e-books - Special issues of Program

The Emerald journal, Program, has produced an issue dedicated to e-books, with several articles about managing e-book collections in UK libraries - case studies, etc. The table of contents for Volume 41, Issue 3 can be found at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/....

As usual all the articles (plus a load of other recently added stuff) can be found on Writings about e-book publishing, 2007.

CILIP Governance and Privy Council

Colleagues will be pleased to read the following e-mail from Bruce Madge, Chair of the Governance Implementation Group:

We have had the very good news that the Privy Council have accepted our revised Charter and Byelaws with a couple of very minor amendments mainly of a confirmatory nature. These will be amended by our solicitor on his return from holiday. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of GIG who worked very hard to achieve this. Bruce - Chair of GIG

eLucidate Vol 4 No. 4, July 2007

The latest issue of UKeiG's electronic newsletter eLucidate is now available at
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/members/access/elucidate/index.html

If you have forgotten or lost your UKeiG user name and password, contact karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk

Contents include:

UKeiG Management Committee Annual Report. Incorporating the UKeiG Councillor's Report January 2006 - December 2006

Report on the UKeiG Annual Seminar: Riding the waves or treading water?
Confronting the challenges of a volatile electronic environment. Report by Fiona McLean

Feature Article - Referencing in the 21st Century: the LearnHigher website. By Colin Neville (c.neville@bradford.ac.uk)

Online - Updates from Joy Cadwallader, University of Wales

Internet - Do you have a Second Life? By Susan Miles

Intranets - Just how networked are you? from Martin White, Intranet Focus. How to contact, and stay in touch with other members of your organisation.

Reference Management Edited by Tracy Kent,Librarian for Physics and Computer Science University of Birmingham t.k.kent@bham.ac.uk

Public Sector News - Guidelines for Official Publications in Local Authorities by Jane Inman.

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

Meeting Report - RSS, Blogs and Wikis. Report from Mark Bargon on the UKeiG one day event held in Edinburgh.

Meeting Report - Image Management in Bio- and Environmental Science: New Directions. Report from Anne Costigan on the UKeiG one day event held in Manchester.

Intranet Forum Report: 7 June 2007. Report from Roshan Khan.

Press Releases & News

Have you experienced "data lock-in"?

Posted on behalf of Martin de Saulles:

Have you experienced data lock-in issues with any Web services?

I am currently writing an article on the issues of data lock-in with Web services such as blogs, wikis, social networking, content management and collaborative tools. I am interested in conducting some short interviews (you can choose to remain anonymous) with anyone who has experienced issues (either at a personal or work level or both) with getting their data out of such services for either transferring to a different service, for back-up purposes or because you wanted to close your account with the service down.

The interview would only be a few questions and could be done by email or telephone - whatever suits you.

Thanks in advance.

Martin De Saulles
Senior Lecturer
University of Brighton, UK
mrd@brighton.ac.uk

CILIP Governance - further update

Council on Monday agreed the revised text of the General Regulations, which will thus come into effect with the rest of the governance arrangements on 1st January 2008, assuming that the Privy Council approve the Royal Charter and Byelaws (we should hear from them by the end of July). Council also agreed that minor amendments resulting from the deliberations of Privy

Council may be made by the GiG. With one minor amendment, Council also approved the specification for the Policy Forum, and for a Remuneration Panel.

Council also approved GiG's endorsement of the Scrutineers' Board with respect to the Annual Election to the new Council and for the Office of Vice President.

Advance notice of the Election will appear in Gazette on 27 July.

UKeiG on Facebook

UKeiG now has a group on Facebook called .. erm .. UKeiG! The group is open to both members and non members of UKeiG, and there is already a discussion about electronic journals going on. CILIP members may also be interested in the unofficial CILIP group.

CILIP Governance: Update

It doesn't sound like much(!), but it really implies a lot of work behind the scenes: at our last meeting the GiG finalised the CILIP Regulations with the CILIP legal advisers, and these will be presented to Council next week. [ Note of explanation: CILIP has a Royal Charter which essentially sets out our aims and purpose, and then there is a set of Byelaws which dictate how the Institute is to be run. Both of these have to be approved by Privy Council, and we are in the middle of this process now - hoping for an agreement in principal before Council. 'Beneath' the Byelaws sit the Regulations, which set out in more detail what is and is not acceptable or expected practice. These do not need external validation and are consequentially easier to change from time to time as need dictates. ]

I can also report here that the promised FAQ on the Policy Forum - the response to Group and Branch questions in the earlier consultation - will be available on the GiG web pages within the week. This has taken slightly longer than we might have wished, but the process of finalising the text between the members of the GiG took place over a particularly busy period - Umbrella, the Scottish Conference, etc - and this has resulted in the delays. Sorry about that - but it IS on the way!

Other items from last week's agenda included the agreeing of both the report for Council which will go out with the final set of papers this week; and a reply to a detailed query received by the GiG; and discussions on our schedule of work for the rest of the year and the governance implementation schedule.

Call for Nominations for the UKeiG Awards

There is still time to nominate a colleague for one of these awards:

The UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award and the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award

UKeiG is now seeking nominations for these two prestigious awards, presented annually at the December Online Information Meeting in London. Both awards are sponsored by The Journal of Information Science, published by Sage Publications and both honour achievement in the broad field of information management.

The UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award is presented for an outstanding contribution to the narrower field of information retrieval, while the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award recognises brilliant work in information science. The deadline for both awards is Friday 14^th September 2007. Details of the individual awards together with the addresses to which nominations should be sent are given below and at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/awards/index.html.

UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award

Nominations should be for achievement that meets one or more of the following criteria:

• development of, or significant improvement in, mechanisms for the retrieval of information, either generally or in a specialised field;
• development of, or significant improvement in, accessibility to an information service;
• a sustained contribution over a period of years to the field of information retrieval; for example, by running an information service or by contributing at national or international level to organisations active in the field;
• a major and/or sustained contribution to the theoretical or experimental understanding of the information retrieval process;
• a major contribution to fostering the education, training and/or general awareness of the importance and the technicalities of information retrieval.

Key characteristics that the judges will look for in nominations are innovation, initiative, originality and practicality.

Nominations should take the form of a short description (no more than 3 sides of A4) of the work in question, together with full contact details of both the nominee and the nominator. Do not forget to include any documentation, references or URLs which may support the nomination. Nominations should reach the judges by Friday September 14th 2007.

Nominations will be judged by a panel of experts, and the statuette of an owl will be presented to the winner during the annual Online Information Meeting in London in December.

The Tony Kent Strix Award is presented in memory of Dr Tony Kent, a past Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists, who died in 1997. Tony Kent made a major contribution to the development of information retrieval and information services both in the UK and internationally, particularly in the field of chemistry. The name Strix was chosen both to reflect Tony's interest in ornithology, and the name of one of the last and most successful information retrieval packages which he created.

Past winners have been Stella Dextre Clarke (2006); Jack Mills (2005); Professor Cornelis Joost (Keith) van Rijsbergen (2004); Dr Herbert van Sompel (2003); Malcolm Jones (2002); Professor Peter Willett (2001); Dr Martin Porter (2000); Dr Donna Harman (1999); Professor Stephen Robertson (1998).

Nominations for the 2007 Award are now invited, and should be sent with full supporting documentation to:

Alan Gilchrist
32 Friar Road
Brighton
BN1 6NH
UK
Tel: 01273 705226
E-mail: cura@fastnet.co.uk

UKeiG Jason Farradane Award

Nominations should be for achievement that meets one or more of the following criteria:

• raising the profile of the information profession within an organisation or field of endeavour in a way which can or has become an exemplar to others;
• raising the awareness of the value of information in the workplace;
• development of a significant new information product or service;
• development of a product or service that has made a significant impact on the availability and accessibility of information.

Key characteristics that the judges will look for in nominations are innovation, initiative, originality and significance.

Nominations should take the form of a short description (no more than 3 sides of A4) of the work in question, together with full contact details of both the nominee and the nominator. Do not forget to include any documentation, references or URLs which may support the nomination. Nominations should reach the judges by Friday September 14th 2007

Nominations will be judged by a panel of experts, and the award will be presented to the winner during the annual Online Information Meeting in London in December.

Jason Farradane graduated in chemistry in 1929 at what is now Imperial College and started work in industry as a chemist and documentalist. He was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) in 1958 and the first academic courses in information science in 1960 at the precursor of City University, where he became Director of the Centre for Information Science in 1966. On the research side his main contributions lay in relational analysis, which can now perhaps be seen as providing a precursor to work in the area of A.I., and the concept of information. He saw information science as a step towards understanding and better organizing ourselves. The IIS first presented the award in 1979, to Jason Farradane.

Previous award winners have included University of Warwick Library for The Learning Grid; Michael Koenig; Bruce Royan; Michael Keen; Newcastle University Library; Sandra Ward; Phil Williams and Phil Holmes.

Nominations for the 2007 Award are now invited, and should be sent with full supporting documentation to:

Christine Baker
Piglet Cottage
Redmire
Leyburn
North Yorkshire
DL8 4EH
Tel & Fax: 01969 625751
E-mail: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

The closing date for nominations is Friday September 14th 2007.

Notes:

UKeiG is an established professional group for all information professionals, users and developers of electronic information resources. The Group encourages communication and the exchange of best practice and knowledge across all sectors; and offers an e-journal, a mailing list, an annual programme of training courses; and an array of awards and bursaries. UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE. Registered Charity No. 313014.

SAGE Publications (www.sagepub.co.uk) is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore

TheJournal of Information Science is an international journal of high repute covering topics of interest to all those researching and working in the sciences of information and knowledge management. The Journal seeks to achieve a better understanding of the principles that underpin the effective creation, organization, storage, communication and utilization of information and knowledge resources. It also seeks to understand how policy and practice in the area can be built on sound theoretical or heuristic foundations to achieve a greater impact on the world economy. http://jis.sagepub.com/

UKeiG sheds light under the Umbrella

Hot on the heels of Lynne Brindley's opening Plenary Session at Umbrella last week, where she urged us to embrace the new technologies and just 'go and do it', Phil Bradley took over the clarion call at the UKeiG session that followed and gave a talk on Practical Uses for Web 2.0 in a Library Environment. The room was packed to overflowing with people perched on tables and sitting on the floor. Phil explained the many uses of Web 2.0 technology and illustrated these with examples from his own web site. Lynne's encouraging words were emphasised rather more strongly by Phil who dismissed excuses such as not being allowed to do it by the organisation, and said 'Be subversive - just do it, and do it NOW'.

There was considerable interest in Web 2.0 at this year's Umbrella and delegates were interested in adopting the various technologies in their own work environment. UKeiG will continue to focus on these topics in its training and seminar programme.

UKeiG Browser Share and Feed Readers - June 2007

Time for the monthly review of which browsers are being used to access the UKeiG web site and the feed readers that are hitting our RSS feeds. The total number of page views for June was 56,130.

There is not that much change in the browser report compared with last month: IE is number one with 64% (IE6=41%, IE7=23%), Firefox comes next with 28% (2.x=24%, 1.x=4%), Safari has 5% and Opera 1%. [Browsers that make up less than 1% of the stats are not included in the graph]

When it comes to RSS readers it is impossible to work out percentages. We can see which desktop and web based readers are accessing our feeds but we can not identify how many 'indiviudals' are looking at them. For example, Bloglines accesses our feeds for all those who are subscribed to our feeds but we see only one entry for 1, 10, 100, 1000 -who knows how many - subscribers. Even with a desktop/intranet client we have no idea how many ultimately read the feed. The best we can do is identify the feed readers that people use.

This month the top readers appear to :

Web based readers:

Bloglines
Google Reader
Pageflakes
Netvibes
Newsgator

Desktop readers
FeedReader
Outlook 2007/IE7 (impossible to distinguish between the two)
Great News
Omea
Awasu
RSS Bandit
Feed Demon

UKeiG photos on Flickr

It seems that the eagle-eyed amongst you have already spotted that UKeiG has a Flickr account. OK - the Flickr RSS feed on the UKeiG home page was a bit of a give-away but we were planning to wait until we had a sizeable archive to publicise. Photos taken at UKeiG events will be added within a couple of days of the meeting, but you will also see snaps taken at events and celebrations that occurred several years ago.

We are steadily working our way through our motley collection, and as well as scanning in the 'old-fashioned' prints we are seeking permission to make the images available via Flickr from the subjects of the photos. When many of these were taken a photo might be reproduced in an industry newsletter or magazine and that was all! The technology that we now have to capture, process and distribute images did not exist.

If you see any of the management committee clicking away with cameras or their mobile phones at a meeting or workshop, don't panic! We ALWAYS ask those who might appear in a photo for permission before we retain or publish the images.