Copies of my RSS, Blogs and Wikis Powerpoint presentation, and additional support materials, are now available on my
selected presentations page.
Category Archives: Presentations
Libraries@Cambridge 2006
The Powerpoint of my presentation, given at the Libraries@cambridge 2006 conference on December 13th, together with the list of resources and further reading is available at http://www.rba.co.uk/presentations/cam2006/
The topic was RSS, Blogs and Wikis: New Essential Tools for Communication and Collaboration.
UC&R – New Ways to Communicate workshop
I am at this moment at the University College & Research Group’s workshop on using RSS, blogs and wikis to communicate with your users, being held at Birmingham University in the UK. There are about 50 of us here and we are all having great fun playing with ePop. Poor ‘Trevor’ who is at the end of a video link is being bombarded with questions from us in the training suite. He can show us presentations, answer questions and take over our computers to help us find things (scary!). And he is on a completely different part of the campus – now we are sharing whiteboards. Brilliant session from Debbie Carter of the Univeristy of Birmingham.
The earlier part of the day was taken up with RSS, blogs and wikis. I kicked off with a general introduction to the subject and Alan Cooper from CILIP’s web team talked about how Web 2.0 is being used at CILIP. Rupert Mann from Oxford University Press looked at the technology from the publisher’s, and user’s, point of view and had some pretty scathing things to say about other publishers’s approach and attitude to RSS and blogs in particular. A memorable comment on one US university’s attempt at RSS was “No fun at Harvard any more”.
Jane Somerwell, University of Worcester, talked about blogging in her organisation and then we had the first of the practical sessions. I am pleased to report that we have significantly increased the membership of the blogosphere with at least a dozen having been set up in the last hour, and the number of RSSaholics in this room is beginning to reach alarming levels. “Stop reading your feeds and pay attention!!”
A fantastic day, great fun, and every one of us learned a lot.
Must stop… time to comment to some of the new blogs 🙂
Online 2006 free search seminars
I am now back from a very busy week at the annual Online Information exhibition and conference in London. As well as chairing a conference session and being ‘on duty’ on the UKeiG stand, I gave two free exhibition seminars on search: ‘Top tips and tricks for better web search’ and ‘What’s new in search’. These are now available as Powerpoint files.
Please note that they are just Powerpoint slides and are not annotated. So unless you were present at the seminars, the significance of some of the screen shots may not be immediately obvious – in fact they may be downright obscure. Also, she compiled these using the latest Microsoft Office 2007 suite and in the conversion to the more commonly used versions of Office some of the slides may have lost something in the translation.
New ways to communicate: a practical approach
I shall be presenting a keynote at an event organised by UC&R in Birmingham on December 6th. Details are as follows:
New Ways to Communicate: A Practical Approach. Using RSS, Blogs and Wikis to Communicate with your Users.
Venue: Learning Centre, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Campus
Date: Wednesday 6th December 2006, 10am – 4pm
As the Internet has developed, so has the potential for reaching information service users. This event will consider how information professionals can best use modern tools such as RSS feeds, weblogs and wikis tools to communicate with users and colleagues, and to develop and promote their services.
Speakers include:
Keynote: Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services and UKeiG
Alan Cooper, CILIP Web Team
Cost: £35 for CILIP members, £50 for non-members (inclusive of VAT)
A limited number of free places are available for students currently studying for a degree in library and information science. Lunch is included in the fee.
Further event details may be obtained from:
Clare Langman, UC&R Group West Midlands Chair and Co-Events Secretary,
Information Specialist (Engineering and Life Sciences),
Library and Information Services, Aston University,
Birmingham B4 7ET
Tel: 0121 204 4513
Email: c.langman@aston.ac.uk
Let’s Get Wiki’d
The slides from my presentation “Assessing the Quality of Collaboratively Collected Information” are now available on my web site. This was part of the Let’s Get Wiki’d event organised by CILIP’s East of England Information Services Group. It was an excellent day covering the whole range ‘2G’ internet services such as Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 Dave (Pattern from the University of Huddersfield), Mashups (Richard Wallis, Talis), Social Bookmarking and Connotea (Joanna Scott, Nature), and wikis and the semantic web (Nick Kings, BT). I understand that links to the other presentations will be available on the ISG web site.
I now have a short break from presentations and workshops, but the next series kicks off quite soon at the end of November at Online Information 2006. I shall be giving two free seminars on Tips and Tricks and What’s New in Search. Details of these and the full programme of free seminars and masterclasses are available on the Online Information web site.
Internet Librarian International – Presentations available
Many of the presentations made at Internet Librarian International 2006 are now available on the ILI web site. If you want to ‘flesh out the bones’, try and track down blog postings on the event. Tom Roper’s blog is a good place to start.
Searching without Google: the hottest and best of the new search engines
Presenter: Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services
Date: November 8th 2006, half day seminar starting at 1.30 pm
Venue: Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PD
Cost: Aslib members GBP 50; non-members GBP 60
There is still time to book a place on this half day seminar on what is new and what is hot in the search engine world. Find out what is wrong with Google and why other search tools are often better and more reliable. This session will take you through the latest alternative web search engines; blogs and RSS search tools; image, video and audio tools; and specialist tools including evaluated listings.
Further information and a booking form can be found at http://www.aslib.co.uk/members/northern/news.htm or contact Rona Stedman, rona.stedman@hse.gsi.gov.uk, tel 0151 951 3524
Tom Roper’s Weblog: Internet Librarian International: Internet Research Intricacies: Out-Googling Google: Finding what Google Misses
Tom Roper has neatly summarised my ILI presentation on out-Googling Google on his blog. He’s done a good job of encapsulating the main points, so worth reading it along side my Powerpoint slides.
ILI – Out-Googling Google presentation
My Internet Librarian International presentation on Out-Googling Google is now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/ili/index.html. I have not written any notes to accompany the Powerpoint so you may not be able to make much sense of some (or even all) of it. If you are interested in seeing photos of the event, go to Flickr and use the tag ili2006.
A fantastic event with lots of good practical tips and case studies. If you have never been, watch the web and feeds for news of next year’s event. This year there must have been at least 350 people there and the key note sessions were packed solid with standing room only for late arrivals! The rest of the program was split into parrallel tracks so you could almost guarantee a seat. At the rate this conference is expanding, ILI will have to take over the entire hotel for the event next year 🙂
In addition to the main programme, there are plenty of networking opportunities including receptions, “group”dinners, and lunch tables hosted by the speakers. A great way to met new people and exchange experiences and success/disaster stories.