UKeiG AGM Call for Motions

A reminder that the 29th Annual General Meeting of UKeiG will be held at 13.50 on Wednesday, 13th June 2007 in the Bloomsbury Suite, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG.

Motions for the Annual General Meeting must be sent in writing via post or fax to Christine A Baker, UKeiG Honorary Secretary. Motions must be signed by two members* or associated members of the Group. Motions must reach the Honorary Secretary by Tuesday 1st May 2007.

*The term 'member' refers to members of CILIP who are members of UKeiG.
'Associated member' refers to members of UKeiG who are not members of CILIP.

Christine A Baker
UKeiG Administration/Hon Sec
Piglet Cottage, Redmire,
LEYBURN, DL8 4EH, North Yorkshire,
United Kingdom
Tel & Fax: +44 (0)1969 625751
Email: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

eLucidate Vol 4 No 2 now available

The latest issue of eLucidate, UKeiG's electronic newsletter, is now available on the UKeiG web site

If you are a UKeiG member and have forgotten or lost your user name and password please contact me at karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk. Please include eLucidate password somewhere in your email.

Contents of this month's issue:

Online (Members only)
Essential updates on new online resources by Joy Cadwallader, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Includes updates on Cambridge Information Group, COPAC, Emerald, Intute - Arts & Humanities, JISC News, Macmillan, Natural History Museum, OCLC, Thomson Gale, Wiley

Intranets, (members only)
Who manages the Intranet? By Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd.

Reference Management (members only)
By Tracy Kent, Librarian for Physics and Computer Science, University of Birmingham. This month’s issue covers Manuscript Management Toolset, Cross Ref, RefWorks, new reference software packages, reproducing the references and training options.

Public Sector News (Members only)
Supplied by ALGIS, and compiled by Jane Inman, Technical Librarian, Environment and Economy, Warwickshire County Council. Topics include e-petitions, cull of government web sites, public libraries and online services, parliamentary blogs, information for local government, local authority web sites and UK cabinet papers.

Current Awareness (members only)
Edited by Jan Grogan. Summaries of articles (print and electronic) about information access and retrieval, electronic publishing, preservation, virtual libraries etc.

Meeting report by Stella Dextre Clarke.
Report on the UKeiG meeting on Selecting and Implementing Web and Intranet Search.

Book Reviews
Ambient Findability, Peter Morville. Farnham: O’Reilly Press 2005
Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources Fiona Durrant. London: Facet Publishing, 2006

Press Releases and News (members only)

Internet Librarian International 2007 Call for Speakers Closing Soon

New Realities, Roles and Resources
Internet Librarian International 2007
8-9 October 2007 Copthorne Tara Hotel, London

Call for Speakers
Deadline: 30 March 2007

One week until deadline - submit your proposal now!

Information Today invites proposals for presentations at Internet Librarian International 2007: New Realities, Roles and Resources, taking place at Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK on 8 - 9 October 2007.

They are looking for a mix of papers for conference sessions, workshops and short tutorials with the emphasis on the practical rather than theoretical. They are seeking case studies and proposals about initiatives in your organisation, not product pitches or overviews.

To be considered as a speaker, please submit your ideas at
www.internet-librarian.com/CallForSpeakers.shtml

Nine years after the first Internet Librarian International, it is clear that internet technologies have vastly altered our professional and personal lives. The amount and types of information available in digitised form has increased exponentially, presenting information professionals with challenges in finding, analysing, managing, customising and sharing information. The new realities of electronic research affect everything we do. New roles mean we may not call ourselves librarians and new resources change our approach to research.

It's an exciting, exhilarating, sometimes exhausting world for internet librarians. What has worked in your work environments and what has not? Share your experiences and thoughts with your colleagues during Internet Librarian International this autumn.

Possible topics (but don't let this limit your imagination):

• Web search
• Federated search
• Digital libraries/collections
• Social software and social networking
• Blogs, wikis, podcasts
• Libraries as publishers
• Taxonomies, folksonomies
• Evidence-based librarianship
• Gaming in the library
• Information policy
• Web site usability
• Needs assessment
• Collaborative working
• Text mining
• Internet resources
• Communicating value
• Managing e-resources
• Mobile technology
• Library 2.0
• Open access; open source
• Distance learning, e-learning
• Multimedia searching
• Innovative projects
• Incorporating new technologies Web design
• Content management
• Training and teaching

The Advisory Committee will review all submissions and notification regarding acceptance will be made this summer. If your proposal is selected, the primary speaker will receive a free registration to the full conference, which includes lunches and a reception. The organisers are not responsible for speakers' travel and accommodation costs.

Chairs
Marydee Ojala, Editor, ONLINE, marydee@xmission.com
David Raitt, Editor, The Electronic Library,

Image Management in Bio- and Environmental Sciences: New Directions

Image Management in Bio- and Environmental Sciences: New Directions

to be held at

The John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester
Thursday, 31st May, 2007, 9.30 – 16.30

Workshop Outline
The bio- and environmental sciences cover a broad spectrum from taxonomy to bioinformatics, farming to climate change, with a correspondingly wide range of information resources ranging from historic manuscripts to genomic databanks. Images form an important component of all these and achieving holistic management of diverse resources to allow easy correlation of their information content is challenging, especially for small information units and ‘one-man-bands’. Developing technologies offer new opportunities but can themselves produce new demands in devising effective strategies for their use. This workshop aims to share experiences and float ideas in areas where there are as yet no ‘right answers’!

Details and a booking form can be found on the UKeiG web site, or contact Christine Baker for further details on Tel & Fax: +44 (0)1969 625751, email: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

RSS, Blogs and Wikis - additional date and venue

The workshop on RSS, Blogs and Wikis being run on 27th April, 10th May and 17th May are now fully booked but the event is being re-run in Newcastle on Wednesday, 11th July 2007. Details and a booking form can be found on the UKeiG web site, or contact Christine Baker for further details on Tel & Fax: +44 (0)1969 625751, email: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

Low-Spec RSS Feed Viewer for Mobile Devices

Posted on behalf of UKeiG member Steve Burgess:

In my frustration at not finding a simple RSS Feed Reader that supports HTTP Authentication, I have developed a mini-RSS Feed Reader that I can use on my mobile device. It does work on Firefox/I.E. etc on a standard desktop - but looks a bit rubbish on there as it is really designed for mobile devices. Having said that, it is easier to set up your list of feeds on the PC than it is on the PDA/Mobile.

This is not a full featured application - all it does is display the current feed items with links where relevant. The stylesheet has been optimised for mobile devices (e.g. PDAs and XHTML compliant browsers on mobile phones). It is not a WAP service (if anyone knows how I could make it WAP compliant, I'd be very interested to hear from you). I've tried it on my O2 XDA Mini S and my Nokia N70 and it works fine - haven't tested it on any other devices. Feedback about how (if) it works on other devices would be appreciated.

The system is linked to the My-RSS Feed Generator website (http://www.my-rss.co.uk/). To use the mobile feed reader you must sign up to My-RSS.co.uk - though you don't have to create a feed or log in again after first signing up if you don't want to. If you already use My-RSS, you can easily import a) your own feeds and b) "associated" feeds from My-RSS into your Mobile account by choosing the relevant option from the drop down select box. You can also import OPML profiles produced by other feed reading software.

I developed this because I need to keep track of password protected RSS feeds (non-protected feeds work too, btw) at work and on the move. If you want to make use of it, please feel free.

As I say, I would be interested in hearing from any WAP experts about whether it is a) possible to host WAP sites on a bog standard apache webserver (I do have full root access) and b) whether it is worth doing in any case.

The address for the site is: http://mobile.my-rss.co.uk/ but remember, you
need to be a member of, or become a member of, http://www.my-rss.co.uk/ first.

Any questions, comments or other feedback, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

stevepburgess at gmail dot com

New discussion list for UK bloggers

"LIS-BLOGGERS is a new JISCmail list for UK librarians and information professionals who create, edit or manage blogs for current awareness or user education. It aims to be a discussion forum for the growing number of information professionals who are developing innovative services using blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies."

You can join the list via http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/LIS-BLOGGERS.html