infoblog

julia

2011-11-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Just a test post to see if i can update by phone

2009-11-24T03:59:00.000-08:00

Digital versus Analog

I watched the last episode of Electric Dreams recently and was taken aback by how radically and swiftly technology has changed the way we live and work.

Much of my work over the past decade has been involved to some extent in using the web to either find information or to communicate and consequently I have spent a large part of it behind a computer. I used to work in a library but now work in an office and it looks pretty similar to the one in the TV show The Office, which I am reliably informed by Wikipedia first aired on 9 July 2001. I don't know when that became what work looks like, it just seems to have crept up on us.

I had a useful couple of years in full time education as a mature student, before which I was a library assistant and after which I became a Librarian. I seem to recall computers were around before I went to University but you usually had to do a bit of searching to find one and quite possibly need to ask someones permission to use it once you found it. Then in 2000 as a newly qulfied librarian I was plunked in front of a computer and I have had my view of the world of work obscured by a variety of monitors ever since.

I sometimes have a bit of ambivalent attitude towards all the technology. I love gadgets, but find the disposable culture of constant upgrades distressing. I love the fact that I can collaborate and converse electronically with people across the world. I hate the fact that in reality I find myself collaborating and conversing electronically with people I am sat right next too.

Application shall speak peace unto Application

2009-02-14T06:43:00.001-08:00

Having finally got my facebook and (hopefully) my Google reader shared items to feed into tweeter, I am now trying to connect one of my infrequently updated blogs. So now I can update from just about anywhere, all I need is to think of something interesting to say.

2008-11-18T02:21:00.000-08:00

Public sector blogging
Web 2.0 has been with us for a while now and is pretty much in the mainstream. Even my father has his own blog and flickr site . Not all areas of the public sector are fully up to speed it and it has been one of my frustrations that most social networking and collaborative tools out there fall foul of my organisations IT security thus thwarting my ambition to be a web 2.0 guru. However I think we are reaching a tipping point. There are a number of initiatives running that aim to give public sector workers some experience of web 2.0 and collaborative technology. These include:

The Communities of Practice platform
The Improvement Service and I&DeA have developed a Communities of Practice site to encourage local authority and government staff to explore the potential of collaborative technology. Staff can register and join existing communities of practice in which they can collaborate on document via wiki’s, upload documents, participate and forums and arrange meetings. There are a few hundred Communities of Practice set up ranging from open communities which have hundreds of members and anyone can participate in, to small select groups where membership is restricted.

There are a number of specialists who are setting up virtual communities. Such as

Government Knowledge and Information Management Network (GKIMN) have set up a virtual community for knowledge and information management practitioners in central government and public bodies.

The Government Communication Network (GCN) is a virtual community of professional communicators working in government.

I could go, and probably will later, but I am finally getting the sense that things are moving.

2007-11-07T08:41:00.001-08:00

Ubiquitous Computing
Mike Underloy has an a fascinating post in which he looks forward to Web Work in a Post-PC World picking up on reports that PCs are losing their relevance in Japan. Apparently PC sales in Japan have been in decline for the past five straight quarters. Smart phones and a whole array of mobile devices make it easier for people to access and update Facebook and MySpace and pretty much everything. It is quite possible that better input devices will be developed before the next generation of nextgens evolve extra spindly fingers.

No two ways about it, the PC is doomed...and not before time either. Being tethered to a big lump of plastic everyday at work seems to be a big price to pay and much as I love all the infinte possibilities the web provides, I do begrudge spending so much of my time face to face with a computer screen in some cupboard of an office.

When I first planned my glorious career, I had anticipated that computers and mobile telephony would allow me to work more or less anywhere, therefore I would choose to work from a beach shack in some exotic locale. This is still the plan, though not yet the reality. The shape and form of future technology will impact on the way we lead our lives, so it makes sense to be at least mildly interested if not actively engaging. Which is all the more reason for using web tools like Google Docs rather having a Word document on your computer, or bringing carrying your files and applications on a USB pendrive using PortableApps. If it frees you from the leaden weight of the PC then the world is well and truly your oyster.

The beach awaits

2007-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

Blind faith in web tools

There is a lovely story in today's Guardian about what happens when you place too much faith in what you find on the web. A group of Dutch journalists planning a trip to Israel almost casued a diplomatic row when they used the online translation tool Babelfish when the Dutch Consulate requested a preview of the questions that the journalists intended to ask.

The email commenced "Helloh bud, Enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian, and on relational Israel Holland," before posing a number of somewhat disturbing questions along the lines of "Why we did not heard on mutual visits of main the states of Israel and Holland, this is in the country of this".

It reminds me of the time when I used voice recognition software to translate my recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and ended up with a somewhat more surreal version. Sadly posterity has been robbed of this new and improved text, the file was lost in a hard drive partitioning incident, though I do recall the final line "So long lives this, and this gives life to fish"

The name Babelfish comes from Douglas Adam's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is such a brilliant idea, a creature that in breaking down the barriers to communication causes "more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation" Perversely it is by not breaking down these barriers that the online version has caused offence.

2007-10-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

There used to be a soap opera in ITV, Britain's first commercial TV company, called Crossroads, whose productions values were so low that the sets would visibly wobble when anyone entered a room. It is well remembered for the time one of its regular characters, a mechanic called Benny, popped out to get a spanner one episode to reappear again five years late with no explanation of what had happened in the intervening time – and no spanner either. Characters re-emerging with little or no explanation are not uncommon however, Sherlock Holmes came back after being killed off at the Reichenbach falls, Bobby Ewing emerged from the shower several series of Dallas after his supposed demise looking none the worse for wear. People do it all the time on the long running BBC radio programme the Archers, but no one bats an eyelid because they never saw them in the first place. So hopefully its no big deal really that my last post on this blog was five years ago. I'd like to to think that this is some kind of a record, but suspect it isn't.

It's not that I totally turned my back on social networking tools, there's my flickr presence for example (which may be possibly give some pointers as to why I have taken so long to get round to updating my blog), and I occasionally get round to entering details of my jogging on mapmyrun, I have 3 friends on BEBO, have been reunited with a few more elsewhere and I do have a wiki somewhere. I'd like to point out that if I don't look as fit in my flickr pictures as my mapmyrun training regimes suggests I should, I am still looking for mapmyguinnessandkebabintake.com

I have been moved to resume my blogging after attending day 1 of the Internet Librarian International 2007 conference. Stephen Abrams in his keynote address recalled the words of British Library director Caroline Brazier's who suggested that librarians are welcome not to embrace web 2.0 – provided they take early retirement first. Clearly we are living in interesting times and I no longer think it is possible to get the full measure of what is happening and what it means to the profession by merely dabbling occasionally. It is also a fabulous opportunity to learn by playing. I missed Phil Bradley's closing keynote, having zipped up on the sleeper to Edinburgh the night before, but fortunately his slides are available because they raise a number of issues which deserve consideration.

Other highlights included Dave Pattern, University of Huddersfield, speaking about web 2.0 and the OPAC, The Impact of 2.0: lipstick, cowbells and serendipity in the OPAC. Brian Kelly, UKOLN, on barriers to blogging and how these can be addressed - The blogging librarian: avoiding institutional inertia and Helene Blowers presentation on the development of "23 things" Learning 2.0: it’s all about play!

2002-07-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting article in Information World Review on the subject of e-Government. The UK prime minister has set a target to ensure e-Government by the year 2005. It cites, as an example of some of the pitfalls to be encountered along the road, the case of the PRO 1901 Census site. This ambitious digitisation project, designed to make the entire 1901 census searchable and accessible to the public, crashed almost as soon as it was launched, due to higher than expected demand.
The article makes the point that e-Government is not easily definable. It takes many forms and will work across many platforms. Clearly there are technology issues, but there are also the human and information aspects
I came across an interesting article in Information World Review on the subject of e-Government. The UK prime minister has set a target to ensure e-Government by the year 2005. It cites, as an example of some of the pitfalls to be encountered along the road, the case of the PRO 1901 Census site. This ambitious digitisation project, designed to make the entire 1901 census searchable and accessible to the public, crashed almost as soon as it was launched, due to higher than expected demand.

The article makes the point that e-Government is not easily definable. It takes many forms and will work across many platforms. Clearly there are technology issues, but there are also the human and information aspects. There does seem to be a lot of investment in the technolgy side of this grand project, but is enough attention being paid to the other aspects?

These are interesting times for Information Professionals. The technology is available now to enable the sorts of projects that librarians have dreamt about doing for years, but do we have the opportunity to run with these projects? We have lots to contribute, but is there a seat for us at the planning meeting? I woul be interested to hear of peoples experience on this.

2002-05-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", to a describe a cultural analog to the gene. According to his theory, just as there is ones genetic information is passed on from generation to generation through DNA, there is a unit of cultural transmission called a meme, which accounts for how ideas and jokes and urban legends get passed on. I've always liked the idea and was originally going to do my dissertation on the implication meme theory had on the information world, but my supervisors face turned white and he started frothing at the mouth when mentioned the idea, so I did something safer instead.

2002-04-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

The Scottish Parliament last night voted in favour of the Freedom of Information bill. The legislation north of the border appears to be more far-reaching than the bill proposed by Westminster, although there is a clause which allows the government to prevent access to current research before its publication date.

The problem remains how to find out what information is held and how to get to it. Not always an easy task when the press are more concerned with how the England football manager conducts his love life than hard news. The government does keep a register of all the unpublished information held by government departments north & south of the border, and what access the public has to this information. It is there, it just isn't publicised very much.

2002-04-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Here in Scotland there has been a fair amount of interest in creating a scottish domain name, as this story from a couple of years ago demonstrates. So much so that Nominet have had to issue a domain statement Scottish businesses currently being attracted by the offer of a "Scottish" domain name, .sc, should be aware that they may not be getting what they think. Apparently .sc is the domain for the Seychelles, but is being offered to Scottish businesses as a Scottish alternative to co.uk etc.

It could be useful to have a Scottish domain for search purposes. I think there is a probably a market for a Scottish version of the SOSIG subject gateway (you could call it HAGIS).

2002-04-01T03:21:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Domesday Book in 1986, the BBC decided to create a multimedia computer based version. Now the 12 inch disks which contain the information are unreadable because the technology is obsolete. The irony is that while you can still read the original 11th century version, the 20th century digital copy took less than 15 years to become utterly redundant.

We aren't any further forward here at the start of the 21st century. The concept of digital archiving is so low on the agenda for most people, yet information is increasingly published in digital form only. This is dangerous. Information is essential for democratic societies to exist, so a situation where we keep losing information through a lack of any coherent archiving policy lessens our ability to be truly democratic.

2002-03-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

The UK Data Archive (UKDA) is a resource centre that acquires, disseminates, preserves, and promotes the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom. If you have difficulties using it, there is a whole load of training material available at TRAMSS (Teaching Resources and Materials for Social Sciences - apparently). TRAMSS recommend you have "about an hour or so and an understanding of multiple regression" to get the most out of the site. There are just so many good resources out there with bad acronyms.

2002-03-22T04:47:00.000-08:00

Virtual training seems to be a hot topic today. In the case of institutions that are somewhat remote from their users, its essential. Robert Gordon University is in Aberdeen which is miles from anywhere. They have set up a Virtual Campus which is worth a look. They offer some free modules about e-learning which may be of use to anyone who is looking into virtual training.

2002-02-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

While we wait for the 1901 census to come on line, Miss Edith Tintwhistle, Head Librarian of Great Cockup County Library has some enlightening news about the Great Cock Up Village Census. I have a feeling this one is going to run and run.

2002-01-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

Trouble is all these fun and games get posted to weblogs and some of these get picked up by Google, then all of a sudden there are half a dozen "irradiation plectrums" out there. Similarly some of these bloggers have entered "intelligent weblogs" as a search phrase and then muddied their results by posting them.

2002-01-29T12:49:00.000-08:00

Apparently there is a new pastime for extreme web searchers, Googlewhacking. The goal is to juxtapose unusual word combinations, most frequently two words, with the goal of obtaining one singular hit when these words are entered in as a search term in Google. I'm quite fond of "irradiation plectrum", which apparently is the best way to sterilise a banjo player's hands. Sad but fun.

2002-01-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

Another interesting article from the Guardian. There was recently a case in Scotland where a guy called William Beggs brutally murdered and dismembered a teenager, dumping the remains in to Loch Lomond. Nasty stuff. He had actually been sentenced to life for something similar about a decade previously, but then released on a technicality. Now of course there was quite a lot of stuff in the newspapers at the time about this.

When Beggs went to trial last year, the judge ruled that while anyone could look at paper copies of those earlier news story by going to the library, any newspaper that made their archives available electronically over the Internet would run the risk of being in contempt. The Judge was of the opinion that whilst a printed newspaper was printed once only, an electronic copy was effectively republished everytime someone accessed it.

2002-01-12T02:47:00.000-08:00

The UK Public Records Office set up a web site containing all the information on the 1901 census on 2/01/02. They were expecting about 1.2 Million visitors a day. They got more than that in an hour, such is the public thirst for finding out about their past. Apparently it will be back up running by 15/01/02.

2002-01-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

We seem to get this headline on a regular basis, UK shamed again..., reports on the how the UK is not doing as well as it would like to think it is in variety of areas such as Health, Education and Transport. The writer of the shamedagain blog, has clearly decided that people aren't taking enough notice of them in isolation. As a collection, the headlines show something of a trend. The UK spends less on health and trains than many of its European neighbours and so it should not be so surprising that we are not doing as well in these areas. The message is that we should learn from the good example of our European neighours. Having lived for a short while in Denmark who have high taxes but greater equality and where everthing seems to work, I think we should start learning right now.

2002-01-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

A nice article I came across courtesy of NewBreed Librarian its all about reader anxiety, which is what I got when I got back to my desk at work and had to wade through the mail (electronic and snail) that had accumulated over the holiday. It is sad when you realise that you don't have the time to read everything you want to. So if life is too short to read the classics, then its far to short to read junk mail.

2002-01-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

One of the downloadable programmes at the moment is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Future, a series of 4 programmes on the impact of technology on music, publishing and broadcasting by the late Douglas Adams.

I interviewed Douglas once by accident when I was about 13. He'd just published the first Hitchhikers Guide book and was doing a booksigning at a record store in Newcastle. I was at the front of the queue and he borrowed my pen for the booksigning, so I stayed there and asked him lots of questions while I waited to get my pen back. He was a nice man.

2002-01-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

Working from home is dangerous. There are far too many opportunities to get distracted. Todays distraction was courtesy of the Radio 4 section of the BBC's website, which now has a listen again facility allowing online listeners to download previously broadcast (recent) programmes. I know it's not new, RTE have been doing it for years, but I hadn't realised that the Beeb had started doing it as well.

It's an exciting development. I'm usually out when most of the stuff I listen to is on, so the ability to select when I listen to a programme is, for me, a huge advance. It is also a step away from the traditional idea of broadcast media.