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The BITS Foundation. November 12th 2009

It’s been quite some time since I posted anything here but I thought I’d make an exception today. Twitter has been my mistress for the past 6 months. And after a slow start I confess I’m a convert. I love the economy and sharpness of focus twitter demands. Here I’m likely to ramble all over the place.

Continuing the theme, I hope that my talk here at the Ardencote hotel in front of a gatering of the BITS Foundation doesn’t ramble too much.

An odd one this. I’ve been invited to give some thoughts on the ‘Facebook Generation’. Personally I’ve always been a bit leery of this sweeping generalisation, but I guess there are some useful points worth surfacing for a roundtable discussion.

My slide deck for the session is here.

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Basically, it introduces some of the broad characteristics of generational groups before introducing Marc Prensky’s terminology - Digital Native/Digital Immigrant.

Don Tapscotts Net Gen norms get an airing before some counterpoints are introduced that suggest this is all rather overblown. I can’t remember where the term came from but I use ‘Digital Population’ to better describe that group of people comfortable with tech. Finishes off with call to the incumbent generation to teach digital wisdom/litereacy to the young, eager and fast Net gen’ers.

Well that’s the basis for a round table discussion. I’ll post some notes later here and via twitter on how it all went!

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By Paul – November 12, 2009

m-Libraries 2009, first reflections

The second International m-Libraries conference closed a few hours ago. It brought to an end a highly enjoyable, extremely well organised and very thought provoking couple of days.

Reflecting on the conference I’m struck by a number of things.

The energy, invention and interest in reaching out to learners and library users is impressive. The keynotes, plenaries and concurrent sessions covered an awful lot of diverse ground. Lorcan Dempsey’s spoke about how the days of the institutional website as the sole focus of attention are receding. Is this also true for publishers? Of course it is. Another point from Lorcan - workflows, and how they are now designed around users, rather than libraries. In a world where scarcity is not the issue, and content can be accessed anytime anywhere, the idea that a student is required to adapt her patterns to fit in with the working patterns of the library is challenged. Service atomisation and the cloud where touched upon too. More later.

I enjoyed Ken Banks’ enormously. He provided us with an uptodate insight into how mobile technology is transforming Africa. Great examples of innovation and street smarts.He described his FrontlineSMS service, which was not unlike the service Eric and I set up for and with the help of UNISWA library, and which was the subject of my presentation at conference.

Carrie Page spoke at length about Gen - X , Gen Y - Enough already. This is too easy and I don’t buy it at all. The younger generation will always accept newer forms of tech and comms before the crusties. This is not new. what’s new is the rate of change. I do hope that libraries, amongst others, resist the urge to enter into an ‘arms race’ to see who can be the coolest, savviest and most uptodate with the kids. Again, more later.

The concurrent sessions gaves us mor detail and drilled into some specific examples of the plenary themes.

For me the take away has been QR Codes. They seem to have come out of nowhere in the last few weeks. I’m a big fan all of a sudden. The idea that one can be connected to the virtual world from the physical with a camera phone is very seductive. Kate Robinson (Bath, UK) gave a great introduction to QR Codes and how hey might be used in libraries and research. Before I arrived at UBC I embedded a QR Code on my slide deck which allowed people to take a snapshot, and if equipped with a QR reader would take them to my google docs page where they could download the slides. This is powerful stuff.

There was a hell of a lot of interesting sessions taking place, and it’s a shame to not be able to attend them all. Thank god for twitter then.

This was a conference particularly rich in tweets and twitters. In the six months I started to use twitter at OEB (Berlin) the use of twitter at conferences is now indispensable. The realt-time conversations, questions, interactivity - the sheer richness and texture and an entirely new dimension to a live conference. If you use twitter for nothing else, use it at conferences. Check out #mlib09 for the conference tweets.

Twitter word cloud, mLibraries Day 1

Twitter word cloud, mLibraries Day 1

The conference banquet was fun. Great talk from Dr. Frits Pannekoek, President, Athabasca University. He covered a lot of ground, inclduing a rallying call to block some forthcoming Canadian copyright act. I’m unfamiliar with it so can’t comment, but it sounds fairly restrictive stuff. Dr. Pannekoek touched upon OERs too. As Canada’s open university this not suprising. I was plesed however to hear a more nuanced view of OER, and acknowledge that it’s pretty much one way traffic right now and that raises questions of cultural/cyber imperialism which are sometimes difficult to counter. I spoke in Dakar at eLearning Africa a few weeks ago with the message that OERs may well cause more problems than they solve. Expecting a rough ride, I toned down the message. Such a surprise then to have such a message acknowledged and endorsed by the African delegates in the room - much like the trade, not aid. Though concerened about the rise of OER, I was pleased to hear a more mature and enlightened view over dinner.

My own talk, first thing on Day 2 had a smattering of brave souls. It was early, and it was was raining, people dribbled in as we started but I’d like to think I got my story across. Attended other sessions in the morning and spoke with other delegates before, during and after lunch.

After lunch we were treated to what I thought was a very good strategic and important set of messages and insights from Sir John Daniels, Chief Executive Officer at the Commonwealth of Learning.

After a brief history of ICOL and it’s mission, John talked about the how emerging technologies, and in particular mobile SMS technology, is threatening to become the world’s first ubiquitous platform. What’s interesting is how this could allow universities to break out from the Iron Triangle - Cost, Access Quality. Conventionally, tinkering with one aspect of the triangle causes tension and problems elsewhere. Appropriate and intelligent use of technology to support lifelong learning, distance and workplace based learners and of course mobile access offers the promise of widening access, without compromising quality, and may in fact reduce costs over the long term. No other strategy offers this way out of the Iron triangle. John also pointed that it is critical that we cut the link between quality and exclusivity if we want education technology to succeed. Again, no argument there.

With respect to the penetration of mobiles, and their adoption John pointed to a recent UK survey which found that ages 16-24 would rather give up sex, tea, coffee, chocolate & alcohol than their cell phones for a month. I can believe it.

Final slide of John Daniels talk - Exact same image as mine!! Neat.

Final slide of John Daniels talk - Exact same image as mine!! Neat.

What I was particularly happy to hear was this : That Scale, Division of Labor & Specialisation are basic principles of success for mobile and elearning in the library and in the wider university.

And this brings me back to the ‘more later’ bit from earlier. I’ve been struck by the fact that libraries from around the world are attempting to work through and respond to threats, challenges and opportunities presented by digital and mobile and social technologies. The invention is impressive. But I do wonder about the duplication of effort here. Another m-Library delegate has already posted on this - Library Web Chic. My talk, though ostensibly about the SMS project and the success we’ve enjoyed in driving usage and downloads with a simple approach to SMS, was also about how this was only possible through an equal partnership between the UNISWA library and Emerald. For me this has always been the most interesting and innovative aspect of the project. Speaking with delegates at dinner we appeared to agree completely that if publishers, librarians and others in the online information value chain could negotiate their respective positions within an altered, mobile and social paradigm then we might we able to move this whole agenda forward more quickly, more productively for the benefit of all concerned. Scale, Division of Labor and Specialisation.

I suggest that if Librarians are serious about making a case to their budget holders about investing these channels and platforms, they consider what they’re good (specialisation), who can help them (division of labor), how is this operated and funded (Scale - in partnership or consortia).

Steve Schafer, Director of Library Services, Athabasca University officialy closed the conference but not before showing us a video greeting from Mohamed Ally, Athabasca University. Mohamed has been instrumental in the conference I believe, and he also led us into a video showcase, the Sixth Sense demo from TED. I saw this a few months ago, it blew me away then and it did again yesterday - click here to see what the fuss is all about - Sixth Sense. A very energising end to a very good couple of days.

I have had the privilege of meeting and talking with some very smart people, I hope we get to do it again some time. Nicky, sorry you couldn’t be here - it was great, well done to you and all your team.

And finally, UBC is a great venue, we were very well looked after, absurdly so. And what a setting. Final image is looking over th rose garden toward the mountains beyond the sound. Leeds/Bradford it ain’t.

Looking over the UBC rose garden

Looking over the UBC rose garden



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By Paul – June 25, 2009

Getting ready for m-Libraries 2009

Only a few days to go before m-Libraries 2009 takes place in Vancouver.

The programme looks very interesting and though the flight is gonna be a killer I’m hopeful the result will be worth it. I’m sure it will be.

My own study, that of a web 2.0 / SMS mashup to promote usage in an African library has gone down really well here. I think Eric and I may well be spending most of July exploring how we might scale the service and port it to support usage drives in other regions. No Bad thing.

As a further experiment I’m going to try and direct interested users to this particular page with QR Codes.

I saw these demonstrated a few days ago. I’ve heard of them but didn’t realise their simplicity and utility until now. I’m going to embed a QR Code in the slides and invite people, if they have a QR reader, to follow this through.

I confess I am curious to explore these QR codes a little more.

qrcode

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By Paul – June 18, 2009

Social Media for Publishers

Reblogged from STWEM.COM and Andrew Spong. A commentary on an earlier Scholarly Kitchen piece

came across a blog post earlier this year by @ScottHepburn which I found very useful, and which I make myself re-read from time to time as a spur to ensuring that the foundations of my ideas still bear weight. In a novel and entirely appropriate reorientation of the dynamics of authority (of which, more below), the article considers questions that candidates may wish to ask prospective employers in order to interrogate the authenticity of what Scott Hepburn calls their ‘visions of social media grandeur’.

If you cannot answer them, then it is time to return to first principles.

I’d encourage you to read the article in its original context, but in the spirit of the mashup I would also like to reorder, rephrase and augment some of Scott Hepburn’s concepts here in order to foreground the manner of inquiry I would exhort all scholarly publishers to undertake:

Goals

  • Why do you want to use social media?
  • Do you view social media as a marketing tool? A driver of revenue? A customer outreach tool? All of the above?
  • Upon what basis have you elected to use some platforms, and disregard others?
  • What do you hope to accomplish through the use of social media?
  • How did you choose these goals?
  • How do they align with your customers’ expectations of the way in which you will deport yourself within your social media presences?
  • How do you plan to measure progress?
  • What are your benchmarks?
  • How did you determine these benchmarks?
  • How will your use of social media inform your future strategic planning?

Resources

  • How much time are you willing to dedicate to social media projects?
  • Are you expecting existing employees to incorporate that activity into their day-to-day work, or are you planning to make new hires in order to drive these programs?
  • If the former, how? If the latter, why?
  • How much money are you intending to invest in supporting your social media channels?
  • How did you arrive at these resource allocations?
  • Does that investment include hiring a dedicated SEO specialist?
  • Have you considered redeploying marketing spend from less successful channels in order to support your social media work?
  • Will other divisions in your company invest a similar amount of their time inaugurating social media initiatives?
  • If not, what impact will this have on your activities?

People

  • Does your company have any existing social media voices?
  • If so, are you happy with the activity they currently undertake?
  • Are you planning on incorporating these presences into the mix of social media channels you will roll out?
  • If not, what are you intending to do with them?
  • Are you prepared to let others become the voices of your company? Are you willing to promote those voices?
  • Are there stakeholders you actively do not want to represent the company?
  • How much freedom are you prepared to give employees to participate in your company’s social media projects?

Listening

  • Who is currently monitoring conversations about your company?
  • Where have you set up listening posts?
  • Are you listening to customer conversations that aren’t about your brand per se, but which are pertinent to your activity in general?
  • Are you constantly trying to find new channels to listen to?
  • Are you listening to conversations about your competitors?
  • What tools and technologies are you using to monitor conversations?
  • Do you act upon the intelligence they afford you?
  • What contingencies do you have in place to engage with critical opinions?

Customers

  • Can you demonstrate that your customers use the platforms you are targetting?
  • Are you willing to give customers the tools to tell others about their experience with your company?
  • Are you willing to let your customers influence (’own’) your brand?
  • Do you know who your brand enthusiasts are?
  • Do you know who your brand critics are?
  • In what ways will your new social media presences augment your existing interactions with your customers?

I would also like to comment upon some of the specific observations made in the Scholarly Kitchen piece:

  • Identity management is an issue because there’s no common standard. This inhibits publishers because we can’t assign rights to an individual and know that it’s them, from publisher to publisher, or across time. [AS: There will never be a common standard, for whilst there are many 'wrong' ways to manage identities within social media channels, there is no 'right' way to aspire to. This should be a spur to activity, not inhibit it. It is not a reason to forbear to participate.]
  • Creating an identity is difficult for users and forces publishers to reinvent the wheel. Does Facebook Connect offer a path toward ease of adoption? [AS: If this is perceived to be an issue within the communities you serve, acknowledge it and offer 'how-to guides' branded or badged around a journal or colophon in order to help your customers create professional social media identities. Lead by example: begin by tailoring your own.]
  • Balancing community and quality might be a false tradeoff. A “crowd” threatens quality, but a “community” doesn’t. [AS: This is for readers, not publishers, to decide. 'Wherever people trust each other, the information will flow'. Give your communities a reason to trust you.]
  • Forrester’s “Five Eras of the Social Web” is a picture worth contemplating (click on the image to see it full-size). [AS: Yes, it's a very nice picture, but how do you believe it maps on to what you need to do?]
  • Enabling mavens and connectors (things Malcolm Gladwell outlined in “The Tipping Point“) scares publishers. We’re used to being the mavens and the connectors. [AS: Publishers are not enabling the 'mavens and connectors'; they are enabling themselves. Remember that more often than not, the catalyst for their activity is their interest in publishers' content. Be grateful for their interest. Rather than view the drivers of change as a threat, publishers would do better to talk to them, understand them, and incorporate their activites, their passions, and their networks in the revivification of their own core values. Publishers must give the agents of change a reason to want to work with them that is diverting enough to distract them temporarily from busily disintermediating them altogether.]
  • Marketing social media is terra incognita for publishers. We’re going to have to learn. This may mean dropping commercial expectations from the picture while we do so. [AS: There is a concurrent need to acknowedge that 'commercial expectations' are also in flux. These are not turbulent times simply to be endured until calmer waters are reached once again. From this point forward, scholarly publishers must learn not only to survive, but also to thrive in a perpetual gale.]
  • Our businesses have legacy expectations, especially around metrics. So, if a social media experiment doesn’t automatically generate the kind of numbers in 2 weeks that our publishing enterprise has generated in 50 years, it’s held up through a false comparison and labeled a failure. [AS: Rephrased, saying 'we have got used to making money, we like it, and we want to carry on doing it' is not going to safeguard your colophon's future. The dynamics of authority are changing. Effective use of SEO and the semantic web threaten to overturn the expectation of authority the colophon on your business card formerly afforded you. If you enjoy being scholarly publishers as well as enjoying being paid, it is time to restate the unique values and benefits you believe you bring to the scholarly publication process, and make sure that they get heard by the people you want to hear them.]
  • Recruiting talent is acceptable through known channels (i.e., acquisitions editors), but makes people nervous if the talent is sourced through social media (i.e., the natural emergence of expert users and mavens). [AS: This position bespeaks an unwillingness to relinquish the 'command and control' mindset. It is not compatible with the expectations your customers are bringing with them to the social media communities they elect to participate in. If you want to be represented credibly within the STM social media space, do not rely on the rhetoric of others: find your own authentic voice.]
  • Linkages of social media to legacy brands is making people nervous. [AS: See above, but there is a whole other dialogue to embark upon concerning the issue of STM publishers moving away from protecting content and restricting usage and towards promoting content and facilitating access whilst delivering revenues.]
  • Ultimately, it has to be financially sustainable. How that will happen isn’t clear yet. [AS: See above. If you do not participate in this process, you deny yourself the opportunity of making this discovery. Consider the fact that existing scholarly publishing models may break before new ones have fully emerged. See the Digital Campus podcast linked to below.]

In conclusion, I’d encourage you to subscribe to the excellent, podcast-driven Digital Campus blog. In particular, spend some time listening to and reflecting on Episode 40: Super models, wherein Messrs. @dancohen, Mills Kelly, and Tom Scheinfeldt (@foundhistory) have some provocative and prescient (IMO) things to say about possible futures for scholarly journals.

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By Paul – June 12, 2009

Learnovation, Brussels

It’s been over a week since I returned from the Brussels Learnovation event and eLearning in Africa (Dakar). I guess I should try to capture some of my thoughts on these vents before I forget them completely!

Although eLearning Africa arrangements had been agreed for some time, when I received the invitation to Learnovation I didn’t hesitate in accepting. This is not because I believed the event to be particularly enlightening, I expected to have the opportunity to meet with a number of interesting people I’ve had the pleasure to meet with at other events. I also wanted to make sure that some of the aspects of Lifelong Learning at the policy level that I’m interested in were aired.

In the end the event turned out as I believed it would. Which is both depressing and satisfying (in a grim kind of way way). The invited audience of EC experts in eLearning research, development and practice conspired to agree to such a uniformly bland and self-evident set of statements that fail to be useful to anyone under any circumstances. I guess this is just how the EC works - compromise and watering down of good ideas until what is left is a rather anaemic version of what we had when started.

Still, I did meet and have the chance to talk with some very bright and passionate professionals (which makes the blandness of the result so more frustrating) about their projects. So I’m encouraged that on a personal and organisational level interesting things ar ehappening. I hope that I can somehow barge a way in for Emerald here - some promising follows up are promised so we’ll see.

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By Paul – June 9, 2009

Publishers and Social Communities/Media

I found this fascinating quote today:

  • Identity management is an issue because there’s no common standard. This inhibits publishers because we can’t assign rights to an individual and know that it’s them, from publisher to publisher, or across time.
  • Creating an identity is difficult for users and forces publishers to reinvent the wheel. Does Facebook Connect offer a path toward ease of adoption?
  • Balancing community and quality might be a false tradeoff. A “crowd” threatens quality, but a “community” doesn’t.
  • Forrester’s “Five Eras of the Social Web” is a picture worth contemplating (click on the image to see it full-size).
  • Enabling mavens and connectors (things Malcolm Gladwell outlined in “The Tipping Point“) scares publishers. We’re used to being the mavens and the connectors.
  • Marketing social media is terra incognita for publishers. We’re going to have to learn. This may mean dropping commercial expectations from the picture while we do so.
  • Our businesses have legacy expectations, especially around metrics. So, if a social media experiment doesn’t automatically generate the kind of numbers in 2 weeks that our publishing enterprise has generated in 50 years, it’s held up through a false comparison and labeled a failure.
  • Recruiting talent is acceptable through known channels (i.e., acquisitions editors), but makes people nervous if the talent is sourced through social media (i.e., the natural emergence of expert users and mavens).
  • Linkages of social media to legacy brands is making people nervous.
  • Ultimately, it has to be financially sustainable. How that will happen isn’t clear yet.

    • Kent Anderson under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Jun 2009

You should read the whole article ‘cos this stuff ain’t going away. It will define the next few eras of the web.

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By Paul – June 2, 2009

The end of ‘free’?

I’m going to include the full extract of this entry from the Scholarly Kitchen. The piece suggests that ‘Free’ as a means of distributing content may be coming to an end. I agree entirely. The whole ‘free’ thing really doesn’t make sense if everyone is doing it - sure it’s novel the first coupla times but if everyone is making their content free, how can it be differentiated - what qualities make it better/more apptopriate than the next piece of free content? How can the model support itself over the long term? I have the same concerns over Open Access and Open Educational Resources.

The argument in recent years has been that “free” is a superb marketing technique, a way to get your product to stand out from its competitors. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow swears by it, having given away the full-text of all of his novels for free online. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails received tons of publicity for their recent “pay what you want” efforts, which probably led to higher sales than standard channels. Chris Anderson of “Long Tail” fame has a book due out shortly touting “free” as the business strategy of the future.

But is “free” reaching the end of its value as a marketing scheme?

The San Jose Mercury News has announced they’ll soon be charging readers for online access, joining others like the Wall Street Journal and apparently most of Rupert Murdoch’s holdings. Networks are pulling their programs off of Hulu, with worries that free viewing will cut down on carriage fees and DVD sales.

As Kent Anderson noted in a recent post, the argument against putting your material behind a paywall is that it eliminates that material from being part of the online discussion, cuts it out of search engines, and takes away any potential traffic from blogs or other social networking sites. But for many content producers, the answer to that argument seems to be, “So what?” What good is it to be part of the online conversation if there’s no revenue generated from doing so? Does it matter if people can Twitter or blog about your content? Are you making any money whatsoever from those mentions? Can you expect to sell a subscription or a DVD if you’re already giving your content away for free online?

The problem is that as more and more content is made free, the market gets crowded, and being free is no longer enough to get your content noticed. Sure, Doctorow and the bands mentioned above got a lot of press coverage for their free efforts. But what happens to the next author or band to try this method? What about the tenth? The hundredth? When there are thousands of bands offering their output for free, does this business model lose its effectiveness? As Seth Godin writes:

The first time a previously expensive good or service is made free, we’re drawn to it precisely because of the freeness. The fifth time or tenth time, not so much. . . . Free by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything.

There’s still probably some mileage left in “free,” at least in the short term in areas where it hasn’t been over-exploited. Godin makes clear that making some content free continues to be useful for sampling purposes, to lower the boundaries for trying out a product before purchasing. But as a marketing scheme to promote your content, its lifespan is limited. If everyone is doing it, it’s no longer a way to stand out. Once free loses it’s novelty, quality is going to win out. As Kate Bradley puts it, the “new free” is going to be “the opposite of free,” something so good you’d be willing to buy it at a premium.

And this is where the newspapers need to take note. Their problems with free content are compounded because they’ve reached a point where they’re all pretty much interchangeable. As Nat Torkington explains concerning the Mercury News:

This business model didn’t fail in 1998 because there weren’t enough people on the Internet, it failed for the same reason it will fail now: you have a generic product and a cheaper substitute will win.

These days, there’s very little that makes one newspaper stand out from the next. If they try to earn revenue by going subscription-only access, readers will just move to the next identical newspaper that remains free and the closed access paper will fail. The free papers have no way to make any money either, so they’ll eventually close as well. If this continues, the inevitable conclusion is that the winner will be the last newspaper standing, which will keep everything free until all competitors are gone, then go to a subscription model.

The solution is to do something to make your product stand out from the crowd. Cutting costs at the expense of quality journalism, relying on the same wire feeds that every other paper uses, and pandering to the lowest common denominator will not lead to success.

Give readers a reason to find your content indispensable and unique. Otherwise, you’re just playing a game of chicken, and the odds are not in your favor.

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By Paul – May 25, 2009

A new life for your old ebook?

TeleRead’s Roger Sperberg has written what I think is an intriguing piece here:
How to give away an eBook after you’ve read it.

I’ve blogged about this in the past and really struggled to figure out how it might be possible to create and support a secondary ebook market. In spite of the impressive growth in ebooks and eBook readers in the last few months there is still an important function missing from the structure of the space - how to pass on a favourite, or resell your book - all treasured activities for book-lovers. I don’t see why it should it be different for eBooks.

I think Roger might be onto something and I wonder if with some tweaking here and there a niche, but viable business model is possible here?

Suppose your library (corporate/public/academic) created a eBook Register of Titles it wishes to acquire - very similar to a Wedding Register in which the couple create a list of gifts they would like and guests indicate which one they are willing to buy, as a gift and on behalf of the couple. In this example your eBook reader ticks the book he or she is willing to buy on behalf of the library. The library own the lending licence but give the pruchaser the right to lend it first. However, and in recognition of the generous act and the fact that libraries cannot live on altruism alone, the library agrees to a small ‘royalty’ payment (can’t think of another term) - pennies and cents for the most part until the cost of the original purchase has been repaid, plus a further 10% (say).

On the upside everyone get’s their ebook content, the publishers continue to sell titles, the cost is spread over a longish period of time and a wide patronage is encouraged (which feels good).

It’s probably an accounting nightmare and I’m sure the license model needs working through too, but in a period of time when libraries around the world are facing severe budget pressures it might be tempting to some to spend some time trying to figure this one out with patrons and publishers.

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By Paul – May 21, 2009

40% of uni libraries to cut book spend

Reblogged from The Bookseller

Nearly 40% of university libraries are planning to cut book and serial purchases from next year. According to a survey conducted by the Research Information Network (RIN) and presented to Times Higher Education, a fifth are planning to cancel one or more deals with publishing houses which allow them to access bundles of journals online—a single journal can contain hundreds of titles.

Higher costs caused by the fall in the value of the pound mean that UK university libraries face huge increases in subscription costs for research journals from the US and the rest of Europe.

Michael Jubb, director of the RIN, said that in the current academic year many university libraries had already overspent and some had been forced to cut budgets; however he said that 2009-2010 was the “much bigger problem”.

He said, “We are facing the prospect of significant reductions in access to a wide range of journals and severe cuts in the availability of books . . . which could do severe damage to research and teaching in UK universities,” he said.

“In some libraries, the extra costs for journal licences that they will face next year, simply as a result of the fall in the value of the pound, exceed the total of their current budgets for buying books.”

Toby Bainton, secretary of the Society of College, National and University Libraries said “2009–10 is going to be the really bad time . . . It is a problem for the entire institution because the only thing to cut is the big deals of journals, and that means hundreds of titles at once, which will affect researchers all over the university.”

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By Paul – May 21, 2009

ePublishing Innovation 09

Halfway through the second day of ePub Innovation Forum 09 and the into the first afternoon session.

Seems to be a kind of RSS and widgets 101 for people looking to drive traffic to a publisher’s site.

The event so far has been OK. Some really, really good sessions - Ashley Frieldin and Ben Edwards (The Economist) are stand outs. Mark Logic was, again, persuasive. I’d write these guys a cheque tomorrow if it were up to me.

Some other sessions have been really product showcase focussed; I’m not sure I like this at all. In fact I don’t. This event costs a  lot to attend and I wanted to be talked at about the latest product features of ‘X’ I’d spend more time in the exhibition hall.

The MD of Phorm made a stout defence of his company against vocal accusations of snooping and encroaching privacy regulations. It certainly spiced up the morning. Good defence but I’m still queasy about Phorm and what it represents.

My boss, Richard, has been here too. This is unusual, usually I’m at these events on my own and frankly this is the first one I’ve attended without speaking for almost 2 years. The thing is, with Richard being here it could turn out to be the most useful event for a long time since he’s seems genuinely interested in helping me persuade the business that this stuff matters and we need to be a lot more joined up than we currently are in order to exploit these opportunities. No longer the mad voice in the wilderness waving his arms around? We’ll see.

The interest in the event, and the representation from the major publishers and content providers attests to the mainstreaming of this stuff. It’s no longer niche, unproven and for the geek in your life - senior management should be here and seeing it for themselves. Next year I’ll kidnap the CEO and bring him along and prop up his eyelids with matchsticks if necessary.

The RSS / Widget speaker has ended. Useful and informative. Mobile stuff next I think.

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By Paul – May 20, 2009