Custom search engine an oasis in the overcrowded information world

The Internet era has created an environment; where in copiousness of information on a given topic is available, in most cases, freely for the end users or researchers. A search made on a chosen search engine like Google result into millions of hits on a given topic leaving the authenticity of much of the information unchecked. This is creating an ‘information chaos’ in the already overcrowded information world. Even subject and specialized search engines such as Google Scholar developed to have control over published scholarly information in a given subject/s could not bring in much needed respite for the researchers.

Internet conscientious for it has also given us some free tools to develop customized search engines as per the needs of group of researchers/users. One such example is Google Coops service, which can be used to develop customized search engine for searching content indexed by Google on a given subject/s.  This tool can be effectively used to publicize the research output emanating on a particular subject/s from particular institutes/region. This will lead to excellent results for the institutes and enables researchers to get right research material on the particular topic from a right place.

I experimented Google Coops service for developing a custom search engine for Indian Economics literature (also few other areas of social sciences), which I found very effective in having control over the published online information and secondly, in exposing the research output emanating from Indian Economics research institutes to the  world.  I feel there is a need to use this service to develop similar kind of services in different subject areas to save library users from the information overload.

Useful web tools worth to make use of

In today’s wired world, the days of installing free or trial or open source software on your desktop/laptop to convert a file, edit and store pictures, create charts/diagrams etc are becoming scarce. It is because of the availability of new online tools on the Internet at no cost.  However, the low bandwidth may be a deterrent to make use of these tools.

Some of the tools, which I found very useful for my work, have been listed below:

• Issuu [Platform to Publish]
• Lovely Charts [Create charts/diagrams]
• OCR Terminal [Convert scanned images and PDFs into text]
• PDF to Word Converter [Convert PDF documents to Word]
• Photoshop.Com [Edit, store and share your photographs]
• Picnik [Edit photographs]
• Primo Online [PDF Creator]
• Skydrive [Online storage device]
• Wordle [Create word clouds]

I feel we need to take efforts in making researchers aware of such utilities and provide orientation on how to make use of these tools in their work.

Firefox and its useful extensions

Firefox, a web browser developed by Mozilla Labs has interesting features as compared to Internet Explorer browser.  Since Firefox is Open Source software, the open source community is supporting to a greater extent for its development.  It supports additional programmes [developed by various developers] in the form of extensions, which stand today at 5000+ in number is its greatest asset, which make value addition to the browser.

The extensions are available for all kinds of online activities starting from bookmarking to web development. The extensions (.xpi) can be added to Firefox browser by just dragging and dropping the extension file on the browser window and following few on screen instructions.

To name few of the popular extensions, which I use regularly for my online activities include hyperwords,  AutoPager, CoolIris, Download helper, WOT, Zotero, Libx Toolbar, Scrapbook, Stylish etc. The detailed and recommended list of add-ons for Firefox is available for access at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

I feel since now a days most of our and library users work takes place online, it is worthwhile to make use of Firefox browser and some of its useful extensions in our day today work and provide training to clientele in making best use of these tools.

LibX a browser plug-in for libraries and a blessing for librarians

In today’s Internet era, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find latest  online information in one’s areas of research even after making use of different search tools. To add to that, researchers are finding it impossible to remember all the web addresses of  tools such as search engines, catalogues, databases etc, which help in retrieving information on the Internet.  LibX an Internet browser plug-in for libraries developed by Virginia Tech University Libraries and Virginia Tech Dept of Computer Science is trying to address these problems.

Libx works as an extension to your Firefox and Internet Explorer that provides direct access to your library’s resources. LibX is an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built. LibX has been widely used by many libraries in the world to develop a toolbar for their university or institute libraries adding in search tools, library catalogues,  links to resources, open URL addresses, Proxies etc which are best suited for their library users and many of the LibX editions developed are available as public editions on its site.

LibX edition for a library can be developed using its online Edition builder and build new edition option, which is very simple and robust to add description, shortcuts, catalogues and databases, Open URL resolvers, Proxies etc.  The new edition can be saved by registering yourself to the service and it is also possible to test the new edition before being put to use by your library users.

Sometime back, I worked on this tool and developed a plug-in for IGIDR library, which is being well received by the library users. We as information intermediaries need to work on such tools to have a better control on the ever increasing quantum of information and facilitate library users to search for required information from one search box from the best online sources.

Zotero: A next generation online reference management tool

Zotero is a research tool used in managing mainly online references. It is free, easy-to-use Mozilla Firefox Internet browser extension helps to collect, manage, and cite research sources. It lives right in the web browser itself and provides users with automated access to bibliographic information for resources viewed online. Zotero includes features to manage sources, and also allows users to make manual entries.

It uses “translators” (software) for several hundred websites, online databases such as Library of Congress catalogue, JSTOR and commercial sites such as Amazon.com, Zotero “senses” the bibliographic information contained in a web page and when the user clicks the Zotero icon (appears after the URL address) which gathers that information and places it in the user’s library of sources. To check and manage sources, Zotero can be activated by clicking on its logo appeared at the right corner of Firebox browser window.

Using Zotero researchers can collect information they need later to review and cite references and create bibliographies in standard formats such as APA, Chicago Manual of Style and MLA.  It results in to having a centralized location for gathering and storing references, significantly streamlining the research process.

I recently had an opportunity to work on this tool and got quite impressed with its features. We LIS professionals and other information intermediaries need to test such free online tools to train fellow researchers, which will help them in organizing references from ever growing information sources.

Social bookmarking/networking in academia a new way of collaborations

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. In social bookmarking system users want to save links of web pages, they would like to remember and share privately or publicly. Most of the social bookmarks are stored publicly, however there are options to store and make them available only to certain people or groups or networks.  These are made available on social bookmarking site such as Delicious chronologically, by category or tags or via a search engine.

Until recently these were universal in nature and not specifically limited to particular subject field such as Delicious, Zigtag etc.  However, now there is a big revolution in social bookmarking targeting academia  encouraging academicians working in different fields to make use these tools. This is a certainly a leap forward for researchers to make use of Web 2.0 to undertake collaborations or network with the community working in their subject field of study.

I had a chance to come across some such tools in a Online Information 2008 conference and exhibition currently being held in London (2nd to 4th December, 2008). I think it is a herald of new services on the Internet to unleash the potential of researchers in a big way thus reducing the time taken for research. Some the interesting tools, I came across are biomedexperts.com for biomedical sciences, IET discover for engineers and scientists and knol for researchers in all fields. This is addition some already existing tools such as citeulike to share the articles bookmarking.

Biomedexperts uses Pubmed database to find out researchers output and their collaborations and also uses Mesh subject headings for tagging. It wonderfully sketches their collaborations in a map linking the main author with his/her collaborators. I very much impressed with this product on its use of controlled vocabulary. The IET discover allows researchers in science and engineering to collaborate with each other and also allows to set their own groups. Like Delicious it also allows users to add their own tags for the entries and also provides cloud of tags for easy navigation. Knol a product of Google tries to harness tacit knowledge of people working in different areas, who are interested in sharing it with others. It encourages collaboration between the author and others and allows the author to control the changes to his/her article. All these products are available for FREE to encourage researchers to make use of them.

I think there are lot more tools are expected to come on the web in the near future. For example Collexis the company behind biomedexperts is already in talks with other authoritative database holders to bring this service in other subject fields as well. Some of these tools in a way help information intermediaries like us to undertake studies to know the research output of a particular researcher/s.

JISC an oasis of higher education in UK

Joint Information Systems Committee [JISC] is one of the unique organizations in the world funded by the UK Higher Education and Further Education bodies to provide the leadership in the innovative use of Information and Communication Technology [ICT] to support education and research. JISC supports national services portfolio and a range of programmes, services, projects, themes and campaigns. The services and programmes of JISC include:

• A network – JANET
• Access to electronic resources
• New environments for learning, teaching and research
• Guidance on institutional change
• Advisory and consultancy services
• Regional support for Further Education colleges – Regional Support Centres

JISC undertakes varied number of activities through its programmes, projects and services embodied in different themes. It carries out most of its works in collaboration with various organizations in UK by providing funding. I would like to highlight here its activities related to information infrastructure, access management and libraries.  I had an opportunity to meet Ms Louisa Dale, Partnership Manager, JISC International to discuss on the above issues and its international initiatives.

The programmes of JISC, which are made up of projects aim at the use of ICT in learning, teaching and research to build knowledge, develop services, infrastructure or applications. Some of its programmes related to information management are digitisation, digital preservation and records management, enriching digital resources, repositories and preservation programme, resource discovery etc.  Its digitisation and preservation programme aims to preserve the digital content created and curated by national libraries, archives, government and publishers for the benefit of researchers and students. The best example of digital preservation project supported by JISC is LIFE. Some of the popular resource discovery tools supported by JISC include archives Hub, coopac, intute, IESR, Suncat etc. These tools can be accessed free by any one within or outside UK and remaining tools such as JISC collections, Jorum, Zetoc etc are available only to the UK institutions either through authentication or subscription. One of its projects on Google generation highlights on the information searching behaviour of researchers, aged people, students etc in the present Internet era.

JISC campaign on ‘Libraries of the future‘ is gaining momentum in the UK. It attempts to explore the issues around the enormous impact of ICT on the academic library and look forward to ensure that libraries-however they may continue to evolve at the heart of academic life.  The campaign is aimed to find out place for libraries in the Google centric information environment. It is organizing series of events on this issue at various higher education institutions in UK, published few publications and also maintains a blog.

JISC at present includes content from/for UK organizations and some European Union countries. However, in the future it may start including the international content for the benefit of UK researchers. It is acting as a saviour for libraries by providing access to e-journals, repositories, data libraries, resource discovery tools etc. These resources and tools are helping libraries in meeting varied information needs of their clientele.

I wish each country should have an institute like JISC to build information infrastructure, conduct programmes and create awareness on fiery topics. This will enable free access to information which eventually benefit researchers, students and public in general. It will also help in filling the digital divide. Libraries in the developing countries benefit to a greater extent from some of its programmes and projects such as intute, libraries of the future, coopac etc.

Monitoring and Evaluation: How important it is for library services

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is necessary to better understand how successful the project/product is. Monitoring is about systematically collecting information that will help you to answer questions about the progress and reach of your project. You can use this information to report on your project to donors and other stake holders, and to help you evaluate, learn and improve. Evaluation is about using monitoring and other information you collect to make judgements about your project. Importantly, it is also about using the information to make changes and improvements to your work [http://www.ces-vol.org.uk/index.cfm?pg=40].

I had a discussion on issues related to M&E with Ms Anna Downie and Ms Catherine Gould, IDS Knowledge Services in relation to IGIDR online services.   M&E will not only help in measuring to what extent a service is achieving its aims, but will also help you to be more effective. It helps in assessing what is working, what is not working so well and what difference the project/product is making. M&E should be thought about at the beginning of a project and it is useful to start by identifying what questions you have about the project/product and drawing out the assumptions behind your project plan. Evaluation can then be used when you are making decisions in regard to new services/products or additions to an existing service/product.

In terms of an online service tools which can help in the M&E of a product or project include:

• Collecting web usage statistics
• Conducting online/offline surveys
• Conducting interviews with your target users and actual users
• Collecting linked in statistics

The usage statistics of a service and its resources can be collected by using visitor statistics (counter) and some tools like Google Analytics. Some websites (including the IDS Knowledge Services) use commercial software (such as Hitlist), to get the detailed usage statistics as per their requirements. However, free tools like Google Analytics are also good in getting detailed statistics. It all depends on what kind of statistics the organization is looking for-and these should relate to your indicators and outcomes. Most types of software generate statistics on various forms such as number of unique visitors, page impressions, link statistics, repeat visitors etc.

Similarly, linked in statistics will help to know how popular the online service/product is. It basically shows how many people have linked in to the  service/product.

The online/offline surveys will help in getting the feedback from the users, which in turn lead towards the improvement of a service/product. However, one need to have a clear idea regarding the methods of analysis of the data which should relate to the objectives of the survey when designing the questionnaire, otherwise many a times it may take longer than expected to analyse and the results may not be very useful!. Also once the survey data is analysed, in order to keep the existing users base, it is good to let them know the results of survey and what new initiative will be taken to improve the service.

Interviewing small sample of users over phone and or in person can also be helpful in getting more detailed feedback about your product/service.

I feel it is appropriate to adopt some M&E tools for library services to analyse their usefulness. Libraries may start using free tools like Google Analytics to indentify usage statistics of their e-resources and services/products.

Marketing of a product, how to do it?

Marketing communications is to make communication about a product or service a purpose of which is to encourage recipients of the communication to purchase or use the product or service. In the LIS field, we have been talking of marketing of library products since long. However, its effective utilization has been made by very few libraries.

I had an opportunity to discuss about marketing plan for IGIDR’s information project ‘Open Index Initiative‘ with Ms Cheryl, Marketing Coordinator, IDS Knowledge Services. My discussions were aimed at how to market OII to the researchers, students, policy makers and faculty members. From the discussions, I found that the good marketing plan for any product should consist of the following:

• Objectives in relation to marketing
• Resources for marketing
• Push and Pull techniques for marketing

In relation to objectives, she mentioned that, these can be set based on what the project or product aims to achieve during a given time frame. She also suggested to making use of SMART technique to set the objectives. The SMART objective is the one, which should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. This clearly highlights on setting the relevant objectives, which are measurable and achievable during the given time.

Resources for marketing basically revolve around staff time and budget. How much time in a week staff can spend for working on modalities of marketing a product. In case of information project or product the work involves identifying potential organizations, key personnel and libraries interested in using the product or disseminating information regarding the product or exchanging the data. This action needs to be followed by mailing the details of product in phases over e-mail and post along with PPT or brochure or poster.

Push and Pull strategy will help in the promotion of product to the targeted group using different advertisement techniques. In case of an information product it is best to push the product to the students, faculty and researchers by writing to the Deans, Course Coordinators, Directors and LIS professionals. The Pull strategy here would be directly contacting the end users over e-mail or post by collating their e-mail and postal addresses either from institute websites or from conference delegates list.

I feel applying a good marketing plan can give a desired success for an information product/project. It will be appropriate to have a good marketing plan in place before libraries develop a project or product. It is very much necessary in the present Internet world looking into the changing format of information and information seeking behaviour of library users.

Changing role of academic libraries..

Libraries are changing in terms of their collection, facilities and services owing to constant changing scenario of information on account of Information and Communication Technology [ICT] applications and information seeking behaviour of clientele. Libraries are no longer considered as store house of knowledge rather they now act as Learning Resource Centre; this is especially true in the case of academic libraries attached to specialized institutes and universities.

I had an opportunity to look around the activities of University of Sussex library, Brighton in this changing scenario of academic libraries and realised how it has geared to take up the new challenges. The library apart from providing traditional library services in a computerized environment is acting as a true learning resource centre by involving itself with a Learning and Teaching Department of the university. The library staff working within the information services division undertakes information literacy programmes for students, researchers and teaching faculty. The library has made available ‘infosuss‘, a simple information literacy tutorial on its website, which is quite useful for a new user in making use of the library and its resources. It is also developing tools concerned to information skills for university’s study and teaching online services named as ‘Study Success at Sussex [S3]‘ and ’Profolio: Professional Researcher Development‘.

Technologically too the library is gearing to implement new technologies, which are best suitable to Google generation users, the best example of it is soon to be unveiled its Web OPAC based on Acqua Browser having faceted searching, its interface looks like Google and results are similar to Amazon with a map of related facets (words). Since the Acqua Browser based catalogue is not yet unveiled at University of Sussex library for public, the working of it can be experienced from its implementation at Queens Library. In terms of facilities library has virtual places having set of computers in all its reading rooms and also has provision of group discussion rooms for students.

The similar kind of change, I noticed in London School of Economics and Political Science Library, London. This library too has involved itself in a big way in providing information literacy programs for its clientele. Most of these programs are delivered to users through Centre for Learning Technology, LSE. This centre has a fully qualified library and information science professional with her team, who delivers these programs for faculty and students.  In terms of use of ICT, library has made a remarkable progress by implementing many applications such as E-Prints, Cross search, Web 2.0 etc. It is also trying out with Google type of Web OPAC (Beta) similar to that of University of Sussex library based on the feedback received from the library users. In terms of Web 2.0 applications, what interested me is the use of Delicious social book marking tool to link free electronic resources available on the Internet in the subject areas of LSE. Majority of its reading halls have been converted into virtual halls having computers on most of the tables keeping an eye on the interests of Generation X.

The situation is same or better in most of the academic libraries attached to higher education institutes across UK. It shows that academic libraries in UK are adopting very well with the changing environment. The LIS professionals are playing a crucial role to see through this transition and to ensure place for libraries in the future. Computer professionals are contributing in relation to technological development , who are part of these libraries in developing and implementing ICT applications. The similar kind of change is necessary for the academic libraries in developing countries for their future existence. The library professionals in these countries have to gear themselves in a big way to bring the similar kind of changes in the library services with the help of authorities and computer science professionals.