I was having a think about del.icio.us last night, mostly because my bookmarks are in such bad shape, and sorely need maintaining. I was thinking about the different ways that people use it, and how it isn’t really actually working for me at the moment, and what I can do to change that.

My account is a terrible shambles. I’ve had it since Dec 2005, and I’ve now got something in excess of 600 items bookmarked, but I’m just not happy with the way I’m using it. I use it more as a surrogate for a traditional browser based bookmarking system (which it is obviously very useful for) and less for keeping track of articles and posts that I’d like to remember or read later (which I’d like to use it for). I’m finding it very hard to change my usage of it, mostly because my tagging is so awful. I have far too many tags, and in the system as it stands, it’s more or less impossible to edit them effectively.

I keep meaning open another account to keep track of all my bookmarks for work, but I keep hesitating, mostly because I know how easy it is to let it all spiral out of control. Do any of you use it for work/professional bookmarking? If so, do you have a better way of keeping it neat and tidy, or have you found that it tends to get messy fast?

I’m anxiously waiting for the beta to become public (there’s a preview of it on Techcrunch). Del.icio.us is such a good service, and very web 2.0 at heart, but it’s no way near as user friendly as it should be, which is a shame.

Only vaguely relatedly, but all the Facebooking law librarians out there should be part of Lo-Fi’s new group ‘UK Law Librarians for Publisher’s RSS Feeds’. We’re going to take on the man and hopefully try and convince the UK legal publishers that it’s in their and our best interests to start publishing this material as RSS. So much easier, so much more current and timely, and so much paper saved from the wastebasket. It’s win-win people. (Also, in the interim, do check out Nick Holmes homebrewed version. He’s a star for putting this together)

While I’m griping about web 2.0 products that are less than spectacular in some areas - why is the groups function in Facebook so poor? I tend to forget that groups exist because there isn’t (unless I’m not looking hard enough) a way of being notified when there are changes to a group. Which is a shame, because obviously social interaction is at the heart of Facebook, and not being able to interact effectively with the groups that you’re involved in is just disappointing.

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It’s been a long time coming but finally here is my second post on the Information ALLA Carte conference.

As the name suggests, the conference had an overall theme of information on the menu, and this was carried throughout in the titles of the session. There was however another theme that threaded its way through the conference - transformation. Many sessions were talking about transformation: of services, of people, of information.

The day started with an opening presentation from Justice Ruth McColl who gave an interesting look at the history of legal publishing and law libraries in Australia. She had the suggestion that there should be a repository of law reports and judgments similar to the seed back in Norway to preserve this knowledge.

Roxanne Missingham, the current president of the Australian Library and Information Asssociation (ALIA), gave a presentation on the Information Future and the changing face of information. I particularly liked her suggestion that when surveying users, we need to do more than just find out how they use the library currently, but how they create their ‘personal information environment’.

The next session was by Baden Hughes, Enterprise Information Architect at University of Melbourne, and he spoke about the effect of ‘non library mass market services’ on library user expectations. He talked about extreme convergence, and pervasive online access and metamorphosis. He also had an interesting discussion on “free” or as he called them “compromise cost” services - those services that are ostensibly free, but really we’re compromising by giving away personal information in return for a service. For example, a site that’s “free” to use, but you have to register and the service is supported by ads. He also compared the print versus digital collections issue to what happened with radio. Print won’t disappear overnight, and it won’t disappear completely, but it will move away from being the dominant paradigm, much like what happened to the radio over a couple of generations.

The day ended with a session by a marketing consultant, Sue-Ella Prodonovich. She took us through a guide that she uses in sessions with companies that she’s consulting to work out where they are and where they want to be. She gave a number of questions to ask when thinking about marketing the libraries services:

• What type of work do you want to do more of?
• What will you say no to?
• Who do you want to work with?
• If you’re successful (and happy) in 24 months you will be……….
• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be in 12 months?
• What will you do to get there?
• What’s your action plan?

And that was just to start with! She then had questions about image, service, products, clients, collaborations and influence. It was a really motivating way to end the day and got everyone talking!

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Last night was the annual Halsbury’s Awards (Previously known as the BIALL Awards for Excellence).  It was good to see such a large number of people attending and even better to hear about the wonderful things being done by the winning libraries.

There were three awards, and congratulations must go to the winners.

Sidley Austin for the Best London Legal Information Service (Commercial Sector)
Addleshaw Goddard for Best Regional Legal Information Service (Commercial Sector)
Inner Temple for Best Legal Information Service (Non-Commercial Sector)

All in all, it was a great evening and good to see these libraries getting recognition for the good work done well.

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Today is, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Blog Action Day - a day where the combined weight of the blogosphere is meant to be discussing all issues environmental.

Now, I know that environmental issues don’t usually feature at the forefront of the concerns of your average law library, though awareness is starting to trickle through, even in the hardest of legal environments. We have it pretty tough in law firms too, if nothing else, the sheer volume of paper that gets thrown away when looseleafing is a bit of a worry. But there are things we can do that can help make a difference, small though they might seem.

• Get on the corporate social responsibilty committee for your firm, if you can, and try and campaign for better recycling and paper-use policies. Even if they’re good at the moment, I bet they could be better. According to todays Telegraph, Brits throw out a paper mountain 8 miles high every year, mostly through printing emails that don’t need to be printed.
• Don’t print emails. Just don’t do it. There’s no need, it’s on screen already.
• Make sure you recycle everything you can. We get so much paper waste through the post - if it can be recycled, it should be.
• Encourage greater sharing of resources. Longer circulation lists can mean less copies. Or get electronic only subscriptions to journals, which means more access and less waiting for that person on the circ list who never seems to pass anything on.
• Fight for getting electronic versions of textbooks where you can. I know people don’t want to use them, and it’s hard, but they’re getting better all the time.
• Or, at the very least, try not to have to buy too many multiple copies of things. I know they all want a copy each, but surely they can share them, at least one copy to a room. It’s always so disappointing watching all those copies of handbooks of various kinds getting thrown out, year after year.
• Use a mug and a water bottle. I know this isn’t a particularly intuitive one, but lots of firms now have coffee machines that take paper cups, and water dispensers that use little plastic cups, and when you think about how many of those are used in a day, even if they are recycled after, it’s a bit staggering! And a mug is nicer anyway - it makes the tea taste better :)
• The small things all add up. Turn off your computer and your monitor at night. Turn off photocopiers. Turn off lights. It’ll all make a difference.

Are there any initiatives at any of your firms, or anything else you do to do your bit for the environment at work?

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Or, how I learned to stop worrying and embrace the fact that I’m an info-floozy

Fiona Bradley posting at Libraries Interact has a good post about cutting down on information overload, which brought in mind to me the draft post I’ve had sitting on my desktop for, oh, the last few months.

See, I have a problem with information overload. A real bad, no good, terrible problem. Now, I’ll happily be the first one to admit it. I love information - thrive off it - and the wonderful glut of information available in these heady days of web 2.0 is a godsend to me. I’ll happily lap up all of that wonderful zeitgeist coming at me through the interwebs at the moment. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t taking it’s toll. And I know that it’s taking it’s toll on a lot of you too.

But what to do about it?

Google Reader tells me that, as of this moment, I’m subscribed to 540 blogs. Now, I know what you’re thinking (I can hear the horrified gasps from here). And it is, I know. I struggle with trying to keep up with them, and manage somewhere between not too badly, and appallingly, depending on how much time I have on my hands. Now, I don’t read all of them everyday (I couldn’t possibly), and a lot of them update irregularly, or are dead (it’s such a hassle weeding out things like that, and I really can’t be bothered - it’s not a problem having them there if they don’t update and don’t get in my way). And I do read in a lot of different subject areas - my main folders cover libraries (2 folders of those), cooking (more than I care to mention), comics, web stuff, geekery, tech, law, KM, productivity, career stuff, music, shopping, people, job hunting, and a temp folder for things that I think I want to delete, but haven’t quite summoned up the courage to actually delete yet. And I know this is too much. Everyday I look at it and pale at the sight of so many unread items. It’s a daunting prospect.

But then again, so is the idea of deleting them. As I said, I’m a sucker for information, and this is feeding my habit. I know I don’t really need to know all of these things, but oh! they’re so good to know! I get to read about beautiful new things, exciting new projects, risque politics, shiny new games, and lots of yummy things to make, lots of music to listen to, and… I don’t want to be without them. I love being on the crest of the wave. I love knowing what will be coming out soon, what the new trends are, what the new tools and startups are. And I love hearing what people are saying about them - what everyone of the individual people in my reading list is saying.

And yet, I do need to cut back. And I have.

There are a lot of ways to cope with information overload like this - Fiona points out a few goods tips in her post, mostly relying on the idea of cutting shamelessly and ruthlessly and not stopping until you have the number of feeds you’re subscribed to down to a manageable number. Which is all well and good, and definitely a good start, but I have a few points to add:

• Think about how you read your blogs - I don’t mind being subbed into a large number of cooking blogs and webcomics, cause essentially they’re just a greatbig scroll of pretty pictures. These blogs bring me joy and give me a way of relaxing. Reading blogs doesn’t just have to be about work and information - it can be about getting small bits of happy sent straight to your feedreader
• Think about when you read - using the same example, as much as I love my sprawling mass of pretty pictures, it’s not mission critical if I don’t read them, or ifI only look at them a few times a week. And as long as you don’t feel compelled to read things that you don’t have time to read, then it’s not really a problem
• Think about what you’d lose if you unsubscribe - This is a bit of a two-edged sword - think about what you’ll be losing both in the good and bad context. One good post a month probably isn’t worth ten bad ones, but at the same time, if someone is only posting once a month, but it’s an amazing post, it’s probably a keeper
• Don’t think you have to unsubscribe to get it under control. If nothing else, I use my reader as an ersatz bookmarking service (as much as I love del.icio.us, things get lost there and are never seen again). Rather than unsubscribing straight away, I move subscriptions to my interim folder, and graze through it every now and then, to see what’s in there. I wouldn’t have subscribed to them in the first place if they weren’t interesting enough to keep an eye on, but you don’t have to be looking at them every day.
• And, as a last ditch, but awfully effective method, just stop reading. Just don’t do it. Don’t open your reader. When you do, don’t be afraid to mark whole folders’as read’ before you even take a peek. Have a folder for the most vitally important, must read, top ten or twenty feeds in your list, and only look at those. (This is my strategy at the moment - I just don’t have the time to be reading as much as I used to, and as such, I only read a tiny percentage of what I’m subbed to)

It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information available and think that you can’t escape from the mire of interesting and terribly important things that need reading. It is possible to get it under control though. Does anyone else have any tried and tested methods for keeping their subscriptions under control?

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I’ve just had a fantastic article brought to my attention, courtesy of Ben at 200ok.  It was the closing keynote at the Web Directions South conference that was on in Sydney last week.

Mark Pesce gave a session titled Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).   It speaks of networks, and how the mob uses them, and how networks change because of the mob.  It speaks of change, the destruction of hierachies and the future of networks.

It’s written with a focus towards web developers, but there is so much that can be taken from it and applied to libraries. Especially when he speaks of the mob making things that they want happen.

Mark points out the five rules of the mob.  Rule two: The mob is faster, smarter and stronger than you are really stuck out to me.   He’s talking of web sites but swap web site for library, and see where it takes you.

You can’t push a mob any more than you can push a rope; you can pull them, lure them, and, if you’re very lucky, dazzle them for a moment or two, but then, inevitably, they’ll move along. That’s bad news for anyone building web sites. The world of mob rules isn’t about sites; it’s about services, things that the street uses and permutes indefinitely. The idea of web sites dates from a time before the network ate hierarchy; sites are places where you go and follow the rules laid down by some information architect. Well, there’s no way to enforce those rules. The first Google Maps mashup didn’t come from Google. Or the second. Or the third. Or the hundredth. Google resisted the mashup. Claimed mashups violated their terms of use. Mashups come from the mob, the street finding its own use for things. The mob pushed on through; Google bowed down and obeyed. The most powerful institution of the Internet era, pushed around like a child’s toy. Ponder that.

It’s definitely something to ponder.  Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is a starting point. We’re starting to think in terms of services.  This is the next step forward - moving toward an attitude that is no longer focused on how we want users to use us, but focused on providing the services that the mob wants, how they want it.  Otherwise they’ll move on and find a way to get what they want without us.

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As promised here is the first of a series of posts about my recent sojourn in Sydney attending the Information ALLA Carte conference. I’m going to write 3 parts, one for each day of the conference.

Wednesday was filled with preconference events. I attended at lunch held by publishers Justis, at an amazing bar right on Darling Harbour. I went on a tour of the library at the Australian Securities and Investments Comission (ASIC). The tour was only 1 of 8 that I could have attended but I decided on just the one and chose the one that was least like what I was familiar with. From there I went to the welcome drinks and got to catch up with a few familiar faces, as well as getting to know a lot of new people.

This first social day was good as it meant that I got to meet a lot of people in a social setting and didn’t feel so lost when I got to the actual conference. It also meant I had people to sit with, which is always an important consideration!

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Firstly, a thankyouthankyouthankyou to whoever nominated us as one of their favourite library blogs in Meredith Farkas’ favourite blogs survey! We are thrilled and delighted to have been mentioned – there may even have been some surreptitious squealing :)

Secondly, apologies are in order for our paltry posting regime of late – I have no decent excuse, begging lack of time and an overabundance of trainees, but happily Davina has returned from her jaunt to the Australian Law Librarians Conference in Sydney, and will soon be posting tales of her adventures there and of the interesting things she saw and heard from the librarians back home.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Jessamyn alerted us to the fact that it’s Banned Book Week this week! So go out and read yourselves a book that someone, somewhere has considered to dangerous to read. Davina will be reading And Tango Makes Three (a heartwarming tale of gay penguin love) and I’ll be rereading my favourite bits of Ulysses, with which I was tortured at university, but have since grown to love. Go, read, enjoy, challenge :)

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