Information Online Blog

Welcome to Country: Les Saxby (Jupurula)

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:01:00 +1100

Les Saxby (Jupurula) of Yidaki Didg & Dance Australia, Aboriginal Performance Group performed a "Welcome to Country" to open the Information Online Conference on Tuesday 20th January Les has allowed a short video of part of his performance to be shown below as well as his photo. You can contact Les by Mobile Ph: 0414358858 or Email: indidge@bigpond.net.au

ALIA IOG Excellence Award Winner

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:49:00 +1100

The prestigious Australian Library and Information Association IOG Excellence Award recognises excellence and/or innovation in performance by information professionals. The award carries a prize to the value of $10 000 and the winner shares their experiences with the information community via Online On Tour.

'The panel congratulates the nominees for the variety of applications, which highlighted the diversity of projects happening within the profession', said Marian Morgan Bindon, Conference Marketing Coordinator for the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) IOG committee. Marian, on behalf of the ALIA IOG committee, also said, 'We want to thank the panel for the time and consideration that went into their evaluation.'

The panel reviewed 22 nominations and shortlisted six finalists. The final six were evenly distributed, with two each from national/state libraries, special libraries and education libraries.

Three finalists were present at the Information Online Conference Dinner where the award ceremony took place. In order of receipt of their original nomination, the three finalists were:
* Elena Evendenskaia Engineers Australia,
* Elibrary Team Australian Taxation Office,
* Southnary Tan University of Sydney.

The winner of this year's Australian Library and Information Association IOG Excellence award was the ATO elibrary Team Australian Taxation Office, for successfully deploying and continuing to develop, a best-practice eLibrary solution, making information quickly and easily available to over 25 000 ATO desktops Australia-wide.

This was achieved by selecting, acquiring, configuring and deploying cutting-edge information applications, resources and content.

Accepting the award on behalf of the ATO eLibrary Team was Sue Sinclair (First assistant Commissioner for the Australian Taxation Office) - pictured top left in the photo of the ATO eLibrary Team.

Vendor News: Alexander Street Press Announces Release of New Media Collections

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:02:00 +1100

Online publisher Alexander Street Press will announce the release of a number of new online collections at ALIA Information Online 2009 this week. A publisher of online collections in the humanities, performing arts, and social sciences, Alexander Street is known particularly for the research value of its Semantically Indexed collections and for its groundbreaking work in the publication of streaming music and video content.

New Streaming Video Collections New streaming video collections from Alexander Street Press--each featuring hundreds to thousands of hours of carefully chosen content--include Dance in Video; Opera in Video; Counseling and Therapy in Video; and (in a partnership with The History Channel®, American History in Video.

New Streaming Music Collection The newest release in Alexander Street's range of streaming music collections--launching in early 2009--is Jazz Music Library. The largest online collection of jazz available anywhere, it will contain 80,000+ tracks at completion and will cover every major jazz genre, performer, and venue world-wide.

New Full-Text Online Literature Collections In a partnership with London based Pickering & Chatto Publishers Limited (www.pickeringchatto.com), The Romantic Era Redefined will make available 200,000 pages of poetry, prose, drama, letters, diaries, travel narratives, and political and philosophical works by canonical and previously unrecognized Romantic-era writers together with dozens of critical essays written by leading scholars. Alexander Street will also announce two new collections, the first of their kind, devoted to comics, comic strips, and graphic fiction--an exciting and rapidly growing area of scholarship world-wide

For more information about any of these collections, libraries should visit Alexander Street on the ALIA 2009 exhibit floor at the Alexander Street Press stand or on the Web at http://alexanderstreet.com Libraries may request free trial access or price quotes by emailing sales@alexanderstreet.com

Vendor News: EnvisionWare LibraryPDA launched

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:59:00 +1100

EnvisionWare is very pleased to announce the release of their LibraryPDA.

EnvisionWare LibraryPDA is a revolutionary product for libraries, offering mobility, convenience and power in a lightweight Windows mobile device that can change the way you operate your library.

Wi-Fi RFID/Barcode Handheld for:

Circulation - Checkin/Checkout
Inventory - capture inventory, search multiple lists, verify shelf order, validate an item list
Item Search - Query Item status
Patron Query - query Patron records
Browsing - search Library Catalogue, search Internet
And more... - Winmobile applications, Open Standard Encoding

If you own a SIP?enabled ILS and your collection uses barcodes or an industry?standard RFID implementation, this product is exactly what you have been waiting for.

The concept of an untethered librarian is now a reality thanks to the innovations that come only from EnvisionWare, the global leader in self service technology for libraries.

On Thursday at 12.10pm in Theatrette 1, we will be presenting "Untethered librarians: Taking your Library Services to the public with EnvisionWare's LibraryPDA"

See Jo-Anne and Susie at stand 22 for more information and to see EnvisionWare's LibraryPDA in use.

EnvisionWare are offering 10% discount off LibraryPDA purchases made before the 30th April 2009 to anyone who visits the booth ot Online.

What do you think?

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:11:00 +1100

As this is the last day of Information Online 2009 what do you think of the conference? What was your favourite part of the conference?

Last day of Information Online 2009

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:53:00 +1100

After a night of laughter and dancing the last day of Information Onine 2009 has come. all too quickly. First thing this morning we had a keynote presentation Andy Hines who talked about the future which was great. All of the delegates are now in concurrent sessions and then vendor presentations then lunch.

Vendor News: iInvest introduces Arabia Informs products

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:20:00 +1100

iInvest and Arabia Inform partner to bring Arabic media intelligence & digital library to Australia and New Zealand

iInvest PTY Ltd. will introduce Arabia Inform's products at Information Online 2009, taking place at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre from 20 22 January. Conference attendees can visit iInvest at Stand 6.

iInvest's products include TransAsiaNet Newswire, distributing more than 2000 news items a day to media clients around the globe; IR-Newswire for investment relations documents; Online Forms, a proprietary system of gathering government, business and legal forms for end users; IntStats service to provide trade and statistical data from a range of government and non-government agencies worldwide; and, in Australia, they also represent Acquire Media, a content and syndication provider for electronic publishers, providing among other products NewsEdge and NewsTrade for businesses and financial traders and Skyminder.com an online global credit reporting service.

Arabia Inform selected iInvest to represent its Middle East Monitor and AskZad brands in the region, as the need continues to grow for information products based on Arabic language and Middle Eastern resources. Since 1997, Middle East Monitor has provided cover-to-cover monitoring, indexing and analysis of 1000 Arabic print media, expanding to cover broadcast media 250 TV channels since 2007 and 50 radio stations beginning in 2009.

AskZad is the first and largest digital library in the Middle East, with over 500 million pages of content, including collections of references, thesauri, lexicons and encyclopedias, as well as scientific journals and periodicals published in the Middle East and approximately 40,000 e-books.

Vendor News: Serials Solutions - 360 Resource Manager Consortium Edition

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:12:00 +1100

Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager Consortium Edition is a new e-resource management service for consortia, groups and their member libraries. 360 Resource Manager Consortium Edition helps consortia managers increase efficiency by consolidating e-resource metadata and acquisition information in one place.

Now consortia can manage holdings, subscription, licensing, contact, and cost information for their group and streamline delivery of information to all group members.

As result, more content can be made available to patrons for research, and their access and discovery tools work more effectively.

New and improved reporting features for 360 Resource Manager and 360 Core eresource management tools, including

Improved reporting for the 360 Resource Manager featuring tandardized reports that help libraries optimize e-resource management, increase efficiency, and make informed decisions concerning budgets, collection-development goals, and patron needs. Reports can be exported in a variety of formats to manipulate and analyze data or for distribution to stakeholders.
A new Data Export feature for 360 Core Overlap Analysis reporting that allows libraries to download summary and results sets of analyzed overlap data to use for library-specific queries and comparisons

Also Serials Solutions 360 Counter Data Retrieval Service enables librarians to bypass the time-consuming tasks of downloading and correcting vendor data before it can be used for usage reporting and assessment.

Serials Solutions data retrieval specialists collect Project COUNTER-compliant reports from resource vendors, clean up the reports, and then load the corrected data into 360 Counter. This means that 360 Counter subscribers can spend more time using data to make more informed collectiondevelopment decisions and reduce costs.

Visit Serials Solution at the tradeshow or Contact: Kathryn Speyer, Marketing Communications Specialist, Serials Solutions Kathryn.speyer@serialssolutions.com

Vendor News: Serials Solutions - Summon unified discovery service

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:53:00 +1100

Serials Solutions Pioneers New Discovery Service, Addressing Libraries' Most Critical Need The Summon unified discovery service searches physical and digital together

A revolutionary new service from Serials Solutions, supported by industry heavy-weights ProQuest and Gale, will create Google-like searching of the full breadth of content found in library collections - from books and videos to e-resources at the article level.

The Summon unified discovery service addresses what research shows is a fundamental barrier between libraries and users: a simple, obvious starting point for searches. The Summon service is in beta with academic libraries throughout North America and will be available for purchase later this year.

"This is what libraries have been dreaming of. What Google does for the Worldwide Web, the Summon service will do for libraries," said Jane Burke, Vice-President, Serials Solutions.

"It's a transformation in library service that addresses our community's most pressing need: a simple entry point to the vastness of library collections. One search box, one results screen, one path to the best, most credible content."

Visit Serials Solution at the tradeshow or Contact: John Law - Vice President, Discovery Services, Serials Solutions - john.law@proquest.com

LibraryJournal.com: Serials Solutions Announces Summon, a New Unified Discovery Interface

Fantastic Desserts at Information Online

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:31:00 +1100

The desserts served at lunch and the morning/afternoon tea breaks at Information Online are the best I've ever eaten at any conference (and i've been to many conferences!).

Please note if you have a special dietary requirement eg: Coeliac please ask the waiting staff to point out which menu items are safe for you to eat

Trade Show: Chat With Our Friendly Vendors :-)

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:04:00 +1100

Information Online isn't just about the conference, we also have a wide variety of vendors from the online information industry exhibiting at the Trade Show

As you can see below they're all very friendly and keen to tell you all about their products/services:

Day 2 Opening Keynote: Laura Campbell - Library of Congress

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:03:00 +1100

Day 2 of Information Online has kicked off and attendees were just wowed by our Opening Keynote: Laura Campbell from the Library of Congress who talked about the American National Preservation project and the World Digital Library

Laura emphasised that the key to success in the future is collaboration between libraries / cultural institutions / business

You can watch an impressive concept video of the World Digital Library - the audience was so impressed that they burst into spontaneous applause when Laura had finished playing the video

Video: Senator Stephen Conroy Opening Information Online

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:31:00 +1100

If you missed Senator Conroy's opening speech at Information Online Day 1 you can watch it via Youtube (below) or read the transcript

Part 1 (10min) + Part 2 (10 min) + Part 3 (3 min).

Live Blogging and Twittering Information Online

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:51:00 +1100

Several people are live blogging or commenting on Twitter at the Information Online conference

Thanks for conversing about the conference online everyone :-)

If you're Live Blogging or Twittering Information Online and not on this list please add your name as a comment on this blog post or send a tweet to @neerav - (Note I've already added several names after initially publishing this post)

Journalist - Stilgherrian (Liveblog + Twitter)
Neerav Bhatt (Official Conference Blog + Twitter)
Anna Pearson aka "Sweepster" (Twitter)
Warren Cheetham Twitter
Paul Reynolds (Twitter)
Rachel Crowe (Twitter)
Kate Davis (Twitter)
Lili Wilkinson (Twitter)
Linda Moore (Blog + Twitter)
Shelly (Twitter)
Thomson Reuters Australia (Twitter)
Kate Bunker (Twitter)
Cory Banks (Twitter)
Nerida Hart(Twitter)
Kim T(Blog)
Allison Brown (Twitter)

Conference Dinner

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:40:00 +1100

The ALIA Information Online 2009 dinner is on Wednesday 21st January. You have until morning tea on Wednesday 21st January to put your name down on table. Do this you need to go to the volunteers near the registration desk and they will be able to help you