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Recent Articles on Use
Reference Desk: Tips on Using Your Wits
July 2009
How were you trained to find information? Possibly you were not trained at all. One would like to think otherwise, but I suspect most of us were plonked at...
Business Insight: BestForBusiness
June 2009
2009 is the ninetieth anniversary of Business Insight, Birmingham Central Library's business information service providing free business information and...
Research: A Strategy for Raising $1 Million
February 2009
I sometimes struggle to define my role with clients. There are days that I would tell you that I am a researcher. Other days, I would tell you that I...
Free Data: Turning It into Something Worth Paying For
November 2008
The availability of so much information on the Internet, free at the point of use, has led the public into a false sense of security, believing that...
Introduction to Federated Search
October 2008
Federated search -
also known as metasearch or a distributed information retrieval system -
provides one portal for searching information from multiple...
Second Life for Business: Ten Techniques
October 2008
In this article I'll talk about business uses for Second Life (SL) ( http://www.secondlife.com/ ) and give some tips for working in SL. SL is a virtual...
Selling Photographs in the Digital Age
August 2008
People have been licensing photographs almost since the inception of the medium in the nineteenth century. Victorian picture agencies like the London...
Do We Have to Work Harder in a Downturn?
July 2008
As I write this article at the beginning of the downturn, I realise how fortunate I am that my information department has not yet been affected by...
Information Provision: Adding Value
May 2008
Information professionals are often seen as peripherally providing a service to an organisation rather than being an integral part of the management of...
Exposing the secret state
April 2008
There isn't an information professional in the world these days who doesn't have to demonstrate that they add value. But media librarians - the folk who...
Legal Research: Turning It into Competitive Advantage
April 2008
Legal research often conjures up
images of assistants scurrying to find case law, related statutes, regulations
to prove an argument, or an attorney...
Statistics: Can You Really Believe the Figures?
February 2008
Hard, objective, accurate, definitive, precise numbers are beguilingly appealing. Yet in reality numbers are often subjective, vague, provisional and...
1997-2007: A Decade of Find, Use, Manage, Share
December 2007
On the evolutionary scale, 10 years isn't even a blip, not a blink,
not a breath in. It's hardly anything at all. But on the information
scale, especially...
Survival Guide: Online Social Networking
September 2007
Online social networking provides you with a venue to connect with
people whom you already know, grow your relationships and find new
people connected to...
RSS Update: It's RSS, Jim, but Not as We Know It
July 2007
One of the classic lines from Star Trek was when, on seeing new life on a strange planet, Dr McCoy turned to Captain Kirk and said in an ominous tone:...
Beyond Online: In-Depth Report from SLA
June 2007
Every once in a while, I think, it's not a bad idea to venture outside your personal comfort zone. For me, that means getting away from the computer. I...
SLA Special Report: Your Wish Was Our Command
June 2007
Prior to SLA, Free Pint Limited ran a survey across our communities (particularly FreePint, ResourceShelf, DocuTicker and Jinfo) to get users' feedback on...
Distance Learning, ifs KnowledgeBank and Usability
April 2007
Introduction
As access to the Internet becomes less expensive and more widely available, distance learning is becoming an increasingly efficient...
Product Evaluations: Completing a Needs Assessment
April 2007
Over the course of doing business, every organisation encounters the need to conduct product evaluations. Sometimes evaluations are no more complex than...
Wikipedia: To Use or Not To Use
December 2006
In July 2006, the American comedian Stephen Colbert defined 'wikiality' (a combination of the words 'Wikipedia' and 'reality') as 'truth by consensus'....
Social Revolution: Bloggers Dominate Online
December 2006
Bloggers may not rule the world (yet) but they do wield surprising power. They can turn elections, expose scandal, and shift public thought. Blogging, and...
On the Verge of Revolution - Open-access Publishing
July 2006
Online technology has revolutionised how scholars communicate with each other. It is also changing how publishers do business. Those of us who rely on...
Trends in business information, provision and use
May 2006
The VIP publications, VIP and VIP Eye, are concerned with the business
information industry - its products, its providers and its users
<...
Information Risk
March 2006
It is not an exaggeration to say that the lifeblood of today's organisation, whether it be in the private or public sector, is information. All...
Every five minutes, someone in the UK has a stroke. It's one of the most frustrating disabilities you can imagine - moving, speaking and understanding what people say can become incredibly difficult. Aphasia Now, an organisation set up by people with speech disorders reviews three software packages that can assist not just the stroke sufferers themselves but also family and friends trying to help them recover.
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