UKeiG Blog

2009 UKeiG Management Committee - Election of Members

2008-08-22T15:23:00.003+01:00

Yes, it's that time of year again - UKeiG management committee elections! Nominations are invited for election to the UKeiG Management Committee for 2009. If you want to help shape the future of UKeiG, do stand for election to the committee. If you are not quite sure about what is involved, get in touch with me, Karen Blakeman at karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk.

You do not have to be a member of the committee to contribute to UKeiG. If you have an idea or a project in mind, or have suggestions for meetings or workshops that you think would benefit UKeiG members, do contact us. The current management committee are listed at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/contact/index.htm l

Details and a nomination form for the committee can be found at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/about/MCNominations2009.html

The UKeiG xWiki is about to close

2008-07-13T14:48:00.001+01:00

The UKeiG xWiki at http://ukeig.xwiki.com/ will be closed down on Monday 28th July. The UKeiG xWiki was always an experiment and we chose xWiki because of the software's flexibility, power and sophistication. It was an interesting experiment and in the initial stages highlighted the importance of controlling access rights at all levels! We succeeded in blocking spam on the main pages but have still not mastered the art of stopping spammers clogging up the user profiles pages :-(

UKeiG is now researching options for a Content Management System for its main web site and our 'spec' includes wiki and blog capability. Our main blog will remain for the time being at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/blog/ and powered by Blogger, and our Wordpress Web 2.0 blog will stay at http://ukeig.wordpress.com/. If you want to download copies of the wiki pages now is the time to do it. We do, though, have a local backup of the content so let Karen Blakeman (karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk) know if you desperately need access to anything.

Digital Lives: New Research Project to Explore the Nation's Digital Memories

2008-07-09T10:12:00.004+01:00

New research project to explore the nation's digital memories.
'Digital Lives' sets to understand how we use computers in our daily lives to capture personal moments and memories
Led by the British Library with University College London and Bristol University

All creators and users of digital information invited to fill in an online survey.

From diaries, letters, jottings and photo albums to blogging, emailing, tweeting and flickr-ing, the digital revolution has affected enormously the ways in which we record our personal lives. These largely born-digital collections will become invaluable in years to come for researchers - from biographers and historians to literary critics and scientists. Currently nobody knows for sure what is happening to this material and whether it can be made available in the future. 'Digital Lives' aims to begin to answer these questions.

Dr Jeremy Leighton John, the British Library's Curator of e-Manuscripts and the Principal Investigator of 'Digital Lives', says: "More and more people are creating, acquiring and holding digital information on their desktops, laptops and hand-held devices. We need to begin to understand the way people capture, maintain and share digital information, the legal and ethical environment in which they do so, including perceptions and realities of ownership, and the impact of new technologies on recording our lives."

The team is now looking for help from anyone who uses computers in their daily lives. There are two ways in which people can participate and help the 'Digital Lives' project:

By completing an online survey at http://www.bl.uk/digitallivessurvey.html The survey looks at the way people currently use their computers to capture their digital lives
By sending in details of technologies and online services relevant for capturing, retaining and sharing digital information to digital.lives@bl.uk

As the custodian of the nation's collective memory the British Library has an interest in enabling future access to digital archives and personal collections created by individuals in the 21st century. The project team has already interviewed a number of individuals such as the
politician Tony Benn, molecular biologist Richard Henderson, playwright, actor and comedian Patrick Marber, digital storyteller and photographer Daniel Meadows, architects M. J. Long and Rolfe Kentish, and geophysicist Martin Siegert.

For further information about 'Digital Lives' please visit
http://www.bl.uk/digitallivessurvey.html or contact Suvi Kankainen in the British Library's Press Office suvi.kankainen@bl.uk

Engaging with the environment: finding quality eInformation resources

2008-06-29T14:49:00.002+01:00

Venue: CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Date: Wednesday 5th November 2008, 9.30-16.30

Course outline

The environment is big news – almost every day there is a story about climate change, waste, a pollution incident or disappearing species. The environment is an emotive issue, and there are many opinions expressed. Where do the facts come from? This workshop will provide you with a starting point – to find authoritative sources of environmental information, help you keep up to date with what’s new and help you work your way through the diverse issues and impacts. It will help sort the wood from the trees!

The objectives of the workshop are to introduce delegates to some of the vast number of sources for environmental information.

The workshop will cover:

Government departments and committees
Influential groups and bodies
News sources
Research

This course is aimed at people who need a starting point for finding environmental information. It will also help people who need to be aware of alternative sources for this information.

Please visit www.ukeig.org.uk for more information, to register your interest in this meeting or to reserve a place; or email meetings@ukeig.org.uk

UKeiG Workshop: Intranet Governance

2008-06-19T13:28:00.003+01:00

Venue: CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Date: Thursday 9th October 2008, 9.30-16.30

Course outline

Most organisations have strategies and policies for just about every aspect of operations, but rarely for the intranet. Intranets have now become essential information platforms, and need to be resourced appropriately.

The objective of this workshop is to set out the key elements of an intranet governance strategy. The workshop will cover:

Making a business case for an intranet
Developing an intranet strategy
Turning a strategy into an operational plan
Creating and managing the intranet team
Supporting the work of content authors
Achieving intranet impact
Developing and undertaking usability tests
Gaining user feedback

As well as copies of the presentations delegates will be provided with a template for an intranet governance strategy. The workshop will include some group work and good opportunities to share ideas and experiences.

Who should attend

Intranet managers who recognise that they need to develop business cases for investment in intranet staff and other resources, or who need to write corporate policy documents for intranet operations.

Course Presenter

The course will be given by Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd. who has a wide experience of intranet strategy issues based on over 50 intranet projects carried out in the UK, Europe, the USA and the Middle East.

For more information or to book a place on this course, please visit http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2008/October/IntranetGovernance.html or email meetings@ukeig.org.uk

eLucidate Vol 5 No 3 now available

2008-06-19T08:34:00.003+01:00

eLucidate Vol. 5 No. 3 is now available at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/elucidate/
Please note: most of the content is available to UKeiG members only

Contents:

Web 2.0 Round-up. Compiled by Karen Blakeman. A regular column summarising postings and news from the UKeiG Web 2.0 blog at http://ukeig.wordpress.com/

Online. This month's column from Joy Cadwallader covers the British Library, Darwin Online, Emerald, Gale, H.W. Wilson, Index to Theses, INTUTE, JISC, JORUM, OCLC, Old Bailey Online, ProQuest and Publishing Technology.

Intranets. Martin White reports on Intracom 2008 in Quebec.

Reference Management and e-Publishing. Tracy Kent looks at what is happening in the reference software world and avoiding plagiarism

Public Sector News. Jane Inman discusses web continuity and local authority web site archiving.

24 Top Business Research Tips from the two UKeiG workshops on business information.

Meeting Report: Practicalities of Web 2.0. Report by Fiona McLean

Meeting Report: Blogs, RSS and Wikis. Report by Matthew Stone.

Current Awareness. Summaries of articles (print and electronic) about information access and retrieval, electronic publishing, preservation and virtual libraries etc.

Press Releases & News: Update on OCLC and Google; Microsoft Book Search winding down; library use of e-books; Sparc and Science Commons; Jewell receives Coutts Award for innovation.

Intranets Forum: dates for you diary

User name and password

Please contact Karen Blakeman if you have lost or forgotten your user name and password.

Corporate/Institutional members

Please contact Karen Blakeman if you are a corporate member of UKeiG and require access to eLucidate by IP address.

Receive PDF via email

Please use our form if you would like to receive a PDF copy of eLucidate by email. If you have previously asked via email to join this list, you do not need to reapply using the form.

Top Search Tips, London June 2008

2008-06-17T12:18:00.002+01:00

I ran another advanced search workshop (Google and Beyond) for UKeiG on June 11th, this time in London. Twenty people attended the event and came up with the following list of top search tips at the end of the day.

1. Use the Advanced Search screen. There are lots of goodies to be found on the advanced search screens: options for focussing your search by file format (e.g. xls for data and statistics, ppt for expert presentations, pdf for industry or government reports); site and domain search to limit your search to just one web site or a type of organisation (e.g. UK government, US academic); and in Google there is a numeric range search.

2. Google Custom Search Engines (Google CSE) at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/. This made its first appearance in the Top Tips from the Liverpool workshop earlier this year. Ideal for building collections of sites that you regularly search, to create a searchable subject list, or to offer your users a more focused search option.

3. See what Google does with your search string.

a) If you use the default search box and Google comes back with odd results, click on Advanced Search to see what it has done with your search terms.

b) If you use the Advanced Search screen and fill in the boxes, see how Google formats the search strategy by looking the search box at the top of the results page. By learning the commands and prefixes you can build more specific searches more quickly on the default search page.

4. Cached copies. Look at the search engines cached copy of a web page if you can’t find your search terms in the document or if the page is nothing like the description in the results list. You will see the version of the page that has been used by the search engine for indexing and with your terms highlighted.

5. Use tools such as Intelways and Zuula for quick and easy access to a wide range of search tools covering different types of information. Enter your search once, click on the tab for the type of resource for which you are searching (video, images, reference, news etc.), and then work your way through the list of search engines.

6. Alacrawiki. The Alacra Spotlights section is a good starting point for evaluated sites and information on industry sectors. It is also a good example of what to look for when assessing the quality of a wiki and how easy it is for anyone to edit the pages. In the Spotlights sections there is no edit option , not even if you register for an account and login. Only the Alacra editors can edit the pages.

7. Open access journals. Google Scholar sometimes leads you to copies of journal articles in institutional repositories and open access journals, but there are also directories of open access journals. For example: http://www.doaj.org/ , http://www.wsis-si.org/oa-journals.html, http://www.abc.chemistry.bsu.by/current/fulltext.htm . This is not my area of expertise so comments on other directories are welcome.

8. Social bookmarking sites. Try social bookmarking sites, not only for creating your evaluated lists of sites but for searching other peoples. For example FURL, Del.icio.us, Connotea, 2Collab . Connotea (owned by the Nature Publishing Group) and 2Collab (owned by Elsevier) are aimed at researchers and scientists.

9. Search results visualisation. Try out some of the newer search tools that present results and search options in a different way. For example Cluuz, Kartoo, Kvisu, Quintura. [Some of the participants specifically mentioned Cluuz and Kvisu].

10. The Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) at http://www.archive.org/ for pages, sites and documents that have disappeared. Ideal for tracking down lost documents, seeing how organisations presented themselves on the Web in the past, and for collecting evidence for a legal case (e.g. ‘passing off’, copyright infringement).

UKeiG Intranets Forum: Web 2.0 at the British Library and theTUC's application of Google Mini

2008-06-15T09:20:00.004+01:00

An informal intranets forum meeting for UKeiG members

Date: Wednesday 25th June 2008 at 10.00 a.m.

Venue: TUC, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS

If you are involved in intranets and would like to meet your colleagues, this informal forum is for you.

Caroline Halcrow of the British Library will talk about the development of internal and external communications at the BL, including their use of SharePoint, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and Facebook.

Ashlee Christoffersen, Intranet/Internet Officer, Trades Union Congress will give a presentation about the TUC intranet’s application of Google Mini.

Pastries and coffee will be provided and the meeting will end at 12.00

Location: 2 minutes walk from Tottenham Court Road tube station.
Map: http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/about_contact.cfm

If you would like to attend this meeting, please contact: Janet Corcoran, Imperial College London Email: j.m.corcoran@imperial.ac.uk

If you are not a member of UKeiG, and would like to come along to this meeting, visit the UKeiG website: http://www.ukeig.org.uk/join/index.html for joining details.

ISKOUK - Sharing Vocabularies on the Web via SKOS

2008-06-15T08:31:00.003+01:00

Posted on behalf of ISKOUK:

Date: 21 July 2008 from 14:00 - 19:00 (registration starts at 13:30)
Venue: University College London, Engineering Faculty, Roberts Building G06, Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre
Cost: 20 GBP (students and ISKO members free!)

We would like to invite you to a half-day event organized by the British Chapter of International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK) entitled "Sharing Vocabularies on the Web via Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)" in London

Predictions for the Semantic Web are heavily dependent on the ability of computers to reason and communicate using controlled vocabularies. SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) development aims to bring forward these capabilities.

Aware of the growing importance of SKOS, ISKO UK in cooperation with School of Library, Archives and Information Studies at UCL has invited a group of experts to introduce this standard, explain its status, potential and scope. Speakers on this event - Alistair Miles, Antoine Isaac, Stella Dextre Clarke, Leonard Will, Nicolas Cochard, Ceri Binding and Douglas Tudhope - are involved in the development and application of SKOS and related standards and are hoping to provoke some interesting discussion.

This event, the third in ISKO UK's KOnnecting KOmmunities series, promises a fascinating glimpse of the future of controlled vocabularies. No one involved or interested in the development, management or implementation of controlled vocabularies can afford to miss it.

For full details on the venue, programme and to book your place at the event visit http://www.iskouk.org/SKOS_July2008.htm.

10 Top Tips for Marketing your Intranet

2008-06-02T15:11:00.004+01:00

Janet Corcoran, UKeiG's Intranets Forum co-ordinator, has compiled a new UKeiG fact sheet on 10 Top Tips for Marketing your Intranet. I personally like number 10: Have some fun…and cakes! This and other fact sheets are in the member's area of the UKeiG web site.

If you have forgotten your UKeiG user name and password, please contact Karen Blakeman (karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk). If you would like to join UKeiG details are available on the UKeiG web site.

Additional date for 'Understanding Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies'

2008-06-02T12:27:00.002+01:00

Due to popular demand Understanding Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies is being re-run on 29th July

Venue: CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Date and time: Tuesday 29th July 2008, 9.30-16.30

For more information or to book a place on this course, please visit the UKeiG web site or email meetings@ukeig.org.uk

Course Outline

Nowadays information comes in from all over the place, in all shapes and sizes. Conversely, the resources we put together need to travel to multiple destinations, perhaps getting repackaged along the way to suit different audiences and contexts. Successful journeys across the networks are achieved by labelling each item and package with metadata.

This one-day workshop will provide an introduction to some widely used metadata schemas (such as Dublin Core, CDWA, e-GMS, IEEE-LOM) and discuss how to adapt and exploit them for our own needs. It will also explore the different types of vocabulary (taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc.) that may be used for labelling the subject content of our resources. We’ll be
looking very practically at how to handle the vocabulary tools, in order to achieve integrated information management. Examples and exercises will be drawn from public and private sector applications.

The course will include a combination of presentations and practical exercises, with participation encouraged and plenty of opportunity for questions and answers.

Who Should Attend

Anyone who is planning efficient ways of managing information flows around the organisation should attend. Likewise webmasters who want to maximise the impact of the resources on their websites, especially by presenting them so that users can find what they want and external portals can harvest the information. Effective implementation of metadata relies on cooperative
working between information professionals and their information technology colleagues, and it is good to have both sides of the house represented.

Course Presenter

A Fellow of CILIP, Stella Dextre Clarke is an independent consultant who specialises in the design and implementation of controlled vocabularies for private and public sector clients. While working with the Cabinet Office, she played a key role in development of the UK’s e-Government Metadata Standard and built the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary which forms part of it. In 2006 she won the Tony Kent Strix Award (sponsored by UKeiG), for
outstanding contributions to the field of information retrieval.

UKeiG AGM

2008-05-25T09:16:00.002+01:00

A reminder that the 2008 UKeiG AGM will be held on June 12th at SOAS, Bloomsbury Suite, Brunei Gallery, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG at 13.50. A PDF of the AGM papers is available at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/agm/. If you are attending the AGM, please bring a copy of the papers with you.

Karen Blakeman
UKeiG Honorary Secretary
mailto:karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk
t: +44 118 947 2256 f: +44 20 8020 0253 m: +44 7764 936733
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/
http://ukeig.xwiki.com/
http://ukeig.wordpress.com/

UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP
Registered Charity Number: 313014

Top Search Tips - May 2008, Liverpool

2008-05-21T12:47:00.001+01:00

UKeiG's recent Liverpool Internet search workshop was filled to capacity. It was a packed day with a significant amount of new content and plenty of time for participants to try out the tools and techniques for themselves. At the end of the day they were asked to compile a list of their top tips. There were the usual suspects but the Google Custom Search Engine was new. It is the first time that we have covered Google CSE in the workshop and it generated so much interest that UKeiG will be producing a fact sheet on it. The full list of top tips is as follows:

1. Use the 'site:' command to search individual web sites that have appalling navigation and useless site search engines.

2. Search for file formats to narrow down and focus your search. For example search for Word documents or PDFs if you are looking for government or industry reports; xls for data and statistics; ppt or pdf for presentations.

3. Try something else other than Google. Have one Google free day or hour a week. Change the home page in your browser if it is set to Google.

4. Use the OR command in combination with the site: command to search more than one site or type of site. For example,

"carbon emissions trading" filetype:ppt site:ac.uk OR site:gov.uk

5. Don't believe all you see, especially when it comes to people searches and mashups. [Mashups combine information from several different sources to produce a single new resource.]

6. If the information is critical, always cross and double check the accuracy of the information with independent sources.

7. Books are still relevant. For example, if you are new to a subject or industry sector try and find an introductory text that can help you with the terminology. They are also excellent for historical information. As well as Amazon, try Google Books (http://www.google.com/books/) for older texts, and Live Books (http://search.live.com/books/).

8. Use services such as Zuula or Intelways to remind you of the different types of information that are available and their appropriate search engines. Type in your search once and click on the search tools one by one.

9. Build your own Google Custom Search Engine for collections of sites that you regularly search, to create a searchable subject list, or to offer your users a customised, more focused search option.

10. Try good old fashioned Boolean. Yahoo, Exalead and Live support AND, OR, NOT and 'nested' searches, but don't go overboard. Remember to type in the operators as capital letters. otherwise the search engines will ignore them as stop words.

11. Make use of proximity searching.

a) Double quote marks around your search terms to force a phrase search works in all of teh search engines. For example

"carbon emissions trading"

b) In Google, use the asterisk (*) to find your terms separated by one or more terms but close to one another. There is no information in the help files on the maximum separation. Increasing the number of asterisks is not supposed to make a difference but it does and it appears that one asterisk stands in for one word.

c) The Exalead NEAR command finds words within a maximum of 16 terms within each other. You can control the degree of separation by using NEAR/n where 'n' is a number specified by you. For example

climate NEAR/3 change

12. Try social bookmarking services to track down other people's research lists on a subject. For example del.icio.us, Furl, Connotea, Citulike,

13. If you are looking for formatted files search Yahoo as well as Google. One participant tested several searches on both and found that Yahoo consistently came up with more. This could be due to different coverage of the two services but is more likely to be down to the fact that Google indexes the first 100K of a document but Yahoo indexes 500K. [Karen Blakeman comments: also search in Live.com. I recently found two unique documents via Live.com that contained vital information on a company that I was researching].

14. The Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) at http://www.archive.org/ for pages, sites and documents that have disappeared. Ideal for tracking down lost documents, seeing how organisations presented themselves on the Web in the past, and for collecting evidence for a legal case.

15. Partially Answer your question in your search strategy. For example

"A hippopotamus can run at"

UKeiG Intranets Forum - can you demonstrate your intranet?

2008-05-18T08:04:00.002+01:00

UKeiG Intranets Forum is hoping to host an afternoon at Imperial College for members of the Intranets Forum to look at other members' intranets in an informal environment.

The event would take place in one of the PC clusters in Imperial's newly refurbished library.

Members of the forum would demonstrate their intranets on PCs, either by accessing them online or via screenshots / presentations. Attendees will have the opportunity to mill around and look at the demos as they wish, rather like an exhibition.

Refreshments will be provided.

Please get in touch with Janet Corcoran if you would be willing to demonstrate your intranet at this event or if you would be interested in attending the event.

Janet Corcoran
Imperial College London Library
j.m.corcoran@imperial.ac.uk

Note: The UKeiG Intranets Forum is a free, informal event for UKeiG members who work with intranets, set up to enable those who work with intranets to meet those colleagues who work in the same area as them.

SharePoint 2007 for Intranets and Web Sites - Fully Booked

2008-05-14T11:37:00.002+01:00

Please note that the SharePoint 2007 meeting being held on 15th July is now fully booked.

UKeiG intranets courses

2008-05-14T08:30:00.002+01:00

You can find more information or book a place on these courses at on the UKeiG web site or by emailing meetings@ukeig.org.uk. Already know the subject inside-out? Maybe someone else in your organisation would benefit from the top quality training UKeiG provides.

SharePoint 2007 for Intranets and Web Sites
CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Tuesday 15th July 2008, 9.30-16.30

The objective of this seminar is to outline the benefits and challenges of MOSS07 implementations so that intranet and web managers are better prepared to discuss these with colleagues in the IT department in developing a business case and implementation plan for using MOSS07.

The course will commence with a comprehensive introduction to MOSS07 which will provide an independent assessment of how to get the best out of MOSS07. This will be followed by a presentation on the search application that is included in MOSS07 and also the new Search Server 2008 Express. There will be a series of case studies of MOSS07 implementations, and the day will conclude with a Q&A Session.

Intranet Governance
CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Thursday 9th October 2008, 9.30-16.30

Most organisations have strategies and policies for just about every aspect of operations, but rarely for the intranet. Intranets have now become essential information platforms, and need to be resourced appropriately.

The objective of this workshop is to set out the key elements of an intranet governance strategy. The workshop will cover: Making a business case for an intranet; Developing an intranet strategy; Turning a strategy into an operational plan; Creating and managing the intranet team; Supporting the work of content authors; Achieving intranet impact; Developing and undertaking usability tests; Gaining user feedback.

UKeiG has the CILIP Seal of Recognition, which recognises high standards in the content and relevance of training courses. See http://www.cilip.org.uk/qualificationschartership/seal/ for details.

CILIP Council Briefing - April 2008

2008-05-12T16:56:00.002+01:00

For UKeiG members who are also members of CILIP here is the latest news from CILIP Council via Chris Armstrong. Note that there is a new Council Matters Blog and that Council papers and minutes are available on the CILIP Web Site, but you have to be a CILIP member to be able to access them.

Date: 30th April 2008:

The new Council met yesterday for the 4th time, and it was agreed that this briefing which appears on our blog and forum, should also be forwarded directly to Groups and Branches. Here, as agreed, is a short report on our current work. In due course, members will be able to read
the full Minutes on the CILIP website.

In my introductory blog post, I set out the dates for future meetings – in June we are in Cardiff as guests of CILIP Cymru and it now looks as if we may have second out-of-London meeting – we are trying to organise the September meeting in Liverpool.

We had a very full agenda yesterday; what follows are notes on the most important business covered.

Following earlier discussions, an International Task and Finish Group has been set up with 6 members.
Council has been aware of concern from Groups and Branches as to their access to members’ details and this issue was discussed sympathetically and at length in the light of the project already underway to improve the ICT infrastructure – CILIP has new Database and ICT Managers in post, and an ICT Project Board with agreed terms of reference has already met twice. (There is a short report by the Project Board in the CILIP Update which members will receive this week.)
In previous years there has been preliminary (and unfinished) work to unify Branch and Group Rules, and the Governance Task Force and Implementation Group recognised that this would remain a requirement under the new governance. Council has now set up a small Task and Finish Group to work on this – ‘plain English’ and consistency are to be the key words.
A second Task and Finish Group has been set up to consider all of the issues surrounding future funding for Branches and Groups, to report back in July or September.
Work on a Corporate Communications Strategy is progressing and the May Council will receive a scoping document for discussion.
In previous Council meetings, the *Framework of Qualifications and Accreditation Review* (FoQA – see http://www.cilip.org.uk/qualificationschartership/foqareview.htm) was established with a Steering Group, which has now had two meetings and is liaising with the ICT Project Board as some of the FoQA requirements will have ramifications for ICT. A dissemination strategy for the Group’s report has been agreed.
The Encompass Initiative: Towards an Inclusive Profession – picking up on threads in the CILIP Corporate Plan – was presented and a pilot Positive Action Training Scheme for Public Libraries in England was approved unanimously by Council.
Colleagues will recall that under the new governance structure the Policy Forum is – as its name implies – the source of policy recommendations, and Council received, through the Forum’s Chair, CILIP Vice-President Peter Griffiths, recommendations following from their first meeting. Council was unanimous in adopting a Policy Statement on Libraries and Learning; and in approving an Action Plan to Support Learning and work to establish an appropriate evidence base.
Councillors have been concerned that they should receive appropriate training as Trustees of CILIP and work has begun to develop a programme of training for this and future Councils.
Finally, Council reviewed and approved ongoing work being undertaken in the area of professionalism in the profession.

This is a necessarily brief overview of the main points discussed yesterday. I hope colleagues find it useful.

Chris Armstrong
National Councillor (CILIP)

Online Information 2008 - Call for speakers

2008-05-12T10:26:00.002+01:00

Online Information Conference
2-4 December 2008
Olympia Conference Centre, London
http://www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Deadline for submissions extended to Friday 16th May

The theme for Online 2008 is "Information at the heart of business", focused on helping business, academia and government survive and prosper in the first real recession of the digital age. Topics covered are:

Understanding enterprise 2.0
Impact of Web 2.0 in organisations
Understanding behaviours for improved service delivery in the digital age
Information dynamics and information logistics
Digitisation and digital rights management
eDiscovery - the new search
Information structuring for improved sharing, management and access Library & publishing developments
Information professionals surviving in the new age

View the conference themes in full at
http://www.online-information.co.uk/online07/conferencethemes.html

Online Information is looking for exemplar cases from around the world - organisations that transformed their business to be information agile and flexible - fit for any digital challenge. Of particular interest are lessons learned one year on from the implementation of web 2.0 tools
in the work place.

To submit a speaking proposal visit the Online Information web site

UKeiG workshop (Liverpool):Searching the Internet - Google and Beyond

2008-05-09T15:53:00.003+01:00

Due to a last minute cancellation we now have one place available on our workshop 'Searching the Internet: Google and Beyond'.

Venue: The Foresight Centre, University of Liverpool, 1 Brownlow Street, Liverpool

Date and time: Friday, 16th May 2008, 09.30 - 16.30

Workshop outline:
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2008/May/beyondgoogle.html

Please contact Christine Baker if you are interested in attending.
Tel & Fax: 01969 625751 +44 1969 625751
Email: CABaker@ukeig.org.uk

Further details:

With the major search engines claiming coverage of over 20 billion web pages in their databases, it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate relevant information. Most of us head straight for Google when we want to search the Internet but Google is not the only search tool, and the competition is hotting up. This workshop looks at recent developments at Google and the alternatives, especially the new kids on the block and Web 2.0 'stuff'. There will be advice on locating serious blogs, RSS feeds, audio, video and podcasts of news broadcasts and interviews. Karen Blakeman will take you through the best of the search engine world and highlight how they can be used to significantly improve your results. By the end of the day, participants will have a vital toolkit to help them search more effectively, including key search tools, comparisons, top tips and essential search techniques.

Topics to be covered include:

* different types of search tools and how they work
* making the most of Google and new features
* alternatives to Google
* advanced search techniques to help you track down the "hidden web"
* image, audio, video and news
* Blogs, RSS, wikis and Web 2.0 resources
* tracking down pages that have disappeared

Participants will have ample opportunity to test out advanced search techniques and to compare different search engines. A significant part of the day will be taken up with practical sessions; exercises will be provided but delegates are free to try out searches of their own. This workshop is suitable for all levels of experience. The techniques and approaches covered can be applied to all subject areas.

Course Presenter: Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman has worked in the information profession for over twenty years and has been a freelance consultant since 1989. Her company (RBA Information Services) provides training and consultancy on the use of the Internet, and on accessing and managing information resources. Karen writes for "Business Information Searcher.” She also publishes a monthly, electronic newsletter called "Tales from the Terminal Room.” Her publications include "Search Strategies for the Internet,” now in its sixth edition. She is a Fellow of CILIP and in 2002 she received the Information World Review Information Professional of the Year award.

ISKO UK - Agenda for Information Retrieval

2008-05-01T17:15:00.004+01:00

The British Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK) is holding an open meeting entitled 'Agenda for Information Retrieval'

Date: 26th June 2008 15:00 - 19:00 (registration starts 14:30).

Venue: University College London, Engineering Faculty, Roberts Building G06

Cost: 10 GBP (ISKO UK members free)

Searching, browsing, and other routes to information are no longer the preserve of information professionals; they are on every desktop, at the fingertips of almost anybody. “Search” has become part of the everyday lifestyle.

Three eminent speakers Brian Vickery, Stephen Robertson and Ian Rowlands will address the issues that have dominated the information retrieval agenda since the 1950s, and still present challenges and opportunities for the future. This ISKO UK event is organized in cooperation with UCL's School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (SLAIS).

For full details on the venue, programme and to book your place at the event visit http://www.iskouk.org/AgendaIR_June2008.htm

Top Business Research Tips (2)

2008-04-11T08:47:00.003+01:00

Yes, it's another Business Information workshop Top Tips. This one was a rerun of the UKeiG event held on 2nd April, 2008. The participant mix was half private, half public sector. At the end of the day they were asked to come with a list of top sites and search tips. Between them, those attending the workshop spent half the day trying out hundreds of web sites - some of them not even mentioned by me. This is their collective list of sites that they felt were worth considering as key resources. In some cases I have also included the comments from the people nominating the site. It is interesting that there are only two sources that appear in both lists, and one of them does not really count: it was my own site, from which some of the course notes were derived so you might consider the delegates to have been brainwashed!

Silobreaker.com http://www.silobreaker.com/. One of the two sites that appears in both the April 2nd and this list. A relatively new service pulling together information from newspapers, journals, blogs, video and audio. In addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool that was singled out by several workshop participants as being particularly useful.
OFFSTATS http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ The new set of web pages for the University of Auckland Library providing information on Official Statistics on the Web and at a new address. An excellent starting point for official statistics by country and subject/industry. As well as the makeover, there have been many additions to the collection of resources.
Research Wikis http://www.researchwikis.com/. This is a wiki covering market and industry data that is in the public domain; several workshop delegates commented that it looks promising. The content is variable in quality. Some reports are highly structured and detailed while others are just a "stub", many are US biased, and the sources of the data are not always cited. Nevertheless, the reports do give you an idea of the issues affecting the sector and the terminology that is used. One of the University based delegates thought that the site's recommended structure and headings for a report would be useful to students who are new to carrying out industry and market research.
Bureau van Dijk's (BvD) "A Taste of Mint" http://mintportal.bvdep.com/ A free directory from BvD giving basic information on companies world-wide. Comment from one experienced researcher: "It found the company I have been looking for when every other directory has failed!"
Google Finance http://www.google.co.uk/finance/, http://www.google.com/finance/ [This was not covered in the 2nd April workshop. Until now, it has been so awful and unreliable hat I have ignored it]. This is a possible competitor to Yahoo Finance. It has been steadily improving over the last 18 months since its initial launch but still does not quite have the authoritative "feel" of Yahoo Finance. Also it does not appear to have the individual stock exchange coverage of Yahoo. It does, though, beat Yahoo when it comes to the share price graph and historical downloads options. The share price graphs are 'annotated' with labels at the appropriate time on the graph and these link to news articles that are listed to the right of the graph. Yahoo Finance's downloadable historical share price data in figures goes back 5 years: Google's goes back to 1996.
Google News. For the UK go to http://news.google.co.uk/ but there are a plethora of country versions. Good coverage of the last 30 days of free world-wide, national, local and industry news resources. One workshop participant said that Google News found a breaking story that the industry press and her subscription services had not yet picked up.
The Wayback Machine - The Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/. The Wayback Machine takes periodic snapshots of the Internet. Ideal for seeing how a company portrayed itself on the Internet in the past and for tracking down sites, pages or documents that have disappeared.
Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ a Custom Google Search Engine that searches across the UK’s major national newspapers: The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The People, News of the World, The Scotsman, Daily Star, The Telegraph and The Times. It also searches the BBC News web site, ITN and Sky. There is a review of Chipwrapper on my blog at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2007/12/29/chipwrapper-search-uk-newspapers/
UK National Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ We will not go into the confusion users suffered when UK government official statistics web sites were re-organised on 1st April 2008 [No, it was not an April Fool's]. Work your way through the new menus and you will eventually end up on the on the old statistics.gov.uk pages. Even without the frequent design changes, the site can be difficult to navigate. Nevertheless, there is an incredible amount of good quality data here. For the web based 'stuff' and formatted documents (PDF. DOC, XLS, PPT) it is often easier to go to the Google Advanced Search page, type in your terms in the search box at the top of the page and in the 'Search within a site or domain' box type in statistics.gov.uk . If you want to look for specific file formats, select the file extension from the drop down menu under 'File type'. The 'Time Series' data have to be search from within the statistics.gov.uk site itself.
Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/. The UK official companies registry. This is the closest you can get to the original company documents that a registered company has to file. Some information is provided free of charge (Use the Webcheck service). Documents are charged for on a pay as you go basis.
RBA Sources of Business Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/. Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers.

Top Business Research Tips

2008-04-04T13:37:00.001+01:00

Twenty-one enthusiastic researchers attended UKeiG's Business Information workshop on April 2nd in London. They came from a wide range of sectors and types of organisation, and when asked to compile their Top 10 tips they came up with 15! Here they are, in no particular order of importance:

1. FITA Import Export Business and International Trade Leeds. http://www.fita.org/. The "Really Useful Links" in the menu on the left hand side of the screen takes you to a range of international sources on business information. One participant of this workshop found the "Doing business", and in particular in the Middle East, especially useful.

2. Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/. An interface to a plethora of statistics on web sites world wide. Some of the statistics are 2-3 years old but there are links to the original site so that you can search for more up to date information. Several participants suggested that this site is a good 'index' of where data is likely to be found.

3. Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/. One of several blog search engines, but this was singled out for its Trends graphs. These show how often your search terms are mentioned in posts over a selected period of time. In a business context the occurrences will usually match reports in the mainstream media. When they don't, click on the peaks in the graph to see what is going on behind the scenes. Superb for picking up on rumours and gossip.

4. Yahoo Finance. Go to any Yahoo and click on the Finance link. For the UK version go to http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/. Yahoo Finance provides basic information on stock exchange quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information (delayed by 15-30 minutes) provided by the stock exchanges; company profiles; charts in which you can compare the company share price with another company, the sector and an index such as the FTSE 100; current news on the company and focussing on the regulatory news; and daily historical share prices as figures that can be downloaded to spreadsheets.

5. Freepint Bar http://www.freepint.com/. Head for the discussion area, labelled as the Bar, where you can post your query and tap into the knowledge of regular 'tipplers'

6. Silobreaker. http://www.silobreaker.com/. A new site pulling news from the usual newspapers and journals, but also blogs, video and audio. In addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool, which was singled out by one participant.

7. Contact a relevant research, trade or professional body for help in locating experts. sources of information and reports. They may not have anything on their web site but there may something 'on file' that they are willing to supply free of charge or for which they are prepared to negotiate a fee.

8. Intelways. http://www.intelways.com/. An interface to many search tools grouped by type e.g. news, video, image. Type your search terms in once and click on the different search tools one by one. A reminder of the different types of information that you should be looking at and of the wide range of search engines that are out there.

9. Click on the Advanced Search option for any of the tools that you encounter, be it Google et al or a web site's own search option. They offer great ways of focussing your search by date, file format, site, author etc.

10. RBA Business Souirces. http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/. Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers. Yes, it is my own site [blush] but they did insist!

11. Phil Bradleys' web site and blog. http://www.philb.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/. Excellent sources of information on Web 2.0 'stuff' and search tools. In particular, his blog has no-nonsense reviews of new search tools that claim they will change the world of search.

12. Intute. http://www.intute.ac.uk/. Forget about the ac.uk label. This is an excellent starting point for anyone working in business and wanting to identify quality resources on a wide range of subjects and industries.

13. Hometrack. http://www.hometrack.co.uk/. This site provides key statistics and data on the UK housing market and financing of that market. Especially relevant in the current economic climate.

14. Alacrasearch. http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch. A Google custom search engine that focuses on business sites selected by Alacra. [A personal note: this is in my top 5 favourite search tools].

15. CIA World Factbook - country profiles. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factboo/. Key statistics on every country. For those of you of a more adventurous disposition when it comes to travel, it even includes the number of airports with unpaved runways.

SharePoint 2007 for Intranets and Web Sites

2008-04-01T14:45:00.003+01:00

Venue: CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Date: Tuesday 15th July 2008, 9.30-16.30

Course Outline

Many organisations with a strong commitment to Microsoft are moving to implement MOSS07 as a general-purpose intranet/collaboration/document management application. This is often as an upgrade to SharePoint Server 2003 but also as a new application. As a result, intranet and web managers are increasingly under some pressure from their organisation to migrate their web site or intranet to MOSS07.

The objective of this seminar is to outline the benefits and challenges of MOSS07 implementations so that intranet and web managers are better prepared to discuss these with colleagues in the IT department in developing a business case and implementation plan for using MOSS07.

The course will commence with a comprehensive introduction to MOSS07 which will provide an independent assessment of how to get the best out of MOSS07. This will be followed by a presentation on the search application that is included in MOSS07 and also the new Search Server 2008 Express. There will be a series of case studies of MOSS07 implementations, and the day will conclude with a Q&A Session.

As well as copies of the presentations delegates will be provided with a checklist of the key issues that need to be considered and resolved, and a list of resources on SharePoint implementation.

Who should attend

Intranet and web managers who are considering either upgrading web applications from SharePoint Server 2003 or migrating from their current content management applications to MOSS07. No technical knowledge of SharePoint will be required.

Course Presenters
The course will be presented by Janus Boye http://eng.jboye.dk/ the author of the CMSWatch Enterprise Portals Report and a European authority on SharePoint. The presentation on search applications will be given by Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd.

Further details and a booking form are on the UKeiG web site.

UKeiG AGM - Motions

2008-03-31T09:50:00.001+01:00

The UKeiG AGM will be held on June 12th 2008 in the Bloomsbury Suite, Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG. Time:13.45.

If a member wishes to put a motion to the meeting, notice of the motion must be made in writing, signed by the member, and delivered to the Group Honorary Secretary, Karen Blakeman by Wednesday, 14th May 2008.

Honorary Secretary contact details:

Karen Blakeman
88 Star Road
Caversham
Reading
Berkshire
RG4 5BE
Tel: 0118 947 2256
Fax: 020 8020 0253
email: karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk

eLucidate Vol 5 No 2. March 2008 now available

2008-03-30T09:00:00.003+01:00

The March issue of eLucidate is now available at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/elucidate/. Please note that most of the articles are available to UKeiG members only.

This month's contents include:

10 Top Tips for Marketing your Intranet. Janet Corcoran

Web 2.0 Round-up. Karen Blakeman. A new regular column summarising postings and news from the UKeiG Web 2.0 blog at http://ukeig.wordpress.com/

Online. This month's column from Joy Cadwallader covers BBC Motion Gallery, Ebrary, Emerald, Harvard University, JISC, OCLC, OVID, Oxford University Great War Archive, ProQuest, Reed Elsevier, Thomson Scientific,

Internet - What's that coming over the hill?. Susan Miles comments on the fifth "Horizon Report" by the New Media Consortium.

Reference Management and e-Publishing. Tracy Kent looks at referencing and the coat of many colours, or how open are your references?

Public Sector News. Jane Inman.

UKeiG Intranets Forum meeting report, 5th February 2008. Deanne Mitchell.

Meeting Report: Information Law for Information Professionals. Karen Blakeman

Current Awareness. Summaries of articles (print and electronic) about information access and retrieval, electronic publishing, preservation and virtual libraries etc.

Press Releases & News: Update on DRIVER; CLOCKSS Works

User name and password

Please contact Karen Blakeman if you have lost or forgotten your user name and password.

Corporate/Institutional members

Please contact Karen Blakeman if you are a corporate or Institutional member of UKeiG and require access to eLucidate by IP address.