Courses, courses, courses!

One of the things I have found this blog excellent for is keeping track of the various courses, conferences and training sessions that I attend. I can look back and remind myself of what I did when and any key points I might want to act on in future.

I've not been blogging much lately due to the usual excuses of pressure of work/life etc and I would like to get back into the habit. This week seems like a good time to do it as I have training events on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday!

Monday's was a course in supervisory skills. Today and Wednesday I get my first sessions on the rather interesting shiny new system that we're getting to replace our old library catalogue. Then on Thursday I'm off to London to a course on library induction where I will be presenting on our approach and, hopefully, doing a bit of what Tom Peters calls 'creative swiping' - being inspired by other people's ideas.

Word work/word play

Constant change

I did feel sorry for the student in one of my training sessions who, at the end of his second year, had only just worked out how to search for things on the library catalogue, only to be told that we'll have a new one when he comes back for his final year. Hopefully it will be better, not just different. I just wish that constant improvement was as inevitable as constant change!

New features on ABI Inform and European Newsstand

Proquest are going to be doing some work on their databases at the following times

Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 03:00 for two (2) hours
Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 03:00 for twelve (12) hours

What they're doing is adding the option to create RSS feeds for searches and also adding a new Arabic interface to their language options.

WARC - digital

The World Advertising Research Centre database has added a new 'digital' section looking at things like top viral campaigns, digital consumers, how people use the internet, and impact on agencies.

The library -
exercise for body
and mind




I'm on leave next week - moving house, but Mary and Jane will be in ML107, on floor 1, if you need any help.

Pajamas

I've never been to a conference* in my pajamas before. Virtual pajamas and real pajamas in fact. That's the sort of thing that can happen at an international conference held in Second Life.

I think this unusual style of dress for professional networking can be excused seeing as the latter part of the programme ran from 12 midnight to 5am.

I must admit though, I have been looking for an excuse to wear the rather lovely pjs I found and, in SL, there's really not much chance, as avatars don't sleep (although they have been known to nod off briefly if sufficiently bored.)

I did wear more appropriate clothing for the (relatively) serious part of my day when I - along with a brave colleague - did a presentation in both text chat and voice simultaneously. And we were not too put out to find in a later session that there was a technological gizmo that would have made the process much easier!

There's always more to learn.

If I've done it right there should be some pics of the event here.

*Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums

Conference

I'm doing something weird next weekend. I'm going to be presenting a paper on Second Life at a *conference in Second Life. If the technical gremlins will allow, that is.

I say I am going to be presenting it, but am I? Or is it my avatar, Wynne, who will be doing that? Will she claim ownership of the copyright?

*More info here Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums and here is a Video

Evangelised!

I saw a presentation the other evening by Metaverse Evangelist Roo Reynolds from IBM. He certainly lived up to the job title!

Key points that I picked up on were...

• Virtual Worlds (VWs) are about people, they're fundamentally social spaces
• The average age of people in Second Life is around 34
• What Second Life has over some other VWs is user generated content
• Its ok to start small - send in a few explorers
• Things in VWs can be ephemeral - its easy to build and to destroy
• Do we want to replicate the real world? Or be creative with the posssibilities of VWs?
• It's not just Second Life, watch out for new worlds
• Watch out for the real metaverse - joined up VWs!

£200 prize up for grabs!

JISC are doing the first ever national survey on the use of and perceptions of e-books.

There is a £200 prize up for grabs for staff and students that enter the survey before February 15th.

To participate in the survey please visit the JISC User Survey 2008. The survey will take around 10 minutes to complete. There is information for faculty staff and students if you want to know more about it.

Literature searching: theory and practice

I'm being painfully reminded lately about the difference between theory and practice.

In the early stages of trying to get a paper written, with a colleague, to submit to a conference, I have to keep reminding myself to keep track of what I've read and might want to quote from or refer to. But after several months of "scan, flick and `power browse’"- as a recent research paper calls it - that is proving to be very much harder to do than it sounds!

JISC Ebooks

We've recently subscribed to 5 new business and management studies e-books through the JISC national ebooks observatory project.

• The Dynamics of Employee Relations - Paul Blyton 3rd ed
• Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning - Graham Hooley 3rd ed
• Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach - Derek Rollinson, 3rd ed
• Integrated Marketing Communication - David Pickton, 2nd ed
• Management Concepts & Practices - Tim Hannagan, 4th ed

These e-books can be found via the library catalogue and are available on the MyiLibrary platform (using your Athens username and password if off campus.)

Staff and students can copy, print, and paste parts of the e-books and can, for educational purposes, incorporate excerpts of these e-books into teaching materials, essays, course work, presentations and MyCourse units.

Facebook

I am hopelessly word addicted. I realised this when I discovered the (for me) killer app on Facebook: you can play Scrabble on there!

I do realise that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the written, or indeed tiled, word, or for books and literature and the whole text based world of ideas, and I know that these things can be taken too far (as shown by this cautionary tale) but I think its probably a good thing if your chosen career involves something you are just a tad obsessive about.

Greetings!

...from Wynne and a very Merry Christmas from me.

The library and this blog will re-open on the 2nd Jan 2008.

Not too good to be true?

They say that 'if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!' I've found that to be good advice at times, but it is just a tad cynical. Some rare things look good and actually ARE good!

I've been poking around a site that looked far too good to be true for a while now and can't see a catch. It's associated with reputable organisations, and looks like a simply excellent idea. It's called FreeRice and it claims to develop your vocabulary while simultaneously helping to end world hunger.

Why am I blogging about this here? Well (she says, thinking quickly) increasing your vocabulary has got to be a good thing from a librarianish point of view, and one of the things I try to emphasise in my training sessions is how important it is to evaluate your sources of information rather than placing immediate trust in them.

Proquest downtime on Sunday

The Proquest databases ABI Inform and European Newsstand will be down from the early hours of this Sunday morning until the afternoon. If you were thinking of getting up early on Sunday morning and doing research I can only apologise and suggest a lie in.

The reason for the downtime is so they can add supplementary digital materials - audio, video, spreadsheets, etc - to the dissertations that are on there.

For some reason the idea of digital appendices reminds me of this blog entry I chanced upon recently.

Virtually there

I'm now most of the way through the Intermediate course in Virtual Librarianship I'm doing with the University of Illinois. (Does this mean I'm virtually a virtual librarian?)

It uses Moodle and Second Life for course delivery as well as them being the subject of the course, which makes it an interesting double level of learning. I've found myself behaving in a very 'studentish' way at times. Last week I popped into Moodle at the last possible minute to do a quick stab at the previous week's questions before the next class!

What I found really interesting is the effect of having my avatar present with other avatars in a virtual environment for the two hour weekly classes. There have been some weeks when the subject matter was not of the greatest interest to me personally, but I would have found it surprisingly hard to just wander (or indeed teleport) out of the class once I was 'there'. Almost as hard as it would be to do so in a face to face class. Quite different from logging in briefly to add a few comments to a discussion forum on Moodle.

Hints and bits

Following on from my last blog entry (where did November go???) I find that odd things I throw into training sessions or research workshops, almost as asides, are often greeted with the most enthusiasm and appreciation. For example pressing Crl-F to find a word on a webpage, or alt-tab to move between two open windows, putting quotation marks around the words to find the exact phrase in a search, or using Bloglines to keep track of infrequently updated blogs, creating a concept map in Credo Reference, or the fact that you can set up an alert on Google News. Maybe I need to devise a training session on useful hints and bits?

Stephen Fry on the net

"You’d be amazed... by how often friends of mine say they can’t find something on the net, simply because they haven’t stopped and thought about how to frame or phrase input search terms."

Stephen Fry on his blog (and in the Guardian)

New look for XpertHR

The XpertHR information database for human resource management has got a very nice new interface design.

Sadly the Athens Users link that HE staff and students need to find is still very, very tiny indeed and hardly stands out in it's subtle grey-on-grey colour scheme.

No spark

A while ago I ordered a book called A Spark from Heaven. I've since had a report from our suppliers to say that A Spark from Heaven 'doesn't seem to be available'. Which I found amusing in an ironic sort of way.

New look for Mintel

The Mintel market research database has a new look, now with a what's hot? link to the hottest industry stories and a media homepage link for ad campaigns, agency news and more.

Web 2.0 explained

This is simply excellent. One of my favourite people talking about one of my favourite things! Stephen Fry on Web 2.0.


VideoJug: Stephen Fry: Web 2.0

The student experience!

It's the summer time and so I'm.... busier than ever! When does the quiet time come I wonder? I've just started an online course with the University of Illinois, so am learning not just the course content but also about how online courses work from the student point of view. We're using Moodle and Second Life and as it's all new for most people there is a lot of learning going on! Two weeks in and we've covered the basics and started thinking about future potential. It's all a bit mind boggling.

Time passes...

Yesterday I received a long service award, which came as something of a reminder of the passage of time!

I've been doing what is supposedly the 'same' job for the last 15 years. The good thing about it is that it's not the same at all. For example, when I started here almost everything the library provided was print based. There was one computer for online searching, and the librarians searched databases on behalf of researchers. It was too arcane an art for anyone to be expected to do it for themselves. Not to mention it being charged on a per minute basis. Then came CD-ROMs, then came the internet.

Goodness only knows what this 'same' job will be like in another, say, five years. My prediction, which I will rashly publish here, is that the boundaries between life offline and online will blur and merge to the extent that terms like 'e-learning', 'distance learning' and 'blended learning' will become quaint and old-fashioned, because distance won't matter and all of life will be blended.

Librarian gets a (second) life

A wet bank holiday weekend seemed to be the perfect opportunity to get a Second Life.

Although I'm looking at the potential of Second Life as part of a work project I suspected (rightly) that there would be a lot to learn in a new world, so I thought I would devote some of my own time to it initially. If I'm going to walk into walls, fly into windows, sit on inappropriate things, or lose items of clothing I'd rather not do it at my first serious professional conference or meeting!

So that's how I came to spend the weekend meeting and chatting with a fox, a zebra with attitude, an eco-geek and several librarians.

Essay mills join Google blacklist

I've just been alerted to a very interesting article on the BBC news about Google banning ads that offer essays for sale. Excellent news.

Having looked at some of the essays for sale on this type of site it's clear that the quality of many of them is lower than most students could produce for themselves, given a very little effort. Add to that the fact that plagiarism is getting very much easier to detect and it really makes more sense to just do the work yourself and save your money!

Smarter student

If there's one book I'd say was well worth students buying it's a book on study skills. It's excellent value as it will apply to every course, not just one. I don't know that I'd recommend any particular book as what works for one person doesn't always work so well for another, but this one is new in and gets lots of stars on Amazon, so it might be worth a look.

McMillan, Kathleen. The smarter student: skills and strategies for success at university. (Floor 1 - Study skills section - 029.6)

Who and why?

Why do I write this, and who do I write it for? Those are questions that occur to me once in a while, as I suspect they do for many bloggers. I suppose I write it because I like writing about what I do, and would like more people to know something about what I do. If I didn't like doing it I could never keep it up.

As to who I write it for, I think that has to be for anyone I might cross paths with in the course of doing my job. Students, lecturers, and other staff at the Uni mostly, but also other librarians, visitors or people who get lost and wander in by mistake.

That happens in real life too. Mostly they ask where the way out is.

Enforcing civility

Sometimes I go to blog about something and find that I don't need to, all I need to do is point to someone else's blog entry that says it all.

Wikipedia again

Wikipedia makes the news again in this article in the Times.

I thought the days of the 'information superhighway' silliness, when people predicted that the internet was going to replace all the libraries and be the answer to everything, had been left behind back in the 1990's. Apparantly not. It's doesn't help that the other camp seem equally keen to say that everything web based is rubbish and should be banned.

Surprisingly enough the internet is just like anything else, a mix of the good, the slightly dodgy and the downright bad. Education, surely, ought to prepare people to tell the difference.

Improbable Research at Portsmouth

I recently attended a remarkable event: an Improbable Research evening at The University of Portsmouth, as part of National Science and Engineering Week. (Although, improbably enough, it was organised by the Business School.)

The event (see the video) was designed to showcase “research that makes people LAUGH, and then THINK.” Marc Abrahams, editor of the world renowned journal 'The Annals of Improbable Research' and newsletter MiniAir (available in the Alternative Library Roof Garden) told us about some fascinating IgNobel Prize winners.

The competition for the IgNobel Prize for Literature seems to be particularly keen and has produced some world class work. In 1999 it was won by the BSI for what The Guardian called "the hot, steamy prose" of BS 6008: Method for Preparation of a Liquor of Tea for Use in Sensory Tests. Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University won it in 2006 for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."

Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, who won the IgNobel Peace Prize last year, deserves a special mention for inventing an electro-mechanical teenager repellant.

The evening also featured a live performance of Atom and Eve: a mini-opera in four acts, the Great Inertia Debates (of which ‘yes v. no’ was probably the most hotly contested) and five minute presentations by previous IgNobel Prize winners in person.

John Hoyland, creator of the Feedback column in The New Scientist, provided statistical evidence of the dangers posed by tea cosies, while C.W. Moeliker, (see his tour diary) of Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, who won his IgNobel Prize for Biology in 2003 for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, also introduced us to the 'Domino Sparrow'.

This bird became famous by flying in through a window and knocking over 23,000 dominos just a few days before a grand domino-toppling event, which was to be televised live in 11 countries. The unfortunate bird was shot, stuffed, and now forms part of a collection of famous sparrows, along with the almost equally well-known 'Cricket Sparrow', killed by a cricket ball at Lord’s in 1936.

Help!

As I'm feeling slightly boggled by technology at the moment I particularly enjoyed this video.

Another approach to Wikipedia

Having blogged about Jimmy Wales saying it isn't a good idea to cite Wikipedia, and about the US college that said the same thing, it was interesting to see an alternative approach being taken by a UK university. This BBC article describes how postgraduates are being required to write Wikipedia entries and updates as a way of developing their research skills.

New look coming for business databases

Keep an eye on market research database Mintel and human resource management database XpertHR: they're both going to be getting a new look soon, with some new features.

ABI Inform - new feature

That excellent database ABI Inform has a rather nice new feature.

When you look at your search results you may notice that some of the articles have a little 'link to full text' option under them. This takes you to other databases that have full text when ABI itself doesn't. It only appears where it knows that there is full text available somewhere else.


[Note! This has only been set up in the last couple of days and some of the links don't seem to be working yet, but most do and we're working on the rest.]

Scientific evidence for why you fell asleep in your 9am lecture!

If you're a teenager who needs an excuse for drifting into dreamland during an early morning lecture, blame your circadian rhythms. Print out and keep this article from the Yorkshire Post as evidence.

One of the most fascinating sessions at the 'Creativity or Conformity?' conference I went to recently was by Russell Foster (Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University) in which he explained how young people's body clocks run to a different rhythm than older people's. The result, when combined with 9am lectures and part-time work, is a lot of chronically sleep deprived young people.

Of course your lecturers have an equally good excuse for yawning through your late afternoon presentations!

Don't cite wikipedia: 2.

There's been another kerfuffle in the library blogosphere lately about Wikipedia. (What do you mean, you hadn't noticed?)

This article from the Guardian started it with it's report that a College in Vermont has 'banned students from citing Wikipedia'. In fact, as you read on, you discover that they were not saying that students shouldn't use Wikipedia, but that while Wikipedia may be a useful source, it should not be regarded as authoritative, and so should not be cited.

I did like the alternative suggested, of getting all students to take an introductory course in scepticism.

One for Advertising students

If only any students ever read this blog I could use it to tell them about things like this excellent new book we've got in the library that they would do well to get their hands on.

Swimming in the sea of irrelevance

There's an excellent article in the Times Online today about Google's continuing efforts to digitise everything it can lay it's hands on, including the content of libraries. It contains a warning.

"Google is a profit machine. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we don’t delude ourselves into thinking it is an entirely neutral source of information."

Well fair enough, and non-neutrality is definitely something to bear in mind when searching Google, but surely libraries, being much more selective than Google, can hardly claim to be neutral either? I don't think neutrality is the issue here. What libraries do that Google makes no attempt to do is to be selective and to select on grounds of quality.

All this reminds me of that classic, which I think I've referred to here before, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he says [my italics]

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy."

Another thing that libraries do is to give 'swimming lessons', and surely those are needed now more than ever.

Creativity - what's that got to do with libraries?

As one of the very few people at the Creativity or Conformity conference who was what they call support staff rather than academic, perhaps I should try to account for the relevance?

One great benefit was that I got to take part in discussion of the issues and concerns of those who I'm supporting. I take 'support' to mean that my job is to make it easier for other people to do their jobs, and I think it's likely that I can do that better if I understand what it is they are trying to do.

Another was that it made me realise that while libraries are excellent at supporting the traditional style of learning (individual, based on the written word and existing knowledge in the subject area) they are not so great at facilitating more creative styles (collaborative, visual, lateral thinking, idea generating and problem solving.) Our physical spaces and our resources and (dare I say) our rules, are very much geared towards the former.

I've seen some examples of what others are doing to make universities and their libraries more active in support of creative learning. The projects involving iLabs and c-spaces * in particular were something that I think we should be aware of. Of course these things take time and resources... but let's not start singing that old song again (see previous post!)

*
Essex
Coventry
Bedfordshire
UEA

Conference: Creativity or Conformity? Cardiff 2007.

I think what I like best about the concept of creativity is its tendency to be positive. It's so very easy, especially at work, to slip into negativity. We would do wonderful things but we haven't got the money, we haven't got the time and, of course, they won't let us. It's a familiar refrain rather like one of those irritatingly catchy Eurovision songs that gets stuck in the back of your mind and you can't get rid of it. It's annoying how hard it is to get rid of, and I've caught myself humming it quietly now and then even since the conference.

As someone said in one of the final discussion sessions (apologies for paraphrasing and for not even being able to remember who I'm paraphrasing!) what it comes down to in the end is, never mind the excuses, did you make any difference or not?

Blogging about having nothing to blog about

It has been pointed out to me that I haven't updated my blog this year. Which is odd, when you think about it, as no-one ever reads it. It's quite spooky really.

The thing is, I haven't actually done anything worth blogging about yet this year. I expect I'll have lots of things to say after next week's conference though, so watch out for updates next Thursday or Friday.

Looking forward to the New Year

It's been getting quieter and quieter over the last week. Winding down for Christmas. Which is just as well as there are quite a few things to prepare for in the New Year. In January there's a conference called Creativity or Conformity that sounds like it could be really interesting (or scary when I remember that I'm tabling a paper there!) and then there's the new Business courses for the Army, supported mainly online, that start in February. One of the things I like most about this job is that it doesn't stay the same, there's always something new happening.

Courses: Marketing the Virtual Information Service

A very interesting day, even though it started badly with over-running engineering works that meant missing the introductory session and coffee.

How best to market a library service has always been a debatable question and with the 'virtual' (or should that be digital or online or 'e'?) dimension it becomes even more difficult to answer.

Something that came up in several sessions struck me as potentially the way we need to go. That is segmenting our market and tailoring our marketing to different groups. How to segment though? By subject? By level? By mode of attendance? And how to find out what those groups want so that we can market effectively to them?

There's also the question of Google. Google has something our customers value highly (ease of use) and we're trying to sell them what we value highly (quality of information.)

Of course we're just lucky, in the business area, that we have so many high quality and easy to use resources like ABI Inform, Mintel and (oops, I seem to have slipped into marketing mode!)

Whatever did I do without Bloglines?

Not so very long ago a colleague suggested I might like to use one of those newsreader, newsfeed thingies to keep up to date with all my news alerts, blogs and so on. I said that I didn't really see the need, as I was quite happy to visit my favourite web sites and do searches to check for news updates. I agreed to give it a try though, and set up a Bloglines account.

Just recently Bloglines hasn't been alerting me to updates reliably, and I've been surprised to find how much of a loss this has left me at. Somehow, without my really noticing, it's become something I rely on. I just expect it to be there, working properly, and I get quite indignant when it isn't or doesn't. I don't have time to go chasing around the internet searching out things that should all come to me! Maybe it's a shrewd marketing ploy on their part?

[Today it told me I had 95 new updates on one of my feeds - I think it's finally caught up!]

Another enquiry

I usually enjoy enquiries, but I'm not so sure about this one. I was asked for help in tracking down a *book that I recognised as being one that I had read on my own degree course. Up to this point I was quite happy. Then I found the following note on the catalogue record. "This edition published on the 30th anniversary of its original publication." Hmn. Where did those 30 years go?

[*Folk devils and moral panics by Stanley Cohen.]

Unsuggester

A funny thing happens at this time of year. Terms starts, the clocks go back, and time accelerates at a lunatic pace.

Anyway, I just found a spare 5 minutes to say how much I enjoyed LibraryThing's Unsuggester. You can type in the name of a book you disliked and it'll tell you which books are most unlike it! What a good idea!

Enquiries

I enjoy a good enquiry. I thought I might share a couple of my latest favourites, suitably anonymised of course.

The first was 'I've got to read chapter 10 of a book by Jones, where can I find it?' What I enjoyed most about that one was that I managed to find the answer. It makes you feel almost useful when you can answer questions like that.

The second was about how to decide on a brand name for a new product. I suggested the WARC database which has loads of information about such things. I can't help but wonder what the people who decided on this name for their new product were thinking of, but I'm sure they know what they're doing.

Scary

Things people typed into search engines recently that led them to this blog -

scary things
scary things about spiders
how to cite wikipedia
compartmentalised furniture

I hope you all found what you were looking for.

X-rated database

Library resources are not always on their best behaviour during training sessions. They have been known to crash in the middle of being demonstrated, mysteriously change their interfaces between one session and the next, and sometimes turn up some rather unexpected results.

Xreferplus turned up a very odd result during training this week. This database includes a concept map option, a nice little feature where you can type in a word and get a diagram of related terminology, based on the dictionary and encyclopedia entries it contains. Once they'd been shown how it worked students had an opportunity to try it out for themselves. What I hadn't realised was that one of the reference books it contains is a dictionary of euphemisms. It seems that there is more to 'business' than is included on the syllabus!

Search engines

MsDewey, the new search engine for those who like their librarians with attitude (and without scroll bars.)

Let me out of here...

If I seem to have disappeared from sight lately I'm probably in the basement. That's where our training room is, you see, and I'm pretty much booked up with training sessions, showing students all the delights the library has to offer.

Plus some less than delightful things, including unmemorable passwords; unhelpful help screens; small, hard to find links you have to click on; links that don't link; a remarkable variety of error messages... you know the sort of thing.

This is the time of year I most deeply appreciate the publishers of those resources that simply do what you expect them to do, without any fuss or bother of the technological kind, and get very, very tempted indeed to cancel the rest in a fit of bad temper!

Weekend posting

I give up. I tried to find an excuse to claim Last fm was work related but it just isn't. It's much too good not to mention though. It claims to find music you'll like based on a sample of what you're listening to and... it actually works! I'm now sitting here happily listening to bluetadpole radio. Well, after 10 hours of information skills training sessions this week I think I need something on the life side of the work/life balance.

One day in history

Now here's an intriguing idea. One Day in History. It's not strictly to do with business information but it is going to be stored by the British Library, so there's a library connection, and it's just far too interesting not to mention. A one day mass blog event collecting snapshots of what YOU did on Tuesday 17th Oct 2006.

What I'll be doing most of the day is talking to small groups of students about all the library resources available to them. I've got 6 hours of training sessions booked for Tuesday, so won't have time for a great deal else!

Forthcoming conference

Looking forward to the Creativity or Conformity conference in Cardiff next January - this is the reason for all the activity with remote collaboration tools!

Don't wait...

Two things happened today that made me do this. I spoke to the first student this year who said what many have said in previous years: "I'm in my 3rd year, and I never knew you had all this before!" and I wanted an excuse to play with SlideShare. So, let's see if this works...

Slideshare

I found another collaborative tool - Slideshare lets you share presentations. It's a bit like YouTube for Powerpoint slides. Hmm, perhaps that doesn't sound too exciting... but then, it all depends how exciting your presentations are!

[This is a beta version and you have to request an invitation to join. I've signed up and have got a few invitations to give out if anyone wants one.]

Kind of blue

You know those silly internet personality quizzes...? I can blame someone from the Uni up the road for alerting me to this one.

"You scored as Blue. You are considered to be a very calm person who takes things one at a time and does not worry too much about the consequences. Whatever happens, happens, is your moto. You are the one people come to for advise on most topics, because you are filled with limitless knowledge. You can handle any situation."

Yes, that and the fact that I spend a fair bit of my time behind a desk over which hangs a sign saying 'Enquiries'!

[Example of limitless knowledge: I know that a 'moto' is an Italian motor scooter. I think they mean motto.]

Poll Builder

Today I found that those clever people at The Center for History and New Media have a very nifty Poll Builder which lets you... you guessed? Build polls. It literally takes a minute to do. That is, it took me a minute to do once I'd switched to Firefox, it didn't seem to want to play in Explorer (I haven't tried it in any other browsers as yet.)

Writely

Another collaboration tool I've recently signed up for is Writely, which lets you share word processed documents. You can import a document from Word or create it in Writely and invite whoever you want to view and/or edit it. It beats sending files back and forward as attachments via email.

As you may have guessed from recent posts I'm experimenting with ways of writing a paper with someone in another location - a university 'down the road a piece' from here.

Seething with life

Suddenly there are alot of people about. What was, until last week, a quiet, almost deserted campus is suddenly seething with life.

I get an odd idea, at this time of year, that someone might actually read this blog. I'm not sure that a librarian's blog is all that appealing in terms of reading matter but sometimes, when you know you really should be reading the set text, almost anything is more appealing, so you never know. Anyway, if you are a new student and you're reading this - hello and welcome!

Gliffy!

I found something that's both fun and useful. It's called Gliffy and it's a way of creating and sharing diagrams, flow-charts, floor-plans, mindmaps etc. The benefit of sharing diagrams created in Gliffy is that you can work collaboratively on them, from any pc.

Conference : The International Learner: Enhancing the student experience.

I was lucky enough to spend the last two days out of the office at a conference put on by the Business School. We were looking at the international student experience. This left me mulling over the usefulness of generalisations. It can be useful, in terms of providing services, to know that students from other parts of the world may be more likely to have problems with this or that or the other thing, but generalisations are positively unhelpful if we start trying to apply them to individuals. No one likes to be treated as a 'type' rather than as a person.

Something else it left me mulling over is that no one else in the world seems to like English food.

A bit of a panic

I got back from my holidays and had a bit of a panic over the number of things I'd not yet done to prepare for the new academic year. There are the routine things like updating leaflets, checking that we have books people have requested etc, and I think I'm on top of those now. Just about. But there are other things that are more work but are also more fun, like trying to keep up to date with new developments in the wider information world. The wider information world is a seething mass of new developments, of course, Google alone would be enough to keep tabs on, which makes it quite a challenge.

A librarian by any other name...

At various times in the librarianship world the issue is raised of whether to call ourselves something different. It's all to do with the thorny issue of the 'public image' of librarians which, to be quite honest, is not good.

I hadn't come across the word 'infornography' until recently. Perhaps we could start calling ourselves infornographers?

Reading about Library 2.0

I try, when I can, to fit some professional reading into my working day. (I'm a librarian for goodness sake why should I, of all people, feel guilty about being seen reading - as if it isn't 'real work'!?)

Something I've noticed lately is that I'm finding more of interest in online and open access journals than I am in the print journals we subscribe to, and occasionally I come across an article that is even worth blogging about, like this one from Webology on that complex mix of things that is often referred to as 'Library 2.0'.

It suggests that one of the greatest challenges for libraries, (and I'd imagine it's the same for all organisations) is that of giving up control over the virtual environment and being open to involvement from, and participation by, the whole community.

What would happen if we let students add tags to our catalogue records, chat online, contribute to wiki's, take part in podcasts? Would it be anarchy and chaos? Or might it be fun?

Bookshops, budgets and Basingstoke.

Sometimes, as a special treat, we get let loose in a bookshop with a budget to spend. That's what I was doing yesterday, in Blackwells in Oxford. Actually being able to pick up and handle real books as a way of selecting stock is good once in a while, although using bibliographic databases and reviews is probably a more sensible way to do it most of the time.

Luckily, for the sake of my personal budget, my time was fully occupied in the Business section and I didn't have time to get distracted by areas of more personal interest!

On the way home I got an unexpected evening excursion to Reading and Basingstoke. Whenever I travel by rail, wherever I am going, I always seem to end up in Basingstoke.

Looking forward to induction week

We had a meeting of local business librarians today to talk about our plans for induction. At this time of year induction week starts to loom large on the horizon, so it was a good opportunity to compare notes and share ideas. It was also an excellent excuse to spend a morning in our wonderfully air-conditioned meeting room.

Somehow I managed to drag blogs and RSS feeds into it towards the end. So hello to anyone who may be reading this blog as a result!

biz/ed podcasts

While I'm on the subject of podcasts I ought to mention biz/ed's excellent weekly series on business issues currently In the News. The latest one (at the time of writing this) looks at whether Airbus or Boeing have made better strategic decisions about the way their market is going.

HBR Podcasts

I see Harvard Business Online are now offering a free bi-weekly podcast called IdeaCast.

My favourite was Episode Four's segment on how to make really great mistakes. I hope this blog is the kind of mistake they're talking about!

Courses: Planning and Designing Technology-rich Learning Spaces

The most inspiring part of this one day JISC course was the tour of the University of Warwick’s Learning Grid. Not just for the flexible layout, although that was an excellent example of it's kind, with tables and chairs, whiteboards and screens that could be positioned to suit whoever was using the space. Not just for the technology-rich environment, with desktop pc’s, space and power for laptops, smartboards, plasma screens and bookable presentation rooms.

For me the highlight was all this plus a deliberate move away from the traditional rules beginning with ‘NO…’! That gave it a very different atmosphere to the usual library or IT resource centre, and it must be even more so in term time.

Most student support is provided by student helpers, rather than librarians or IT staff, so it's largely run by and for students. The emphasis is very firmly on being positive and finding solutions. For example, if the Grid is getting close to full capacity then staff might suggest using the nearby café – also within the wireless network area - or might help negotiate moving furniture around to create a better use of space.

Talking of café’s, cold food and hot and cold drinks are allowed. It seems that many students go to the traditional library (which is still available, and hasn't been replaced by the Learning Grid) to borrow books, then bring the books plus drinks and sandwiches to the Grid and settle in for the whole day. As well as food, talking is allowed. Mobile phones are allowed. Moving the furniture is allowed. Accessing audio and video content via internet is allowed, with or without headphones. Hot food is just about the only thing not allowed, not for worries about it being dropped on the books or equipment, but simply because of the smell that tends to linger. Basically pretty much anything is allowed that helps people to get on with their work the way they want to.

I know it wouldn't be everyone's idea of what a library should be, but I liked it, and it seems like a lot of students do too.

You can take an online tour to see what it's like.

The most uninspiring part of the day? The technology-rich, laptop friendly Virgin train breaking down in Basingstoke on the way home, leaving us going nowhere, in a train with no air-con and doors that wouldn't open (thankfully only briefly) on one of the hottest days of the year!

Podcasting

I suppose it's because CW and I are doing quite similar jobs, in academic libraries on opposite sides of the planet, but it's remarkable how often she blogs about something that I'm trying to get to grips with. We'd decided that July was going to be the month we investigated the possibilities of podcasts, and look what today's entry is! I really ought to comment more often but it might be a bit embarrassing to keep popping up saying, "ooh yes, me too!"

Elit 2006 - light bulb

I thought I'd highlight a few of the 'light bulb moments' from Elit 2006 but then I realised that there was really only one key theme that cropped up in several different sessions.

eliteracy is obviously a key concern of librarians but it is not something that librarians alone can address. It does not fall neatly into any one group's remit. It crosses the boundaries of library, IT, learning technologists, study skills tutors, and lecturers. We all have a tendency to concentrate on and so sometimes to over-estimate the importance of the bit of the process that we know best. We need to get over this and learn to work together in a much more joined up fashion, keeping an appropriate balance between IT skills, information retrieval skills, research skills, thinking skills, skills in analysis, argument and presentation. Someone needs to take a strategic overview and connect up the pieces. This really has to be led by academic staff. When I can do a library training session that fits into a structured course that is looking at all aspects of eliteracy, I find it works much better than if I do a session that is just library training in isolation from the rest of the learning process.

work/life life/work

I wasn't sure where to put this blog entry. It's about writing so maybe it should go on my writing group blog, but it's about work, so perhaps it should go on my work blog. Sometimes life is not so neatly compartmentalised!

I've found that creative writing and ordinary, everyday writing are more closely related than you might think. Since I've been doing writing exercises (fiction and non-fiction) I've found it easier to write anything. I'm not so daunted by word counts. I have an idea how much I can convey in 500 or 1000 words and what kind of structures work. I've some experience of how to write differently when the words are to be spoken aloud, which helped in writing the same paper for delivery at a conference and for subsequent submission for publication.

Having to read out my writing group exercises - something I hated doing at first - has helped to get me used to the idea of public speaking to a wider audience.

I'm pretty sure that blogging contributes to this as well. It's a form of regular writing exercise that helps me focus on how to express thoughts and record events in a reasonably concise format.

eLit 2006 - black hat

I got back from the eLit 2006 conference yesterday and am trying to get some thoughts down in writing as soon as possible. I know that if I go back to my scribbled notes in a week's time I'll end up frowning at them, wondering what on earth I meant. After two or three weeks, if I haven't followed up an idea and done something about it then, realistically, I probably won't ever get around to it. After a conference or training session it's easy enough to be enthusiastic and full of ideas, but doing something about it is another thing.

I want to sort out which of all the many ideas that were discussed would be the most practical to take forward. I know that some, if not most, would involve collaboration with others who have the necessary skills to enable things to actually happen and won't be practical without that. I know that my time is limited and if I try to do too much I'll risk failing to complete anything. I think I ought to set myself a deadline of one month to prioritise things I want to take forward and actually do something about them.

Having blogged that thought, of course it's now date stamped and I can't easily wriggle out of it!

eLit 2006 - yellow hat

eLit 2006 was a very positive experience. It's encouraging to know that I'm part of a profession that can put on events like this where there are not just librarians present but a mix of different people who all have an interest in e-literacy issues. It's good that we can look beyond the boundaries of our traditional roles and think about new ways of working for everyones benefit.

The experience of presenting a paper has helped me extend the boundaries of my comfort zone. I can't say "I couldn't do that" any more, because now I've done it!

There were a huge number of ideas generated by the various sessions, as well as by conversations over breakfast, lunch and dinner. It would be good to make use of some of these ideas. I need to set aside some time at work in the next couple of weeks to go through my notes and extract the best ideas, and to share them with colleagues.

eLit 2006 - green hat

At times during eLit 2006 you could have imagined you were at a creative thinking conference. I suppose the theme of digital literacy tends to attract those who are interested in doing innovative things with all the new technologies that are now available, but people were also finding new ways to use old tools and technologies. Presentations included using mind mapping software to convey complex information previously held in inch thick instruction manuals; using blogs and wikis for collaborative work; providing students with furniture on wheels to organise their own learning spaces; using online discussion lists to encourage cross-gender academic debate in remote areas of the Middle East; using web-based survey tools to gather research data, and using a variety of social networking software in all kinds of ways.

At one point a small light bulb lit up for me when a lecturer expressed the hope that librarians would help the academic staff they work with to keep up with the potential uses of all the new developments that are going on, and how they might be relevant for research and for teaching. I think I could be doing a lot more in this area.

Perhaps we could produce a series of podcasts or a wiki covering how various new tools and technologies could contribute to teaching and learning and research? We know that information like this is more useful if it can be provided at the right time, when it's most relevant to people, rather than en-block in a training session. Podcasting or wiki would suit the rapid pace of change and might be a good way to enable people to access what they want, when they want it.

This is all green hat, blue sky type thinking of course, so I don't have to worry about who 'we' might be or any other practicalities at the moment!

eLit 2006 - white hat

There were around 80 delegates to the eLit 2006 conference from I think I counted 15 countries. They were a mix of librarians, IT, learning support and academic staff, although librarians easily outnumbered the rest. Quite a high proportion of the delegates were also involved in presenting in some way which gave it a strong sense of being a participative event.

Those presenting papers were also invited to submit them for publication in a joint issue of the journals Italics and JeLit, soon to be renamed Journal of Digital Literacy, which will give me the chance of seeing what I missed in the parallel sessions I didn't manage to get to.

eLit 2006 - red hat

Affective reaction and emotion was a theme that came up in the panel discussion and Q&A session at the end of the eLit 2006 conference. It was suggested that sometimes we address cognitive development in isolation, not giving enough attention to how people feel about issues like e-literacy. I found this interesting as one of the issues in the paper I was involved in presenting was that of library anxiety and how this needs to be addressed before we can hope to develop information skills.

In personal terms I had my own anxiety to deal with as I was, along with a colleague, presenting my first paper at an external conference. I had originally said that I was happy to be involved in writing the paper but didn't want to do much, if any, of the speaking. Eventually I decided that it would be good for me to step out of my comfort zone far enough to do some of the actual presenting. It was scary to find myself at the front of a room full of expectant looking conference delegates, but once we got started I realised that it was actually quite fun to have people's attention for a while to talk about a subject that I'm interested in. I was very glad I was not on my own up there though, so I must thank my co-presenter for helping to make it a slightly less stressful and much more enjoyable experience than I'd anticipated it might be!

The atmosphere of the conference overall was one of active involvement and sharing of experience. Some difficult questions were raised and no easy answers were forthcoming, but there was lots of energy going into trying to find ways forward. One presentation summed this up for me. It started as a very proper academic research paper, describing methodology and analysis and so on, but as the presenter got involved in talking about their work with students it was like a light had been switched on, the tone of voice changed, and suddenly you could see and hear the enthusiasm.

eLit 2006 - blue hat

Last night I got back from the eLit 2006 conference in Loughborough with so much to think about that I couldn't possibly do it justice in a single blog posting. So what I thought I'd do is a series of postings based on a Six Thinking Hats structure. This one is the 'blue hat' posting, concerned with the process of how I'm going to record my reflections.

I think this structure will allow me to present a rounded view of my experience of the last three days. I'll try to write something with each one of the hats on, and it will be interesting to see which I find most comfortable!

Multi-skilled

You can never tell what you'll be doing next in this job. I seem to have agreed to do a mind-map ice-breaker session on an Open Day for visiting Further Education college librarians. When exactly did I become qualified to do that? It certainly wasn't at library school! Or while employed by City banks. It's working here that's given me such a variety of unexpected new skills.

Weeding the books

What do university librarians do in the summer time? Dust the books? Go and explore strange and exotic foreign libraries?

One thing we do that I enjoy a lot is we weed the books - and that's not typo, or a lisp. I already said we don't get time to read books. What we do is we weed out and dispose of old books, books that have been replaced by new editions, books that are starting to fall apart from sheer constant use, books that people don't like the look of and so haven't used, books in subject areas that are no longer relevant. I like doing this. I like it so much it probably reveals some personal trait best left unanalysed. I find it very satisfying. Even more so the last couple of years, as our better quality weedings are being dispatched to Rwanda, which makes it a worthwhile job in more than one way.

Taking a breath

There's another book on the pile of books I'd like to read. You might think that a librarian would have time to read a book once in a while. The trouble is that information overload effects us too. Today I had to make several attempts to read one short email. It was the sort of day when your interruptions get interrupted. That's why I'm blogging now. Just occasionally I need to

• stop
  
  
• breathe
  
  
• think

then dive back into the flow again. I think that's one of the main things I get out of blogging - the opportunity for just a few moments reflection now and again.

Reading about searching

There are some interesting books being published lately about that remarkable business success story - Google. Search Me by Neil Taylor, The Google Story by David Vise and John Battelle's The Search are all new in stock this academic year.

Scary things

I keep finding myself standing at the front of rooms full of people lately, doing presentations. It's something that causes me a certain amount of anxiety, which is not surprising, as public speaking is right up there with terrorists, spiders and dentists as something that a lot of people find scary.

Oddly enough, one of the things I was talking about this time was anxiety, specifically library anxiety. Libraries don't make the top 10 most scary things but, rather like spiders, large ones can be daunting.

People tend to deal with anxiety by avoiding the scary thing as much as possible and by trying to appear more confident than they really are, and only admit to being anxious or ask for help as a last resort. (Maybe that's why I spent so much time just outside Bath University library when I was a student?!)

While preparing for this event I discovered that the colleague I was doing the presentation with and I differ significantly in the way we deal with anxiety over this type of thing. I tend to do my panicking earlier on in the process and want to keep on going over the slides and the notes, but I don't get particularly anxious on the day itself. Maybe that's because I'm not a good performer, so I tend to avoid the whole issue of making it into a performance and just read out my notes!

We are going to do a slightly different version of this presentation at a conference next month, and I am trying to wangle it so that I only get a walk on part in that one.

Library open on Bank Holiday Monday

Students have often asked if the library could be open on bank holidays. Well it is going to be open on the one at the end of May. More details here in Library News

Conference papers

When CW over on her blog wrote about getting a conference paper accepted and about the subsequent avoidance of putting pen to pen - or more likely finger to keyboard - I thought it was quite amusing. Until I got an email saying a proposal a colleague and I had send off a while ago had been accepted - suddenly it wasn't so amusing!

We're going to talk about library induction and library anxiety and um... doughnuts. If you want to know more sign up for e-Lit 2006 in Loughborough!

Why time management is a bad thing

I've always had the feeling there was something fundamentally wrong with a time management system that would have you writing out long 'to do' lists and struggling through them. I thought it might just be a personal aversion to 'to do' lists, but now one of my favourite business bloggers has put his fing..., um, I mean paw, on exactly what is wrong with time management.

Business librarians - talking in the library!

It's always interesting to compare notes with people doing similar jobs in different places. Which is what we got a chance to do today, as we hosted a meeting for business librarians from around the local area. As we discovered, 'business' can mean a variety of things, including or not including law, economics, social science, hospitality, advertising and more subject areas.

This was a first meeting of its kind, and so was a fairly general discussion of current issues in the business librarianship field. Subject areas that seem to be of general interest for possible future meetings were induction, ebooks and training (which is lucky as these are some of my particular interests - did I influence this too much I wonder?!)

Being part of the blogosphere has helped me to feel in touch with issues in the international librarian community, but it can sometimes be harder to keep up with what's happening locally! I hope we can make these meetings a regular thing.

British librarians blog

Here's something for the CV - I was one of the first 100 blogging librarians in Britain! There are now 100 members of the British Librarian Bloggers Group.

Budget update

A colleague tells me that details of today's Budget are available from here.

Including a link to DirectGov from where, "You will be able to view the speech live from this page in either Windows Media or Real Player formats, as well as download an audio 'podcast' version for use on your PC or MP3 player."

Just what I wanted!

This is not the only example of high tech government I've seen lately. It seems that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which ran an experimental wiki for a while, now has a blog.

Whatever next?

Paperwork

I seem to be suffering a deluge of paperwork at the moment. Even as I write this someone has just added another inch of paper (a new course validation document) to the pile! I don't know quite why it is, but lately its landing on my desk faster than I can deal with it.

I'm looking forward to my enquiry desk duty later as a chance to get away from it for an hour.

It's a LibraryThing

It's fun being a librarian. And now, with the really rather wonderful LibraryThing - anyone can join in!

A reflective sort of post

It was an 'out of the comfort zone' sort of day today. I think it was good for me, but I wouldn't like it to happen too often. No one bit of it would have been a problem on it's own, but all on the same day was a bit of a challenge.

There was a re-validation of a course in one of my subject areas, which meant that in the morning I showed some of the visiting panel around the library and talked to them about the resources we have in the relevant subject areas. After this a colleague and I gave a presentation about the way we manage our library induction to a group of visitors. Part of the 'out of the comfort zone' of this was that we made a few last minute changes to the slides, (changing some quotes around and adding sound clips!) which is not something I would normally have the nerve to do just before a presentation. It definitely did improve it though, so was worth it. Then there was a short break for lunch and then we did another presentation, this one on Web 2.0/Library 2.0, and what it might mean for us, to some of our own library staff.

Standing up and presenting is a part of the job I enjoy much more than I used to (there was a time when I cringed at the thought of it and didn't enjoy it at all) but it's still not my favourite thing in the world. I would not like to be a lecturer. I generally get more satisfaction from working away quietly in the background to make sure everything is in place for people to come along and take the library resources for granted!

Which is what I hope to go back to doing, except for one small group training session, next week.

Business writing

There's an interesting article in the latest Business Information Review about the importance of creative writing skills (including blogging) in business.

They say KISS stands for Keep It Short & Simple. I was told it was Keep It Simple Stupid, but maybe that was just me?

Library blogging

One of my main inspirations in the world of library blogging is CW and her Ruminations blog. So when she said she was going to do a survey of librarian bloggers I just had to take part. At first I was going to just email the answers. Then I thought, why not blog it? So here goes.

Where do you work?

I work at Southampton Solent University, on the south coast of England. Some people may know it better as Southampton Institute - we only got university title last year (an excuse for many celebrations!)

What's your job title?

Information Librarian (Business Management)

What are your main responsibilities?

Selecting and organising access to business information resources (specifically for the subject areas of management, human resources management, marketing, advertising and public relations)

Providing help and advice on making the best use of these resources (via enquiry desk services, group training sessions, one-to-one research workshops, leaflets, webpages and anything else I can think of!)

Liaising with academic staff to make sure we're providing the right resources for existing courses and are involved in plans for new courses.

Contributing to the overall information team effort with special responsibility for induction and ebooks. I've also got an interest in library innovations (e.g. blogs) I think this dates from a few years ago when I asked to go on a creative thinking course and they let me. I've not been quite the same since, either in or out of work!

How long have you been blogging?

Since June 2005

How did you begin blogging?

I'd read a bit about blogs, and thought there was potential in them, so I decided that the best way to find out what they were good for would be to set one up on a trial basis. In June 2005 I set up ML107 which is my work/professional blog. In July 2005 I added Cabbage Soup for my writing group, then in October 2005 I started miso soup for my daily haiku. In February 2006 another writer set up ukku spring haiku to celebrate the coming of spring and I'm now a co-moderator of that group blog. I seem to be getting carried away!

What do you blog about?

This is more of a problem on my work blog than on my writing blogs as I'm not too sure who - if anyone - reads it, so I'm not sure what I should be blogging about. (On my writing blogs I don't mind/care who reads it - it's just me rambling for my own amusement.) Being unofficial and experimental it has no promotion, other than when I mention it in my training sessions, and only one link - from my profile page under staff contacts.

So far I've tended to blog about courses I've been on, new books and other resources that have come in, databases or reference books I think need a bit more promoting, current issues generally, and things that I am reading or thinking about at work. It's mostly work related, but a few more personal comments creep in occasionally. I think professional blogs need a certain amount of personal content to make them engaging and readable, but obviously not so much that they turn into purely personal journals.

Why do you continue to blog?

It appeals to me as a way of 'thinking aloud' with the advantage of having an automatic archive of past thoughts to refer back to.

I'm interested in writing and I don't see a major difference between creative writing and professional writing. I've had articles published in poetry magazines and I was joint author of one article published in a peer-reviewed librarianship journal (Aslib Proceedings) and the writing process was not all that different, although obviously each have their own styles and conventions that you have to be aware of.

My blogs are very much writing practice. I try to write something, somewhere, every day that I'm not ashamed to make public.

Would you agree that blogging has improved your professional practice?

It certainly encourages timely reflection. For example, when I get back from a course or conference I don't wait for a meeting to report back to colleagues, I blog it right away while the ideas are still fresh in my mind. I then have the blog entry to refer back to if I want to do a more formal presentation.

Being involved in the blogosphere has made me feel more in touch with the professional community, internationally. It's an excellent way of keeping up with current issues - at the moment the whole Web 2.0/Library 2.0 debate in particular. It takes much longer for discussion of this type of topic to filter through to print publication. It's rather like being able to drop in on the chatty bits of a conference for a few minutes every day.

Basically its all about communication, which I think is a good thing, although I have some sympathy with those who groan at the thought of yet more communication! Since I've been using Bloglines I've found it a lot easier to manage the growing the number of blogs I like to keep an eye on, without it taking up too much time.

May I quote your answers for publication?

One of my secret ambitions is to be quoted. (Oops... )

If yes, how would you like the quotes attributed?

I'm happy to be attributed by my real name and blog URLs.

May I email you again for more discussion/clarification?

Certainly.

Oh, and, thanks for encouraging me write a longer blog entry than usual, I'm such a minimalist my entries are usually short-short and I need all the practice I can get at longer pieces.

It's interesting, on reflection, that I wrote this entry on a Sunday (although I've edited it a bit and am posting it on Monday.) I'm still a little wary of spending much work time on blogging, even though, as I said earlier, I do feel it's contributing to my professional development. This is an issue I think I need to reflect on some more. So thanks for bringing that to light too!

Local business information for Southampton

The COBRA database now has local information for Southampton. It's aimed at people planning to start up a small business and has general information such as population figures and local contact information.

What to blog about?

I'm not sure who, if anyone, reads this blog. Or who, if anyone, might ever read it. It's a litle odd having a conversation that has the potential to go on in real time, or to generate a response weeks, months or years later. I've been assuming students and staff of the University are my most likely audience, or possibly fellow blogging librarians of the world. (I know you're out there.) I'd really appreciate some feedback so, if you are reading this, let me know - what should I blog about? Otherwise I'll just ramble on the way I have been so far and hope someone, sometime, might find it useful!

Key business resources - WARC pocket books

There are a series of statistical pocket books produced by WARC that are a really useful source of data, presented in a very user friendly way. Drawn from a range of statistical sources they cover drink, retail, media, lifestyle, finance, and marketing in various parts of the world including Europe, Asia, America, and Canada.

They can be found in the business reference section: turn right as you come through the doors onto floor 1 of the library.