The Supreme-ish Court. Again

Looks like the UK Supreme Court’s having a wee holiday from posting judgments (or as they call them, Decided Cases) on its website.

The last case listed is [2010] UKSC 10, from the beginning of March. BAILLI however has the text of all judgments up to [2010] UKSC 32, this July.
What’s going on? Why are cases not being posted to the UKSC website? I can’t find if there’s an announcement about the cases being posted to BAILLI instead, as the news section only goes back to mid-June 2010, and the archive section only lists information from 2009. What’s happened to the news that happened between 2009 and June 2010?
But hey, at least they managed to publish their annual report and accounts yesterday. Wonder how much of it went into web design…? From the annual report:
“Our website
The Court is a modern institution on an international stage. Our website http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk continues to be a success with a wide audience and contains a considerable amount of information for people interested in the Court, its Justices and judgments. This material includes: current cases coming before the court with brief details of the points of law to be considered: full judgments handed down and their press summaries. The website also has information about how to appeal, the history of the building and the art within it; corporate information about the administration of the court, and biographical details of the Justices and officials.”
Uh-huh. Sure.

Nope, it didn’t work

The whole “fill in this form and email it to us, we’ll send you your library membership card in the post, it’ll be so easy!” thing, that Edinburgh City Libraries promised me.

Unfortunately, like Kelly who commented in the previous post, it appears my Library membership application has got lost in the ether. Which is pretty concerning, seeing as my personal details are there. Where is that nice form with my name, date of birth, home address, email, phone number, ethnic origin and disability status on it, now? Languishing in an ignored email folder? Sitting in an untouched pile on a desk?
I’m thinking that a month after sending the form is probably plenty of time for someone to have managed to do something about it. It would also have been a good idea for them to have created an automated acknowledgement email in the first place, to have reassured me that the form I sent them hadn’t just disappeared into a never-viewed email folder. In fact, any sort of contact with me once I submitted the form would have been good, since they have at least three methods of contacting me available from the information I gave: phone, email and postal.
So now, the chances of me ever becoming a member are even lower than ever, as I have no trust in their ability to deal with things competently. And the chances of me wanting to refill the same form are even less, due to irritation.
Top tip: if you’re going to show how lovely and modern and useful your library service is by allowing people to join without having to take time out of their day to go into the library to fill out the form…make sure the service works? Otherwise you’re just pissing people off.

It’s aliiiiiiiiive!

So, we unleashed the UK Library Bloggers wiki into the wild back in March, and crossed our fingers that it would be ok, out there in the Scary World, all on its own.

And so far, it seems to be doing just fine, yay! There are of course the regular spammer attempts to “subtly” insert adverts for dissertation work, and all sorts of less…erm…wholesome products within the entries, but the email alerts about text amendments that go to the administrators of the wiki (Phil, Jo and I) means that the first person online and able to, goes in and removes that material and blocks the creator. This has worked really well so far, and unwanted content doesn’t stay on the wiki for any real length of time.
And the best bit is the librarians and info professionals who’ve been adding themselves to the wiki! I created a backup in March before we “unlocked” the wiki, and at that point there were 115 institutional / professional group blogs, 83 librarian blogs, 5 Chartership blogs, 8 information professionals blogs and 8 industry supplier blogs.
There are now (as of 5th July 2010) 135 institutional library blogs, 90 librarian blogs, and still 5 Chartership blogs, 8 information professionals, and 8 industry supplier blogs.
So, the biggest increase has been in institutional blogs, with a small increase in personal library bloggers.
I will (at some point in the near future) be going through the wiki and checking all the links of the ones added prior to the unlocking off the wiki, and removing the “dead” ones. I’m planning on moving those entries into a “dead blogs” section – I think it’s worth keeping the links available, for interest.
So: if you haven’t added yourself, go do it now – you’ll be in good company!

Mainly unprofessional

So, I’m following some of the “New Professionals Conference 2010” online and one of the tools referred to was Personas, to see what your online presence is like. Or, how references by to and about you online appear visually.
I used my normal online username (it’s more distinctive than my “proper” name), and was pretty amused by the results.
It seems that the thing that I’m least of all, is “professional”, closely followed by “committees”. Whoops!
Mainly, I’m either aggressive, or I provoke aggression, and sports and fashion feature highly. Hmmmm, I’m thinking that there’s maybe something REALLY ODD about this.
Wanna fight about it? Huh? DO YA?!?!
😉
Edited to add: OK, so it does a different thing every time then?!? This is what I got when I redid it again, for the same single word username (so it’s not getting confused by two words, misspellings etc). Perhaps this is the truer one? More online, and social, MUCH less aggression…but perhaps that’s because it’s been joined by “military”. Whaaa?