UKeiG Top Search Tips

UKeiG held yet another ‘Google and Beyond’ workshop on November 6th 2007, this time in London. As usual, the participants were asked to come up with a list of their Top Search Tips. Here it is!

1. Graball http://www.graball.com/
   Search two different search engines side by side and compare results.
   
   
2. Use ’site search’ to search within a specific, individual site or to a particular type of site e.g. UK government sites. Especially useful for sites that have poor navigation or awful internal search engines. Use the site: command, for example site:gov.uk or use the Advanced Search screens of the search engines.
   
   
3. Use file format search to limit your search to one or more file formats, for example PDF, PPT, XLS. A good way of focusing your search: many government and industry/market reports are published as PDFs, statistics in spreadsheet format, and PowerPoints are a good way of tracking down experts on a subject. Use the Advanced Search screens or the filetype: command, for example filetype:ppt
   
   
4. Intelways http://www.intelways.com/. Type in your search once and then run it through individual search engines one by one. The search engines are grouped together by type, for example Image, News, Reference. A useful reminder of what else is out there other than Google and that perhaps you should be thinking of searching different types of information.
   
5. Numeric Range Search. Available only in Google and searches for numbers within a specified range. The syntax is 1st number..2nd number. For example:
   
   TV advertising forecasts 2008..2015
   
   or
   
   toblerone 1..5 kg
   
   
6. Alacrawiki Spotlights http://www.alacrawiki.com/. Extremely useful in providing reviews and commentary on industry specific web sites that have statistics, market research and news. Invaluable if you need to get up to speed on key resources in a sector or industry.
   
   
7. Panoramio. http://www.panoramio.com/. Now owned by Google. A geolocation-oriented photo sharing service with uploaded photos presented as a mashup with Google Earth.
   
   
8. Wayback Machine - http://www.archive.org/. For tracking down copies of pages or documents that have disappeared from the original web site. Type in the address of the web site or the full URL of the document, if you know it. Note: this is not guaranteed but worth a try for older documents that are unlikely to be in the search engine caches.
   
   
9. Google Book Search . Useful for searching within books that Google has been allowed to scan, and in particular older text books.
   
   
10. Use anything but Google! For example - in alphabetical order - Ask.com, Exalead.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com. For a day, try out other search tools to see if you can survive without Google. You may go back to Google as your first port of call but at least you will have discovered the strengths and key features of the alternatives.
    
    
11. For current news try Google News and its alert service (it’s free!). And don’t forget blogs, for example Google Blogsearch, Ask- Blogs, Blogpulse, Technorati.
    
    
12. Blogpulse trends. Click on the graph icon on the results page to see how often your search terms have been mentioned in blog postings over time. Used by many of us who monitor competitor or industry intelligence to see what are hot topics and when. Many of the ‘peaks’ will tie in with press announcements: it is those that don’t that are really interesting. Click on the peaks in the graph to see the postings.

Next week is Online Week!

Next week is Online Week and the UKeIG Management Committee are dashing around getting everything ready for the stand and their presentations. UKeIG is on stand 734 so drop by and say hello.

A few points to bear in mind:

Pre-register for the exhibition and you will avoid the £15 entrance fee. As well as the exhibition, your badge will give you access to the free seminars and master classes. Details of what is on offer can be found at http://www.online-information.co.uk/online07/seminars_2007.html

The Information Management Solutions exhibition is also running alongside the show. Full details of this related event can be found at http://www.ims-show.co.uk

Remember that there is also a conference running at Olympia entitled Applying Web 2.0: Innovation, Impact & Implementation & featuring a keynote presentation from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. There are only 14 more places left and registration will close at midday Thursday 29th November. Please register without delay if you want to attend at http://www.online-information.co.uk/online07/conferenceprogramme.html

For those of you who are on Facebook, Online Information has a Facebook group with 350+ members. Delegates are already discussing tips for visiting the show; the best restaurants in the area around Olympia; cocktail parties planned etc

UKeiG Awards: PIONEERS IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SCOOP TOP AWARDS

UKeiG are delighted to announce today the winners of the Strix and Jason Farradane Awards, which will be presented at the Online Information conference and exhibition at London's Olympia in December. The awards are sponsored by The Journal of Information Science, published by SAGE, the world's largest, independent academic publisher.

Both awards celebrate achievement in the broad field of information management. The 2007 Strix Award, created in honour of Dr Tony Kent, is made to Mats Lindquist, senior executive officer at the National Library of Sweden.

"We're delighted to award the tenth annual Strix Award to Professor Lindquist, "said Adrian Dale, editor of The Journal of Information Science and Online Information conference chairman. "In the world of practical full text information retrieval he is one of the "giants", wholly in the spirit of Tony Kent's contribution in chemical information".

Professor Lindquist won the Strix Award for his key role in the development and significant improvement in accessibility to an information service through the business development of Paralog AB and its TRIP retrieval system. The Award also recognises his sustained contribution over many years to the field of information retrieval.

The Jason Farradane Award, which recognises brilliant work in information science, is made to executive director of Intute, Caroline Williams and the Intute community network. Intute is a free online service, created in partnership with university subject specialists, with over 100,000 links to academic content on the web, as well as a suite of virtual training tutorials and internet information services.

Adrian Dale praised highly the winners. "Intute is a great example of the UK library community taking a long-term, pioneering role in the Internet information environment. Through effective collaboration, they have developed a national service which now has a global reputation."

Intute's origins lie in the 1996 Electronic Libraries programme, where a number of librarians and researchers won JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funding to develop their ideas for new Internet gateway services. The service has thrived as it has always actively pursued exploring original ways of working online, as a community. Intute has also innovated with new technologies - such as Web 2.0 - but always against balanced judgements about their relative value to education and research.

The Awards will be presented at the Online Conference to be held from 4 - 6 December at London's Olympia: the Jason Farradane Award at 14:00 on Tuesday 4 December and the Tony Kent Strix Award at 09:30 on Thursday 6 December.

Innovations in e-information - the UKeiG 2009 State of the Art Conference

UKeiG is pleased to announce a major addition to its training and seminar programme. There has been considerable demand from members for a residential forum that provides opportunities for information and IT professionals to network, wine and dine in excellent social surroundings while catching up on the very latest developments in e-information.

'Innovations in e-information - the UKeiG 2009 State of the Art Conference' will be held at the Manchester Conference Centre from Tuesday 16th - Wednesday 17th June 2009 - put it in your diary now!

UKeiG will be drawing on the expertise of many of its high profile information experts to deliver on a range of key topics. A call for papers will shortly be issued inviting recommendations for presentations and breakout sessions.

Speakers will include:

Laurence Bebbington, Law Librarian and Information Services Copyright Officer, University of Nottingham

Karen Blakeman, Consultant and Director of RBA Information Services

Phil Bradley, Librarian and Internet Consultant

Dr Paul Miller, Technology Evangelist, Talis

Professor Charles Oppenheim, Head of the Department of Information Science, Loughborough University

Martin White, Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd.

To register an interest in the event please email conference@ukeig.org.uk with UKeiG 2009 in the subject header.

UKeiG course for 2008: Image Management

Image Management: New Directions

to be held at

The Headley Lecture Theatre, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Thursday, 13th March, 2008, 9.30 - 16.30

Workshop Outline
In this increasingly visual age, subject librarians and information specialists are frequently required to source Images in a wide variety of formats, advise on their use and organise their retention as part of their day-to-day jobs, but often with no specialist experience or training. This workshop aims to help the non-specialist navigate successfully across this unfamiliar territory, pointing out useful shortcuts and pitfalls to avoid, and showcasing examples of good practice that can help inspire us in the use of a wide spectrum of information resources ranging from historic manuscripts to genomic databanks. Achieving holistic management of such 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 is an opportunity to share experiences and float ideas in areas where there are as yet few 'right answers'!

The workshop will comprise a mix of presentations and group discussion. Topics are expected to range over:

* Locating sources: what to look for and where to look
* Digital libraries and repositories: creating and searching
* Embedded images: searching within documents
* Metadata content and ontologies: requirements for effective retrieval
* Rights issues and commercial factors
* Storage and preservation: short- and long-term issues
* Using images in teaching and learning: the role of the information specialist
* The impact of social networking tools: salvation or hype?

Who Should Attend
Anyone whose work involves the use of images will benefit from this meeting, from any sector - university, college, government, NHS, charity, learned society, commercial etc. We hope for a good mix as we all have much to learn from each other!

Presenters
A panel of speakers will be chaired by Roger Mills, Bio- and Environmental Sciences Librarian, Oxford University Library Services. Roger is currently President of EBHL (European Botanical and Horticultural Libraries) and co-ordinator of IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organisations) Unit 6.03.00 Information Services and Knowledge Organisation. He is co-author of The New Walford: Volume 1: Science Technology and Medicine, Facet, 2005, as subject specialist for Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Food.

The panel will include:
Dr David Shotton, Oxford e-Research Centre and Dept of Zoology, University of OxfordMichael Popham, Head of the Oxford Digital Library, Oxford University Library Services

Further details of the speakers and programme will be announced on http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/ as available.

UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and InformationProfessionals. 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE. Registered Charity No. 313014.

UKeiG training courses recognised by CILIP

UKeiG is pleased to announce that it has been approved by the CILIP Accreditation Board for the award of the CILIP Seal of Recognition in acknowledgement of the range of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities that are relevant for the Library and Information Science Community.

UKeiG offers a wide range of training courses which are held throughout the UK. For further details contact:

Christine Baker, Piglet Cottage, Redmire, LEYBURN, North Yorkshire DL8 4EH. Tel & Fax: 01969 625751 Email: CABaker@ukeig.org.uk

How to Sell your Intranet

Free informal intranets forum meeting for UKeiG members.

Venue: Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), King Charles Street, London. SW1A 2AH.
Date: Thursday 13th December, 3pm to 5pm (coffee from 2.30pm).

If you are involved in intranets and would like to meet your colleagues, this informal forum is for you.

Andrew Davidson, Intranet Senior Editor at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Susan Hinchsliffe, Intranet Manager at the Department for Transport, will be sharing their practical experiences of promoting their organisation’s intranet.

There will also be time to network in small groups, sharing and brainstorming promotional ideas.

Location: The Foreign Office is situated between Whitehall and St James' Park, parallel to Downing Street. Map and directions.

If you would like to attend this meeting, please contact: Janet Corcoran, Imperial College London, Email: j.m.corcoran@imperial.ac.uk

If you are not a member of UkeiG, and would like to come along to this meeting, visit the UkeiG website at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/join/index.html for joining details.