ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

The banquet was glittering. At least I had on glittering gold, and there were lots of silver glitters as well. So the big news, from my perspective, was the Lifetime Achievement Award to Carol Tenopir. Not only was it well deserved, it went to an American rather than a European, emphasizing the international focus of the Online Information show. The second award that I personally had a connection with was to Mary Peterson of Australia, a frequent speaker at Internet Librarian International, for Chasing the Sun, a virtual reference service in collaboration with SWICE (the UK National Health Service South West Division) and SAHSLC (sorry, don’t know what that acronym stands for entirely, but it’s from south Australia).

Wow! I’m thrilled!

Marydee Ojala

Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals

www.onlinemag.net

• Online Information 2004

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

As keynote speaker for the Scholarly Publishing track Michael Keller, Stanford University Librarian & Publisher, Highwire & Stanford University Press gave a fascinating review of scholarly publishing issues including:

• Challenges to Big Deals and some retreats by publishers

• Increasing customer awareness (involving faculty) of issues

• New entrants in e-publishing

• Developments of institutional repositories

A rhetorical question - are print versions becoming ephemeral, he asked? (Something to think about!)

Don Hawkins

ITI

(Look for a complete report in my review of the conference in the January issue of Information Today.)

• Online Information 2004

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

Jane McConnell, moderator of the Information Architecture track, gleefully warns Lou Rosenfeld and Christopher Harris-Jones that she’ll pull the plug on the microphone if they exceed their time limits!

Lou Rosenfeld keynoted the Information Architecture track this morning with a passionate, but reasoned argument for the viability and importance of information architects, especially in enterprise and government environments. Describing them as “information therapists” or new “information integrators,” Lou sees information architects as librarians of the new age – who may not be especially entrepreneurial, but who enjoy organizing information, and are seeing growing opportunities.

Many of his comments were based on a survey of the profession and its prospects that he conducted earlier this fall. The results and related comments can be found on his blog.

Bottom line, Lou is optimistic about the prospects for information architects and for the profession, but in the next breath admits there may still be a debate in some quarters as to whether IA is “real” or not. However, I suspect that by the end of today’s track on IA, attendees at this conference will harbor few doubts.

Nancy Garman
Information Today, Inc.

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

Well this ITI blog has got tongues wagging back in the states. Not surprisingly, it has the whole topic of blogs buzzing through the email mill and, of course, the blogosphere. It also looks like a hot week for blogging news in general.

While the company didn’t choose to exhibit in London, I’m pretty the news that Patrick Spain’s HighBeam Research named a Chief Blogging Officer this week made it across the pond. (If not, look for it in Friday’s EContent Xtra.) Now, the job title may be tongue-in-cheek, but the business impetuous behind the decision is serious enough. EContent contributing editors Ron Miller, David Scott, and I have been speculating quite a bit on how HighBeam’s hired guns–some formidable names–to comment on its research products using blog-style tools will be received by the blogging community and info pros, who might not cotton to the opinions for fee approach in this vox populist medium. As Scott said, "Patrick is really intent on shaking things up; Good thing we put them on the EC100." Without doubt, HighBeam’s move reinforces the info world’s recognition of the power of blogging.

That said, Microsoft officially tossed its hat into the Weblog ring with its MSN Spaces blog service slated to be unveiled this week. As Miller put it, "Never let it be said that Microsoft doesn’t wait until everybody else clears a path."

I see that taxonomies and discovery are hot… any buzz on blogging over there?

Michelle Manafy
Editor, EContent & Intranets

• Online Information 2004

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

As I noted in an earlier posting, Google is not exhibiting here. But they are around.

In evidence, I spotted this media kit from them in the Press Office. And our International Columnist Jim Ashling had an interview with one of their representatives yesterday.

But even their unofficial presence here is not focused on Google Scholar, which is indeed turning out, according to various reports, to be the buzz of the conference.

Rather, Google is here (if only in the background) hawking its enterprise search appliance.

As an independent observer, someone cynically noted to me in a sidebar conversation, I guess they really don’t need to be on the show floor, since everyone is talking about them anyway.

It must be great to be a household name.

Dick Kaser

ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

On the trail of opinions on Google Scholar, I next went to the CrossRef stand, where I talked with Ed Pentz, CrossRef’s executive director.

He noted the original 9 publishers who first participated in the CrossRef Google pilot starting last July have grown to 29. Among them are such leaders as Blackwell, Springer-Verlag, Taylor & Francis, American Physical Society, IEEE, and Wiley (see below). Open Access publisher BioMed Central is also in the pilot. And 3.4 million research articles are available via the interface (accessed from the sites of participating publishers).

That’s CrossRef Google, but what about Google Scholar?

Is everything from CrossRef publishers automatically included?

Nope, said Pentz, “Google Scholar is a whole separate crawling, indexing and searching operation.”

“Google Scholar’s set of materials is somewhat,” and Pentz seemed to be implying inexplicably, “different.”

“Clearly,” he said, “Users like cross-disciplinary full-text search through the Google interface. But Google Scholar is pointing to a separate set of ’scholarly’ materials.”

What’s lacking? I asked.

He noted that Google Scholar is “not comprehensive, the links may not be persistent, and it’s not necessarily clear which is the authoritative copy.”

Should the DOI foundation get more involved with the Google Scholar effort?

“Well,” Pentz said, “we want to engage actively with Google.”

Dick Kaser

ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

I had a lovely chat on Tuesday with Kimberley Allen, from John Wiley, UK, who gave me a demo of Wiley’s Interscience online service.

When I noticed the CrossRef Google icon on one of the search screens, the conversation took a turn, and we segued into the topic of Google Scholar.

Wiley, as you may know, was one of the first of a handful of publishers last summer to participate in CrossRef Google, which was also an effort to open up scholarly resources via Google’s ubiquitous search engine.

"Wiley definitely noticed more traffic coming from Google, as a result of opening up the Interscience collection to the Google crawler," she said.

Those searching on CrossRef Google can either retrieve materials under their organizations’ Interscience subscription, or they can buy individual items on a pay-per-view basis.

With regard to Google’s latest foray into deep Web resources, Google Scholar, she said, "Anything that makes our content more discoverable and accessible to the user and drives traffic to our content is good."

Dick Kaser
ITI VP Content

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

This week, Scirus, the free science-specific search engine from Elsevier, announced that it has partnered with the American Institute of Physics (AIP) to index AIP’s full-text articles. Scirus had previously indexed just the AIP abstracts.

With all the buzz recently about Google Scholar’s launch, Scirus is determined to show its advantages. Scirus covers more than 167 million Web pages and says it can pinpoint STM information that other search engines cannot reach. Scirus also covers more than 18 million full-text articles and abstracts from sources such as MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, BioMed Central, pre-print servers, as well as patents. Scirus says it offers unique content, superior indexing and classification technology, and advanced search capabilities.

See the NewsLink Monthly Spotlight article posted today about Scirus and scholarly content.

Paula J. Hane, ITI News Bureau Chief
www.infotoday.com

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

This morning SLA’s European Chapter, recently re-branded as SLA Europe, held its annual breakfast. This event is one of the few where chapter members from all over Europe can mingle. My table was mostly Danes, so the conversation veered from Danish to English and back. The speakers were Janice Lachance, SLA Executive Director; Ethel Salonen, SLA President; and Ciaran Morton, Dialog. Both Janice and Ethel talked about the benefits of belonging to SLA and the future direction of the association. There’s a membership drive on, the idea of an SLA University with courses to be delivered over the Web, new chapters (Australia/New Zealand), new divisions (Government, Competitive Intelligence), and the annual conference in Toronto (the Canadian dollar relative to the British Pound and the Euro should make this really affordable for European members) were topics for discussion.

Shortly after the breakfast, a partnership agreement between SLA and Elsevier Publishing to be made final in mid-December regarding funding for SLA Online University was announced with great fanfare.

Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
www.onlinemag.net

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ITI Bloggers December 1st, 2004

Tuesday afternoon’s track on Information Discovery was very good, although the switch in rooms halfway through confused a lot of people. Can You Trust What You Find? was in the Auditorium. I spoke first on quality issues as they affect researchers, students, and the general public, then Beth Jacaruso from OneSource talked about quality from the perspective of a data producer. Our talks paralleled each other to a surprising degree, considering we hadn’t coordinated them ahead of time. The third speaker, Adrian Porter, told how his company designs Web sites.

The Eureka Forum, with Phil Bradley, Mary Ellen Bates, Karen Blakeman, and Gary Price was next, but we all had to move across the hallway to Conference Room 1. Competitive Intelligence from the Business Information track moved into the Auditorium. The Forum received lots of questions about Google Scholar. They were also asked how their searching behaviors have changed in the past year. It was interesting to hear how much ground Yahoo is gaining and how Google is being seriously threatened by other search engines.

Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
www.onlinemag.net

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