Don’t go on holiday!

I tell ya, it takes at least a week to catch up on the week you were away…and now I’m off to Dublin this afternoon until Sunday, so I can only imagine how long it’ll take me to catch up again when I get back!

One useful thing I have done while on holibobs though is play with Yahoo Pipes, to create a feed of feeds. After being a total doofus and needing the help of the lovely law.librarians group to fix things (how come they could easily explain what a video didn’t?) I’ve had a stab at making some usefulness from the UK Librarian Bloggers wiki, starting with (hopefully) a feed of all the academic library blog feeds on there.

If I’m lucky, you should be able to do something with it, like subscribe to it. Although I haven’t got as far as actually testing that theory myself.
Hopefully, you’ll find it here :

http://pipes.yahoo.com/jennie/ukacademiclibraryblogs

And even more hopefully, it’ll be useful to someone! Let me know if it works, and if it’s useful. If it is, I’ll start creating more…public libraries, special libraries, Scottish, English, Welsh etc…

I could be in online trouble

If giving a fake name and date of birth to MySpace is a criminal act…

Admittedly, I’ve not actually done anything criminal online, but I regularly make up a false date of birth / location / name when signing up to various websites.
I refuse to give the real information when I beleive that all it’ll be used for is to track what I’m doing on the site, and target marketing at me based on that information. Same reason that I don’t have loyalty cards – if they want market research, they can put some work into it, rather than stalking my shopping habits!

We’re constantly being told to be more aware of how important and sensitive our personal information is, and not give it away without careful thought and consideration of the basis for the request for it.
But by giving false information when we don’t believe the request for out personal details are justified, we’re breaching the terms and conditions of various sites.
How can you win?

Help locating a librarian from the 1990s

I had contact via this blog, asking for help finding a librarian that someone used to work with in the early 1990s.

I’ve posted the text of the email below – if anybody knows her, or of her, get in touch with me and I’ll pass the info on (I’ve withheld his email), or pass his info on to her. Since, as he says, we’re fairly well networked, I’m hoping somebody will see this and get in touch.

Also off to post on the CILIP Communities board – I have a vague idea that CILIP has a register of members, but I’m not sure about that. And if she’s married and changed name, or left the profession, there’s not much hope of finding her, but here’s hoping!

Dear Jennie,
This may be a slightly odd email; but I am trying to trace a friend who when I met her was working her BA in librarian(ship?) at Birmingham Polytechnic (now the University of Central England) and subsequently worked as a Librarian at Blakenhurst prison in the Midlands. Her name is Valerie Evans and she worked at the prison during 1993/’94, but I am told she subsequently left.
I was wondering if:
The library communinity is fairly well networked in the UK and whether someone might know her or indeed work with her now.
Alternately:
Whether she works in some affiliated library/IT service somewhere in the UK.
If by some staggering coincidence/chance you might happen to know of her, I would be delighted. If not, could you give me some pointers as to where I possibly look for her if she still works as a librarian. My email address is xxxx@xxxx
I am in New Zealand at present and trying to find her is as you can imagine a difficult task. I would be very happy to hear from you. You will find a photo of her attached
Kindest Regards
Neil Allister

Why Web 2.0? The opportunities and challenges for the legal sector

I’ve foolishly been allowed to organise a training event for the Scottish Law Librarians Group, and if you’re a member of the SLLG, it’s free for you to attend, yay!

Why Web 2.0? The opportunities and challenges for the legal sector

You are cordially invited to a seminar which looks beyond the hype at the challenges and opportunities Web 2.0 provides for information professionals in the legal sector. James Mullan will explore some of the technologies that are currently available and provide practical examples of how these can be used within an Information Services unit. There will then follow a chance for those who wish to investigate these tools to experiment with them on the computers provided, and have informal discussions with James about any of the topics covered in his presentation.

James Mullan works as an Information Professional at a large city law firm and is an active blogger, owning the Running Librarian Blog. He is a well known Web 2.0 evangelist and administrates BIALL’s blog and Facebook profile. He has also spoken at numerous events including Knowledge Management for the Legal Profession and Online Information and has written widely on the subject of harnessing collective intelligence by means of Web 2.0 technologies…

The first half of the seminar is expected to take between 45 minutes to an hour, with computers and refreshments available for the following hour of the second half of the event.

Date and time: 3.30pm, Friday 20th June
Venue: Edinburgh Training Centre, St. Mary’s Street,
Edinburgh (location maps and directions available
from: http://www.edintrain.com/location.asp )
Cost: Free to SLLG members

Thanks to James for agreeing to make the trip up to the Frozen North!