‘dot eu’ is five years old

By on April 11, 2011 in Europe

The .eu domain has been open to EU residents and organisations since early April 2006 and it is now the worlds’s ninth largest top level domain. 

.eu is more instantly recognisable that some other country domain codes and is more readily trusted.  Germany is responsible for the largest take-up of .eu (31% of the total) followed by The Netherlands and the UK.   More recently .eu has been growing faster in ‘newer’ member countries, including Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.

EU residents and  organisations established in the EU have been enttitled to

Adventures in data visualisation

By on April 3, 2011 in Information and Knowledge Management

The great graphic designer Abram Games was the UK’s official war poster artist and continued to create iconic images after the war.  He would test his designs with friends and family – including his children.  If they could not quickly grasp and explain the meaning of the image he would discard his work and start again.  A great image can convey at a glance what may take 1000 words or a ream of numbers to communicate.   

At this month’s SameAs meeting in London, an interest in data visualisation brought together the widest range of speakers imaginable including statisticans and creative designers and artists.

Jade Davies is a graphic and visual designer who is interested in emotional responses to visual representation.  Her project, Emotionalisation, involved her ‘using her own emotions as a data source’ and representing this data as pins on a model’s face to bring the data to life. The pins map the Jade’s emotions on a difficult day in her final year at university.  The image is a striking representation of ‘fuzzy data’.  Stefanie Posavec’s ‘writing without words’ projects result in stunning visuals of writing styles and texts.  

Meanwhile, Brock Craft of the London Knowledge Lab showed how he used publicly available data to map the patterns of usage of London’s ‘bikes for hire’ schemes, creating mesmerising videos that show the flow of bikes across the city.  The Guardian data blog also uses public data to tell stories,  show trends and engage users – for example in the interactive ‘budget cutting’ feature that was lauched during the UK election in 2010.  

Truly, information can be beautiful!

New service models – some lessons learned

By on March 31, 2011 in Corporate Environments, Post

Outsourcing no longer means ‘sending work to India’.  Instead there are as many blended solutions and approaches as there are firms looking to change the way information services are delivered.  While early attempts to outsource were focused primarily on cost containment, more recent initiatives have been focusing on value and impact.

If last night’s extremely lively SLA Europe event was anything to go by, the opportunities and challenges presented by new business models for corporate information services are exercising many minds.

The oversubscribed session, chaired by Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Phillips, heard contributions from Liam Brown (Integreon); Greg Simidian (Perfect Information); Kate Stanfield (CMS Cameron McKenna LLP) and Sarah Fahy (Allen & Overy).  Each speaker presented their views and experiences of the adoption of new business models, from outsourcing and offshoring to blended approaches and questions and observations were offered by the participants.  The reasons behind Allen & Overy’s recent decision to create an onshored, blended support centre in Belfast were outlined, as was CMS Cameron McKenna’s decision to work in partnership with Integreon.

The law firm perspective

Law firms are relationship and reputation businesses. They rely on high quality support services to maintain reputational capital.  Quality services and high professional standards are vital to their continued success.  The experience of developing new models for information provision provides opportunities for information professionals to raise their profiles – and their game.

Other key pointers from the session

  • maintain contact with your users and your senior clients to help you innovate
  • be flexible about what works
  • ensure you solve a true business problem – and work in consultation
  • focus on who has the expertise to do it right irrespective of where they are based/who employs them
  • increased use of vendor capability is another form of outsourcing
  • outsourcers acknowledge the need to focus on professional development
  • any changed model will require significant investment of time and resources in the early stages
  • information providers are responding to the high usage of products in offshored locations by providing local customer support
  • ask senior level manager what works for them
  • when it comes to big change programmes, remember to keep communicating with your staff and your users

Outsourcing, in its many guises, can complement a service and help deliver flexibility and value.

I heart the OED

By on March 25, 2011 in Information and Publishing Industry

In 1977 New York was a city struggling with a number of social and economic challenges.  A campaign to increase tourism was launched, one element of which was the ’I heart New York’ logo’.  Designed by graphic designer Milton Glaser (who incidentally did not charge for the idea), the ‘heart’ logo has long outlived the original campaign.

(I know all this because BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a 30-minute programme about Milton Glaser and this iconic image). 

‘Heart’ is now used widely as a verb meaning ‘love’ and has been recognised in the latest Oxford English Dictionary online update.  Also included are popular new ‘initialisations’ including LOL and OMG.

#CIL11

By on March 23, 2011 in Post, Professional Development

Computers in Libraries has been taking place in Washington DC this week.   You can of course track events via Twitter, but you may also wish to check out the following for on-the-spot coverage.

Sarah Houghton-Jan (aka The Librarian in Black) is attending the conference as a presenter, delegate and moderator.  She spent the first day of the conference in the ‘Information discovery and search’ track  and blogged throughout the first day.  Her review of the super searcher strategies session is particularly helpful, as is search engine update.

As a co-presenter, Sarah joined David Lee King and Nate Hill to discuss how to use social media to make user interactions ‘rock’.  Her blog summary includes a list of 8 tips from David Lee King.

Well worth a read.

Creation or curation?

By on March 21, 2011 in Content, Social Media

Rory Cellan-Jones (the BBC’s Technology Correspondent) was speaking on BBC Radio this morning about Twitter.  He called it ‘the most important innovation for journalists in recent years’. 

As he was speaking, I was reading this article by Steven Rosenbaum on Mashable who describes how social media has enabled a personal web publishing boom.  Now that publishing tools have been opened up, the key challenge lies in getting value from this ‘information flood’.  This includes ensuring that content creators gain access to appropriate audiences.  As it’s got easier to talk, it’s becoming harder to be heard!

This is where content curation comes into its own.  ”Data will be created with staggering speed, and systems will need to evolve to find, gather, and package data so that you can get what you need, when you need it, in coherent and useful bundles”. 

This sounds like a job for the information professional!

Librarians feature at ‘techie’ conference

By on March 18, 2011 in Professional Development

SXSWi (South by South West interactive) 2011 wrapped up in Texas earlier this week.  Lucky attendees enjoyed five days of presentations and events featuring innovative, emerging technologies in the creative industries.  (For those of us unable to attend SXSW events, there is always Twitter @SXSW).

Phoebe Connelly was one of the lucky participants.  She networked, attended sessions and had interesting conversations.  And she ‘kept coming back to the librarians’.

Writing in The Atlantic, she calls librarians, ‘the lens through which to view SXSWi’.  Every day of the event saw librarians being showcased, leading debates on such issues as user needs; data for a purpose; and data visualisation.

For Phoebe, the presence of the librarians helped to keep a focus on the purpose of technology and on the end users, rather than on the technology itself.  

Phoebe’s article (SXSW: the year of the librarian) is here.

A good airport read

By on March 16, 2011 in E-books

Passengers at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport can now take advantage of the world’s first airport e-library.

The English and Chinese language collection is available to read in the airport via thirty devices.  The books cannot be downloaded onto users’ devices or taken away which must surely lead to some people having to leave behind a good cliffhanger so they can board their plane.

The service is run by the airport’s duty free shop.  (This sounds like a set-up for a good joke.  Clever responses to that statement, including cringeworthy puns are welcomed.)

Check out the Bicycle Library

By on March 14, 2011 in Post

“Imagine a library where instead of books, there are bicycles”.

The Bicycle Library in West London has used a library service model to provide advice and information to potential cyclists.  The ‘Library’ offers ’reference bikes’ and ‘loan bikes’.  Visitors can call on the expertise of a ‘librarian’ and test out a variety of bikes.

HarperCollins, e-books and the echo chamber

By on March 9, 2011 in E-books, Public Libraries

Is there a plus side to the ongoing HarperCollins e-book controversy?

HarperCollins’ decision to limit public libraries to checking out an e-book 26 times before, as Phil Bradley puts it ‘it implodes on itself like a Mission Impossible cassette tape’, has caused a great deal of comment and complaint.  Phil Bradley has much to say about this ‘retrograde’ step on his own (not Cilip’s!) blog as do librarians and others around the world.  Some librarians are calling for a boycott of HarperCollins.  The Library Journal reports that some US library consortia are already boycotting the publisher. 

In fact, librarians’ ability to collaborate and comment using a full range of social media has meant that the debate has gone beyond the library ‘echo chamber’.  In the US, the story has been covered by ABC news as an e-book backlash led by librarians. 

Cory Doctorow, writing in the Guardian, calls the HarperCollins move indefensible.  He argues that it is bizarre to import ‘finite durability as a feature’. 

The coverage of the story shows that librarians can attract the attention of the mainstream media. 

You can follow the ongoing debate on Twitter (#HCOD).   HarperCollins’ explains its decision in an open letter to librarians on its blog.