One in three businesses uses niche ISP (OUT-LAW.COM)

This Out-Law.com article is a summary of a 28 page report published by Ofcom on what they term 'niche' internet service providers. Niche ISPs are defined as those with fewer than 150 employees and it appears that a third of UK businesses use these, whereas only 5% of consumers use them.

Not surprisingly, the research found that most of the niche ISP business is in serving other small companies: "88% of the ISPs serviced the micro-company market of firms with fewer than 10 employees, while 86% serviced the small company market of firms with up to 30 employees." I say 'not surprisingly' because as a micro business myself and web liaison for UKeiG (which could also be described as micro) I have found that the large ISPs cannot, or rather will not, provide us with the type of service that we require at a price that we can afford. You have to choose from their standard packages and that is that.

The report says that the ISPs themselves believe that it is their small size and approachability which makes them attractive to customers: 34% believed that customers came to them because the technical support was a person on the phone rather than a series of automated systems and long telephone queues. For myself and UKeiG that is only part of the reason. It is true that when something goes wrong, which it rarely does, we get through immediately to someone who understands the technology and is based at the company itself in the UK rather than Outer Mongolia! I had a very interesting discussion a few years ago with a Freeserve support desk "consultant", who was totally lost when he had to deviate from his script and didn't know the difference between SMTP and POP3 mail servers. It took me an hour and a half to escalate my enquiry through the hierarchy before I reached a tech savvy person. Then there was the incident with Pipex who took 3 months to transfer the old UKOLUG domain names to our new ISP, but I digress...

We have found that niche suppliers will happily customise web hosting, email boxes, PHP, SSI etc. and they know what they and we are talking about. A quote from one niche ISP, and which summarises their strengths, says:

"Delivery [is] by fully qualified engineers, not a call centre. We can identify and diagnose the problem and surgically solve the problem in real time."

So who do I and UKeiG use? I use ICUK and UKeiG's Internet and web presence is supplied by Merula. Both have provided excellent service to date, quickly solved the few problems that have arisen - even when it was down to our own stupidity! - and seem to have people in the office 24/7, 7/7, including 7.37 am on one Sunday morning :-)

Finish your RSS feeds!

Found this little gem on Peter Scott's RSS Compendium Blog.

eLucidate Jan/Feb 2007 now available

The latest issue of eLucidate Vol 4 (1), January 2007 is now available to members at
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/elucidate/index.html

This issue's articles include:

Feature Article: Lexis Nexis on Trial
A comparison of LexisNexis and Factiva for providing news alerts from Megan Roberts

Intranets
Making One plus One equal One by Martin White

Internet
Reflections on 2006 by Susan Miles

Online
Essential updates on new online resources from Shirley Parker-Munn

CILIP News
Report from Chris Armstrong on the New Governance Implementation.

Public Sector News
A review of what's new in public sector information resources by Jane Inman,

Reference Management
Updates and what's new from Tracy Kent on reference and bibliographic management services.

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

Meeting Reports - Intranet Forum
Working with sub-editors. A report on the meeting held in London on Thursday 7 December 2006

Book Reviews
Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums
Digital Libraries and the Challenges of Digital Humanities

Information on how to become a member of UKeiG is available at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/join/index.html

Belated greetings for 2007, and a reminder ... :-)

As we have now put behind us the dreaded Monday 22nd January - apparently THE most depressing day of the year according to the pundits - I wanted to wish you all a belated happy and healthy 2007 :-) As a valued member of UKeiG I would like to thank you for your support of the Group throughout 2006, and wanted to remind you to renew your membership for 2007. We look forward to your continued involvement this year and there are many benefits for you to enjoy over 2007. Our e-journal eLucidate, eforums, a great website, fact sheets, an awards and bursaries portfolio, fantastic training and seminars and a great AGM and members’ day lined up for June. There are a number of developments in the pipeline: further enhanced functionality of the website; investigating CILIP validation of the training programme; exploring the viability of a UKeiG conference or residential meeting and exploring partnerships and collaboration with other special interest groups. The UKeiG committee hopes that you will support us in our endeavours. Tell your friends and colleagues to join if they are pondering over their CILIP renewal form. We all know it's worth it :-) Gary

TechXtra expanded coverage

TechXtra, a free service for finding material in engineering, mathematics and computing, has added new sources to its cross-search. It is now possible to search across 31 major collections (over 4 million items) for articles, eprints, technical reports, books, theses & dissertations, teaching & learning resources, the latest industry news and job announcements.

In addition, TechXtra has partnered with GlobalSpec to offer a free Patents and Standards search facility. There are also new, free, trade magazine subscriptions.

The new collections now covered by TechXtra's cross-search include:

• Emerald - TechXtra indexes a subset of Emerald Journals relevant to Engineering & Materials Science. Around 6,000 articles are indexed from approximately 15 Journals. Full text content is available to Emerald subscribers, or by pay-per-view.
  
  
• JORUM - a searchable repository of learning and teaching resources for academic and support staff in the UK. TechXtra indexes around 1,500 JORUM objects. An Athens username and password are required to access the actual resources.
  
  
• Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library - TechXtra indexes a sample subset file from the ICE Virtual Library of papers produced between 1836-1998. Over 5,500 papers are indexed (including the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). Full text content is available by subscription, or by pay-per-view.

These collections join arXiv, CISTI, CiteSeer, DOAJ, Inderscience, IoP, NASA Technical Reports, and many more in the TechXtra cross-search. For a full list of the collections covered by TechXtra, see: http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/index.html?action=collectiondetails

Many new feeds have been added to TechXtra's OneStep News service at http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/onestepnews/ The new feeds include:

• Platts - Nuclear, Metals, and Electric Power news.
• Building Design & Construction News
• IEEE Spectrum
• Brightsurf Science News
• PhysOrg News
• SPIE NewsRoom
• Control Design News
• Wireless Net News

In the majority of cases, the full text of items found through TechXtra is freely available. This includes the 8,000 Australian theses, nearly half a million articles in computer and information science from CiteSeer, items found via ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World), thousands of eprints from arXiv in mathematics and computer science, 300 earthquake engineering technical reports from Caltech Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory Technical Reports, many articles from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), theses and dissertations from NDLTD, learning resources from the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS).

Further information on the new services is available at: http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/news/press-release5.htm

UKeiG Student Conference Award

Every year UKeiG offers support for one or more students' attendance at a professional conference. These include, but are not limited to:

LILAC

Umbrella

Internet Librarian International

Online Information Meeting

Library Information Show

Applications are accepted throughout the year, but should arrive at least 2 months prior to the conference for which support is being requested. Where more than one application for a conference is received, the winner will be chosen from the applications received according to their application letters, which should detail the benefits to be gained from attending the conference, as well as details of the conference (including date and place) and the costs to be incurred.

The grant awarded may not cover all costs. It is a condition of the award that a short 'conference report' is presented for publication in the Group's e-journal, eLucidate. UKeiG reserves the right to withhold the award if no suitable application is received.

Further details may be found at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/awards/student_conference.html

Application letters should be sent to awards@ukeig.org.uk with the Subject line "UKeiG Student Conference Award".

UKeiG Management Committee Elections 2007/8

The following were nominated and seconded for election to the UKeiG Management Committee.

Chris Armstrong (Vice Chair). Proposer: Jane Grogan. Seconder:Shaida Dorabjee

Christine Baker (Hon Sec). Proposer:Chris Armstrong. Seconder:Karen Blakeman

Helen Davies. Proposer:Tracy Kent. Seconder:Karen Blakeman

Jane Grogan (Treasurer). Proposer:Shaida Dorabjee. Seconder:Tracy Kent

Gary Horrocks (Chair). Proposer:Karen Blakeman. Seconder:Claire Pillar

Megan Roberts. Proposer:Claire Pillar. Seconder:Christine Baker

Michael Upshall. Proposer:Christine Baker. Seconder:Lyndsay Rees-Jones

Sheila Walker. Proposer:Alice Laird. Seconder:Andrea Milns

As the number of nominations does not exceed the number of vacancies, a postal ballot was not required and the above are elected to the UKeiG Management Committee with effect from 1 April 2007.

UKeiG Awards - photos

For anyone unable to attend Online Information 2006 last December, and hence unable to be at the presentation of our two awards:

• UKeiG Jason Farradane Award
• UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award

there are photographs of the presentations on the centre pages of Information World Review and on the Online Information Awards pages.

The winner of the 2006 Jason Farradane Award was the University of Warwick Library for the development of The Learning Grid, a revolutionary information and learning service. The blended service is a unique combination of a radical new library design, coupled with ground breaking operating practices, all supported by advanced information literacy training and learning support programmes for students.

The awards committee felt that this nomination strongly upholds the spirit of the Jason Farradane award - a strong desire to promote good information practice to the widest audience through the use of innovative information techniques and approaches. The Learning Grid will directly impact the lives of all students in the University of Warwick but its impact will be felt more widely as other institutions follow their lead across the world.

The winner of the 2006 Tony Kent Strix Award for advancing the field of information retrieval was Stella Dextre Clarke. The award is given in recognition of her sterling work in developing first the Government Category List and then its successor the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary - known as IPSV (or "ippsvee" to its friends). IPSV is now one of the mandated elements of the UK Government's interoperability framework and is used throughout local government and the more enlightened parts of central government.

Stella's expansive expertise in the area of vocabulary is also widely recognised outside government circles. She has played a pivotal role in revising and updating BS 5723 (Structured vocabularies for information retrieval) chairing the working party and building international support for the conclusions. Stella's nomination upholds the spirit of the Tony Kent Strix award - an outstanding contribution to information retrieval - practically focused but grounded in the best principles of information science.

The call for nominations for the 2007 Awards will take place in April 2007. Further details can be found on the UKeiG website at:
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/awards/index.html

Both awards are sponsored by SAGE Publications, a leading international publisher of journals, books and electronic media for scholarly, educational and professional markets.