ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

Right after hearing Mary Ellen Bates talk about “change is constant,” I heard an excellent B&F division presentation on Business Intelligence in a Changing World. Daniel Franklin has been editorial director of the prestigious Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and editor of the annual publication, “The World in…” He is about to start as the new editor of The Economist and editor-in-chief of Economist.com. Needless to say, the room was overflowing with eager listeners.
EIU was born in 1946 and is now celebrating its 60th anniversary, thus the choice of dates for his commentary—60 years back and 60 years forward. Citing a wide range of authoritative sources, he provided statistics, graphs, and facts to illuminate his fascinating look at 10 themes of change during these years. He covered demographics, the world economy, countries, companies, technology, and more. I won’t go into details on the 10 since I’ve been told that the presentation will be posted on the B&F Web site. [Don’t miss his fanciful list of the top companies in 2066, like ExxonHydro, MyMcSpace, and GGS (formerly Google Goldman Sachs).]

These are just a few highlights of what he covered. First, the people. Our global population has expanded by more than 150 percent since 1950, rising from 2.55 billion to 6.47 billion. The UN projects 9.08 billion for 2050, and increase of 40 percent from today. In 2006, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population is urban, rather than rural. The world economy is nearly 10 times bigger in 2006 than 60 years ago. Countries in emerging markets will experience faster growth in the future, but the U.S. will still grow at 3 percent per year and outpace other rich countries. We’ve also seen great changes in the balance of military power and international crises have actually lessened. “Yes, the world is actually a safer place. There’s less really bloody conflicts.” We’ve also experience quite a social revolution—changing work roles for women, single parent households, gay marriage, and more.

He urged the audience to reflect on these 10 themes—these subjects will be driving business in the future. “The past 60 years have seen extraordinary changes, but we’ll see even faster changes in the next 60 years. Prepare for a risky ride, but also an exhilarating one.”

Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief
Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com

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ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

The business meeting this year was rather sparsely attended, probably because there were no burning issues upon which the membership was being asked to vote. So here’s some high points.

The treasurer, Gloria Zamora, reported the “sexy” information that the association has consolidated the monies from 10 funds into four to increase our investment opportunities and that we ended the fiscal year with a surplus of $135,000.

SLA’s CEO, Janice LaChance, said that the conference had, so far, attracted 5,551 attendees–more than Toronto. She’s started a new blog called InfoX (and, yes, she asked ITI’s permission to use that moniker). Lots of partnerships are happening: ITI is one and SIIA is another. SLA is looking for advertising opportunities to build awareness and gain new members. “Why should we think small?” We need a renewal of purpose. SLA should build both its stature as an association and that of its members. “You have to be ready for the journey.”

President Pam Rollo reviewed her presidential strategy for the past year and talked about how the task forces performed (admirably). There’s an ongoing focus on membership and a commitment to review chapter management. We need to look outside ourselves. Branding and marketing should be ongoing. There is lots going on with education and professional development.

Incoming president Rebecca Vargha urged us to play hard and play together. She then outlined her plans for the upcoming year.

Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals

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ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

What a seasoned pro she is. At the start of her session, there was no microphone in the room and her computer’s video was incompatible with the display setup. She grabbed a volunteered PC, added her memory stick, booted up, and talked without a mic until the audio folks got one working. She didn’t even seem fazed by it.

Mary Ellen’s look at where our profession is heading was entertaining, insightful, and challenging. She talked about the impact of Web 2.0 in our libraries and offered a number of practical suggestions. “We’ve been 2.0 for a long time,” she said, “but maybe we haven’t packaged [our services] in a sexy way.” One suggestion for increasing the value and visibility of the library within an organization is to create an internal version of something like LinkedIn, which would surface hidden experts and create networks. She discussed the many challenges we face, including attracting and motivating younger workers, getting library schools to teach the needed skills, and providing virtual services. “Will librarians become highly paid “knowledge officers” or merely filing clerks?”

Looking ahead, she urged folks to make the library as pervasive as possible and look to provide availability at the point of need, whether mobile, 24/7 access, or embedded in users’ applications. “Can we become the new Amazon.com?” Those who adapt best will survive and change is constant. In fact, she went so far as to declare that “everything you know is wrong!” We should be ready to “pivot.” Other great soundbites of commentary:
“We are providing a service, not maintaining a warehouse.”
“We have more electronic tools, but they are just tools, not solutions.”
“Assume that what worked last year isn’t appropriate now—evaluate for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis).”

Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief
Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com

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ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

RSS is hot! It’s very hot, as evidenced by the overflow crowd that turned out to hear Jenny Levine give an excellent tutorial called “How to Use RSS to Know More and Do Less.” In fact, when I arrived at the scheduled room to hear Jenny, there were more people outside in the hall than inside the meeting room! And when the conference organizers moved the session across the hall to a larger room, there was still a large overflow crowd. Clearly, RSS is a topic of keen interest to many information professionals, and Jenny was just the right person to explain it. Jenny’s information-rich presentation is available here, and I highly recommend it as a resource on RSS.

Briefly, an RSS file (a form of XML) is installed on a Web server, and it watches the indicated sites in the background. Once an hour, it checks for changes, and when it detects one, it lets the user know. The user must access a reader or aggregator (either one installed on the PC or a Web-based one), and by a single click can access the changed Web site. As Jenny said, it’s much easier to understand RSS by using it than by reading a description like this one. Many Web sites have an icon on them, indicating that an RSS feed is available (although sometimes the icon is very hard to find).

The advantages of RSS are that the user does not have to access a Web site (or remember to!); instead, the site can come to the user automatically. The process is simple:
1. Subscribe to a site’s RSS feed by adding it to your aggregator.
2. The aggregator will scan the sites and tell you if there is new content.
3. Click on the site to see the content.
There are a number of RSS aggregators available; Jenny suggested starting with Bloglines because it’s free and server-based, so you can access your account from anywhere. A number of customization options are available; you can categorize the sites you are watching into folders, etc. Some RSS aggregators have the capability to view feeds on an iPod or directly in Outlook folders, and it is reported that Microsoft is integrating RSS throughout its new Vista operating system scheduled for launch in the near future.

Jenny mentioned Feedster, an RSS search engine and called it the “Google of RSS”. It lets the user subscribe to keyword searches so there is no need to rerun the search every time a database update is made—very convenient! Now that RSS is entering the mainstream, large companies are even providing “canned” feeds for users to customize.

It is absolutely critical that librarians understand RSS. Libraries need to provide RSS feeds so that their content can be used effectively by their customers. Jenny stressed that as Web shifts, librarians will not be part of it if they do not have an RSS feed. There is a wide range of things that libraries can do with RSS, and Jenny’s presentation contains numerous examples of RSS feeds for new acquisitions, patron accounts so that one is always aware of loans and due dates (click here for an article on a sample service and here for another service on the same lines), creation of pathfinders on subjects of wide interest, or displaying headlines from news sites. One library patron (Edward Vielmetti at Ann Arbor) has even created an RSS feed of book covers of new acquisitions, making browsing them much more informative. Brian Mathews, Atlanta GA, (a librarian) got RSS feeds for 20 students and put them in Bloglines. When he saw somebody needed help, contacted them and offered it, thus reaching students before point of need. See Brians blog.

Some library automation vendors are installing the capability for integrating RSS feeds into their products; if your vendor is not doing this, ask them for it! It will allow you to make maximum use of the content that you have paid for. Content from several sites can even be integrated into a single virtual feed using Superglu.

Jenny concluded by urging the audience to “Go forth and RSSify!” Use Bloglines to stay current, start a blog so you have a feed of new items, start asking vendors for RSS feeds, get others to display your RSS, and market your RSS services.

This was one of the best talks on a technical subject at SLA. RSS is here to stay, and it is important to make as much use of it as possible. People ARE going to use RSS (some companies are already using it for internal communications). We will have to deal with it, and there is no better time than the present!

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today

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ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

Among the SLA Awards Reception party-goers aboard the USS Constellation tonight was Pamella Rollo, SLA President (above, right).

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers June 14th, 2006

An enthusiastic, gesticulating Stuart Elliott, NY Times columnist on advertising, captivated his listeners today in a session sponsored by the SLA Advertising and Marketing division.

When asked about the future of printed newspapers (given the preference of today’s advertisers for the more measurable, if somewhat speculative results, of e-advertising), Elliott said “There are already some magazines that have abandoned print. . . .

“For a daily newspaper, that’s going to be an oh-my-gawd moment, because the history and heritage of these properties is reporting things that you find on your doorstep every morning. If I had one dollar for everyone who goes to the Web for news, I would be wealthy . . . What is a newspaper? We’ve had them since 1750 or whenever, but does that mean they have to continue for another 250 years? . . .

“To try to extrapolate what the new media will be like,” he continued, “would be like extrapolating what TV would be like based on what it was 50 years ago.”

When asked how his own research habits have changed, Elliott said, “There is still a staff of librarians on the 10th floor [of the NYTimes building], but we ask them to do only a fraction of what we used to. We have online information at our fingertips–Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, Wall Street Journal online, all kinds of databases and search engines. I used to keep clippings of articles. I used to call the librarians on the 10th floor . . . now we have an embarrassment of riches. It democratises and decentralizes the sources of information and is good for everyone.”

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006

Pat Ryan, Sr. Account Manager, Databases, Wiley Interscience, explained to me today how Wiley is offering a variety of pricing models to support a range of user requirements.

Books can be purchased, she said, based on a subscription model or an outright purchase approach. But if a user subscribes to the same book for several years, then the book becomes a permanent part of their collection.

Pay-per-view options are also available, for $25 a view. Tokens for article views can be purchased for as little as $10 (as much as $23.50), depending on how many the buyer commits to purchase in advance.

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006

Ovid’s Inside Sales Account Manager Paul Farris gave me a demo of QUOSA, a desktop tool that lets researchers compile a personal reference collection on their computers.

According to handouts in the booth, "Users can quickly and easily search, store, analyze, share, monitor and organize dozens, hundreds, even thousands of full text documents …," reducing by up to 70% the time needed to conduct research tasks.

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006

Creating buzz around the H.W. Wilson booth was the reference publishers’ most recent retrospective collection: Applied Science and Technology Index (1913-1983).

Wilson was also sponsoring a contest, with results to be announced at the end of today.

Questions on the quiz were:

1. What infamous actor was born in Baltimore, MD, on May 10, 1838?

2. What famous biologist born in Baltimore was known as “the zoo lady” because she was the founder of the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center?

3. What famous cosmetics company executive–founder, president, and chairman of the board of the company bearing her name–died on October 18, 1966.

The answers were, according to the Wilson flier, to be found in the Wilson Biography Reference Bank.

I decided to see if I could also find them on Google . . . with these results:

A1: John Wilkes Booth (okay I guessed, which made the search easier. My search statement: John Wilkes Booth born May 10, 1838.)
A2: Sharon Matola (my search statement: Belize Zoo “Zoo Lady”)
A3: Elizabeth Arden (my search statement: cosmetic executive died October 18, 1966.)

It took about 10 minutes of googling to get these answers. But are they right?

Quite frankly, I would have felt more comfortable searching in the Wilson database, and besides I would have ended up with the official biographies on these fascinating Baltimore natives . . . so the old adage applies, you get what you pay for.

My congratulations to whoever won the prize.

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006

Brian Sweet, Sr. Product Manager, STN, showed me how a search for information on laundry detergent can provide intelligence on who’s doing what in the field and how concepts related to products can be visually mapped.

The relatively new service from CAS/STN has been available for several months, but it was my first glimpse of what all the buzz is about.

Search results are displayed in various windows, which let the user see–using bar charts, scatter graphs, and highlighting–what specific companies are involved in the field, what individual researchers are doing, and what concepts in document titles and abstracts show a conceptual relationship to one another. In a nutshell the software lets researchers see where the action is without having to wade through the literature itself.

It’s simply amazing the things that technology is facilitating these days.

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

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