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.]