Online Insider

InfoUSA to Become InfoGROUP

Marydee — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:17:15 +0000

It’s not just Warren Buffett who headquarters his company in Omaha, Nebraska — infoUSA is there as well. This database and marketing company will officially change its name to infoGROUP on June 1st. The name change reflects its increasing presence outside the U.S. It has offices in Canada (just opened one in Toronto), the UK, australia, Indian, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The company, which has been around since 1972, owns OneSource (an aggregator of business information, although it would be nice if its website for information providers would update Thomson Gale to Cengage Gale — that’s not exactly a recent name change), Donnelley (direct marketing company), and Opinion Research (the CNN partner for polling). This name change is one of the more logical I’ve seen in the information industry. It’s hard to portray yourself as a global company, with international business information, when you’ve saddled yourself with USA in your company name.

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Data Sources Matter

Marydee — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:18:25 +0000

A story in the Wall Street Journal this morning caught my eye. Headlined "Source of House Data Skews Loan Losses," by Marshall Eckblad, it talked about the effect the source of data has on companies’ financial reporting. My Dollar Sign column in the May/June 2008 issue of ONLINE was about real estate information sources. One of the frustrating things about writing the column is the fixed length. I’ve got 3 magazine pages, which doesn’t always allow me to mention every single thing I’d like to — and in this case it was these two sources of housing data that got "lost on the cutting room floor."

One of the sources mentioned in the WSJ article is governmental, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and the other is private, the Case-Shilling Index from S&P. The OFHEO data presents a more optimistic picture than does Case-Shilling. If you want a good comparison of the two sources, the OFHEO published a research note last year, complete with charts and graphs. I certainly wish I’d had the space to include those two sources. Maybe I’ll write myself a letter to the editor.

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The Nation Quotes ILI Keynoter

Marydee — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:16:22 +0000

An interesting article in The Nation by R. H. Lossin, posted online yesterday, about Iraq’s national library quotes Dr. Saad Eskander’s comments from his keynote speech at the Internet Librarian International conference in 2004. I remember that as being an incredibly moving talk, leaving several delegates with tears in their eyes. The sad thing is how little improvement there has been. Lossin calls "the lack of solidarity from the American community of librarians and scholars" to support Iraq’s library particularly by donating physical materials "shameful." Having just come from the Computers in Libraries conference, where librarian bloggers gloried in talking about and using new mobile technologies, wireless access, laptop computers, and Internet resources, it’s sobering to recognize how differently their lives would be in Iraq with its shortages of electricity and sporadic Internet access. Online activities that we take for granted in North America and Europe are not possible in some other parts of the world. Many of our suppliers of premium content online databases also have print reference books. I wonder how many of them are donating these physical materials to the Iraq National Library. If they are, the library community should recognize them for being responsible world citizens, and if they’re not, let’s encourage them to do so.

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PaidContent Mixer

Marydee — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:59:21 +0000

I went to the PaidContent Mixer tonight in London. It’s their third. ContentNext Media, Inc. now includes the sites paidcontent.org, moconews.net, contentsutra.com, and paidcontent.co.uk.

The speaker at the mixer was Martin Stiksel, one of the three co-founders of Last.fm. Stiksel and company sold to CBS in one of the highest-profile start-up UK-US deals of late for $2.8 million. Interesting comments about licensing. They have to get rights for every country to which they broadcast. Uh, they’re on the Internet, so that’s practically every country in the world! Wow! That’s quite a challenge! He also said the merger with CBS was going well.

During the cocktail hour following the talk, Raj Kotecha, ConentNext’s director of sales and business development for Europe, announced major changes to the corporate structure. Rafat Ali is stepping down as CEO. Taking that position will be Nathan Richardson, whose credentials include previous positions with Dow Jones and Yahoo Finance. Pat Dignan will leave Forbes.com to become the chief sales officer and Charlie Koones, ex-publilsher of Variety, will join the board. Although Raj announced this in halting terms, telling us it was a premature announcment because of a pending Reuters story, the full details were posted to the PaidContent website about an hour and a half before the mixer began. Check there for details.

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ILI Call for Speakers Deadline Extended

Marydee — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:23:17 +0000

We decided to give people another week to submit their proposal to speak at Internet Librarian International. With Easter holidays, it seemed like a good idea to allow a bit more time. The new deadline is the 4th of April. I’m really looking forward to examples of 2.0 stuff in action!

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Funny You Should Ask

Marydee — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:01:11 +0000

Every Monday, Cengage Gale (when will I get used to that Cengage appellation?) drops a little gem into my inbox. It’s called "Funny You Should Ask" and is real-life questions asked at real-life reference desks of real-life libraries. Today’s was more hilarious that usual:

"I’m doing a demographic project. Can you tell me the percent of mothers who have children?"

Hey, I’m no math wizard, but I think I know the answer!

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21 Steps

Marydee — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:12:58 +0000

As a fan of mystery stories, I’m quite taken by a new Penguin initiative called We Tell Stories. I’ve been reading 21 Steps, a story by Charles Cumming, that starts at St. Pancras station where a man, Jack Kalba, is shot and drops dead at the feet of the story’s protagonist, Rick, who then runs into the British Library to use their computers to read what’s on the memory stick given him by Kalba. It’s hardly a conventional means of telling a story, since it’s actually a mashup with Google maps. As you read, you follow the path of the narrator. From the British Library, he goes to the National Gallery, then Heathrow, and onwards. I confess that at times the map whizzes by a bit too fast for me, but it’s still an interesting way to present fiction.

21 Steps is the first week of a 6-week series of stories that Penguin is presenting. The next one will debut on March 25th. They are based on classics, according to Penguin–this first one is a homage to 39 Steps, both John Buchan’s book and Alfred Hitchcock’s film, I think. This whole idea of digital fiction brings Web 2.0 to stories. Of course, it’s going to be difficult for libraries to "shelve" these kinds of new media stories, but I doubt Penguin cares.

As someone who read Smilla’s Sense of Snow with a map of Copenhagen next to her, I like Penguin’s digital fiction idea. And as one who will be in London next week, the setting for 21 Steps is perfect for getting reacquainted with that city.

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Q&A Stats

Marydee — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:29:25 +0000

Hitwise reported that U.S. visits to question and answer sites increased 118% from last year, with Yahoo Answers gleaning 74% of the traffic. In second place was WikiAnswers, from Answers.com. Third was Answerbag and fourth was Ask MetaFilter. Hitwise interprets the popularity of the Q&A sites as showing the importance of the social network in sharing knowledge contributed by community experts. If the popularity is so great, why did Google leave this particular playing field? Also, it strikes me that the quality of the questions is often not very high. In fact, many of them simply reflect the laziness of the questioner. Not only do they not know how to frame a good question, they don’t really care to lift a finger to try and find information on their own. Research apparently consists of asking the question online. The quality of the answers varies tremendously and does not always reflect either knowledge or expertise. A major exception is WikiAnswers, which grounds its answering mechanism in trusted, reliable sources.

I suppose there is room in the information world for trivia questions, but glorifying both trivial (which is not exactly the same thing as trivia) questions and answers based on opinion rather than facts rubs me the wrong way. I do sincerely hope that, when the question-askers have something of real import to ask, they won’t rely 100% on any of these Q&A sites, but will look for qualified answer sources. Yes, like librarians! And researchers who cite their sources.

Speaking of expertise, the next issue (May/June 2008) of ONLINE will have an article by Bobby Brody exploring some "real" expert sites. She begins by defining expertise, then notes you can find experts at places like professional and trade associations, government agencies, executive network sites such as LinkedIn, and Who’s Who type publications.

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The Horse You Go Out With

Marydee — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:40:43 +0000

Great segment on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer about public libraries. Julia Keller talks about the impact of public libraries on peoples’ lives. My favorite takeway line was that it doesn’t matter as much what you come in looking for as what you actually take away with you. OK, that’s a paraphrase. Here’s an even more egregious one: It’s not the horse you rode in on, it’s the one you go out with. Bad grammar, I know. Still a terrific sentiment. Reminds me of a sentence from a book by Annie Dillard where she talks about the explosive nature of the books she encountered as a child at the Pittsburgh Public Library. You just never knew, she said, what was between the covers.

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IOLUG Looks at Digitizing Yesterday for Tomorrow

Marydee — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:56:21 +0000

It’s the IOLUG (Indiana Online Users Group) spring meeting, titled Memory, Heritage, Visions: Digitizing Yesterday for Tomorrow. First speaker, Robin Crumrin, Associate Dean of Collections & Information Access at IUPUI Library, gives background, how State Library kickstarted in 2003, up to licensing OCLC’s CONTENTdm and LSTA digization grants. There’s a framework for partnership & policies & guidelines.

Indiana Memory Project should launch this May, sasy Connie Rendfield, Indiana State Library. Two parts to this project, uisng ISL CONTENTdm license to create collections and collections being harvested into Indiana Memory Portal. Plans for the future: develop collection, educational materials, soft launch, and long-term sustainability.

if you have collection, must tell Indiana Heritage that it should be harvested. Library’s logo can be affixed to harvested collection.

Should collections be harvested into WorldCat? Not so sure. Speakers think that decision should be up to individual institutions contributing to INdiana Memory.

There’s no charge from OCLC to add. OCLC will convert to MARC format.

Next talk is on Wabash Valley Visions & Voices Digital Memory Project. Speaker is Cinda May, Indiana State University Library. Project started to document and preserve history and cultural heritage of West Central Indiana (that’s the Terre Haute area) in digital format made freely accessible. Started in 2004 with 3 goals: establish consortium of cultural organizations & community groups in west central Indiana; create digital collections documenting history and cultural herital of region; develop a digital library that fits seamlessly with Indiana Memory. She’s showing a list of poject participants in 2008. There’s lots of public libraries, also academic, and then there’s the Clabber Girl Museum. I didn’t know there was Clabber Girl Museum. Wabash Valley actually starts in Ohio and Cinda will take materials from anywhere in the region that might be loosely defined as Wabash Valley.

Visions project started with a licence for 12,000 items but soon realized they needed an unlimited license. There’s an MOU among partners.

Vigo County contributed doll collection. Cinda wasn’t thrilled.

Community History Days used to get members of the community to contribute stuff that’s in their attics, closets, etc. Scan material on the spot, sometimes use digital camera for objects. One had music entertainment and tons of food (Vigo County). But one other one only pulled 5 people (at Clabber Girl). More people are available on Saturday.

Now she’s showing Story of a House, 1873-2004. Full history of the building of the house through to its destruction in 2004. Great for architectural history.

And they’ve got a blog. Tells what the featured subjects are. Now it’s Women’s History Month.

O Miners Aware project. Indian Coal Miners, Their Families, Their Communities. I guess this is from the Coal Museums collections, but she didn’t actually say so. Other special collections. Early Vincennes. Eugene B. Debs corresondence.

Not in competition with Indiana Memory.

Challenges: addressing needs of diverse partners; adequate staffing; equipment replacement/upgrades; quality control across collections; digital preservation issues.

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