It’s been a fun ride here at UQ. I’ve found the environment to be quite relaxed yet focussed on doing a good job and there is a good level of camaraderie amongst the troops. I suppose that most people here don’t find it difficult to find a sense of belief in what the library does and most people working here are here because they want to be.

Contrast this with some of my past jobs where there is a much higher contingent of people who are motivated by money and status.

I will miss working on campus here, there is a certain buzz or energy that comes from the students, a variety of food options, some fun architecture and the peace and tranquility of the lakes (only interrupted by attacking geese, the ferrari lawn mower and students who couldn’t get a room).

I will also miss the diversity of staff here. IT and engineering is a male dominated industry and tends to attract harder, more rational personalities. There is probably less mixing between different levels of managment in private industry too.

I’m not sure how much work I’ll be doing in the library field in the future but I have a half plan to be working on some projects in my own time. If you’re interested, you can follow some of my progress at my IT and engineering blog: Smithology . Otherwise, some might be interested in my more frequently updated blog of finding lifes meaning amongst the confusion of postmodern predystopian “raised on television” society at Bogosity

Perth based Library 2.0 advocate Karthryn Greenhill joins me On The Pod this week to talk about the changing role of libraries as the information revolution sweeps the world.

The Librarians also dabbles with a few social hot potatoes, but with slightly less malice than from Ja’mie or Mr G. Unlike Chris Lilley’s dark mockumentary these are clearly actors doing schtick

the art life: Darkness of the Stack

They come in with requests. They want to use the photocopier for free. Some of them want blank paper to write down their filthy secrets. Most of ‘em just sleep in the reading room. Yes, it’s your local library and that long haired guy behind the counter, the bloke with the smile on his face ready to help you sort out the mysteries of quarto non-fiction

Announcing the CSS Zen OPAC | One Big Library.

One thing we could do to push the boundaries further is a CSS Zen OPAC (Garden) – think about if the HTML sitting behind the CSS Zen Garden were an OPAC screen? Think about all the crazy ideas that might bubble up if we could throw a cleanly-designed, thoughtfully semantic-html OPAC screen up and let the world’s best graphic designers and CSS gurus explore new directions and designs.

CSA – Discovery Guides, Publish or Perish: Afterlife of a Published Article

It is a common experience. A University professor recalls there was an important paper that was published a few years back that applies directly to the proposal he is writing. He remembers what the paper was about but is utterly clueless as to the title, author, and publication title. It’s late and the proposal deadline is only hours away but this article really must be cited in the literature survey. What to do? A quick literature search based on what the professor remembers about the article should do the job. Among the available options are the tried-and-true abstract databases that he has been using since undergraduate days or the all new, highly touted Google Scholar. Does it matter which choice he makes?

In the blue corner, I was arguing that you have to take articles like this with a grain of salt as there are lots of people who are threatened by Google’s growing accesibility and the public perception of it as the ultimate information source (or more importantly, the perceptions of people who are not information professionals but might be making decisions affecting the employment of information specialists).

I came around in the end though. No matter what their motives (and I’m sure that there are many different responses amongst information professionals), calling out Google on missing information and lack of transparency is a good thing. Google Scholar needs to open up more about who it is indexing and how often.

BBC News Online | Technology | Warning of data ticking time bomb

“If you put paper on shelves, it’s pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.
“If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you’d have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it.”
“Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper,” warned Ms Ceeney.
She added: “The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.
“We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper.”

Digital repositories to the rescue…

Tech Explorer Generation X in Libraries «

Now that the Library community is taking notice of such things as tagging, reviews, and collaborating with users, library vendors are starting to add this type of functionality into their offerings. Oh, but did I mention that these features are still in development, for example Rome and Encore, and no doubt come with a hefty price tag? Are we, as a library community prepared to wait for what is provided? Or are we going to start exploring alternatives such as Scriblio, Koha, or Evergreen?

Apple Announces iTunes U on the iTunes Store

Apple® today announced the launch of iTunes® U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.

Of course, universities with digital repositories can make the same data discoverable through services such as OAIster and RSS feeds directly form the collections but maybe doing it through iTunes narrows the type of content down in a useful way.

We have been having some discussions with external Fez devlopers who are planning features which will allow repository items to be easily showcased in podcasts and eNewsletters e.g. an ‘Add to podcast’ button. Being able to centralise an organisation’s research data (even if it is not all stored in the one place but at least all indexed in a meaningful way in one place) and construct meaningful and structured metadata opens the door to a lot of cool stuff like this.