Jeeves and Teoma Retire

The Ask.com Blog: Another Brand Retirement of Note: Teoma

Jeeves's retirement from Ask Jeeves has been well publicised - the search engine now answers to http://www.ask.com/ or http://www.ask.co.uk/ - but many searchers may be unaware that Teoma has also been put out to grass. You are now redirected to Ask. Ask Jeeves acquired Teoma in late 2001 since when it has been the technology underlying Ask Jeeves. Many of the Teoma features are now in Ask; the only feature that is not is the "Resources", or hubs, pages. Ask say that given that this receives less than a 1% click-rate, they don't think many people will miss it.

If you were put off Ask in the early days do give it another try. It has improved immensely over the last couple of years with some very useful features such as Zoom, which suggests ways of broadening or narrowing down your search. It also has a very good image search option.

CILIP and governance...

... from a "white, middle-class and old" (well, aging) Councillor in response to the correspondence in the March issue of CILIP's Library + Information Update.
Frivolously, I could suggest that Council is aging me faster than I would wish - but I actually want to address a very serious issue that John Pateman raised and to which Bob McKee did not respond: John wrote:

Governance needs to be seriously addressed - current arrangements are too big and expensive. CILIP Council is bureaucratic and intimidating ... It is a comfortable and cosy, exclusive clique ...

In the December Council, I said almost exactly that - and a little more. My view was, and is, that Council is also a broken reed: Council lacks virtually any influence on governance. As the governing body of CILIP, Council should be pro-active in deciding on (i.e. instrumental in originating) policies, strategies and governance. The current over-weighty governance structure makes this impossible and Council is reduced to agreeing on decisions made in advance of meetings by other committees, by the Executive Board, by senior management, etc. Councillors struggle to Council under the weight of a mountain of paper received too late to do anything except skim on the train, and certainly without the benefit of discussing issues amongst themselves prior to the meeting. I called for a review of governance and an improvement in communications ... and I am happy to report that Councillors now have a proper mailing list to facilitate discussions (a specific request from my paper), and that - as readers may have seen in the Gazette - there is to be a Task Force to review all aspects of governance during 2006.
Council is CILIP's governing body - by the end of 2006, I hope that we shall be able to hold up our head to that claim.
I hope that the Task Force will be able to examine the existing hierarchy of governance as well as the roles of Council and all the committees, panels, boards that surround it. One might begin by wondering whether an Executive Board - specifically there to take decisions between Council meetings - is really necessary in an age of instant communications by email and a Council mailing list. My view is that everything that currently makes up CILIP governance should be examined very carefully to determine whether it is performing a useful role ... and if the Task Force decides, and Council agrees, on something that requires a change to the Bye-laws or the Charter, so be it, that too can be changed.
The Gazette (24th February) calls for members (as well as Councillors) to take part in the review of governance, so this is your chance to take part and influence the way your Institute is run. I hope to see some of you there!

>>Technorati tags: CILIP; governance

>>IceRocket tags: CILIP; governance

>>Also posted in: iNG

UKeiG User Names and Passwords

We have just processed the latest batch of Group membership renewals and new members. User names and passwords for the members area of the web site are sent out automatically by email to new members who have supplied an email address (renewed members keep their existing user name and password). Inevitably, some of the email addresses will be out of date or wrongly transcribed, and the percentage of bounces for each batch does vary. This time the failed delivery rate (unknown user, host not found etc) was nearly 50 per cent :-(

If you fall into any of the following categories and have not received your user name and password please contact karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk

1. You are a new member and recently joined via CILIP
2. You are a new member and recently joined UKeiG direct
3. You have renewed for this year (either via CILIP or UKeiG) and have never received a user name and password

Please note that the email address you supply will only be used to send you your user name and password. If you wish to receive the PDF of the electronic journal eLucidate you will have to specifically request to be added to that distribution list.

Karen Blakeman, UKeiG Management Committee

UKeiG Management Committee Election

In accordance with Rules for CILIP Special Interest Groups the following have been elected unopposed to the Management Committee of the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG).
As the number of nominations did not exceed the number of vacancies a ballot was not necessary.

Gary Horrocks - Chair
Chris Armstrong - Vice Chair
Jane Grogan - Treasurer
Christine A Baker - Hon Sec

The new committee, which takes effect on April 1st 2006, is therefore:

Gary Horrocks - Chair
Chris Armstrong - Vice Chair
Jane Grogan - Treasurer
Christine A Baker - Hon Sec
Karen Blakeman - UKeiG Councillor
Shaida Dorabjee - – committee member
Zoe Kelleher - committee members
Tracy Kent - committee member
Claire Pillar -– committee member
Michael Upshall co-opted member, Editor eLucidate

Full details of the committee can be found on the web site at
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/contact/index.html

Google Desktop 3 launched

Google has launched version 3 of its desktop search tool. Some of you are well aware of my concerns regarding earlier versions of the software. Rather than just create an index of the original files on your computer, Google desktop makes text copies of your documents and keeps them in a cache on your PC. It is this cache that Google Desktop indexes. The main problem I have with this is that if you delete the original document a copy remains in the desktop cache. There is a remove facility but it is not straightforward and certainly not foolproof. For many organisations, this may contravene their document retention and/or records management policies and has serious implications regarding data protection and FOI.

Google Desktop 3 goes a stage further and enables you to search for files across all your computers. Great, you might think. If you are on the road and have forgotten to copy a vital document from your desktop machine onto your laptop you can quickly get to it via Desktop 3. Whoa there! In order to do this Google stores your files (web history, cache, office documents, PDF and text documents) on its own servers. That is something I am sure most organisations would definitely not want to happen. In the US the Electronic Frontier Foundation has urged consumers to boycott the software, warning that Google could be forced to turn over the data to the government if subpoenaed, even if the data is stored on Google servers temporarily. Google says that your files may remain on its servers for up to 30 days but several commentators have pointed out that Google's desktop search privacy policy states that if you uninstall the Google desktop, or deactivate your Google account, some data may stay on the Google's servers for up to 60 days.

The feature is turned off by default but I noticed that when I opted to index my Googlemail, the same screen had the Search Across Computers option, which automatically ticked itself when I enabled Googlemail indexing. OK, so you can untick it but one might be tempted to leave it, especially if you have not read the further information or the privacy policy. At least you must have a Google account of some sort to use this feature and need to type the details into Google Desktop, so that is a check against accidentally enabling it.

If you are really interested in desktop search, there are plenty of others around. I use Yahoo, but Copernic and Exalead are also excellent, and I have received good reports on them from other users.

UKeiG Browser Share

Earlier this year XiTi Monitor reported that the Firefox use in Europe had reached 20%. UKeiG's own global statistics seem to back this up. Looking at data covering the last month IE 6 came in top with 63% of our visitors using the browser, but Firefox came a creditable second with 24%. Other browsers included IE 7, Netscape, Opera and Safari.

Developing and managing e-book collections - Newcastle Upon Tyne

Netskills Training Suite, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Newcastle.
Tuesday, 11th April 2006, 9.30 - 16.30

Course Presenters: Ray Lonsdale and Chris Armstrong

Course fee: UKeiG members £150 + VAT (£176.25); others £180 + VAT (£211.50)

Further details and a booking form are on the UKeiG web site Alternatively, contact Christine Baker by email (CABaker@ukeig.org.uk) or phone +44 1969 663749

Course Outline

This course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. The programme will give you the opportunity to explore a range of different e-books including a range of commercially-published and free reference works, monographs, textbooks, and fiction. Examples will include individual titles and also collections of e-books, such as those offered by NetLibrary and Oxford University Press. The course will also facilitate consideration of the new opportunities e-books offer for librarians and users, and the significant collection management and promotional issues which challenge information and library staff.

The course is designed to offer:

• an understanding of the meaning of the term 'e-book'
• a familiarity with a range of commercially-produced e-book from publishers and aggregators
• a familiarity with range of free e-books
• an understanding of the nature of e-books (e.g. reference, textbook)
• an appreciation of the advantages and disadvantages of the medium
• an appreciation of the collection management issues associated with bibliographical control, selection, acquisition, access, licensing, and archiving
• a familiarity with the different ways of promoting awareness and use of the format

In addition to talks by the presenters, the course includes two practical exercises. The first allows delegates to explore examples of online e-books in a structured way. The second comprises an activity in which delegates will be divided into small groups to examine the major collection management, and marketing and promotion issues. A plenary session led by the course presenters will then be held to enable delegates discuss their findings in the light of current research, practice, and the work of the JISC e-Book Working Group.

Inforum - Final Call for Papers

The organisers of the 12 Inforum Conference on Professional Information Resources, to be held on May 23 - 25, 2006 in Prague have issued a final call for papers. If you are interested in presenting a paper, the topics are:

• The Future of Scientific and Technical Information Searching
• Trends & News in the Field of Electronic Information Resources
• Current Trends and Technologies of Digital Libraries
• Web Search News, Wikis, Blogs and RSS
• Open Access - a New Way for the Distribution of Scientific Information?
• Management of Information and Knowledge in the Business Environment
• E-learning and the New Information Technologies in Medical Libraries

Participation of both, researchers and practitioners is strongly encouraged. The first author of the accepted paper will be entitled to free registration. Submissions in the form of abstracts should meet the following requirements and include:

1. Major theme of the paper should be in line with the conference topics and the content should be strictly non-commercial
2. Paper title
3. Abstract of 200 words, in English.
4. Author(s) and/or co-author(s) with names, addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Abstracts should be submitted using using the form on the conference web site http://www.inforum.cz/inforum2006/english/papers3.php

Deadlines

February 13th, 2006: Submission of abstracts
March 8th, 2006: Acceptance notifications will be sent out
April 24th, 2006: Submission of full text's electronic versions

Accepted papers will be published by means of electronic proceedings on the Inforum website.

>>Also posted in: Karen Blakeman's Blog

Factsheet on e-Books

The latest UKeiG Factsheet is now available to members on our website. Written by Chris Armstrong and colleague Ray Lonsdale, the factsheet gives a brief history of e-books, a definition, and answers a series of regularly asked questions about the format - how are e-books read? what is the difference between purchase and licensing? what e-book readers are available? what do e-books offer that print books do not? and so on. There is also a list of e-book publishers and aggregators. The Factsheet on e-books is available at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/members/access/factsheets/index.html. A printed version will be available from the UKeiG stand (S100) at the London Book Fair at the beginning of March, at which the authors will give a UKeiG presentation on "Issues surrounding the collection of e-books in libraries".

>>Technorati tags: ebooks

>>IceRocket tags: ebooks

>>Also posted in: iNG

UKeiG web site back up and running

Apologies to all of you who have been attempting unsuccessfully to access the UKeiG web site over the last 12 hours. As announced yesterday, we have been transferring to a new hosting service and there were a few inevitable hiccups. Email, however, has been flowing freely and we are not aware of any disappearing emails. Many thanks to our new hosting service Merula for their great support.

You might still spot a few problems, the most notable being that the training booking forms may generate an error message. The necessary changes to the anti-spam database are currently being made so we hope to be able to resume normal service very soon :-)