Think your library can't answer your questions? Don't
worry. If it's a member
of QuestionPoint, a new collaborative reference service from the Library
of Congress and OCLC, the University of Timbuktu
or the Chinese University of Hong Kong might
well provide the answer. QuestionPoint is an online reference service
which draws upon the expertise of member libraries all over the
world. So next time you want to know how
many grains of sand there are in the
Sahara. more...
It's got an asset base of USD24 billion and is
spending hundreds of millions on libraries
He's the richest man in the
world and he's not taking all of it with him when he goes.
In fact the Microsoft Chairman has given USD24 billion to the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation and some of that money is being spent on
libraries. The latest grant of USD9 million has been given to OCLC to build
a web-based public access computing portal for public
libraries. more...
Nature, Science and Cell get nasty
shock
Three of the most venerable titles in science
publishing
are under attack from a new journal.
The Journal of Biology from BioMed Net will be permanently available
free of charge ensuring the widest possible dissemination of its
content. Its Board includes three Nobel Prize winners. Two ex-editors of
Nature are also involved. Read about it
here. more...
Singapore and UK national libraries put
history on the Web
The British Library and
the National Library Board of Singapore are putting historic texts and archival
material on the Web. The documents and drawings dating from 1758
are held by the British Library. Thirty eight items comprising more than one
thousand images related to Singapore's history will get the digital
treatment. more...
Developing countries get more free
stuff
The World Health Organisation, the Soros Foundation
and now Faculty
of 1000 is making current online scientific information available to the poorest countries free
of charge. And scientists associated with Faculty of 1000 can also nominate institutes
in other countries to access the service free of charge.
Think you're
eligible? more...
Food industry feeds on
information
Thailand is hoping to become Asia's largest and most
diversified food exporter.
Policies are being drafted to increase agricultural production and ensure that
food exports comply with the rules and regulations of importing nations. Elsewhere
in Southeast Asia, food chemistry and biotechnology and receiving heavy investment. Whether research
or production, databases are essential for keeping abreast of news and
research from around the world. FSTA from IFIS aims to answer this
need.
more...
Public libraries need coffee
bars?
Britain has
one of the most admired and copied public library systems in the world. Yet
a report from the British Audit Commission says that few people are
borrowing few books than ever before. Bookshops on the other hand are
flourishing. What is it about public libraries that accounts for this decline and how can this
slide be halted? Our article offers some
suggestions.
more...
Tibet in Virginia
Noticed how most
of the scholarship about Tibet is outside that country? The latest
addition to Tibetan studies is the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library at the University of
Virginia. The site has five domains, deep level cataloguing and promises a diverse
collection of
resources. more...
ebrary isn't a collection of ebooks
Unfortunately for ebrary, the company tends to get
lumped in
the
ebook category. And we all know that ebooks have had a hard time both
in business and getting accepted by consumers. This is a pity because the
company uses digital books to deliver an unique service to libraries. Christopher
Warnock, CEO and founder of ebrary, speaks his mind in this
interview.
more...
Online
Information conference draws 500 participants
More than 240 librarians left Bangkok
last week with newly acquired skills in information auditing,
managing digitization projects, and applying metadata to their web
sites. They had attended the Online Information and Education
Conference 2002, now in its fourth year. Participants came from Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Conference, held 1-4 July at the
Rajabhat Institute Suan Dusit, offered two days of workshops
followed by papers and discussions. Dr. Bob Pymm, Collection
Manager, ScreenSound Australia (the National Screen and Sound
Archive), taught a course on managing digitisation projects, a
topic he knows well after helping the Australian War Memorial
place their photograph archive (over 250,000 items) online. By
the end of the course, librarians were familiar with deciding
why to digitise their material, technical standards, files and
formats, management and costing, outsourcing, access and
cataloguing issues. Most of all, getting IT personnel on board
from the beginning to the end of the project was heavily
emphasised.
Conversation at a workshop
Dr. Bob Pymm with workshop participants
Metadata cottage
industries
Metadata continues to be a topic
that draws much interest even though it is not widely
practised. Nonetheless, more than 80 librarians completed the
course on Advanced Metadata. The instructor was Ms Lynn Farkas
who described the basic elements of Dublin Core Metadata, its
limitations and initiatives in Australia, New Zealand and UK.
She showed that developing metadata standards suitable for
varying needs in government, academic and corporations has
become something of a cottage industry. Dublin Core remains
the touchstone but it is adapted as needed to suit different
organisations and objectives. Ms. Farkas also highlighted the
importance of maintaining and contributing to international
standards development to ensure global inter-operability and
transfer of information. By the end of the course, each
participant had produced their own metadata and experimented
with metadata creation software.
Lynn Farkas
Brenda
McConchie
Brenda McConchie's workshop
concerned itself with information auditing. This is a series
of interlinked exercises concerned with identifying the
information needs of a library's clients; taking an inventory
of all the resources currently available to meet those needs,
including information resources and the information skills of
members of staff; examining the gap and determining the
resources (information and human) required to fill that gap;
and working out how to acquire these resources and make them
accessible to clients. This was a popular workshop and
oversubscribed.
Library management, e-learning and
digitisation
Assoc. Prof Daniel Tan
The Conference, which attracted more
than 500 participants, had several distinct themes including
e-learning, digitisation, and library management. Although
amongst the last of the higher education institutes in
Singapore to implement an e-learning system, Assoc. Prof.
Daniel Tan explained that the Nanyang Technological
University's Blackboard system is the most heavily used of
all. Although a training programme for faculty and students
had been planned, word of mouth meant that by May 2002,
Blackboard was receiving 300,000 hits daily because it is so
easy to use. By June, 3,700 courses were online and 21,500
registered users generated 30 million page hits.
Jim Shaw
Jim Shaw, from the Open Training and
Information Network, OTEN, of Australia, decribed the distance
education work of the institute and its links with countries
in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ms. Ch'ng
Kim See
The papers on digitisation
highlighted practice, management and policy. From the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, Ch'ng Kim See
embarked on the first project of its kind to use source
material, funding and software (UCAT, a union cataloguing
software developed by the iGroup) from entirely within Asia.
The strength of this project is the lessons learned. It didn't
go entirely to plan: disbursement of funds was delayed and
gathering records was slow and unpredictable. In hindsight the
project would have been planned differently but it did produce
a Masterlist which will be added to and valuable insights for
future projects.
Think
big but start small
Dr. Bob
Pymm
Bob Pymm recapitulated on managing
digitisation projects stressing that data will have to be
copied as the storage media changes (from CD-ROM to hard disk
for example). He also highlighted the need to fully navigate
the copyright minefield and for librarians to cut their teeth
on small projects rather than going for the 'grand designs'
which will often fail.
Ms.
Christina Chau
A small, tightly focussed project
was described by Christina Chau. The Pao Yue-kong library of
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University digitised 13,000
examination papers and 240 course schemes. Using the skills of
librarians, library IT staff and vendors, it is an example of
a project with clear objectives and methodologies, adequate
funding, and a proven demand for its products.
Dr. Kamales
Santivejkul
Copyright was not a moot point in
the Hong Kong project. But for Chulalongkorn University it is
not clear cut as Dr. Kamales Santivejkul, Library Director
explained. Dr. Kamales speaking about preserving documents
published or produced by Chulalongkorn University in the last
85 years, confirmed that researchers want full text digital
access but as copyright is often debatable, it is difficult to
move forward. Do documents belong to the author, the
department or the university? Producing an answer is not easy
especially when many authors are untraceable. For contemporary
documents, the library has produced a template for students to
submit their theses in print and digital format. But for older
documents, Dr. Santivejkul is sympathetic with libraries that
decide to digitise, arguing that if we become paralysed by
labyrinthine copyright issues, nobody does anything.
One
standard is best or several?
Once libraries have got their
digital collections on the web, will metadata be added? Lynn
Farkas hopes so but she acknowledges that differing standards
in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere can confuse
the librarian. Isn't it better to have one standard like
Dublin Core since this will lead to inter-operability? On the
other hand, a single standard would only be taken up quickly
if there were more commercial reasons to use it. Sadly, the
number of web sites using metadata is a tiny fraction of all
web addresses primarily because the major web search engines
do not look for metadata.
The management
papers had at their heart the visibility of library services
and their acceptance by library customers. Bob Pymm provided
valuable tips for libraries to improve accessibility of their
web sites. Brenda McConchie stressed that marketing library
services means linking libraries to libraries and people to
resources. She identified several ways that this can be done
including meet and greet sessions. Lynn Farkas asking why more
librarians are not knowledge managers gave examples from
knowledge managers who viewed librarians as technicians. She
also noted that professional organisations don't put enough
emphasis on librarians as knowledge managers. Library
association web sites for example, rarely comment on it.
Libraries can learn from
business
Ms. Rosna
Taib
Customer business is library
business believes Ms. Rosna Taib, Chief Librarian of
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM. Libraries can learn from
business about customer satisfaction since the latter's
livelihood depends upon customers feeling comfortable about
the goods and services they buy. She cautioned against
libraries stagnating or procrastinating and described how
Malaysian libraries have formulated performance indicators for
benchmarking and how her own library uses focus groups.
A busy exhibition
A busy conference
Online Information and Education
Conference 2002 was sponsored by the Rajabhat Institute Suan
Dusit, The Center of Academic Resources Chulalongkorn
University, Book Promotion and Service, and Booknet.
Powerpoints of the presentations can be found in the Agenda
section of the conference
website.
Metadata cottage
industries
