Information Research Weblog

A snowy Saturday afternoon in Sweden seems an appropriate time to check what's going on in the world and my attention was caught by reference on Librarian.net to a new 'portal' to library and information resources from Steve Cohen, who runs the Weblog Library Stuff. The title, LIS Feeds is not exactly catchy, but it gets across the idea. Using a bit of software called a 'news aggregator', which is:

"software that periodically reads a set of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological order on a single page."

Some aggregators will sit on your desktop, others need to be mounted on your Web site server, particularly if you want to deliver a news service such as LIS Feeds. One desktop version, which is free, is Amphetadesk, which can be rather addictive. The package comes set up with access to six 'channels', but you can change these and select others from a list too big to count, or insert the url for a news-feed that isn't on the list.

Amphetadesk is worth playing with, just to get a feel for the general idea - but don't overdose on the channels, otherwise you will be suffering from information overload.

Who knows, if I get really interested, I may have an RSS feed associated with this Weblog, or with the Information Research in some other way. If there is anyone out there who would like to help.... mail me

Occasionally I receive a message telling me that Information Research, or one of the other resources at InformationR.net has been linked to from another site. I usually take a look to find out what is there. On this occasion, yesterday, it was from Keith Hamilton, who runs a site called Nature IQ, which provides links to all kinds of information resources on all kinds of subjects. Now, you might ask, What is the point of this, when so many directories exist? I think the answer is that a personal view on what is available, which you have selected according to your own quality guidelines, probably has something going for it, which a simple directory, based on spiders running around the Web looking for possible additions, does not.

One of the things it guided me to was the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science - a pretty impressive piece of work. Slow to load, because it is all one big page, but useful for newcomers.

Well - take a look for yourself and see what you think. The interface is pretty basic and rather ugly, but...

Red Herring was one of the wave of new business magazines that hit the newsstands some years ago, did well in the dot.com boom and then came to a juddering stop. RH has lasted longer than some of these and, especially in its early years, I found it interesting. Now it is announced that it has ceased publication. However, the original co-founder has in mind to resurrect the magazine when market sentiment changes. That may be some time, of course, but, as the mag was more interesting under his original direction than it became later, it will be one to watch out for.

I picked this up from Current Cites - a useful e-mail newsletter, and also a Web site. Eric Lease Morgan has produced an introduction to XML, Getting started with XML, specifically for librarians and library staff, although I think it will be equally useful to anyone who things of themselves as an information manager or even a knowledge manager. The guide is available as a .pdf file and as an html file, as well as .zip and .tar.gz files, which include sample files. An introduction to XHTML is also provided, as a 'dialect' of XML - this might prove useful, as I hope to move from html to xhtml with volume 9 of the journal.

The guide is part of Morgan's own Web site, Infomotions, which also includes 'Musings on information and librarianship', his monthly column for Computers in libraries.

While searching for information on the King County wireless Internet system, I came across a conference series I hadn't seen before, which is available on the Web. It's the Virtual Reference Desk Conference series. The first thing that hit my screen was a discussion between Mike Eisenberg (University of Washington) and Charles McClure (Florida State University) in the second conference in 2000, which is entertaining as well as informative. However, there's a lot more there on the impact of the Internet, and of electronic connection between user and library that points to significant changes going on and likely to accelerate.

The latest papers (although, in fact, most are presentations rather than papers) available are those from the 2002 conference. One of the 'exemplary' papers is from Simon Bains at the University of Edinburgh on Testing Collaborative Electronic Reference Services: The Experience of UK University Research Libraries in the Use of QuestionPoint

All in all, worth a browse.

I don't know how many of you are interested in RM issues, but it's the area of "Information Management" in which I work, so sorry if you couldn't care less about it - skip to the next post. :-) http://www.rmaa.com.au/ is the home page for the Records Management Association of Australia and they have a listserv which you can join by going to http://listserver.cowan.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/rmaa and the archive of previous posts is found at http://listserver.cowan.edu.au/pipermail/rmaa/

Boxes and Arrows might be a site of some interest to some of you. Some fascinating articles in the area of Information Research, the web, html, controlled vocabularies and other matters.

As a Records Manager, I'm more interested in how it relates to RM, so the "controlled vocabulary" article was the one of most interest to me so far. Perhaps others could look around and suggest which links they find of most interest, and even some critiques.

Greetings from snowy Poland. I'm in the old city of Torun, which currently has snow falling. I'm at a conference here of the DELOS group - dedicated to digital libraries in Europe. The papers will be published in some form after the conference and should be of interest to many readers of Information Research. In the interim, after the conference, the powerpoint presentations will be on the Web site of ICIMSS - I'll keep an eye on this myself and let people know when they are available.

Just before I go... Today's Financial Times has a fairly lengthy article on Web accessibility: "Rich rewards for sites set on accessibility", which also reproduces IBM's guidelines on the subject. I couldn't find it by browsing the Web site (www.ft.com) but tracked it down through a search.

Tom

If you don't already know the Current Cites Web site and associated e-mail bulletin, I suggest you check it out. The current issue has some very interesting citations, including one to an online magazine called Syllabus, which has some interesting articles on technology in higher education. Those with an interest in online teaching and learning will find the first paper of interest: Designing for Learning: The Pursuit of Well-Structured Content, by Judith V. Boettcher.

Tom