Global thinking about local searching
9th February 2012

If you are like me, whenever you are working on a research project, the first place you turn to is one of the big three databases – Nexis, Factiva or Dialog. You know that the big three do not cover everything, but when you are on a tight deadline, you hope that a search in one of these databases will quickly and easily produce your desired results.

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Understanding the high stakes of stakeholders [ABSTRACT]
9th February 2012

Every department, and every business, has customers: the people who directly use the services of that department or business. In library and information services, we know who our customers are – those who use our services, databases and sources to get the information they need to do their work effectively.

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Managing information, opportunities and the role of info pros
9th February 2012

You probably feel you have a good sense of the assets of your organisation. However most organisations actually have no idea about how much information they have stored away, because no one has bothered to track it down and count it. This year one of my clients discovered they owned 45TB of information contained in 6000 Lotus Notes databases, but had no way of searching this vast repository. We worked out that staff time being wasted in creating information that no one could find was around €150Million a year. That was the equivalent of building 10 new factories!

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Understanding the Facebook Timeline
9th February 2012

Earlier this year Facebook launched Facebook Timeline. Timeline is a reverse-chronological display of a user's history on Facebook. This is a big issue for some users as timeline is non-optional for all users.

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Social media and BRIC - new report
8th February 2012

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Reuters takes the social media pulse
8th February 2012

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Strategic use of social media - Heron & Hughes at news:rewired
8th February 2012

At the news:rewired event in London last week, Liz Heron and Nicola Hughes both gave great insights into their uses of social media. At the New York Times Liz is mostly concerned with the best strategic way for the paper to use social media, whilst Nicola Hughes uses social media as a powerful investigative tool.

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How to deal with the tech-savvy customer?
8th February 2012

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Does Facebook have a future?
7th February 2012

The Facebook valuation has stirred up a great deal of press debate. It is expected that the IPO valuation will come in at $75-100 billion, giving Facebook a higher value than Boeing, American Express and Nike. Unsurprisingly, people are wondering if this is another dot com bubble. Social networks haven’t fared well following buyouts so there is a lot of speculation on Facebook’s future.

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Beyond newsletters: tips for internal communication
3rd February 2012

How often have you heard the phrase "we need a newsletter!"? It’s one of the cheapest, easiest and most common ways of disseminating information withinanorganisation, but all too often they sit unread in email inboxes. It is important to carefuly consider a few factors before starting up a newsletter.  

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