FreePint Newsletter 194 - Awards and VoIP
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FreePint
"Helping 75,000 people use the Web for their work"
http://www.freepint.com/
ISSN 1460-7239 10th November 2005 No.194
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IN THIS ISSUE
-------------
EDITORIAL
By William Hann
MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By Lisa Anderson
FREEPINT BAR
In Association with Factiva
a Dow Jones & Reuters Company
JINFO :: JOBS IN INFORMATION
Reference Librarian
Law firm information service - trainee post
Reference Librarian
Researcher (with Italian or Swedish)
Information Science, Chemistry
Information Scientists, Bioscience
Information Scientist/Analyst
TIPS ARTICLE
"VoIP: Threat or Opportunity to the Market Research Industry?"
By Gary Giddings
REVIEW
"E-Book Publishing Success"
Written by Kingsley Oghojafor
Reviewed by Graham Stewart
FEATURE ARTICLE
"Interview with Steve Borley, winner of the
SLA Europe Information Professional Award"
By Penny Leach
EVENTS, GOLD AND FORTHCOMING ARTICLES
CONTACT INFORMATION
ONLINE VERSION WITH ACTIVATED HYPERLINKS
FULLY FORMATTED VERSION
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WOULD YOU LIKE GREATER RECOGNITION WITHIN YOUR ORGANISATION?
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acquiring and maintaining the knowledge and skills that enable you to
excel. As a CILIP member you can benefit from a range of services,
including new online content, which will help you do your job better
and enhance your career prospects. See us at Online Information 2005
on stand 103 or visit today.
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*** Moreover features in VIP ***
The latest issue of VIP features an in-depth review of CI-Newsdesk,
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*** ABOUT FREEPINT ***
FreePint is an online network of information searchers. Members
receive this free newsletter twice a month: it is packed with tips
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EDITORIAL
By William Hann
The buzz is building as we head towards the Online Information 2005
conference and exhibition here in London at the end of this month
.
This is our eighth year exhibiting, although there may be some
disappointment (or relief) that we won't be having a bar or 60s-style
lounge as in previous years .
Visitors to the exhibition will primarily be coming to see the
products, but our main purpose in exhibiting is to network. It's such
a good chance to catch up with colleagues and friends from around the
world, be they visiting or exhibiting. It's also great to work with
the organisers of Online Information, who are a first-rate team.
Liaising with the organisers always reminds me of the importance of
working with a group of people with complementary skills. We are lucky
to have a great team here at FreePint too, and we know of another
company with excellent staff: how easy it was to choose the winner of
the 'Online Information / FreePint Award for Best Customer Service
Team' when they received such excellent citations as:
"Support is always available with a smile in their voices,
no query too small or too big."
"They combine a light hearted and friendly approach with knowledge
that just seems to be overflowing out of their heads."
The award, a crystal pint glass (of course), is being engraved as we
speak, but you'll have to wait to find out who the winner is. It will
be announced at the gala awards dinner before being published in
December's FreePint. Of course, if you made one of the citations
above, then you will know who the winner is and can enjoy a private
smile.
Thank you to everyone who made nominations for this year's award.
There were a number of worthy contenders, but the winner shone out.
Another winner is also featured in today's FreePint. Steve Borley is
interviewed about winning the SLA Europe Information Professional
Award. We also look at how Internet telephony is affecting market
research, and bring you the usual mix of useful tips and reviews.
We hope you can join us at Online Information, but if you can't, then
do join the 15,000 members who receive the FreePint Bar Digest every
Tuesday and Friday. It's a great current awareness tool, and makes you
feel really 'connected' with the community. You simply need to log in
to your account at (note 'web' rather than
'www') and click on 'Subscriptions'.
We hope you enjoy FreePint, and will continue to spread the word to
your colleagues and friends. In fact, it's easy to do so using the
'Recommend FreePint' page at .
William Hann
Managing Editor and Founder, FreePint
e: william.hann@freepint.com
t: 0870 141 7474
i: +44 870 141 7474
FreePint is a Registered Trademark of Free Pint Limited (R) 1997-2005
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"Enterprise Search Guidebook"
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This report sets out the principles and practice of specifying
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MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By Lisa Anderson
* BAILII (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute) is one of
my favourite sites as it contains freely accessible legal
information and is quite easy to search .
* The Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations is fantastic for finding
out the full title for obscure legal references
.
* I could easily spend all day surfing the Internet Movie Database.
If you ever want to find out where you have seen an actor previously,
this is the site to go to! .
* McSweeneys is run by the elite of young San Franciscan writers and
includes short stories and many other interesting pieces of modern
writing .
* Reuters currency converter is easy to use and always up to date.
This site also provides great links to breaking news stories
.
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Lisa Anderson is a Learning Advisor for Law working in Information
Services at The University of Birmingham. Lisa is also a committee
member of UC&R West Midlands.
Submit your top five favourite Web sites. See the guidelines at
.
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*** Valuable free job-seeking advice from Jinfo ***
The Jinfo Newsletter is published twice-monthly and contains useful
articles on interview technique, skills, career progression, etc.
Recent topics have included "Skills for Records Management",
"How to give yourself the best chance of making it to interview"
and "Accentuate the positive - tips for handling rejection"
Give yourself a job seeking headstart, and subscribe to the free
Jinfo Newsletter today:
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FREEPINT BAR
In Association with Factiva
a Dow Jones & Reuters Company
Willco (FreePint's sister company) provides the technology for the
FreePint Bar. We (the Bar's moderators) get sent an email each time a
posting is made and we can edit or delete the posting if required. The
Willco system creates the Bar Digests automatically twice a week with
a round-up of all the latest postings and handles the sending of them
to all Digest subscribers. It also allows users to search the
Bar or browse by topic, and can alert posters if their message has
received a reply. It's a very effective way of running an online
community .
A number of FreePinters have their own blogs, and Phil Bradley
is trying to get a list together of all the
British information industry bloggers. If you are a blogger, contact
Phil directly or, if you know where to find such a list, view his
posting here .
This FreePinter would love to be a researcher for authors, but doesn't
know where to start. Can you help?
.
Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, is undertaking a PhD study on
finding your family's history on the Internet. Perhaps you would like
to fill out their five-minute online survey?
.
Can you can help this student who has decided to do their dissertation
on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 but doesn't know how to structure their
research .
Do you know of a "handy book" which lists companies together with the
drugs they are testing? . How about
the online advertising rates for healthcare Web sites?
.
Are there any tools/products/services for small businesses to measure
the effectiveness of their IT systems?
.
Take a look at this fascinating posting on how to find out the
dimensions of Trafalgar Square in London. Measuring it with Google
Earth has been one suggestion .
Finally, if you think your community needs a 'Bar' too, check out the
Willco Modules system .
Best regards
Penny Hann
FreePint
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The FreePint Bar is where you can get free help with your tricky
research questions
Help with study for information-related courses is available at the
FreePint Student Bar .
Subscribe to the twice-weekly email digests at
.
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*** Do you use DigBig to shorten long Web addresses? ***
If so, then consider supplying a testimonial about DigBig:
Here's one we've just received:
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JINFO :: JOBS IN INFORMATION
The Jinfo service enables you to search and advertise
information-related job vacancies.
The Jinfo Newsletter is published free every two weeks, and contains a
list of the latest vacancies along with job-seeking advice. The latest
article is entitled "Interview day blues (things they don't tell you
about in books ...)". Read it online and subscribe free at
.
Here are some of the latest featured jobs:
Reference Librarian
Exciting opportunity for exp. Reference Librarian to manage enquiry
service across 2 public libraries in Wiltshire, temp or perm.
Recruiter: Sue Hill Recruitment
Law firm information service - trainee post
Enthusiastic, energetic person with lots of initiative to
be part of a friendly team of five ASAP.
Recruiter: Davies Arnold Cooper
Reference Librarian
INSEAD, top-tier business school, is seeking a Reference Librarian
to provide reference & information services to INSEAD community.
Recruiter: INSEAD
Researcher (with Italian or Swedish)
Italian or Swedish speaking? Researcher at junior level with
excellent English required by prestigious client.
Recruiter: Glen Recruitment
Information Science, Chemistry
You will apply your expertise across a range of activities, using
online published information and in-house resources.
Recruiter: Astrazeneca
Information Scientists, Bioscience
Join our Global Information Science & Libraries team: an integral
part of our drug discovery, development & marketing process.
Recruiter: Astrazeneca
Information Scientist/Analyst
You will provide a number of value-added services and support the
decision-making process of a worldwide internal client base.
Recruiter: Astrazeneca
[The above jobs are paid listings]
NB: There are 49 other jobs in the current edition of the Jinfo
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TIPS ARTICLE
"VoIP: Threat or Opportunity to the Market Research Industry?"
By Gary Giddings
Introduction
------------
For those not familiar with the telecoms industry, VoIP is one of
those acronyms much loved in the information and communications
technology industries. Unlike many technical acronyms used by IT and
telecom professionals, VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, has the
potential to radically impact on the operations of the market research
industry.
What is VoIP?
-------------
VoIP allows broadband Internet users to make and receive voice phone
calls over their Internet connection. A caller's analogue voice call
is converted into a digital signal, bundled into data packets and
sent just like any other information packet over the Internet to its
destination. At the receiver's end, the packets are recombined and
translated to speech again. VoIP calls largely or completely bypass
the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Instead, they are
carried wholly (or mainly) over Internet Protocol (IP) networks like
the public Internet, an organisation's own IP wide-area network or the
network of a telephone service provider that uses the Internet itself
to carry calls.
Market researchers will use telephones in much the same way as they do
now. However, calls will be made either via an IP Phone (which looks
like a conventional phone but converts analogue signals to IP digital
signals), or a normal analogue telephone connected to an analogue
phone adaptor which converts the analogue signal to a digital one.
Telephone numbers can be assigned and calls can be terminated onto the
PSTN network. Users can talk to others who are not using VoIP and they
retain the traditional voice call experience, i.e. they can use their
existing CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing) headsets to
make IP calls.
What does this mean to an agency?
---------------------------------
VoIP will affect an agency in three potential ways:
* It will lower the costs of telephone research
* It will lower the cost of running an agency by lowering all
telephone bills
* It will improve the functionality and flexibility of an agency's
communications, but it may make it harder to organise telephone
research and build a representative sample
The opportunities: cost savings
-------------------------------
VoIP essentially removes the cost of using the public switched
telephone network (PSTN) to make telephone calls because the traffic
is carried wholly or partly off the PSTN. It therefore reduces
telephone and administration costs. Calls made between VoIP users are
free. When calling others using a VoIP service, there is only a
monthly service charge (often around GBP 6.00) but no call charges.
Therefore, calls to respondents who are also using VoIP are free and
calls between agency locations or to freelancers are free as long as
all are using VoIP. Via a VoIP service, staff can also make and
receive calls to and from ordinary non-Internet numbers and whilst
these calls are not free, they are usually at significant discounts to
regular rates.
Business-to-business (B2B) telephone research is increasingly open to
the use of VoIP. The UK is amongst the leading countries in terms of
the proportion of companies using VoIP. According to the DTI's (UK
Department of Trade and Industry) International Benchmarking Study
2004, in 2004 18% of UK businesses were using VoIP. Given that 65% of
UK businesses have a broadband connection when accessing the Internet,
this implies that 28% of UK business broadband users have VoIP. Within
the UK, there is significant variation by sector - 44% of financial
services use VoIP compared with only 10% of manufacturing businesses.
The proportion of consumers using VoIP is not clear, but broadband
connections now exceed dial-up connections for Internet access and the
consumer VoIP market is likely to grow strongly in the future,
especially as many VoIP service providers are bundling VoIP services
with broadband connections.
The opportunities: increased flexibility and functionality
----------------------------------------------------------
VoIP is particularly attractive to research agencies. In contrast with
other technologies - such as multiplexing, which allow data and voice
traffic on the same line - IP telephony is more flexible, and can
accommodate new working trends such as 'hot desking'. By using IP
technology, companies can digitise communications, meaning emails can
be forwarded to workers while they are on the move. It also opens the
door for cheap video telephony.
VoIP offers:
* Increased employee mobility
* More intelligent call handling
* Greater flexibility
* New channels of communication.
Most VoIP service providers bundle a range of communications features
into their standard packages allowing even small agencies to enjoy the
benefits of sophisticated telephony services. Services aimed at
businesses offer basic voice services plus a range of business user
features, such as:
* Call redirect (to any other designated phone, to anywhere when no
answer, immediately when an office is closed)
* Advanced voice messaging features
* Abbreviated dialling between locations
* Real-time billing
* Advanced call restrictions
* Integration of the VoIP services into the PC network, meaning
companies can have features like parallel ringing, central web-based
feature management, global corporation telephone integration,
conferencing and an easy-to-use web interface to manage extension
numbers and call groups.
The threats
-----------
While VoIP offers many operational benefits to research agencies,
there are also dangers. A consumer or a firm using a VoIP service can
be allocated either:
* A UK geographic number
* An 0845 number, which is usually slightly cheaper than a UK
geographic number.
On the one hand, this can benefit an agency. Users can specify any UK
geographic numbers regardless of where they live so, for example, a
freelance teleworker in Spain can have a London telephone number. This
might be advantageous to an agency working virtually but who wants to
present a professional image to clients.
On the other hand, it decouples telephone numbers from geographic
areas. Not only does a UK telephone number no longer point to a
geographic locality within the UK, it no longer points to the UK
anymore. UK nationals with a home in the UK but living in Spain for
most of the year, for example, will have a UK telephone number which
rings in Spain. These individuals are unlikely to be appropriate
contacts for a survey about living conditions in the UK.
The traditional method of sample selection for a consumer omnibus
survey would entail a random sample of telephone numbers being drawn
from the entire BT database of domestic telephone numbers within each
region. Each number selected will have its last digit randomised so as
to provide a sample including both listed and unlisted numbers. In
today's non-VoIP world this would ensure a representative sample, but
in a VoIP world it may not. A number initially drawn from the South
East region could turn out to be one from Scotland when the last
digital is randomised - e.g. 0208519XXX1 might be from East London,
but 0208519XXX3 might be from Glasgow, if the Glasgow household has
chosen a London number.
Similarly, businesses operating from overseas but with a UK mailing
address can also have a UK telephone number which rings in the
overseas office. Are these appropriate contacts for a survey about
business conditions in the UK?
Moreover, advanced call-handling features will complicate research.
VoIP allows consumers to establish a separate number for each member
of the family. One address can now have multiple numbers - unless each
individual is identifiable by age and sex, which is the best number to
call to reach the head of household, for example?
In addition, call-divert options allow calls to be diverted to another
number on no answer or re-directed to other family members. During the
holiday period, a call to family A could be answered by family B
(neighbours or relatives) while family A is away. A telephone survey
of London households, as an example, could be answered by a home in
Manchester.
VoIP may also ironically add to telephone bills. Options like
simultaneous ring mean that calls to the landline will ring
simultaneously on a mobile as well - agencies call a landline but pay
for a mobile call.
Finally, the curse of a B2B telephone researcher's life - voicemail
-- will be commonly available to consumers, including personalised
greetings. Households, tired of sales calls, can simply leave the
phone on voicemail and only return those calls they want to answer.
Conclusion
----------
VoIP could radically cut the costs of telephone research in the UK and
will make an important impact on the operating costs of a research
agency. However, like ex-directory numbers and the lack of 100%
penetration of telephones into UK homes, it raises some interesting
issues about how telephone research needs to be designed and
conducted.
Useful Links
------------
- General site for VoIP information in UK.
- Review of VoIP developments
including list of service and equipment providers.
- Wiki covering software, hardware, service
providers, reviews.
- Good introductions
to VoIP
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Gary Giddings is a director and co-founder of IRN Research
, a UK-based market research and
consultancy business. As well as offering general research services,
IRN focuses on bespoke research projects and commissioned research
reports for the information & content, and IT and telecommunications
sectors.
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Related FreePint links:
* 'Internet and Online' articles in the FreePint Portal
* Post a message to the author, Gary Giddings, or suggest further
resources at the FreePint Bar
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* Access the entire archive of FreePint content
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REVIEW
"E-Book Publishing Success"
Written by Kingsley Oghojafor
Reviewed by Graham Stewart
A glance at the Bibliography of Kingsley Oghojafor's recently
published text on e-books reveals the author's intended audience. With
titles such as "How to Become an Information Millionaire" and "How to
Literally Triple Your Online Sales...Overnight!" it's clear that Mr.
Oghojafor is keen to appeal to those drawn to the Internet in the
misguided belief that merely attending the party can guarantee wealth
and success. Literally, indeed.
A number of the other titles listed could have been alternatives for
the book under review. ("How to Create, Promote and Sell an E-book on
the Internet" anyone?) The author has obviously read widely in the
literature of e-book publishing and has published seven of his own.
This book is therefore a distillation of his knowledge and practical
experience. There is, however, no avoiding the paradox that a text on
the subject of writing and publishing an e-book is delivered as a
bound paperback, at once quite short and very expensive.
Yet, for all that, the book is a clear enough instruction manual on
how to publish an e-book, covering everything you'll need to take you
from conception to selling. After a brief and possibly redundant first
chapter explaining what e-books are and why the author thinks they're
important (which boils down to the fact that "they have now made it
possible for anyone to write and self-publish a book within a short
time"), the book falls naturally into two parts. The first (chapters
2 to 8) covers choosing the subject of your e-book, how to go about
the task of writing it, and the mechanics of actually compiling your
treasured prose into one of a number of e-book formats. The second
part (chapters 9 to 18) examines the mechanics of marketing and
selling the finished product, from getting it onto the Internet to
promoting it via both your own web site and those of others.
The book is an easy read. The sections are short, the instructions
clear, and the author's simple prose style allows no stylistic
flourish ever to stand between the reader and the author's message.
Here, for instance, is Mr. Oghojafor introducing the topic of e-book
compilers: "With your information well-written and structured, it is
now time to compile all of it into an e-book. To be able to do this,
however, you will need an e-book compiler. Without e-book compilers
you would not be able to compile all the information you have prepared
into a single file that can now be viewed as an e-book". No room for
misunderstanding there.
By far the most interesting chapters are those covering the promotion
of your completed e-book. This is an education into the ways of
Internet marketing, with its autoresponders and affiliate programmes.
There is also some very useful information on search engine rankings
and article directories. However, this book is a very expensive route
to such knowledge.
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Graham Stewart is a freelance writer with a sordid past in IT
development. His client list includes Reuters, Vodafone, Microsoft,
and Citrix. In his spare time he works as an editor for the technical
podcasting site at . His personal blog
can be found at .
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Related FreePint links:
* Find out more about this book online at the FreePint Bookshelf
* Read customer comments and buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
or Amazon.com
* "E-Book Publishing Success" ISBN 1843340992, published by
Chandos Publishing Oxford Ltd.
* Search for and purchase any book from Amazon via the FreePint
Bookshelf at
* Read about other Internet Strategy books on the FreePint Bookshelf
To propose an information-related book for review, send details
to .
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Now is the time to book your advertising with FreePint for
2006 as there are a limited number of advertising accounts.
We already have a number of confirmed bookings, so talk to us
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FEATURE ARTICLE
"Interview with Steve Borley, winner of the
SLA Europe Information Professional Award"
By Penny Leach
[Steve Borley, Regional Information Manager, Royal Bank of Scotland,
is interviewed about winning the SLA Europe Information Professional
Award (SLA EIP) by Penny Leach, Board Member of SLA Europe on behalf
of FreePint]
** What does it feel like to be the winner of the (first) SLA Europe
Information Professional Award (SLA EIP)?
It is a great honour to receive such recognition from my peers.
Naturally, I was very surprised to receive the Award and thrilled that
some of the things I've achieved in my career were considered worthy
of celebrating in this way. Winning this Award in the year it
recognised 'information professionals' instead of 'special librarians'
was especially satisfying. I think this change in Award title shows
SLA Europe recognises the vital broadening and diversifying of the
information profession, as a profession that welcomes participation
from a wide range of people including those without formal academic
qualifications in library and information management, such as myself.
** You mention in your write-up for SLA Europe of the June 2005 SLA
Conference in Toronto that you are a veteran of student politics
conferences - tell us a little bit about your past activism.
I was President of my college at Lancaster University, which led me to
sit on the Student Union committee, which in turn led to my attending
National Union of Students conferences in Blackpool during my student
years. This experience showed me that I enjoyed the work of organising
things on others' behalf and made me keen to engage in what I guess
you could call 'professional activism' from the earliest part of my
career. Back in my student days I did get involved in student politics
- though looking back I was generally happier taking responsibility
for enabling practical things to get done rather than chaining myself
to too many railings!
** Attendance at the SLA Conference this year was the main part of
your prize, which is generously sponsored by Factiva. What were
your main take-aways?
Well despite the myriad differences between SLA and NUS, both
conferences involve a degree of stamina and single-minded intensity
that I'm sure can come as a shock to the first-time delegate. More
specifically, the SLA Conference was an excellent opportunity to take
stock of where the information world is now and where many of the key
thinkers believe it is going tomorrow. The keynote speakers spoke at a
high level, challenging everyone's notions of what our work looks like
and what our roles should be. I liked Bill Buxton, and his exhortation
that if we sit around waiting for the next new invention we'll get
nowhere, but if we look at what we use today and think how else we can
use the knowledge we already have we will make progress. On a micro
level, I think that is a key mindset for someone running an
information service in any organisation in the world, so it was good
to hear.
Though Bill was good, it was Gary Hamel I enjoyed the most. He
believes information professionals should be agents for change in
their organisations, and that an organisation that is unable to change
will be obsolete in a fairly short timeframe. Hamel also made the
point that organisational change starts from what we know today. He
wants us all to be very clear-eyed about the assumptions our
organisations make and to prod and poke them until we find an
assumption that we can challenge, thereby altering the way our
organisations operate. Hamel is definitely a big-picture guy, but this
is a message all information managers need to hear. If we are not
challenging how we work then we'll be leaving it to someone else and
disenfranchising ourselves from determining our futures. It was
powerful stuff and emboldened me to really look closely at how I
operate.
** Gary Hamel's conclusion in his keynote speech at the Conference was
that information professionals can help their organisations develop
a culture that delivers more original strategies and not just push
data from A to B. Can you give us an example from your current role
at the Royal Bank of Scotland?
RBS has given me a role that previously wasn't seen as an opportunity
for an information specialist in the bank. My remit has been to
increase the strategically valuable knowledge from the raw data we
collect about our day-to-day business. The bedrock of this is to make
my team as efficient as possible in turning the raw data we receive
into information so that we spend as much time as possible turning
this information into the knowledge that will inform our strategic
decision-making. It's taking the 'fetching and carrying' role that
information work can easily become and shifting the focus to what we
do with the data rather than how we move it around. Every job is a
work in progress of course, but I do feel I am in a role where I can
begin to see a marriage between the core skills and attitudes of an
information professional and the strategic renewal requirements that
Hamel identified.
** Tell us about SIN (Scottish Information Network) and your role
in it?
The Scottish Information Network is
something I take a great deal of satisfaction in. Hazel Hall, from
Napier University, and I both work in Edinburgh. When I'd been in
Scotland for about two years I was looking to join whatever networking
groups there were to help build my professional network of contacts
working with business information, and struggling to find one. (For
Hazel this was less of an issue because she had been in Edinburgh so
much longer than me). Hazel and I recognised that my problem was
probably not unique. We decided that if there was no obvious group to
join then there was only one solution - to see if we could rustle up
sufficient enthusiasm from those people we did know to get a new group
off the ground. So, using Hazel's wonderful contacts list and my own
somewhat shorter list, we got around thirty people together to see if
there was any interest in forming a group. There was, along with the
all-important additional swathe of volunteers and willing hands and
brains to actually get some momentum going.
Roll forward a couple of years and we've built up a pretty good list
of past events and we already have more in the pipeline in the diary
through to next March. The ethos behind the group is very much one of
'open access'. We encourage anyone with an interest to come along; we
cover the cost of events through sponsorship, so we don't need to
charge attendees - and we keep membership free too. This, I think, has
helped us get established as there really are no barriers to anyone
getting involved. At the events themselves we like to invite high-
quality speakers and, where possible, to pair them with a member of
the group - offering members the chance to lead a discussion with
their peers. We always try to end with a networking session to allow
debate to continue and give people in Scotland the chance to meet
people who share their professional interests. We have a good mix of
private and public sector workers, people from academia - including
students - and people from large and small organisations. All in all,
the members are an interesting, generous and sociable bunch.
I should emphasise that SIN does not regard itself as a "professional
organisation". Rather it is a self-organising community, the main
purpose of which is to facilitate networking as a means for
participants to increase their information "reach" through access to
others active in the group. An early resolution, and one that still
stands, is that the group would continue to hold meetings only for as
long as there was an appetite for them. We are not concerned with
some of the issues that occupy the strong established bodies for
information professionals, e.g. CILIP, such as advocacy, professional
qualifications, validating academic courses, etc. This is not to say
that SIN's work does not have an impact on such other groups. For
example, someone who has been mentored to serve on the SIN Committee
may later be encouraged to offer their services to another more formal
association. In short, it offers a complementary means for individual
professional development through networking.
Whilst Hazel and I got the ball rolling in the first place, the
continued success of the group has been testament to the active
participation of members and a genuine desire to see the group
flourish. So the satisfaction for me comes from seeing events happen,
web sites updated, and members introduced by people other than Hazel
and me - it reaffirms my belief in the power and value of networking.
I would recommend it to everyone.
** What other professional networking activity in the information
industry have you been or are you involved in?
I was on the City Information Group (CiG) Management Committee in 1998
and 1999, chairing the group in 1999. I really enjoyed that, but it
was a challenge trying to keep anything up to a 1,000 members happy.
Still, just like my experience with SIN, there were always plenty of
talented and committed people around to make things happen. Indeed, it
was CiG that really switched me on to how useful and rewarding
networking can be. I remember CiG providing me with the opportunity to
hear from and meet people who had more experience than me, giving me a
short cut to insights that would have taken several years of beavering
away on my own to find out.
Recently, of course, I've attended events organised by the SLA too, in
particular their Summer Soiree in London and their Edinburgh
Networking Evening in October. Plus I'll be speaking on an SLA
platform at the Online Information conference at Olympia at the end of
November.
Useful links
------------
SLA
The Special Libraries Association is a non-profit global organisation
for innovative information professionals and their strategic partners.
Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, USA, the SLA represents over
12000 information professionals in 83 countries, including corporate,
academic and government information specialists .
SLA Europe
SLA Europe provides information professionals in Europe with a unique
networking and learning opportunity through regular meetings and
social events. It also seeks to recognise outstanding achievement in
the information profession with the annual award of SLA Europe
Information Professional (SLA EIP); the next call for nominations will
be made at SLA Europe's Annual Breakfast Meeting at Online Information
2005 .
Scottish Information Network
The Scottish Information Network is an informal networking group for
information professionals. Members come from a mix of backgrounds to
organise and attend events, and network. Events focus on issues of
interest to business information professionals
.
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Penny Leach is an information services procurement specialist, working
for Business Information Services in the European Headquarters of a
global investment bank. She deals with non realtime electronic
services, as well as the traditional format of books and journals. A
qualified librarian, her career started in academic libraries. Penny
has been active in various professional groups, including the City
Information Group, and is now on the Board of SLA Europe.
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FREEPINT GOLD
A look back at what FreePint covered at this time in previous years:
* FreePint No.171 11th November 2004. "How to Improve your Business
Writing" and "Information Auditing: Key Concepts and How To Get
Started"
* FreePint No.148 6th November 2003. "Records Management, the Aunt
Sally of your business!" and "Getting UK Immigration Information and
Advice"
* FreePint No.125 14th November 2002. "Teaching In China" and
"FreePint talks to Jakob Nielsen"
* FreePint No.100, 15th November 2001. "Digital Content on the Web"
and "Untangling The Web For Health Professionals"
* FreePint No.75, 16th November 2000. "Music and the Internet
Revolution" and "Business Information for Small and Medium Sized
Enterprises"
* FreePint No.50, 18th November 1999. "Information on tap - Web
resources on the water industry" and "Electronic Communities"
* FreePint No.26, 12th November 1999. "Web Site Promotion Ideas" and
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Penny
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