Informationoverlord

I’ve been a bad boy. Yes, this month I have not been very good at posting to this blog, and as I am in Antwerp for the next few days, it’ll be March before I get around to anything new. So, I thought as a means to make me do something, I’d list three posts coming your way during March.

• My post on CILIP picked up a lot of comments, and I think they deserve a new post bringing some of the thoughts together and adding in my own views on the value of CILIP.
• With Friendfeed now out of closed beta, and with accounts at onaswarm and Plaxo Pulse and others in the field, I thought it might be time to put lifesteaming in the spotlight.
• Finally, I plan to take a look at travel sites, and ones to use when planning a trip.

I also need to welcome certain bloggers to the local area with a beer or three, also coming soon girls!

Interesting (or not) parliamentary question tabled by the Lib Dems’ Mark Oaten today: “To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, if he will make it his policy to ensure that .co.uk internet domain names are only issued on condition that at a minimum an administrative contact is domiciled in the UK”

Newspond the “most advanced news site on the planet” has launched, which is so advanced that it doesn’t feel the need to offer rss. “most useless news site on the planet” would be a better tag. The site looks quite nice, and I like the drop down that lists sources, but the homepage doesn’t allow for many headlines and lacks quick scanability for me, which means i am probably never going to use it in its current format.

Silobreaker is a good news search site. If you’re looking for a change from Topix or GoogleNews, give it a try.

One for all the Ski bores out there. Ski Bonk- Ski resorts, live weather conditions, and more on a Google map. . If Golf is more your thing, try Golf Bonk instead.

Travature is a nice looking travel site. It has an airfare search engine, wiki style travel guides, Hotel and Restaurant tips/reviews (user generated) Also new to me on the travel front is TripTouch targeting independent travelers.

The Gazette has a short article this week on a new report from Sweet & Maxwell about the face and the future of Law libraries and Librarian/Information professionals. Sweet & Maxwell have been talking to senior information management professionals (disclaimer: I wasn’t one of them) in 50 commercial law firms (46% of respondents are from Top-100 firms) and found that 70% now deliver market information and other commercially focused information to the business.

I have not seen the report itself, but have seen the press release for it as I was asked by the Gazette for my comments (I didn’t make the final article).

From the press release it all seems to makes for some good headline grabbing reading: ‘Radical shift in the role of Legal Librarians as they become responsible for crucial market intelligence’; “25% of Library and Information departments expect to merge with Marketing”.

Here are a few of the stats from the research, before I deal with some particular points.

It is no surprise that information and library staff and services are increasingly being called upon to demonstrate and contribute to the overall commercial development of a firm, it is only the realisation that they haven’t been before that should be the surprise. The move to be more competitive and get more of the pie has finally made law firms realise that what they sell is ‘knowledge’, and much of their knowledge of :the markets they operate in, the law, and other things outside of the deal room comes from information, more often that not, supplied by ’support staff’ throughout the organisation.

So, in that sense I would not see this move as the ‘pressure’ identified by 70%, but one of potential value to the bottom line at last being fully recognised. This is an opportunity, not a threat, to information professionals. As for a radical shift - I would just say, information is information.

The ‘big headline’ from the press release (or at least the one that I expect will raise the most eyebrows) in the research does seem to be that 25% of library and information departments expect to merge with their marketing departments, and do so within 2 years. This is a figure that surprises me. Whilst I certainly think library and information, marketing/communications and (especially) business development departments/teams should be working more closely to deliver value to the firm; (and there are obviously synergies from an information gathering, analysing and delivering point of view) no one - outside of freshfields -I have ever discussed such matters with has ever suggested such a merger - which is not to say it isn’t/wont/can’t happen.

Alina Lourie states: “By providing strategically important information on which markets to target and which services to provide legal librarians can feed into the decision-making process, helping Marketing departments to form a sophisticated strategy underpinned by close market scrutiny.”

I think ‘helping’ is the key word here. You do not need to merge departments to achieve this goal.

So, should we just dismiss the whole idea? Personally, I don’t think ideas like this should just be dismissed out-of-hand just because we don’t like the sound of then. However, by the same measure, it needs to remembered that those who have trained in each discipline - whilst no doubt seeing some common ground - would also, I think, see such a ‘merger’ as a devaluing of their respective disciplines. What would the department be called, would Library and Info staff become part of the Marketing team, visa versa? would it have a new name such as Knowledge and Marketing (K&M) or the Communications team?

Also, the rational behind it would need to be clear: what benefits that were not already derived - or could not be derived by a closer working relationship between the teams - would be delivered by such a merger (taking into account the possible demoralising effect on staff?) Or is it just about money, and reducing staff numbers (because I think you can guarantee that the number of staff in the combined entity would be smaller than that in the separate ones)

Maybe the problem is, that those in both departments do not to a good enough job of promoting themselves, and the value and services they can (and do) provide to the firm: so that those who make the decisions do not see anything other than two cost centres which they can turn into one cost centre.

This all said, this should not detract from Sweet & Maxwell’s conclusion that utilizing the real benefits information departments can deliver will help ensure law firms remain competitive - something I think all information staff in law firms would agree with.

European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy today showed he’s an idiot. He has announced the term of copyright protection for European performers should be increased from 50 to 95 years. How American of him.

According to McCreevy:

“I strongly believe that copyright protection for Europe’s performers represents a moral right to control the use of their work and earn a living from their performances. I have not seen a convincing reason why a composer of music should benefit from a term of copyright which extends to the composer’s life and 70 years beyond, while the performer should only enjoy 50 years, often not even covering his lifetime It is the performer who gives life to the composition and while most of us have no idea who wrote our favourite song – we can usually name the performer.”

Now, I do have a lot of sympathy with the basic argument here. It is unfair that the two terms are not the same. However, the solution would be to REDUCE, yes reduce, composer protection to 50yrs if you are looking for parity. McCreevy’s logic is, because we have no ideas of our own, let’s just follow what the Americans do, and go for 95 years.

If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late fifties and sixties will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next ten years. “I am not talking about featured artists like Cliff Richard or Charles Aznavour. I am talking about the thousands of anonymous session musicians who contributed to sound recordings in the late fifties and sixties. They will no longer get airplay royalties from their recordings. But these royalties are often their sole pension”, says Commissioner Charlie McCreevy in describing the rationale behind his proposal.

How many times do we have to say this - copyright is NOT supposed to function as a pension. Have session musician’s often got royally screwed? Absolutely, but it is not copyright laws role to provide them with a pension. If they live in the UK and paid their taxes, they’ll have the state pension like everyone else. If they wanted more money, they could also have set up a personal pension - just like the rest of us.

To be fair, he is also suggesting a ‘use it or lose it’ provision. That means that, in case a record company is unwilling to re-release a performance during the extended term, the performer can move to another label. However, this proposal is still ill thought out, and a bad idea.

Those who read my post on charity eCards before Christmas (and may have received one from me) will be pleased to hear that Marie Curie Cancer Care managed to raise £38,062 from the 3,000 people who registered with the site and sent some cards. None too shabby. The money will continue to go towards the work they do providing nursing care for the terminally ill.

 

I have been a bit slow (after effects of a trip to Amsterdam) in pointing readers to a new blog/twitter experiment going on at Law.Librarians. It is a humble attempt to take the short posting attraction of twitter, but using a Wordpress blog template. And whilst it is still very early days, we are quite an international bunch, whose every word you should be hanging on …

But seriously, folks … some smart folks are contributing and if you’re a law librarian / info person, we’d be happy to have you join us, so please pay us a visit.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints against budget airline Ryanair this week for press ads in the Herald, Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail which were headed “HOTTEST BACK TO SCHOOL FARES” accompanied by a picture of a woman standing in a classroom and wearing a version of a school uniform.

The ASA considered the model’s clothing, which included long white socks and a tie, together with the setting of the ad in a classroom strongly suggested she was a schoolgirl, and considered that her appearance and pose, in conjunction with the heading “HOTTEST,” appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour and was irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

Ryanair responded stating that the model was clearly not a teenager and questioning how a fully clothed model can be irresponsible or offensive, when it appeared in mainstream British newspapers which frequently run pictures of topless models or photographs of celebrities in various stages of undress. They went on to say that three national daily newspapers with a combined circulation of 3.5 million, and the 13 complaints was an insignificant number, which they believed clearly demonstrated the overwhelming majority of UK residents did not find the ad offensive.

“This isn’t advertising regulation, it is simply censorship. This bunch of unelected, self appointed dimwits are clearly incapable of fairly and impartially ruling on advertising”, said their spokesman, Peter Sherrard - who is seems has missed his calling as a ‘journalist’ at the Sun or The Daily Star, as he goes on to describe the ASA as “Absurd Silly Asses” and a “quango whose council must consist of Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter”. I know who sounds like the silly ass to me.

He said, the company would not pull the ad, or provide the ASA with any of the undertakings they seek. Ryanair also complained about a separate ruling that they should insert the word ‘from’ in an ad to substantiate the availability of flights at an advertised fare.

The company, which is no stranger to ASA rulings also comments that “Ryanair has come to expect these daft and idiotic rulings from an organisation which recently ruled that a 1hr10 min flight was not necessarily faster than a 2hr 11 min train journey and that a £15 fare was not necessarily cheaper than a £27 fare”. Here, they were referring to a ruling from 2007 where the ASA upheld complaints by Eurostar Group against a national press advertisement for Ryanair. The ad claimed that Ryanair`s service to Brussels was faster, cheaper and more punctual that taking the Eurostar. The ASA felt that readers would infer that the time and prices quoted by Ryanair referred to the time and price to get from London to the centre of Brussels, and might not be aware of the additional time and costs getting to and from airports. The ASA also found Ryanair had failed to substantiate their punctuality claim as it was not based on any current statistics, but was instead based on a 2005 BBC article that referred to a dip in Eurostar`s punctuality due to adverse weather conditions.

I presume all this means that Ryanair will be refraining from complaining about ads by competitors in the future, as surely they wouldn’t want these Absurd Silly Asses dealing with their complaints? Such as when the ASA upheld their complaint against a TV ad for Turkish Airlines  This ad was on TV. Wonder how many people saw it - quite a few I’d reckon. How many complaints? One. From who? Ryanair. Or this one against Jet2.com.