Letter From London

Barbara Holder, Forintek

In March 2002 I joined more than 400 delegates from over 40 countries attending the Internet Librarian International Conference, held at the Olympia Conference Centre in London, England.

Vibrant City

London was, as usual, huge, fascinating (and expensive!) The conference organisers acknowledge this and leave evenings free for delegates to explore theatre, music and other attractions. I visited the National Theatre (NT) on the South Bank for a performance of Tartuffe by Moliere in a new translation in rhyming couplets by Ranjit Bolt. Sounds deadly, but it was actually very entertaining!

I felt really alive crossing Waterloo Bridge on foot to get to the NT and seeing the lights of the London Eye (the largest ferris wheel in the World at 450 feet high), Parliament upstream and the South Bank complex ahead.

Lifelong, Lifewide and Lifedeep Learning

Dr. Chris Yapp, a conference keynote, described a new vision of learning as "lifelong, lifewide and lifedeep". Innovation, boldness and imagination are needed to realise the vision. Though the future is opaque (we don't know where we are going, and we do not know how to get there), "user-active" change will be key. Solutions should be user-driven. Librarians have an essential part to play in this cultural renaissance, providing access to resources.

Intranet Accessibility (or Not!)

Many speakers touched on intranet accessibility:

Existing intranets:

• ROI is abysmal on most existing intranets
• Most staff do not trust the intranet but have no alternative
• Professionals spend more time looking for information than using it
• Most users will not use complex search features (Boolean, drop-downs, etc.)

To improve intranet design:

• Eliminate useless graphics
• Eliminate jargon
• Decide on useful content by monitoring electronic resource use:
  • Monitor email attachments sent by staff
  • Have some staff keep diaries
• Obey the three clicks rule
• Conduct usability testing
• Pilot prototypes before design is finalised
• Build redundancy into navigation by providing multiple features:
  • Search engine
  • Browsing
  • Complete single alphabetical index of all categories
  • Graphical navigation overview
  • Some initiatives are using traditional library classification systems to provide hierarchical multilingual structure for subject searching. (Renardus is using the Dewey Decimal Classification).

Search Engine Snapshot

Danny Sullivan, creator of Search Engine Watch, summarised some search engine developments over the last year:

• There is more paid inclusion and it can be hard to distinguish advertising from editorial content…but users do not seem to mind.
• In 2001 companies cut back on human editors although they are still essential to verify and augment automatic web site indexing done by computers.
• September 11th revealed to many that Search Engines are not good sources for fast-breaking news. This is because they only crawl sites every 10 to 14 days. The exception is Altavista, which has recognised that users want current news, so integrates a daily news feed with its other information.

Danny said that if you have not found what you need on the web in 12 minutes, it's time to quit and resort to other tools. He commented that web search engines are similar to a handy Swiss Army knife, but sometimes you need specialised heavy duty tools from the tool box.

Collaboration in Action

One of the reasons I attended the conference was to presented a paper in the Collaboration in Action: Case Studies track with my colleague Deirdre Moore. Deirdre joined us virtually from her desk in Quebec City. We described using collaboration software to build virtual community focussing on four separate initiatives:

• SLA WCC's future scanning and strategic planning process (2000/2001)
• SLA WCC's virtual seminar series (2001/2002)
• Forintek's use of virtual collaboration tools
• Collaboration by forestry/forest products librarians worldwide.

Donna Scheeder, Past-President of SLA International came forward after the presentation and thanked me for making SLA look good! I told Donna that without SLA WCC I would not have been using the collaboration tools in the first place.

The conference provided food for thought. One fellow delegate commented that it was a great source for ideas, but each "solution" would need to be customised for our own specific environment. There are no easy answers!

The conference was sponsored by Information Today. Presentations are posted at http://www.internet-librarian.com/presentations/index.html.