ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
The exhibit hall closes this afternoon. It has been a great showcase of products and services for information professionals. And as usual, there have been lots of giveaways (my grandchildren are eagerly awaiting my return!). I don’t think I did too badly in this department on my rounds.
There were literally dozens of iPod drawings. All you had to do is drop your business card in a bowl to enter. This one is typical.
Pens, pencils, and candy were also in abundance. Here are some of the more unusual pens–they blink with a blue light and have a button to turn them off and save the battery.
Here’s a "living statue" that greeted exhibit hall visitors yesterday.
The last giveaway is ice cream–I didn’t have any dessert for lunch, so I’m ready for it!
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
Sabrina Pacifici, creator and editor of the llrx.com webzine and the beSpacific blog, and Dennis Hamilton, Information Services Manager at KZF Design, Inc., discussed blogs in the corporate world, specifically on the corporate intranet. They said that there is no single right way to implement a blog on an intranet, but they offered some practical information and examples. In a very information-rich presentation they discussed such topics as why blog, software considerations, ethics, lessons learned, and issues to consider. Dennis showed some examples of pages from his blog on KZF’s intranet. If you are thinking of installing a blog on your intranet—or maybe replacing your intranet with a blog (yes, this has been done)—then you need to check out this presentation. It’s now available on the Web–click here to view it.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
Bill Buxton, a noted interface designer, keynoted the second day with a look at how technology has impacted us and how it should impact us. In a fast-paced talk with lots of quotations, he took the view that technology is like a prosthesis—it helps us function, but it’s not the end goal. Stressing that we must understand technology’s social impact, he noted that the effects of technology are not neutral, and we must ensure that they are not detrimental. Here are some other quotations from his talk:
· “The tail of technology can’t wag the dog of society.”
· “History did not begin in 1947 with the invention of the transistor.”
· “The greatest work of literature in English has to be the Oxford English Dictionary.”
· “Good ideas have become a commodity. We don’t need new ones, we just need to capitalize on the ones we have.”
· “We aren’t in the midst of an information revolution; we’re in a racket of noise and data overload!”
· “There has been no progress in the design of computers since 1982. There has been lots of progress in our experiences with computers.”
· “Untrustworthy blogs are just words.”
Buxton emphasized that we must have a human-centered perspective on technology. He feels that virtually any technology that will have a real impact in the next five years has existed for about ten years. We just need to figure out how to change its scale or location. He mentioned some interesting new devices that have this potential: digital pens that work like a highlighter but store the highlighted material in their memory, electronic ink, and organic LEDs (OLEDs)—see below.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
Some people certainly enjoyed the parties last night. Here are a few scenes from the Thomson Scientific/Dialog party. Interesting that half the people there thought it was the Dialog Party while the other half thought they were at the Thomson Scientific party. Now that Dialog is part of Thomson Scientific, two parties became one party.
Margot, Deb, and Randy
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
So which exhibitor’s parent company comes from the greatest distance? The undisputed winner has to be a Japanese company, and Maruzen International, Ltd. is here. They’re showing molecular models for chemists and other information-related materials (that’s a model of the HIV virus on the right). Shown in the top picture below is Jessica Mateo, Maruzen’s New Jersey-based local representative.
The runner-up is TDNet from Tel Aviv, Israel, with their e-journal management system, and shown in their booth in the lower picture are (left to right) Donna Delrieu, Director of Corporate Sales; Michael Markwith, President of the US-based company; and Asher Sofrin, CEO from Tel Aviv.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
It wasn’t just the Blogging session that was crowded yesterday. Most sessions I tried to go to yesterday afternoon were full, as was this morning’s on statistics. Statistics? This subject has all the chairs taken and librarians lined up outside in the hallway? Amazing!
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
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ITI Bloggers June 7th, 2005
You know that public records are important to this group of librarians when this 7:30 am session on Mon. drew a full room. With just coffee to keep them going, they expressed their concerns and asked questions about data quality, sources of data and inclusion policies, and pricing. Many wanted clarification of update policies and about content that is no longer being included. Representatives from LexisNexis, ChoicePoint, and infoUSA were surprisingly frank in their comments and promised to get back to individuals if they couldn’t supply an answer. One librarian stood up to thank them for coming and asked if their presence indicated a “new spirit of openness.” Many interesting questions centered on issues of “appropriate use” or “permissible use”—and in what context. In the light of recent security breaches and fraudulent use of public records data, vendors are beginning a “recredentialing” process. All in all, a very interesting and useful dialogue.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief
Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com
phane {at} infotoday(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 6th, 2005
Industry pioneers Margie Hlava of Access Innovations and Roger Summit, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Dialog at the Thomson Dialog booth.
Photo by Don Hawkins
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ITI Bloggers June 6th, 2005
Librarians weren’t the only ones to give presentations to the SLA attendees. In the Exhibit Hall, a presentation area was set up for vendors, and the sessions seemed well attended. Here, LexisNexis discusses their taxonomy integration project, which was announced today.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 6th, 2005
An overflow crowd turned out to hear about blogs in the first round of sessions after the opening keynote this morning. I only got to part of the session (and had to stand!), but I heard a good talk by Catherine Lavalée-Welch of the University of South Florida and creator of the EngLib blog. She reviewed how to measure the quality of a blog, why publish a blog, how to find blogs, and she gave some examples of specific blogs. A paper in the Journal of Library Administration on how to judge the criteria of a blog will be published in the fall. She also recommended the book , Weblogs and Libraries, published last year. Some of the quality measures she mentioned were:
· Regular updating
· Consistency of posts with the subject of the blog
· A lifespan of more than one year
· Links to other resources
· Brief posts
· Easy access to older entries, and
· Good graphic design (especially ease of printing)
She also pointed out that most of the standard search engines do not allow the user to limit the results to blogs, so if you are searching for a blog, use a specialized search engine like Technorati or Feedster.
Catherine concluded by noting that blogs are supposed to help you keep up with the literature, but, like any other information source, you can get information overload if you subscribe to too many of them. She feels that they can be used in some ways as a reference tool, especially if their author is a well-known expert in the field. They also can be authoritative, again by virtue of the status of their authors.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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