In fact he suggests it's not a good idea to cite encyclopedias at all. Read the full story in Business Week online.

Christmas ebooks

Christmas: an excellent time to try out the library's ebooks collection!

Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol perhaps or Ron Herbst's The New Wine Lover's Companion and New Food Lover's Companion.

You may need your Athens username and password.

Web 2.0 Library 2.0 (Does this make it a draw?)

A summary for the information overloaded
(with more for those who can't resist a hyperlink...)

"Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It’s about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services. By open I mean technically open... but also, more importantly, socially open, with rights granted to use the content in new and exciting contexts. Of course the web has always been about participation, and would be nothing without it. It’s single greatest achievement, the networked hyperlink, encouraged participation from the start. Somehow, through the late nineties, the web lost contact with its roots and selfish interests took hold. This is why I think the Web 2.0 label is cunning: semantically it links us back to that original web and the ideals it championed, but at the same time it implies regeneration with a new version. Technology has moved on and it’s important that the social face of the web keeps pace."

This was originally posted by Ian Davis but I found it quoted on a Business Week blog by Rob Hof who says

"the term has helped define a new generation of technologies whose social nature differs qualitatively from the broadcast-oriented first generation of Web technologies."

Some key features of Web 2.0

• The web is used as the platform, rather than having software installed on a local pc or network
  
• It harnesses collective intelligence via interaction, rather than broadcasting information to a passive audience
  
• Data is key (e.g. Amazon, who added data to basic records to create a superior service)
  
• It requires no software upgrades or reinstallation, but changes through continuous development on a web platform
  
• It makes use of lightweight programming and easy to use systems (e.g. RSS, wikis, blogs)
  
• It has cross platform compatibility
  
• and provides a rich user experience

These are the main points of a long very detailed article on Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly

Ken Chad and Paul Miller from Talis have put this in a library context and comment that,

"Library 2.0 is a concept of a very different library service that operates according to the expectations of today’s library users. In this vision, the library makes information available wherever and whenever the user requires it."

It looks like this is going to be major subject of debate in the library and information world.

As a personal view, it looks to me like there is great potential for libraries to work alongside the new breed of internet information sources, such as the ubiquitous Google, rather than trying to compete with them. Web 2.0 Library 2.0 indeed!

Missing out?

I've been running a lot of training sessions for students lately on making the most of library resources. While it's well known that we provide access to the internet and free information - through services like Google - the fact that we also give access to online information that we pay for (like Mintel) is much less widely appreciated. Which is a shame because it looks like people may be missing out on a lot of high quality information that's available to them.

What's an RSS newsfeed, and why would I want one?

Once upon a time the internet was a collection of fairly static pages that people went and browsed. Thus the browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) became a key tool.

These days there are a lot more sites that offer up to the minute news (the BBC, FT, Google News, BizEd and blogs) and the RSS newsfeed is as useful for dealing with these as the browser is for static pages.

Basically what a newsfeed does is bring together in one place the latest updates from all the news and updating sites you want to check on a regular basis.

There are several newsfeeds, just as there are several browsers, but as a starting point a particularly user-friendly one is Bloglines.

Courses - Weblogs

Blogging live from the Aslib weblogs course in Birmingham today. I think I'll be posting about RSS feeds next - watch this space!

New book - How to be a Student

It's one of those things that no-one ever actually teaches you, you just work it out as you go along. Unless you get your hands on How to be a Student by Sarah Moore.

I particularly liked these chapter headings.

• Regular 'study snacks' are better than occasional 'study binges'
  
• Understanding boredom
  
• Sleeping enough (but not too much)
  
• Remembering that lecturers and tutors are human too
  
• Recognizing that information is not knowledge
  
• Remembering that people thought Einstein was a slow learner
  
• Getting to know your librarians and lurking in the library
  
• Using all of your brain
  
• Having some time every day when you're doing nothing at all
  
• Reading
  
• Writing a little bit every day
  
• Using images and diagrams when you're taking notes
  
• Believing in yourself

Courses - Developing and managing ebook collections

This was a useful update on the state of ebooks in the UK and confirmed my suspicion that many things that would encourage their takeup are still not happening

• no single comprehensive resource exists for ebook identification and selection
  
  
• no standard business model or licensing agreement exists
  
  
• each provider uses a different interface and software
  
  
• ebook availability varies greatly between subject areas
  
  
• more research needs to be done, especially qualitative analysis (currently being undertaken by JISC)
  
  
• a large number of issues relating to the electronic delivery of information in general, not just ebooks, have not yet been fully resolved (copyright, archiving, security, authentication etc)
  
  During the day we had the chance to get hands on practice with several different systems. I thought it was interesting that one of the childrens ebook services had involved children in the design of the interface, and the result was both intuitive and enjoyable to use. (You can search for short books with blue covers about imaginary characters!) Not something that can honestly be said of many electronic resources, sadly.
  
  We also had the chance to compare our own experience with librarians from other institutions. It was encouraging to find that we are already doing some things that others are considering or are in the process of putting in place.
  
  
• we have fully integrated catalogue records for our ebooks
  
  
• we have a collection development policy that includes ebooks
  
  
• we are using a variety of means to promote the use of ebooks (including blogging!)
  
  There are some areas we could investigate further, such as whether we could provide access to ebooks (and other eresources) for library visitors other than staff and students of the University.

New books - Dark Angels

Can the writing you do at work ever be 'creative'? Dark Angels by John Simmons suggests it can.

"By developing creativity in everyday language and words, this writing guide helps businesses and business professionals strengthen their goals and generate fresh ideas. Suggestions for emails, reports, letters, memos, and proposals show how company communications can be clearer and arguments more effective with a few inspired changes. By allowing their inner dark angels to spread their creative wings, aspiring professionals will learn how to better engage with, and connect to, their audience with stories and emotion rather than cold analysis."

Starting a business in Portsmouth?

The COBRA database now provides local area profiles for those thinking of starting a business in a particular part of the country. There is a profile of the Portsmouth area, but not yet one for Southampton* - more areas are going to be added in future months updates.

* UPDATE! There is now.

ABI Inform - new features for researchers

ABI Inform have recently added some new and improved options for business researchers including:

• Full text US masters and doctoral dissertations
• A new improved 'My Research' area for organising your references
• Automated email alerts on your research topic
• The option to export Harvard format references

Scary?

"And then, of course, there was the sheer size of the library; tens of thousands of books; thousands of shelves; hundreds of narrow rows." (1)

Studies have found that most students suffer some degree of 'library anxiety'. Comments in one study included words like ‘scary’ and ‘lost’. We hope you don't think our library is scary, but if you do feel at all lost when you're first finding your way around, it might help to know that you're not alone in feeling that way.

If you have any trouble finding what you need, please don't hesitate to ask the library staff: we're here to help! Business librarians can be found on floor 1A in office number ML107.

(1.) Rowling, J.K. (2001) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London, Bloomsbury.

BlogScholar

I've encountered a fair bit of scepticism about the academic relevance of blogging. If you haven't made your mind up yet BlogScholar might be of interest.

The BBC on the blogosphere

I managed to miss this Radio Four programme* about blogs and the blogosphere, but luckily someone told me about it. If you're not sure what a blog is, or how they might be relevant, it's a good summary of what it's all about.

On the BBC News site this interview with Tim Berners-Lee also talks about blogs.


*It may be in the archives by now, or gone. That's the internet for you, things come and go...

The blog generation?

I emailed a few people asking if they thought the ML107 blog was a good idea. Most replied, "I will be out of the office between..." It's that time of year. One claimed not to be of the 'blog generation'. (And I am!?!)

I'm inclined to agree with Martin Röll who writes on SAP Info "The blogger scene has become as diverse as society itself. From journal-writing adolescents via IT specialists through to university professors – all kinds of people blog. "

Anyway to bring this back to library matters, the term 'blogs' has now been added to our library catalogue key word list, and the latest book on the subject to arrive in stock is Buzz marketing with blogs for dummies.

Fear in the library

Yesterday I went to an interesting presentation on the effects of fear, both in the workplace and in life in general.

Libraries can be pretty scary places, especially for new students. They can be scary places to work in too! All the new developments, in technology especially, mean that there can be a fear of not being able to keep up with it all. There can be a temptation to react to this by clinging to old established ways of doing things, and insisting they are the still the best. I don't think we suffer from that here, we've integrated ejournals and ebooks into our collections and always seem to be considering different ways of using technology. Some of us are even blogging! But maybe there are areas where we could be more innovative?

Don't be afraid to post a comment on this!

What future for ebooks?

Later this year I'm going to be attending a course on 'Developing and Managing e-book Collections', and I'd appreciate any feedback on the subject.

Do you think we should be developing our collection? Should we be buying more print books instead? Which titles would you like to have as ebooks? What do you like or not like about ebooks?

Use the comments feature to let me know what you think - I'll let you know of anything useful that I find out from the course.

If you haven't used our own ebook collection before, just go to the library catalogue and type in 'ebooks', then on the next screen add a subject keyword for a list of ebooks on that topic. Click on a title for a link to the ebook itself.

New books - Beyond Bullet Points

Atkinson, Cliff. Beyond bullet points: using Microsoft Powerpoint to create presentations that inform, motivate, and inspire.

Would you like to do something more interesting with Powerpoint than the usual bullet point slides? Find out about storyboarding, dividing your presentation into three acts, using graphics and more techniques to give your Powerpoint presentations more appeal.

Courses - Defining the Digital Roadmap

'Defining the Digital Roadmap' was organised by the eInformation Group of Cilip (1.) - it was a day packed with the latest live issues in internet searching and related areas.

Something that came up in several sessions during the day was the impact of blogs and RSS feeds. Blogs seem to be the big issue in digital information currently. One of the new roles of many librarians is to use a blog as a way of keeping their organisation up to date with developments. So here are a few of the highlights.

New services keep on coming from GoogleLabs. Following on from Google Scholar and Google Print, context specific help with searching is now available with Google Suggest while Google Maps allows you to zoom in on any part of the world you choose, right down to street level. Some concern was expressed over security issues with Google Desktop. This allows you to search your own pc, which is excellent if you're not that good at keeping your files and folders organised, but take care that you know what it's keeping in it's cache! Especially if you are working with confidential information.

While Google may have captured the market for general internet searching there are also many specialist search engines. Ever wanted to find an American radio programme? You can find NPR (2.) programmes using Speechbot. Unfortunately this won't find BBC or other UK radio programmes. Want to find a VR model? You can sketch your search into Princeton's 3D Model Search Engine.

All of which, fascinating as it is, just adds to the information overload we all have to deal with. If you're struggling to work out where it's best to go to find the information you need, don't hesitate to contact us in the library.

The highlight of the day for me was this video - a cautionary tale of where trends towards personalisation and customisation in digital news might be taking us. It reminded me to dig out my copy of Neil Postman's classic Amusing Ourselves to Death.

(1.) Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
(2.) National Public Radio

New resources - The IDS HR Case Study Library

We now have access to a new service - The IDS HR Case Study Library. It can be accessed using the same password as for our other IDS resources.

Business library blog!

This is our new business librarians blog. We hope to use it to keep staff and students, and anyone else who might be interested, informed about business information resources available from the Southampton Institute Library. We'd be grateful for any constructive feedback: use the comment feature to let us know what you find interesting or useful, and what you'd like to know more about.