One rule for one…

According to reports from MoneyMarketing and the Telegraph the UK government plan to make troubled bank Northern Rock exempt from the Freedom of Information Act once they’ve steam-rollered its “temporary” nationalisation through parliament. Apparently the legislation states that “Article 18 deems Northern Rock not to be a publicly-owned company for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”

Broon defended the decision at PMQs today, saying that “The only reason that the Freedom of Information Act comes into this is that it would be unfair on Northern Rock if other companies knew everything about its business plan”. [Read a full transcript of the exchange here] However, FOI advocate Maurice Frankel, quoted in the Torygraph article above, reckons there are plenty of other mechanisms in place to stop the breach of commercial confidentiality, without resorting to such measures.

So, what’s the beef? With tax payers set to be saddled with somewhere in the region of £110 bn of liabilities they didn’t ask for, is there yet more bad news on the horizon? This apparent effort to restrict the flow of information from the stricken company would suggest we might not yet know everything.

However, beyond the minutiae of this particular case, isn’t it reassuring to know that important legislation that makes public bodies more accountable can be bypassed with a quick flick of the legislator’s pen?! Selective application of the law doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence in the system.

 

Huckabeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

More videos, this time found by Guido Fawkes at Guy TV News.  Interesting to see that some people across the pond are happy to have a go at the NeoCons!

 

No Cookies in the Library…

Hands up those who have ever had a reader like this [I mean one that doesn't listen, not one that's green and hairy... though if you have had the latter let's hear the story!]

… Yup, I see a forest of virtual hands

Thanks to Jasmine at the new WorldCat blog for leading me to this little gem

 

Online information lecture – Plagiarism in academic publishing

I attended Online information at Kensington Olympia this week, and amongst the selection of free talks on offer was a discussion on identifying plagiarism in academic publishing.  The talk was given by Ian Bannerman, managing director of journals for Taylor & Francis.

I’m used to thinking of plagiarism as primarily a problem with students in HE, but apparently it can also be prevalent amongst some academics too, according to research [sorry, no citation available I'm afraid!].  This poses problems for publishers, particularly when an offending article slips through the net and the plagiarism comes to light later on.  Bannerman explained that there is a fine balancing act between writing apologies to those who are the victims of plagiarism, and avoiding language that may attract libel accusations.

Now, 8 publishers [including T&F] are working with the company CrossRef to develop a cross-publisher plagiarism detection (PD) service to help detect plagiarism earlier in the publication process.  As I understand it, they are encouraging publishers to submit their published archives to a database.  The PD software, known as CrossCheck, can then apparently be used to check new manuscripts against the vast array of material in the database [not available to other, more traditional PD software due to lack of access to other publishers' archives] to try to flag up potential instances of text duplications.  It all sounds very promising!

It was stressed that this software isn’t perfect, and it is still in testing.  However, should it realise the potential it shows it could well help negate instances of plagiarism in academic publishing – an issue that seems to be more of a problem than I would ever have imagined.

 

Academic research – beyond Google?

The online peer-reviewed journal First Monday  has an interesting article by Alison J. Head entitled Beyond Google: how do students conduct academic research?

This “insider’s view of the student’s research process” emerges from research conducted by librarians at Saint Mary’s College of California (SMC) and aims to take a detailed look a the conceptualization and practical conducting of research, as well as the “barriers students encounter while conducting course-related research”.

This is definitely an interesting study, though with a sample of only 13 students studied (in a college of nearly 4000) some may question how representative the results actually are.  Practicalities of the research methods almost certainly restricted the numbers participating, and these kinds of logistics are often a very limiting factor.  However,  I’d be interested to know if a much larger sample (say 10 times the size) would produce similar results.

Hat-tip to iLibrarian for highlighting this article.

 

What’s in a name?

Ok, so I wanted to start a blog for the library service that I run, in order to keep my key stakeholders up-to-date with what’s going on and what’s new.  One slight problem however… the clamour of “No, no, no, we can’t possible have a blog [emphasis = sound of disgust]… no-one would want to look at that!” coming from the group of practitioners that I informally put the idea to.  However, when asked if they would like regular updates on new library developments that can be delivered straight to them with little effort or fuss… “oh, that’s a great idea – we’d really find that useful!!”.

*Rolls eyes*

Two things can be learned from this little escapade:

1. Names can be daunting and indeed off-putting, depending on your target audience.  Research that audience closely and carefully before suggesting any new services, for what you provide may be what they want (or need) but what you call it may make your users run for the hills!
2. I need to give my target audience some gentle instruction on RSS… what it is, how useful it can be, and how easy it is to use.

I feel an article in my organisation’s newsletter coming on!

 

Are “skills” a figment of our imagination?

I recently attended a very interesting and thought-provoking course on learning theory, the aim being to gain ideas about how best to put across information to members of my organisation enrolled on information skills courses.

Long story short – it appears that the term information “skills” is something of a no no. As you may have gathered by the quote marks, it’s the “skills” bit that’s the problem. According to the course leader this could imply a set of predefined processes that a “student” may assume is the only way to approach a problem and that all information inquiries (in this case) can be solved by following the same set routines. “Skills” is therefore giving my “students” an unrealistic expectation about what they should be taking from/what they will get out of my courses.

The problem that I have with this is pitching it to my target audience. I have resisted using the industry terminology “information literacy” because, in my opinion, the inclusion of the term “literacy” will give the impression that I am condescending towards this audience who are almost certainly unaware of its use in this context.

My aim is not to give the impression that every information need can be fulfilled by the same routine set of processes, and nor do I think the title “information skills” imply this.  My aim is to raise awareness of techniques that can be used in searching for information in online or real-world environments.  For example, the use of truncation and wildcards in search engine queries, or even the simplest things like the use of synonyms (which can easily be applied to both Web/database searching practice, and searching the index of a book).  I want to equip those who participate in my courses with some “tools” that will make them more effective searchers, more “skilled” searchers. However, in order to do this I have to get people to come first!  They won’t come if they don’t feel they will be getting anything practical from it, and woolley terminology like “problem solving” simply won’ cut it with my target audience I’m afraid.

So, the dilemma is one of semantics versus the “greater good” – namely encouraging as many of my target audience as possible to think more carefully about information searching and retrieval, and resource evaluation when conducting their enquiries.  Narrow-minded though this may seem, the success of these courses is far more important to my organisation than the relative merits of the terminology, so for now I will set the semantics to one side and concentrate on the content.  I fully appreciate the arguments of the course leader, and I accept that in the field of academia “information skills” may be divorced from the “reality” of the learning experience provided, but in the real, my real world the semantics aren’t the issue – the results are.  As long as those attending the courses take away more than they came with, and find the work we do on the day useful, I’ll be a happy bunny!

I should say that the rest of the course that I attended was very useful indeed, and I gained a lot of useful ideas about how to approach a subject in ways that would benefit all types of learners and people at various stages of understanding and development… but that’s one for another post – watch this space!

 

A stereotype, but a cute one none-the-less

Ok, so last time I was bemoaning the stereotyping of librarians by lazy journalists… and don’t get me wrong, I still hate it. However, you can’t help loving this can you?! A book-stamping avatar!! At least she hasn’t got a bob.

I just hope she set the date right

Hat-tip to Scott Vine, the Information Overlord, for drawing my attention to this.

 

Back with new technology!

I’ve been somewhat lax in posting lately, and this can be explained away by a number of factors, namely:

1. Vacation!!
2. Heavy workload.
3. New technology to facilitate blogging!

However, it’s time to start posting again – especially now I’ve acclimatised to the shiny new bit of kit that I’m tapping away on right now

And what better way to start than with that old chestnut, the image of librarians. Now, the stereotypical librarian wears a large quantity of tweed, has her (invariably they are female) hair tied tightly in a bob, and sets off the outfit with a stunning pair of horn-rimmed specs. Add to this the physical trait of a severely eroded index finger (the result of “wind burn” from 20 years of hardcore shushing) and there you have a character that the majority of the public know and, erm… well, do they love them, resent them, laugh at them or just pity them?

An enduring question for me is, why, when numerous generations have passed through modern libraries (be they public, academic or special) that retain very few or none of the 1960s-1980s-style characters described above, does this image persist. I mean, this is the 21st century for crying out loud! Are there really any of these librarians still working? Does any modern library user really recognize this stereotype in their librarian? Anybody?

Ok, I suppose there must be one or two, but this surely doesn’t warrant the persistent perpetuation of this myth.

My (very obvious) theory on the matter is that the stereotype is driven by the media, and in particular lazy journalists who haven’t visited a library for at least 25 years and prefer to fall back on their long-formulated preconceptions about a profession rather than think “ooh, I might actually do some research on this story”.

Even positive stories trying to dispel the myth can leave a slightly bitter taste in the (well, in my) mouth. For example, a recent article by Kara Jesella in the New York Times aims to show that modern librarians do “cool” things like drink cocktails in bars and get tattoos… ooh, and by the way, they do some good work with new technology too…

Well, no s**t Sherlock! Ok, this is probably a little harsh, and it may well be that the author was genuinely surprised that all librarians don’t go to bed at 8pm every night reciting the finer points of AACR2 to their budgies. However, I can’t help feel that the title of the article (“A hipper crowd of shushers”) sets the wrong tone initially, and subsequently the piece never really recovers. Whilst it successfully highlights the fact that there’s much more to librarianship than a bit of book stamping and shelving, the reader doesn’t really escape the overriding feeling of surprise that young people can do what young people do and be librarians at the same time.

So, let me spell it out to anyone who hasn’t yet got the message… we librarians and information professionals are (in the most part) highly motivated, well qualified individuals who are good at what we do and enjoy our work both with people and new technologies… and we do have lives too!! Capiche?

Thanks to the lo-fi librarian for drawing attention to the NY Times article.

Update – It seems like I’m not the only one to take a dim view of this article.  Meredith Farkas, who was interviewed for the article but to her relief wasn’t quoted, seems to agree with much of what I say above.  I very much agree with her sentiment that we should celebrate the diversity of the people working in the profession – working together and being able to draw on a wide range of experiences only makes us collectively better at what we do!

 

Stephen Fry on Web 2.0

One for my friend Emily here…

Stephen Fry, actor, TV presenter and all-round good egg with a penchent for Twinings tea and Oscar Wilde, talks (for 5 minutes or so) on the subject of Web 2.0. Whilst some celebrities can be an absolute bore when digressing from their usual area of expertise, Fry manages to be as interesting and entertaining as ever. Well worth a watch! To view the video (and other interviews with SF) follow this link.

(Originally found via Phil Bradley’s weblog)