BLOG ON THE UN

UN Pulse, blog from the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations. Categories (in order of most posts) economic and social development, peace and security, Specialized agencies, In the News, human rights; plus conferences, appointments, committee activities, headquarters announcements, international law, and research tips. With archives back to March 2005.

URL: http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/unpulse/

CURRENT AWARENESS FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

Current Law Journal Content, Washington & Lee Law School, http://law.wlu.edu/library/CLJC/

Covers 1283 law journals, includes scanned journal contents pages. Searchable by date, country, or words. Free.

RESOURCES ON ROI

Articles and Studies Related to Library Value (Return on Investment), from ALA.
http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/reports/roi.htm. Really good stuff, mostly for public libraries, but some for schools and specials. There’s even a nice group of articles from out of the USA. Some have links to the articles.

HOW TO DO BETTER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

Powerful Pointers for Presenters, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, Law Practice Today, January 2007, http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc08051.html.

Links to resources on creating PowerPoint presentations, how to avoid “really bad PowerPoint” presentations, and presentation resources like Projector Central and plug-ins.

BOOK ON MARKETING FOR COLLEGE LIBRARIES

Petruzzelli, Barbara, ed, Real-Life Marketing and Promotion Strategies in College Libraries: Connecting with Campus and Community, Haworth Press, 2005, ISBN-10: 0-7890-3157-4, $42.95, ISBN-10: 0-7890-3158-2 (paper), $22.95.

Recommended by Chris Olson (http://www.chrisolson.com/marketingtreasures/vol15/Vol15N3JULY06.html) and that’s good enough for me.

For more information or to order, go to http://tinyurl.com/jsb9z

POSTS YOU SHOULD LOOK AT

A long-overdue update on the special library 2.0 survey
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/?p=251
The most used 2.0 tools are RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social book marking, and IM, in that order. Post has many great ideas for uses of the above. Also, problems with implementation that you may encounter.

Service with a smile
http://circandserve.wordpress.com/2007/01/16/service-with-a-smile
Excerpt: “I think we often forget the positive experiences with patrons and only tend to remember the negative ones…I can honestly state that the patron interactions are the main reason I love working in access services.” Me, too.

Conference Speaking: I Have a Little List
http://citesandinsights.info/v7i2c.htm
Walt Crawford summarizes and comments on recent posts on the responsibilities and expectations of conference organizers and speakers. If you are planning on being either, read this post!

The endangered joy of serendipity
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/26/news_pf/Perspective/The_endangered_joy_of.shtml
One of the worst things about electronic information is that we see only what we were looking for—and not the things we didn’t even know we would find interesting. Well worth a read.

Books Mapped
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/01/books-mapped.html
The folks at Google Book Search are now creating maps of locations found in books. When they have done this for a specific book, there will be a note on the “About this book” page. Some of the ones already done are: Around the World in Eighty Days and The 9/11 Commission Report. Absolutely fascinating.

THREE GOOD ARTICLES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

The January issue of Information World Review has three great articles. Here are some excerpts from them. I hope they intrigue you and make you read the entire article.

Why You Should Always Deliver the Punchline First

by David Tebbutt [media coach and trainer, Eastcote, Middlesex, UK], Information World Review, 12 January 2007, http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2172448/why-should-always-deliver

How many times have you heard the phrase “sell the sizzle, not the sausage”? And how often do you resolve to do so to capture interest and commitment for your latest initiative? And do you succeed?
If you’re after money or commitment from a manager, your life will be a whole lot easier if you talk their language and go for something they hold dear.
Unless you find out what drives your audience, you can’t hope to interest them in your latest proposal. Once they’re hooked, you can build commitment through supporting evidence and conversation.
For example, someone figured out that internet telephony would save their company a bundle and improve productivity. That was the place to start. What they actually started with was: “I think we should introduce IP telephony.” Better to have asked: “Would you like to increase staff productivity?” Who could say “no”?

Breathing New Life into KM
by David Tebbutt [media coach and trainer, Eastcote, Middlesex, UK], Information World Review, 12 January 2007, http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2172573/breathing-life-km

KM promises so much more than information management that it’s little wonder it has become so popular with suppliers and others.

The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing and, this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge – providing it can be expressed reasonably easily. So can social software deliver the dream of knowledge management? Well, it could ensure that the term survives.

Look at the main elements: blogs, wikis, RSS and tagging. And, behind the scenes, some network analysis. When people are socialising, even in a work context, they are much happier to share their thoughts and their experiences. For the first time, the motivations of both organisations and their staff are moving into alignment.

So is knowledge management dead? Only if we want it to be. It might be better to widen the definition to embrace social computing and bring it closer to the object of its ambitions. Knowledge will never be managed but the environment in which it flourishes certainly can be.

Are Career Prospects All Doom and Gloom or a Land of Hope and Glory?

by Bobby Pickering, Information World Review, 15 January 2007,

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/comment/2172576/training-continuing

Pickering interviewed UK recruitment and training professionals. Here are some of their comments.

The problem(s)?

Richard Pinder [TFPL]: “The continued blurring of roles in the information world means that there are more stakeholders in the information world and increasing competition for roles with others from non-information backgrounds.”

Sue Hill: “The influx of other professions and skills into information-handling roles; the continuing change of view of ‘information’ by those at board-level; the inability of many information professionals to forge strategic alliances with the business drivers; and the increased outsourcing and offshoring of information functions”.

Richard Beveridge [Tribal]: The profession is in danger of being considered irrelevant.

City Information Group: “Outsourcing/offshoring of information services and teams; the shortage of experienced and qualified graduates and staff; and the lack of management understanding of how information services can deliver return on investment, and add value.”

Kathy Ennis [CILIP] “Information services are often perceived as an overhead rather than an intrinsic part of the organisation, and therefore easier to cut” and “There is little sense of the add-on skills that a trained information professional can provide – not only skilled research, but information analysis, collation, retention and organisation.”

Hill says the legal market may have peaked. “Much restructuring is going on, but at the same time smaller firms are hiring.”

What can we do?

Beveridge: “Learn to sell to new markets within your organisation and manage existing relationships,” “Project the value or contribution of information services within the organisation and add a cash value of services where possible.”

Hill: “Out of sight and out of mind is certainly not the way to be valued.”

Pinder:“Diversify! Employers are looking for a good mix of information, IT and business skills and experience.”

Ennis:“Information professionals must market themselves and their abilities.If information professionals don’t evangelise about the service they provide, they will foster the stereotype, not get credit where it’s due, and not become involved in projects and plans to which they could easily contribute.”

CIG: Do value-added research, become a “skills chameleon,” embed yourself within the business, embrace and drive change.

The future?

Pinder: “The continued convergence of disciplines; off-shoring and outsourcing; and the opportunities available to information professionals”.

Ennis: A lot of change within formal library information services education, which will affect the number and type of graduates

SOURCES OF NON-OFFICIAL UK STATISTICS

I haven’t actually seen this book, but it looks to be very useful. It lists over 900 statistical sources from trade and professional associations, journals, banks, consultants, and magazines. One-third of the sources are free (usually on the web).

Mort, David, Sources of Non-Official UK Statistics, London: Gower, 2006, ISBN 0-566-08715-4, £75 (US$147).

NEW BLOG FROM MARY ELLEN BATES AND A NEW UK UNDERGROUND MAP

In her first post, Bates, a well-known speaker on library issues, wrote, “Primarily upon the urging of a few people I've subjected to my amusing anecdotes of life on the road, I'm starting to share my own peculiar perspective of the world with the world. I'm not sure where it will lead.” There are some very interesting observations here, including the next item.

THE REAL UNDERGROUND
The London Underground’s stylized map may distort distances. This neat tool morphs it into an accurate map. You can even superimpose a street map on the tube map. From Transport for London, a functional body of the Greater London Authority, whose mission is to implement the Mayor of London's Transport Strategy and manage transport services across the Capital.

URLs:
Bates’ blog: http://maryellenbates.typepad.com/librarian_of_fortune/
Real Underground: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/maps/realunderground/realunderground.html

E-CYCLING

“Find reuse, recycling, and donation programs across the [USA] for your electronic products. If you aren't sure what to look for in a recycler, take a look at a series of questions we suggest to ask. Want to recycle your batteries or mercury containing lamps? Take a look at our Links to other recycling and green purchasing resources. From the Environmental Issues Council, Arlington, Virginia.

URL: http://www.eiae.org/

CONSUMER REPORTS BEST BUY DRUGS

Reports on the effectiveness and relative prices for most brand-name and generic drugs. Summaries online with downloadable complete reports. And all of this is FREE!

Currently available: Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder; Overactive Bladder; Sleeping Pills for Insomnia; High Cholesterol, Heart Disease (the Statins); Asthma and Lung Disease (Inhaled Steroids); Alzheimer’s Disease Drugs; Drugs for Heartburn, Acid Reflux Disease; Migraine Headache Drugs (the Triptans); Menopause (Female Hormones); Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Drugs; Allergies, Hay Fever, and Hives (Antihistamines); Angina, High Blood Pressure (Calcium Channel Blockers); Osteoarthritis, Pain (the NSAIDs); High Blood Pressure, Heart Failure (the ACE Inhibitors); Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure (Beta Blockers); Antidepressants.
Upcoming are reports on: Drugs to treat diabetes; Blood thinners to prevent and treat heart disease; Drugs to treat severe pain; Drugs to treat osteoporosis; and Drugs to treat prostate enlargement.

URL: http://www.crbestbuydrugs.org/

NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK RESOURCES

Ideas from the Public Relations Committee, Private Law Libraries Special Interest Group, American Association of Law Libraries.

URL: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/pllsis/commgrp/LibWeek.asp

OTHER NEW RESOURCES I’VE FOUND

Top Ten Marketing Podcasts
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/top_ten_marketi.html
Although these are not aimed specifically at libraries, there’s a lot that you can learn here.

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian
http://keptup.typepad.com/
This blog from Steven Bell [Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] is subtitled “Helping Academic Librarians ‘Keep Up’ With News and Developments In Higher Education” and that’s just what it does. Very interesting and almost a must if you work in a college or university.

Circ and Serve: Service with a Smile
http://circandserve.wordpress.com
From Mary Carmen Chimato [Stony Brook (New York) University], this is a great blog or anyone in reference, circulation or ILL, academic library or not.

Online Historical Population Reports for the UK
http://www.histpop.org
Online access to the complete British population report (similar to the US Census) for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937—over 200,000 pages. There’s not much here for genealogists, but there’s a link on the site to some better resources.

New Online Music Repository
http://www.musopen.com
MusOpen is a “community driven, online music repository started by a music and economics college student named Aaron Dunn.” It provides free, unlimited access to music in the public domain, as well as allowing “anyone” to upload their own music. My only qualm is that Dunn will lose interest and MusOpen will fade away.

Wikiseek
http://www.wikiseek.com/
“A better way to search Wikipedia” is just that. Very useful.

WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR MEDICAL LIBRARIANS

Health Promotion Board Information Centre, Singapore
http://hic.hpb.gov.sg
Now online is the catalog of this library specializing in health education, health promotion and disease prevention. You can search the 20,000 books for free, but need to join to borrow them (free for most, charge for corporate entities).

Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebilioteket)
http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/
If you speak or read Norwegian, this could be very useful.

Course Presentations on Medical Librarianship
http://www.slideshare.net/smaccall
Dr. Steven MacCall [University of Alabama, USA] has uploaded some of his course slide presentations to Slideshare. It’s almost like being there, some say. He is a highly regarded member of the School of Library and Information Studies. Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net) also seems to have some great possibilities for resource-sharing.

Web-based Radiology Tools
http://davidrothman.net/2007/01/15/more-web-based-radiology-tools/
This post from David Rothman has links to seven online radiology resources. Point it out to your radiology department.

THE MOST IMPORTANT MEDICAL MILESTONES

The British Medical Journal has published a list of fifteen medical milestones. Readers were asked to vote on which is the most important. Here is the list, in alphabetical order.
Anaesthesia, Antibiotics, Chlorpromazine (thorazine), Computers, Discovery of DNA structure, Evidence-based medicine, Germ theory, Immunology, Medical imaging (x-rays, etc.), Oral contraceptive pill, Oral rehydration therapy, Risks of smoking, Sanitation (clean water and sewage disposal), Tissue culture, and Vaccines.

And the winner was, Sanitation, with 15.8 percent of the vote. Second place went to Antibiotics, and third was Anaesthesia.

Over 11,000 readers participated in the poll. Physicians made up nearly 29 percent of the voters; almost 22 percent were members of the public; students and researchers were also well represented; only 1.7 percent of the voters were librarians. Not surprisingly, most of the readers voting were from the UK (37.7 percent) and the USA (20.0 percent).

MINIMUM WAGE RESOLUTION FROM ALA

On 22 January 2007, the following non-binding resolution was passed unanimously:
“Resolved, that the American Library Association-Allied Professionals endorses a minimum salary for professional librarians of not less than $40,000 per year.”

You can see the entire resolution and supporting documentation at http://librarydust.typepad.com/library_dust/files/ala-aparesolution.doc

I doubt if it will do any good in the real world, however. What do YOU think?

GREAT PUBLICITY PIECE

The St. Joseph County Public Library, South Bend, Indiana has posted a wonderful list on its website and blog. It lists the “Top 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know Your Library Offered.”

10. Museum passes!
9. Art for your walls!
8. Books!
7. Movies!
6. Magazines!
5. Children’s toys and games!
4. Your family!
3. Gaming!
2. iPods! (And audiobooks to go with them.)
And the number one thing you probably didn’t know your library had:
1. Delivery! (Homebound Service, Readmobile, drive-through window)

Their list is appropriate for public libraries, but I am sure you can come up with a similar one for your own library. Take a look at it and be inspired!

URL: http://libraryforlife.org/blogs/lifeline/?p=2651

GETTING PUBLISHED 101

Rachel Singer Gordon has written a nice "step-by-step approach to professional writing for students, faculty, researchers, practising librarians and information professionals" for Emerald's librarylink program. It's not exhaustive, but pretty good.

URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/librarylink

GREAT ARTICLES ON LIBRARY 2.0

The latest (January 2007) issue of Computers in Libraries is wonderful! The magazine is now subtitled "The New Face of Libraries" and this issue is on Library 2.0. Here is a list of the articles:

Transformative Shaping with Instant Messaging, Wikis, Interactive Maps, and Flickr, by Darren Chase

Get a (Second) Life! Prospecting for Gold in a 3-D World, by Lori Bell, Tom Peters, and Kitty Pope

Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0, by Karen Coombs

Mission IM-possible: Starting an Instant Message Reference Service Using Trillian, by Ronalee Ciocco and Alice Hull

Spam Wars: The Battle of the Formbots, by Marshall Breeding

Surfing the Library 2.0 Wave, by Terence Huwe

eLearning about Library 2.0, by Janet Balas

Introducing Libraries in Computers (a new column) by Daniel Chudnov

Get Online, Get Found, Get in the Know! by Rachel Singer Gordon

The Coombs article is available in free full-text at http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jan07/index.shtml

EUROPEAN NEWS FOR MEDICAL LIBRARIANS

I have just come across two neat resources for European medical librarians.

PubMed Central UK is now available. This free archive of life sciences journals has the searches run at the US site, but the results have links back to the UK version for the full-text of the articles. A guide to its use is also available.

URL: http://ukpmc.ac.uk

There is also a relatively new blog, european medical librarians. Its mission is stated as: “There is a strong desire for networking among European medical librarians. This blog serves as a starting point for what is at the heart of EAHIL [European Association for Health Information and Libraries, http://www.eahil.net]. Check out the post of 11 January with a link to the combined output of eight European blogs. Good stuff.

URL: http://euromedlib.blogspot.com

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE INVISIBLE WEB

The good people at Online Education Database (http://oedb.org) have posted The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web. It has Background of the Invisible Web (definition and history), 9 Reasons a Web Page is Invisible, 10 Ways to Make Invisible Content Visible, How to Access and Search for Invisible Content, 15 Invisible Web Search Tools, and References and Resources.
This is a good overview.

URL: http://oedb.org/library/college-basics/invisible-web

RESUME HELP

The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information, has a wonderful site for job hunters. It has links to the presentations and handouts of the workshops on "Developing Effective Resumes, Cover Letters, and Interview Skills" and links to many other resume and career resources.

URL: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/careers/resume_assistance.php

THREE "LIGHT" SITES

I found three humorous or just interesting sites today.

MeL Internet Humor and Culture in Libraries has links to a comic strip, funny articles on weeding, and value, books and movies about libraries, and humor from IFLA.

URL: http://web.mel.org/viewtopic.jsp?id=1164&pathid=1780

The Marginal is an e-zine from the McGill Library and Information Studies Student Association, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. There are some serious articles, some humor, and some in between.

URL: http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/index.htm

Love the Liberry is on of several blogs from reference desk staff. Its subtitle says it all: "Stranger than fiction...we couldn't possibly make these things up."

URL: http://lovetheliberry.blogspot.com/

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A LIBRARIAN WHEN...

Michael Heileman, a “computer geek” in Copenhagen, Denmark, posted this list on his blog, Blue Magnolia. How many describe you? (I match nine of the 14.)

you worry about punctuation.
you tell people to be quiet in bookshops.
you use acronyms more than you use real words.
you know what all the acronyms you use stand for.
people are amazed that you need two degrees to stamp books all day.
you read dictionaries for fun.
you know when you’re breaking copyright law.
you’ve left your friends in the pub to go and look something up.
you can tell what someone is going to ask you by the look on their face.
245 00 $a makes perfect sense.
you have dreams/nightmares about Dewey.
you know what the last digit of an ISBN is for.
you pride yourself on not conforming to stereotypes.
you smiled at at least two of the above.

URL: http://bluenettle.blogspot.com/2005/05/you-know-youre-librarian-when.html

US STATISTICS, ANYONE?

The Statistical Abstract of the United States is available from the US Bureau of the Census, full-text, on the web. It is in the form of PDF or Excel spreadsheet files. Some of the are: population, health and nutrition, education, courts and prisons, prices, natural resources, energy and utilities, manufactures, transportation, information and communications, foreign commerce and aid, and comparative international statistics. There are also appendices or sources, state and foreign statistical abstracts, weights and measures, new tales, and index, and telephone and Internet contact numbers.

URL: http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract.html