View from the Hill

Who wants to be a knowledge gardener or k-warrior?

Flicking through this week's CILIP Gazette at lunchtime, I noticed a little article entitled "How do we define ourselves:discuss", debating what information professionals should call themselves and whether it's important. Knowledge gardener, k-guardian, k-provider and the alarming-sounding k-warrior (is a Lycra-suit essential to this role?) are apparently all real job titles.

However, no one knows outside the profession what these job titles mean and it seems that when asked what a knowledge gardener actually is most people would revert to using 'librarian' as part of the explanation as there is on some level a generic understanding of what librarian means.

Do job titles matter? Is it our issue as a profession or is it an issue for our users, employers and the media? Perhaps the way we explain what we do is more important than what we call ourselves? That said, I'm off to ask Sue if she'd consider changing my job title to Information Warrioress...

Why are law firms reluctant to adopt web 2.0 technologies?

Interesting post from the Running Librarian James Mullan on Web 2.0 Resistance in Law Firms. The Am Law Tech 2008 survey shows that relatively few law firms have deployed Web 2.0 tools and James's post considers the reasons why this might be. The comments particularly suggest that this is due to cultural barriers within law firms rather than problems with the technologies themselves...

A Digital President? Not entirely...

Perusing the digital Sunday papers (albeit a week late) I couldn’t help but notice that fellow digital gadget addict Barack Obama may have to surrender his Blackberry. Why? The Presidential Records Act puts all correspondence that Obama has in the public spectrum, possibly making him susceptible to subpoenas. There is also the fear that using email, especially via a mobile device, is not secure.

This raises a couple of questions in my mind: If email security is that important to his aides, why was it not an issue on the lead up to the Presidential election, with Obama using his Blackberry to not only contact friends, but to check over speeches and other documents? Maybe the Republicans did in fact have someone hired to try and hack his Blackberry?

The intent of the Presidential Records Act was to create a historical record of Presidential decision making, and ultimately transparency (read : keeping the crooked on the straight and narrow?). Something the outgoing administration is evidently none too keen on. Yet if Obama was to be subpoenaed for any wrong doing, surely evidence would not be exclusively derived from emails or electronic messages. Can we not gather evidence from phone or mobile or people testifying?

Keen to bring the Senate and the Whitehouse into the 21st century - Bill 2.0 Anyone?, the ironic twist of this story is that Obama may essentially be removed from the very technologies he is such a strong advocate of.

Sharing the Load

Here at SHR we are often asked by candidates about the possibility of finding an organisation who is willing to offer two candidates a job share. There are a multitude of reasons why people may be looking for part time work and we regularly meet people with a host of impressive and variable skills who are looking to cut back their hours.  But are there enough part time roles to go around?

Some progressive employers are willing to look beyond the obvious and hire two part time workers to make up a full time job share position.  Earlier this year one of our Public Library clients came to us with a full time Archives position and when we suggested that a job share might work, the manager was very open to the idea and saw the benefits that could be offered by two people with different skills and experience to draw on.

A job share may not work in all cases but my advice to anybody looking for part time work would be, use those networking skills and knowledge of your industry to find yourself a likeminded job share partner.  Together you can make joint applications for jobs and demonstrate to employers all the positives that a dual approach could bring to a role.  Like they say two heads is better than one.

Does anyone else have any advice on this?

More news on Europeana

Here is some more news on Europeana.  It crashed because of having over 10 million hits an hour!!!!  See people love having access to information and libraries are a place to feed that habit.

The mug is the star!

We recently ran a competition for the most imaginative photograph of a Sue Hill Recruitment mug and were delighted to see our mugs getting out and about. A selection of the winning photographs is shown below. The winners each received a bottle of our own brand champagne and one of our new design mugs.

From Meredith Davies: SHR Mug - traveller through time and space?

From Fo Krabben: SHR Mug wins the WDF Europe Cup in Denmark. Go mug!
 

From Sophie Philipson: SHR Mug poses with View from the Hill. Nice lippie!

Comprehensive Search results

A question:  As reported in a Guardian blog today, some of the bigger search companies are experimenting with more comprehensive search results.  Yahoos example is GLUE.  You can do a simple search and you are presented with not just links to websites, but images, videos, news results, etc.

Another example is CUIL which was originally touted as the Google killer.

Well, I was wondering how popular and useful people find these search engines.  Are they encouraging users to move away from their beloved Google?  Any thoughts?

European Library

It is here and it has launched today.  The European Library or Europeana as it is called, is free to use and opens up a world of digital resources bought together by a number of European countries, as the name suggests.

However, not wanting to put a dampner on the whole thing, but I was trying to access it today and the server was down.  I was not a happy information bunny =:(  But on a positive note, it could be down due to so many people trying to access it and it's capacity being surpassed.  If this is the case then it is great that it has generated so much interest. =:)  Happy info bunny again.

Order is called in Norfolk's libraries

As someone who grew up in Norfolk and enjoyed my local library in King's Lynn (particularly their numerous copies of the Narnia series!) I read with interest a BBC news article about a group set up by Norfolk County Council to look at conduct and etiquette in their libraries. I thought at first it was following on from the recent discussions about there being too much noise in libraries but it seems to be a very sensible idea to ensure all users respect library facilities, thus making libraries safe and enjoyable for all.

Norfolk has certainly modernised its libraries since I left home in 1996. For example, The Forum in Norwich has a wonderful library as well as the BBC, community learning organisations and event space, tourist and council information and a Pizza Express and coffee shop. All of this tempted my brother into a library for the first time in more than a decade. He now takes his three children there on a regular basis.

Will a code of conduct help improve behavioural standards in libraries? Has anyone already implemented a code of conduct - with positive or negative results?

See, Libraries are cool

I don't know if anyone saw Gwen Stefani in the papers recently, but she has taken her new born, Zuma, to get his very first library card.  Bless.  That's what we like to see, start them off young.