New free resource from EBSCO

EBSCO Publishing has just made LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) available for free - 'available to any library, college/university, K-12 school, hospital, corporation, or other interested party at no cost'. Offering comprehensive (at least from a couple of quick tests on my own name!) coverage and a straight-forward interface, this looks like a useful and valuable new bibliographic tool.
It joins BL Direct and infotrieve ArticleFinder on my Personal Toolbar.

>>Technorati tags: abstracts; bibliographic_databases; EBSCO

>>IceRocket tags: abstracts; bibliographic_databases; EBSCO

European Firefox use hits 20 per cent - vnunet.com

A summary of a report from French internet monitoring firm XiTi Monitor.

Apparently "Finland leads the way with nearly 40 per cent of computer users choosing the open source browser, while the UK languishes near the bottom with just 11 per cent. Germany and Slovenia are the only other countries with over 30 per cent market share for the Firefox browser."

This is confirmed by UKeiG's own web stats that say around 20% of visitors are using Firefox and those for my own site (http://www.rba.co.uk/) which say 15-17%.

UKeiG members can find fact sheets on the advantages of using Firefox and Firefox extensions (plug-ins) at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/members/access/factsheets/index.html

Taming your Intranet. London, 28th March 2006

To be held at CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE, Tuesday, 28th March 2006, 9.30 - 16.30

Course Outline

Taming your intranet is a unique opportunity to share experience with other intranet managers about the challenges and opportunities presented by intranet technology, web-based collaborative working, and enterprise information solutions. Aimed at both newcomers to intranet management, and experienced managers, the course explores the problems of implementing intranet solutions for information management needs.

While highlighting technological possibilities, the course is not focussed on the technology of intranets itself, but on the socio-cultural issues of introducing change, managing content and content creation, and developing a vibrant and useful resource. The course concentrates on transforming intranets into essential aspects of wider information and communications policy. Not just a series of best practices, the course will offer a forum for discussion and reflection on the issues facing intranet managers and designers in creating an essential resource.

Topics to be covered include:

• Getting your organisation to back the intranet
• Making an intranet function effectively
• Turning an intranet around when it has lost momentum
• Managing people - intranet contributors and users, the socio-cultural aspect

Course Presenter: Luke Tredinnick

Luke Tredinnick is a Senior Lecturer in Information Management at London Metropolitan University and Course Director for the MSc on Digital Information Management. He specialises in Intranet and Internet technologies and electronic information management. He is the author of Why Intranets Fail (and How to Fix Them) published by Chandos in 2004, Digital Information Contexts, and Digital Information Culture, due for publication in 2006 and 2007 respectively. He previously worked as Intranet Content Manager and Systems Librarian for a large financial services and accounting firm in London.

To register your interest in this meeting, reserve a place, or request further details, please email meetings@ukeig.org.uk. Further details are also available via the UKeiG website at
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2005_03_28_intranets.html

Ethical Search Engines

Rob Hughes recently posted the following to LIS-UKEIG:

"Given the news about Google today I wondered whether there was a ranking anywhere of Search Engines in terms of their overall ethical approach to their business?"

Any comments via this blog welcome.

RSS, Blogs and Wikis

To be held in the Netskills Training Suite, University of Newcastle. Wednesday, 22nd February 2006, 9.30 - 16.30

Course Outline

Don't know your RSS from your elbow? Haven't a clue where to hang the blogroll? Or are you wondering why everyone seems to be going wild over wikis? Whether you plan to use these new technologies purely as information sources, or intend using them as part of your information delivery strategy, this workshop will guide you through the jargon and demonstrate why you ought to be using these technologies. It will look at how they can be used to manage projects, provide users with current awareness, generate newsletters, and promote your expertise to colleagues, users and clients.

The programme includes:

• RSS, blogs and wikis defined
• Why bother - key applications and reasons for using them
• RSS for current awareness and news alerts
• Identifying relevant RSS feeds and blogs
• Using RSS and/or blogs to market your services and keep your customers/users up to date
• Setting up a blog
• Blogs and wikis as collaborative tools
• Publishing your own RSS feed
• Software comparisons

There will be practical sessions during which you can set up your own personal alerts service using RSS, start a blog, and contribute to a wiki. The techniques and approaches described in this workshop can be applied to all subject areas.

For further information or to book a place contact Christine Baker or go to http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2005_02_22_rss.html

eLucidate Vol 3 No 1 now available

The latest issue of the UKeiG newsletter eLucidate is now at
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/members/access/elucidate/index.html with all
the usual columns:

• Online
• Internet (reports on the Internet Librarian 2005 conference)
• Intranets (looks at the new Intranet Review toolkit)
• Reference Management
• Current Awareness
• Book reviews of: Weblogs and libraries, and the Content Management Bible

eLucidate is available to members only. If you have forgotten or not yet received your password please contact Karen Blakeman (karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk). A PDF of the whole issue has been sent by email to those of you who have requested to be added to the distribution list. If you would like to receive eLucidate in this way (file size varies from 100 to 350 KB) please contact Karen Blakeman.

New award for UKeiG

So UKeiG doesn't just give awards, it GETS them too! And at the same time!

Readers of the January Information World Review cannot have failed to see pictures of our Chair, Gary Horrocks, awarded for his "sartorial elegance" at the Awards ceremony. Congratulations to Gary on this triumph of PR ... and for managing to get himself on three pages of IWR - surely a record!!