Internet Resources Newsletter by email and RSS

Over 40,000 people subscribe to the free email version of this Newsletter. Very many thanks go to FUMSI http://www.fumsi.com/ who sponsor this newsletter. FUMSI publishes articles, tools, and a monthly magazine, to give you practical help with information skills.

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Random quotes

"Electronic information may be easier for people to retain, yet it is also more ephemeral, and forgettable, than the printed word, and its burgeoning popularity may herald a brave new world in which no one holds on to anything, not even a thought." Richard Fallis, "Thanks for the Memories" CILIP Annual Buyers' Guide Directory 2009, p11.

"With the proliferation of e-book readers now on sale the printed book, apart from a few select genres, is finished" Julian Rivers, The Bookseller, 13 Feb 2009, p. 20.

News items of interest.

Emerald launches eBook series collections http://info.emeraldinsight.com/about/news/story.htm?PHPSESSID=ms0ppnhu2po0o46gll67r0gta0&id=1046
Emerald Group Publishing Limited is pleased to announce the launch of its eBook series collections; one focusing on Social Sciences and the other on Business, Management & Economics.

Inderscience has introduced a new open access option for authors
http://inderscience.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-access-option.html

Nature Publishing Group Expands Open Access Choices
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/wndReader.asp?ArticleId=52372
Nature Publishing Group (NPG; www.nature.com ) is expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both "green" self-archiving and "gold" (authors-pays) open access publication routes.
From: Information Today

12,000 TOCs in ticTOCs
ticTOCs, the free Journal Tables of Contents Service, now contains TOCs for over 12,000 scholarly journals from 436 publishers.
http://tictocsnews.wordpress.com/
The ICBL and the Library at Heriot Watt University helped to develop ticTOCs

A Journal Feeds Wikipedia
In a fascinating and forward-thinking policy change, the journal RNA Biology recently began requiring authors to submit a Wikipedia-ready page after acceptance, so that new findings can be published in Wikipedia after journal publication.
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/01/13/a-journal-feeds-wikipedia/
From: The Scholarly Kitchen

A-Z NEW & NOTABLE WEB SITES

AATravelShop

http://aatravelshop.com/

Revamped site and guides.

Academic Earth

http://academicearth.org/

Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars

AceStartups

http://www.acestartups.com/

AceStartups.com reviews the latest social networking sites, mobile internet applications and web 2.0 communities.

Advances in Optics and Photonics

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/aop/virtual_issue.cfm

The Optical Society of America’s new online-only, peer-reviewed journal.

An introduction to Google's search engine

http://websearch.about.com/b/2009/01/22/google-search-google-search-engine-basics.htm

From About.com

ARROW Discovery Service

http://search.arrow.edu.au/

Where you can search 260,299 Australian research outputs, including theses; preprints; postprints; journal articles; book chapters; music recordings and pictures.

Australian Research Council

http://www.arc.gov.au/

The ARC is a statutory authority within the Australian Government's Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (IISR) portfolio. Its mission is to deliver policy and programs that advance Australian research and innovation globally and benefit the community.

AuthorMapper

http://www.authormapper.com/

AuthorMapper, an online tool for visualizing scientific research, enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps.

Awareness Watch Newsletter

http://zillman.blogspot.com/2009/01/awareness-watch-newsletter-v7n2.html

The February 2009 V7N2 Awareness Watch Newsletter is available. The Awareness Watch Article Review covers Social Networks That Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope by Bernardo Huberman, Daniel M Romero, and Fang Wu.

Boliven Patents

http://www.boliven.com/patents

Search regularly updated collections of patents and applications.

British Monarchy

http://www.royal.gov.uk/

New official site.

Canadian Housing Information Centre

http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/li/index.cfm

The Canadian Housing Information Centre is the library of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Located at the National Office of CMHC in Ottawa, it is the most extensive housing information source in the country, serving consumers, builders, developers, academics and industry decision-makers.

CiteAlert

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/cite_alert

CiteAlert is a service which automatically notifies authors by e-mail soon after their work is referenced in a newly published article on ScienceDirect.

Content Architecture: Exploiting and Managing Diverse Resources

http://www.iskouk.org/conf2009/programme.htm

ISKO UK 2009 Conference on Content Architecture, London, 22-23 June 2009.

Digital Britain – the Interim Report

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx

The Government has published a plan to secure Britain’s place at the forefront of the global digital economy. The interim report contains more than 20 recommendations.

Digital Research Tools (DiRT)

http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively.

Directory of Learning Professionals (& Others) on Twitter

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/socialmedia/edutwitter.html

This Directory lists (in alphabetical order by Twitter username) learning professionals from both education and corporate training, as well as other related professionals and e-learning products and services on Twitter.

Disaboom

http://www.disaboom.com/

Disaboom.com is a dynamic, interactive online community for people with disabilities and those whose lives they touch. It combines disability-related health and lifestyles information with an engaging, member-driven community of personal profiles, blogs, forums and shared-interest groups, tailored to your needs. Providing a place for you to learn about – or talk about – your spinal cord injury, back or neck pain, diabetes, cerebral palsy, depression, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, amputation, or other condition,

D-Lib Magazine

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january09/01contents.html

The January/February issue is available, with articles on web services, institutional repositories, etc.

Drillingsite.com

http://www.drillingsite.com/

Petroleum industry job board.

Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf

A report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

Edge

http://www.edge.org/

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Engineering Results: Some Alternative Search Engines

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/3616

An article by Adrian Janes, in FUMSI.

EThOS

http://ethos.bl.uk/

A catalogue of UK Research Theses. Many UK institutions support Open Access to their theses, so download of their digital and digitised theses is free to the researcher. A small number of participating institutions may not be able to offer Open Access and in this case the researcher may have to pay for the digitisation.

Europeana

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

Multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections.

EuroSimE 2009

http://www.eurosime.org

EuroSimE 2009 is the 10th IEEE international conference on Thermal, Mechanical and Multiphysics Simulation and Experiments in Micro-Electronics and Micro-Systems. It will take place in Delft, The Netherlands, on April 27-28-29, 2009, along with training courses on April 26 and exhibition.

Expanded green and gold routes to open access at Nature Publishing Group

http://www.nature.com/press_releases/greengold.html

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both 'green' self-archiving and 'gold' (authors-pays) open access publication routes. Eleven more journals published by NPG are offering an open access option from January 2009. NPG has also expanded its Manuscript Deposition Service to include 32 further titles.

Facebook Connect

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=108

Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.

Federated Search Finds Content that Google Can’t Reach

http://www.altsearchengines.com/2009/01/11/federated-search-finds-content-that-google-cant-reach-part-i-of-iii/

From AltSearchEngines.

Find ‘Em On Twitter: 15 Twitter Directories Compared

UniTextBooks.net

by Jennifer Van Grove, in Mashable.

Free Language Translator

http://www.codeplex.com/LanguageTranslator

This is a desktop language translator application using the Google translation service. It adds more features to the existing service and addresses some of its shortcomings.

GoPubMed.org

http://gopubmed.org/

A semantic knowledge based search engine for the life sciences.

Heriot Watt University Centre for Sport & Exercise

http://www.hw.ac.uk/sports/

The CSE website has been re-designed

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

http://www.labnol.org/internet/how-to-embed-in-html-webpages/6365/

From digital inspiration.

IABSE Publications Archive

http://www.iabse.org/publications/archive/index.php

In time with the celebration of the 80 years of IABSE the IABSE Congress Reports, IABSE Reports, IABSE Periodica and IABSE Publications from 1929 - 1999 have been scanned and are online free of charge.

Over 80,000 pages of its historic documents on Structural Engineering worldwide are online for free.

Icoste

http://www.icoste.com/

Icoste features millions of products for every type of interest. They also find the cheapest products for you on the internet, with regular discount codes and reviews. Offers discounts for students.

Information Age

http://www.information-age.com/

Information Age, the UK’s monthly IT-in-business title, has been relaunched with a new website.

Information and Computer Sciences Newsletter

http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/news/newsletter/iscnl_issue13.pdf

Issue 13, Feb 2009 issue from the HEA Academy Information & Computer Sciences Subject Centre is available.

INFORUM 2009

http://www.inforum.cz/en/

The 15th INFORUM conference, which will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from May 27 to May 29, 2009.

The three-day conference, which is focused on variety of aspects concerning the use of electronic information resources in research, development, education and business, is attended by information specialists from public and special libraries, corporate sector and government agencies.

INSITE09

http://www.insite09.com/

INSITE09, 1-4 June 2009 will build on the success of the previous BRE OFFSITE events with a four day exhibition and conference, with a much broader focus on the wider issues facing the future of construction, hence the new event name.

INSITE09 is the key built environment event for 2009 which aims to connect Government, industry and other key stakeholders involved in the built environment industry

Institutional Repositories in India

http://key2information.blogspot.com/2008/12/institutional-repositories-of-india.html

A list on a Key 2 Information blog post.

iSmithers

http://www.ismithers.net/

New-look website.

iSmithers evolved from the information division of Smithers Rapra in 2008 after delivering over 30 years of polymer related products including Polymer Library, Publications, Conferences and Training.

Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

http://www.istl.org/09-winter/index.html

The Winter 2009 issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship is available.

JISC Digital Media

http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/

TASI, one of JISC’s Advisory Services, has relaunched under its new name: JISC Digital Media

Joomla

http://www.joomla.org/

Award-winning Open Source content management system.

Journal of Legal Analysis

https://ojs.hup.harvard.edu/index.php/jla/index

New Open Access journal. The Journal of Legal Analysis aspires to publish the best legal scholarship from all disciplinary perspectives and in all styles, whether verbal, formal, or empirical.

JURN

http://www.jurn.org/

Search 1842 free scholarly ejournals in the arts & humanities. See also the Jurn blog..

Khan Academy

http://www.khanacademy.org/

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

Latest chapters of The E-Resources Management Handbook

http://www.uksg.org/news/ermhfeb09

UKSG has recently published new chapters of The E-Resources Management Handbook, its open access guide to the issues and challenges facing those in the information community.

Includes interviews with some luminaries from the information sector, including Stephen Abram, Peter McCracken and Jim Mouw.

The ERMH is an open access publication on e-resource management.

Learning occurs in social networks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwM4ieFOotA&eurl=http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/video-learning-occurs-in-social.html&feature=player_embedded

A YouTube video.

Librarians Tweeters Directory

http://justtweetit.com/education/librarians/

A directory of librarians who use Twitter.

LUTube

http://lutube.leeds.ac.uk/

LUTube is a new project to enable staff and students at the University of Leeds to show and share video securely online.

Mary Todd Lincoln

http://www.mrslincoln.com/

A website about Mrs. Lincoln, America's first First Lady.

Mature Students

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Mature_Students

The Student Room and the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS) have teamed up to create this resource for anyone over the age of 21 who's thinking of returning to education.

Medicexchange

http://www.medicexchange.com/

“Medicexchange is one of the fastest growing online portals for radiologists and related medical imaging professionals. Medicexchange offers a global portal covering the latest medical imaging news, educational resources and jobs, and is the only multi-vendor online sales channel for medical imaging products”

MelZoo

http://www.melzoo.com/en_GB/search

This Meta search engine, offers "visual previews" of the search results.

Memidex

http://www.memidex.com/

This is a free online dictionary/thesaurus with several unique features, including more extensive cross-referencing, complete inflections, simple interface, and frequent updates.

Molecular Therapy rolls out open access and article deposition services for authors

http://www.nature.com/press_releases/mtopen.pdf

The American Society of Gene Therapy and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) are pleased to announce the introduction of two new services to help authors comply with funder and institutional mandates for public access. Molecular Therapy now offers authors the option of immediate open access on publication, including deposition in PubMed Central, subject to the payment of a publication fee. In addition, as a further author benefit to aid compliance with several funding body mandates, Nature Publishing Group will deposit all Molecular Therapy articles to PubMed Central upon final publication, to be made public after 12 months.

Nature Network New York City

http://network.nature.com/hubs/nyc/

The Nature Network New York City hub offers a dedicated blog, forum, jobs and event listings for the city’s thriving scientific community.

New York City (NYC) joins London and Boston as the third Nature Network city hub, and is the first new hub since the global launch of Nature Network in March 2007.

The Nature Network NYC forum will be the place where local scientists can, for example, share tips on living in the Big Apple. Researchers looking for a job in the NYC area can use the jobs feed from sister service Naturejobs, the world’s largest scientific jobs database. The Nature Network NYC events calendar will list local seminars, lectures, talks, and conferences of interest to scientists.

Noesis

http://noesis.evansville.edu/index.htm

A limited area search engine for open access, academic philosophy on the Internet.

novo|seek

http://www.novoseek.com/

novo|seek is an information extraction system developed by bioalma for searching the published knowledge in biomedical literature.

novo|seek indexes the biomedical literature with a text mining technology that enables identification of the key biomedical terms. To do this unambiguous identification the technology takes into account external available data and contextual term information. As a result of this indexing technology novo|seek is able to retrieve every document where a term is mentioned no matter the synonym used and discards those documents where the term is used with an unwanted meaning.

NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter

http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/ntrnews8.pdf

The February 2009 issue of the NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter is now available.

oDesk

http://www.odesk.com/w/

“oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams, with the best business model for both buyers and providers. Our unique approach guarantees that an hour paid is an hour worked while also guaranteeing that an hour worked is an hour paid.”

OpenStretMap

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

The Free Wiki World Map

PatentScope

http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/patents/434/wipo_pub_l434_03.pdf

WIPO Guide to Using Patent Information

PDFse

http://pdfse.com/

Ebook search

People Information: Finding Accurate, Authoritative and Well Organised Data

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/3584

An article in FUMSI by Donna Fryer.

Philosophic Nature

http://www.eilab.org/issues.htm

A new Open Access journal for Conventional and Non-conventional Cross-disciplinary Ideas on Mathematics, Science, Medicine, and Mathematical & Scientific Philosophy.

Pligg

http://www.pligg.com/

Pligg is an open source Content Management System

Profile Books

http://www.profilebooks.com/

Profile was founded in 1996 to publish stimulating non-fiction. We publish across a wide range of subjects including history, biography, memoir, politics, current affairs, travel and popular science. We also publish all The Economist Books and have done so since we started.

Progetto Riviste on line

http://www.rivisteonline.org/

A database of contents of a lot of Italian theological and philosophical issues. It offers free use and a free subscription to a Current Awareness Service that alerts the user by email according to submitted keywords or specified tables of contents.

Ranking Web of World Repositories

http://repositories.webometrics.info/

The "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.

Repository@Napier

http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/

The Repository@Napier is intended to be an Open Access showcase for the published research output of the university.

SAGE Resources for Librarians

http://www.sagepub.com/librarians.nav

Sage have transformed their Librarians' Website into a user-friendly Librarian Resource Centre.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition

http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/annual/annual.htm

It presents over 3,350 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development.

http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2009-02.pdf

Report commissioned by OCLC Research.

SciTopics

http://www.scitopics.com/

”Distilled, authoritative and up-to-date information for researchers on scientific, technical and medical topics.”

SciTopics pages are written by scientific experts; facilitate knowledge sharing; provide the latest and most relevant journal and web results.

ScreenToaster

http://www.screentoaster.com/

Free Online Screen Recorder.

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/medieval/gutenberg.shtml

In this revealing documentary, Stephen Fry investigates the story of one of the most important machines ever invented - the Gutenberg Press.

Stirling Online Research Repository: STORRE

https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/index.jsp

STORRE holds a small, but growing, collection of the research output of University of Stirling authors.

Sustainable Information Technology in Tertiary Education: SusteIT

http://www.susteit.org.uk/

The main outputs from a year-long, JISC-commissioned, study on Sustainable ICT in Further and Higher Education are now available.

These include the briefing paper and strategic overview The greening of ICT in further and higher education

Tales from the Terminal Room

http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/archives/2009/jan2009.shtml

The January 2009 issue is available.

In this issue: Search Tools; Information Resources; Search and the UK's regional press; Online maps for local crime statistics; and more.

Technical Resources

http://www.technicalresources.co.uk/Telecoms/

Technical Resources is a specialist telecoms recruitment agency, offering a range of jobs in telecommunications for technical, sales and executive appointments

The European Library

http://www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org

The European Library has announced a new site release.

The new portal incorporates many of the recommended enhancements from user feedback studies. Top of the list was more multilingual facilities. As a result, users can now navigate and scan over 330 collections in their native language. Support materials, including FAQs and a first-time user guide, are available in 22 European languages.

The New Atlantis

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/

“The New Atlantis is an effort to clarify the nation’s moral and political understanding of all areas of technology—from stem cells to hydrogen cells to weapons of mass destruction. We hope to make sense of the larger questions surrounding technology and human nature, and the practical questions of governing and regulating science—especially where the moral stakes are high and the political divides are deep.“

TheBookCalendar

http://www.thebookcalendar.com/

Introducing you to a different book everyday!

Transport Advice Portal

http://tap.iht.org/Default.aspx

TAP has been devised to direct members of the transportation profession and the general public to core documents in a range of subject areas that focus on the management of user groups on roads in the UK. The portal acts as a depository of web links to documents that are seen as key guides to the planning, design and operation of road networks.

Transport Research Laboratory: TRL

http://www.trl.co.uk/

TRL (Transport Research Laboratory) has a new, redesigned website.

Trovit

http://jobs.trovit.co.uk/

Trovit is a search engine for job offer leads in the UK. Trovit jobs has got more than one milion job offers. Tovit jobs allows to the user search the full range of jobs listed on most important online job boards, instead of going to each job site individually.

Tweetree

http://tweetree.com/

Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context.

Twidox

http://www.twidox.com/

Twidox is a free, user generated online library of quality documents that allows individuals and organisations to easily publish, share and search for them, allowing people to share their knowledge and help others with their work, learning, teaching and research.

twitterfeed

http://twitterfeed.com/

Feed your blog to Twitter.

TwittGroups.com

http://twittgroups.com/index.php

TwittGroups.com brings people together from Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friend Connect and other social networks to form groups with common interests.

UHI Research Repository

http://uhi.kipling.lib.ed.ac.uk/

This digital repository contains sample collections and communities showcasing the research produced at UHI.

UK Research Reserve: UKRR

http://www.ukrr.ac.uk/

UKRR is developing an imaginative solution to storing and securing the knowledge in low use printed research journals.

In this digital age, the print copy of important research journals becomes little used as the journal is read online. UKRR enables Higher Education Libraries to collaborate in sharing the burden of print storage.

UniTextBooks.net

http://www.unitextbooks.net/

UniTextBooks.net was created and developed by two business students from Plymouth University, Murat Haykir and Jamie Hook.

“Frustrated with paying full price for University textbooks that would only be used for a year or two, we set about designing a website where students could buy and sell their old textbooks between themselves, cut out a third party, and avoid any seller fees or commission. This was to be acheived at the same time as promoting the green benefits of re-using old books, cutting down on waste, and saving trees being used for new books.

As well as the ecological motivation, it was felt that students buying and selling books locally would ensure a better deal for both buyers and sellers.“

Vadlo

http://www.vadlo.com/

Vadlo search engine caters to all branches of life sciences. VADLO allows users to search within five categories: Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases and Software.

Wastecare

http://www.wastecare.co.uk/

Wastecare specialise in the collection and recycling of waste from all industrial and business sectors, offering full environmental compliance.

Web2Rights

http://www.web2rights.org.uk/

Web2Rights is a JISC funded project, whose purpose is to develop a practical, pragmatic and relevant toolkits to support the projects funded within the JISC Users and Innovation Programme in their engagement with next generation and Web2.0 technologies and emerging legal issues, such as IP, libel and accessibility.

WelshArtNow

http://welshartnow.co.uk/

WelshArtNow features art that has a Welsh connection. The aim of the magazine is to increase awareness and understanding of Welsh art and get more people talking about it. We will feature a diverse range of art, you might not like some of it or even recognize it as being art, but by engaging with the magazine you may feel more confident to express and informed opinion one way or other. WAN will also serve as a platform for new art, artists will be challenged to produce new art specific to a magazine format.

What is Twitter?

http://www.philb.com/twitter.htm

A brief introduction for librarians, by Phil Bradley.

WhatDoTheyKnow

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

Make and explore Freedom of Information requests.

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

NICE WEB SITE

In the course of finding sites of interest for this Newsletter, we sometimes come across Web sites which we feel deserve slightly more than a passing mention. Each month we will pick out one or more such sites, and give them a short review. The sites will often be UK based, may be small or large, and be of interest or potential interest to academics. After lengthy discussions we have decided, with incredible creativity :-), to call these: Nice Web Sites. Details of previous Nice Web Sites are available in the Nice Web Site Archive.

There seems to be a number of good websites listed in this month's Internet Resources Newsletter, making any choice for the Nice Web Site difficult, however, I've chosen two search engines.

JURN
http://www.jurn.org/
Search 1842 free scholarly ejournals in the arts & humanities. More details are given in the About page.

novo|seek
http://www.novoseek.com/
novo | seek indexes the biomedical literature with a text mining technology that enables identification of the key biomedical terms. More details are given in the About page.

RM

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

BLOGORAMA

Selected interesting blogs, RSS feeds and news items

You already know what blogs are, but for more information about RSS see the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol) or Webopedia http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RSS.html

The Internet Resources Newsletter has an RSS feed (essentially the Table of Contents for each issue): http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.rss
To add this RSS feed to any feedreader, go to: http://tinyurl.com/39sg5j

Feed Chronicle
http://www.feedchronicle.com/
Create and customize your own personal newspaper using feeds from your favorite sites; from the New York Times to Digg

Future4catalogers' Blog
http://future4catalogers.wordpress.com/

Hot New Resources
http://epalibrarywhatsnew.blogspot.com/

RFID - Changing libraries for good?
http://mickfortune.org/
Written by Mick Fortune

Spiegel Online RSS feed
http://www.spiegel.de/international/index.rss

SciTopics RSS feeds
http://www.scitopics.com/rss.jsp

HotStuff 2.0
http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/
…keeping track of what's cooking in the biblioblogosphere

Science of the Invisible
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/

RSS Micro
http://www.rssmicro.com/
RSSMicro was formed to explore new search capabilities where the web contents become extremely dynamic and grow exponentially. Includes a list of top RSS feeds.

Robot Librarian
http://robotlibrarian.billdueber.com/

Here Comes Everybody
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/

Ten Reasons Why ‘Enterprise RSS' Has Failed To Become Mainstream
http://ukeig.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/ten-reasons-why-enterprise-rss-has-failed-to-become-mainstream/

10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2009
http://lisnews.org/10_librarian_blogs_read_2009

Plagiarism Advice
http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk/wp/index.php

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

RECENT INTERNET BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY

The Mantex Information Design web site has reviews of some of the books mentioned in previous issues of the Internet Resources Newsletter.

Recent Arrivals

302.231 MAR
Online social networking on campus: understanding what matters in student culture,
by Ana M. Martinez Aleman and Katherine Lynk Wartman.
Routledge, 2009

384 MAL
Broadbandits
by Om Malik
John Wiley, 2003

A complete list of new books added to Heriot-Watt University Library is available at: http://hw.lib.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin/newbooks.cgi

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

NEW BOOK REVIEW

Digital Consumers: reshaping the information professions
edited by David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands
Facet Publishing, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-85604-651-0
Price: £39.95

Much as Marinetti's 1909 Futurist Manifesto sought the modernisation and rejuvenation of Italian culture, so Nicholas and co-contributors blast the trumpet of a new belief system which, if adhered to, would reshape how information intermediaries (librarians, journalists, archivists and publishes) view and interact with their users – or should that be consumers?

Out with the old and in with the new! This is the clarion call for these middle-man professions which, according to Nicholas et al, have lost their way, their purpose and their place in the information-seeking food chain. It's just many don't realise it yet – and this is where the book comes in.

Written with no punches pulled, this book is evangelism without the charisma. It is direct and almost scathing in its portrayal of information professionals, particularly librarians, variously described as insular, tribal and set in their ways. Information professionals of a nervous disposition should cover their eyes. But wait, this is what Nicholas and Rowlands suggest has been happening for too long.

It's time for a different way of looking at things – a new philosophy, where disintermediation rules and Consumer is King. Ignore it at your peril. Professional meltdown is nigh.

The contributors obviously believe strongly in their message and, unlike a lot of evangelism, much of it is based on hard evidence (as the contributors are at pains to point out). Down with unsubstantiated PowerPoint puffery (as it is termed in the book). Long live evidence-based research into information seeking behaviours. This is the new wave.

Nicholas and Rowlands, like the Lynda La Plantes of the field, offer hard-hitting lines. Gritty realism it may be, but is it as radical a new order as the book suggests?

It is true that, in many circumstances, the gate-keeping role of the Librarian is dead and libraries may no longer be the information provider of choice, as the book suggests. However, the role of librarian or archivist as provider or custodian of information remains a valid if reduced one. Many information sources are not digital or may only become digital through the work of information professionals– perhaps, in the long run, contributing to their own downfall – if they fail to adapt to the cultural shift?

However, in the consumption of digital information, Nicholas and Rowlands make some very valid points. That libraries, particularly academic libraries, have become detached from their user base is undoubtedly true. Cultural shifts and consumer choice have lead to an unprecedented two way exchange between producer and consumer, leading traditional intermediaries such as Librarians to become marginalised. Librarians are not alone in this, however. Journalists are now often bypassed by those following the news, who prefer to follow events as they unfold using blogs and videos uploaded from mobile phones. Disintermediation cuts across professions and the book rightly discusses the phenomenon in the wider context of other content industries.

To mix metaphors, the editors don't hide their light under a bushel and do nail their colours emphatically to the mast. The book describes itself as ‘a first' which fills a ‘yawning gap' in the literature. Chapter 6 is described as “the most extensive evaluation of the digital consumer's information seeking behaviour ever presented”. Despite being published by Facet (the publishing arm of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals - CILIP) and being listed as recommended reading in CILIP's Executive Briefing on digital consumers, it is quite damning of information professions and their professional societies, noting that professional development training has been wholly inadequate in equipping their members for the digital transition.

The book pulls together and develops work by Nicholas and his colleagues at the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at University College London (UCL) . In this sense it is a very useful companion to the CIBER report “The Information Seeking Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future” on which Chapter 6 is based. All the contributors are connected to CIBER in some way so all are singing from the same hymn sheet. This does provide a unified voice but a heckler or two might not have gone amiss. However, contributions are drawn from many different disciplines including psychology, media studies, journalism, computer and information science, librarianship, history, e-commerce, publishing and marketing offering the following chapters: -

The digital consumer: an introduction and philosophy provides the setting for the book.

The digital information market place and its economics: the end of exclusivity illustrates that what is happening in libraries has parallels in other content industries.

The e-shopper: the growth of the informed purchaser discusses the e-shopper as a model for digital information consumption.

The library in the digital age offers a historical perspective on the current and future situation.

The psychology of the digital information consumer provides an insight into how we anthropomorphise technology and how an understanding of how we interact with technology can assist interface design.

The information seeking behaviour of the digital consumer: case study – the virtual scholar discusses the evidence gathered from a seven year research programme analysing millions of digital footprints left by information seekers.

The ‘Google Generation' – myths and realities about young people's digital information behaviour exposes poor information retrieval and evaluation skills amongst the young which the authors suggest must be tackled early in the school curriculum. However, a developing role for the Librarian in cultivating information skills in secondary education, reinforcing those skills in secondary and tertiary education and correcting acquired bad habits, is not developed satisfactorily. The quality and variability of information in the digital age is substantially different to print media and a level of scrutiny, objectivity and scepticism is required in the consumption of information. Might not the Librarian rise from the ashes of the library here? As quoted in the book “. . . in this new, answer-rich world, surely we must ensure that we are able to pose appropriate, meaningful questions?” (Susan Greenfield, 2006).

Trends in digital information consumption and the future suggest that generational gaps in information behaviour will shrink as will the lead time to the adoption/rejection of new technologies.

Where do we go from here? offers a six point plan for survival and suggests that the solution is purely a change of mind set. Simple.

There are many direct and useful points made in this book, while some, such as the challenge posed by consumer diversity, deserved more discussion.

Voicing the mantra of every good Evolutionist - adapt or die! this is a very thought-provoking book relevant to librarians, publishers, journalists, and archivists alike. The question is whether the suggested adaptations are the right ones to ensure survival.

All professions need to continually evaluate how they serve their audience. Simple SWAT analysis dictates that threats should not be neglected, opportunities not ignored, strengths not undersold and weaknesses not allowed to flourish. This book goes a long way to exposing threats, opportunities and weaknesses, if a bit light on strengths within the information professions.

To paraphrase Marshall Mcluhan, while not wishing to defend or excuse professional inertia, people go in to the future looking in the rear view mirror. A certain amount of harking back to the past and working with the familiar is natural. This book, however, suggests this has gone on too long. In this sense, it goes a long way to sharply realigning the reader's gaze and perspective. Once looking in the right direction with the right glasses on (as the book would have it) adaptation based on reliable evidence is the key to professional survival. It may herald a new regime but if its embraced, perhaps one which can declare -

T he Information Professional is dead. Long live the Information Professional?

MK

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GET A LIFE! - LEISURE TIME

StreetWire
http://www.streetwire.org
You can find out what's going on near you. From gigs and blog posts, to planning applications and missing kittens.

Garden Buildings Direct - How to build a base
http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/advice/buildingabase.aspx

Internet Bird Collection
http://ibc.lynxeds.com/

Free Printable Guitar Lessons
http://www.freemusicstudy.com/guitar.htm

Spotify
http://www.spotify.com/en/
World of music

Rooms in Scotland
http://www.roomsinscotland.com/
Various kinds of accommodation. Also has information on Scotland on things such as castles, walks and whisky distilleries

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