Information Research Weblog

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.

I picked this one up from the Guardian Online weblog. If you can bear to read 4,000+ words on the subject, then I guess that James Gleick (perhaps you know his book on chaos theory?) is worth reading more than many. The link also had the effect of making me check out Gleick's own Web site - an interesting place to browse. Among other things it has a link to the Autodesk program, Chaos, the Software which I shall download when I get broadband (this crawl speed modem is getting to me more as I try to maintain this log). He also has three papers presenting his views on Microsoft, including one on the company's own form of 'political correctness' - never using the word 'bug' when some other circumlocution will serve.

I suppose that, as I run a fairly complex site like InformationR.net, I ought to have been interested in Content Management Systems (CMS) a long time ago. However, my attention has been drawn to them again by David Gurteen's 'Knowledge-Letter' - check out his Web site - via a link to Why every small website needs a content management system . A short, interesting read, but my interest took a step back at the statement:

The good news is that a lightweight CMS, suitable for a modest-sized website, is not expensive. It can be as low as a few thousand dollars...

That's Australian dollars, of course, but, even so, my base rate is zero, so there's a while before I give up my do-it-yourself system. Small businesses might think differently, however.