The IWR American Psychological Association Information Professional of the Year award has been announced and went, deservedly to Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus for the UKOLN organisation.

The award is judged by a panel of previous winners and the IWR editorial team. As editor of IWR when I judge the award I look for an individual who is pushing the limits of information, technology and making the role of the information professional as far as possible and making it an exciting role.  When looking through the final results I could see that the other judges felt the same way and Brian was an excellent choice.

Brian's role is a national Web co-ordinator, an advisory post funded by the educational body JISC and the Museums, Library and Archives Council (MLA).

In this role Brian is looking at the web as central resource for learning and research in higher education and is looking at ways to make the web a successful resource, which is a challenging role, because the web is still very young and is constantly changing. This can be seen with the recent changes dubbed Web 2.0, therefore Brian is going to be pretty busy for some time to come.

Based at the University of Bath, I know from information professionals I have dealt with in the academic sector that he is very well respected and his thoughts are often the basis for great debate within the industry. Linked to this is his blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the sector.

I hope all IWR readers will join me in congratulating Brian for an award very much well deserved. 

Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia was the keynote speech of Online Information 2007 with a presentation Web 2.0 in action: Free culture & community on the move.

Starts with Britannica editor Charles van Doren 1962, who said the encyclopaedia should be radical, but Wales claims they have been anything but.

Small showing of hands for those that have edited, although Wales believes it’s a good showing, "but not as many as college kids".

I consider us to be the Red Cross of information, he says as he describes its charitable status. Have 10 full time staff and will spend about $2 to 3 million this year, which is tiny compared to the major publishers. Vast majority of the money is from small donations, which he likes because its grass routes and not dependent on advertisers.

Wales talks about the desire to extend the languages that are in use on Wikipedia, including Hindi and Afrikaans.

Wiki is free in the sense of GNU, its free to copy, modify and distribute.

Shows a video of his travels to India and how he learnt that the local communities want to use the English version, as the English language is a route out of poverty. His organisation has been out to South Africa teaching students how to edit Wikipedia. "One of the things we have learnt is that if you can get five to 10 editors working together, it can make a great difference." These groups make progress and then they look towards outreach and who they can include. Hence the organisation has set up an academy to find the founding editors. It has begun in India, with 10-20,000 articles a month being put together by academy organisations.

Wikia is his next subject, a separate organisation with 66 languages, including a 67th, Klingon. Wales goes on to demonstrate using Google search results for Muppets and how the top result is the official site, but the rest of the results are from web based conversation, ie Wikipedia pages, forums and fan sites. He demonstrates an article on the Ford motor company and how on Muppet Wiki site, there is an article on Muppet Ford ads and how this demonstrates this level of information would never have been available before.

The search engine is a political statement, in a small P sense, Wales says. The proprietary software of the main players is a mystery in that people have no control of the accountability. The Wikia search will publish its algorithm.

Wales believes that the trust of social networks and setting up trusted networks can be utilised in search. .

On the role of collaboration, he asks the audience to imagine that they are designing a restaurants, discussing the idea that we trust the people around us, we don't put people in cages in restaurants because they will be using knives.
The wiki philosophy is to allow people to do good.

At a major international publishing event like the Frankfurt Book Fair the bright lights of trade publishing and all its household star names could easily drown out the academic and scientific publishers. But this has not been the case.

Talk at the event, in all circles, is about books and technology, in particular search and eBook readers. On both subjects the specialist publishers are leading the way and the trade publishers salute them.

Amazon and Sony were expected to steal the show with their eBook readers, they are instead conspiquous in their absence, but that has not stopped publishers and technology providers from talking about the devices and their potential.

I was particularly interested in a conversation I had with sceintific, technical and medical publishers WIley where they hinted that they and other specialists may get involved in driving the adoption of eBook readers. Could we see the eBook reader adopt a similar model to the mobile phone where users sign up to a subscription service, content of a particular kind in this case, and in return they get a sleek and sexy device? Its certainly worked for the mobile industry, which now resembled the car world with its emphasis on styling and marketing.

But such a move could also be a blind alley, as one expert said to me, these devices don't support the interlinking and interactivity that content users are currently enjoying with the web.

During the fair Google, Ingram Digital Group and Amazon have all used the scientific and academic publishers as case study beacons for just what can be done with books on the web.

Geographically the Far East is the leading adopter as its markets radically develop according to Mark Carden, Ingram senior vp.

Perhaps Amazon spread rumours of a possible launch to see if there was real interest, well if the level of conversation we've heard is anything to go by, the eBook reader is in demand.

A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned  $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.

Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.

Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers. 

Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.

The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.

IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.

Earlier this week PaidContent.org launched its UK and European information service at a swanky Scottish bar in, err, London.  IWR went along and once underneath the deer antler chandelier it was as if a time and space wormhole had opened up and we were transported back to 1999 and they heady dot com boom.

The zeitgeist was unmistakable, young trendy professionals in Chris Evans glasses, sharp suits, bright shirts and an excitable level of conversation about "content" and "funding". It was uncanny. The headache's from the launch parties of Boo.com, Handbag.com and anything you like .com have only just cleared at the IWR Editor's desk and all of a sudden I get the feeling that it is all about to happen again.

The last web boom rapidly replaced CD-Rom in the professional information space and for those of us commentating on it for the traditional information sector, we were regularly told our days were numbered and the geeks would inherit the earth. In many ways everything has changed, yet also, nothing has changed.  Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia are significant changes, but despite falling ad revenues, the stalwarts of information still remain kings of the jungle.

Interestingly at this party, fund toting entrepreneurs didn't make the same mistake of predicting the demise of traditional information providers; instead I heard many conversations about partnerships, relationships and hosts. Kewego, just one of the bright (complete with lime green logo) Web 2.0 start ups present talked of the importance of the "content owners" and rattled off the names of respected information providers. The general feeling I left with is that if we are about to start partying again, but the difference is not that the new players think they have all the answers and will replace our libraries, publishing houses and research departments, instead they see themselves as a component and supplier.

Widgets is a term used widely in the blog world and already newspaper groups are adding widgets to their online portfolios. The next information wave appears to be about a wealth of new ("funded" and partying) companies offering to add their widget to your information. For information professionals this means understanding what a widget is, what it offers your users and negotiating a good deal for all parties involved.

Catherine Draycott, chair of British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) and the Wellcome Trust discusses how difficult it can be for image libraries within an organisation, including museums because there is often a need to generate a profit. She wants the industry and BAPLA to consider new models where there is an exchange between the academic community and the image provider, whether it is partnership or digitisation benefits or other ways of sharing revenue.

Wellcome now makes its images available under Creative Commons and a large percentage of the royalties goes to the creators. They have gone to the attribution model, because it is in line with the Wellcome's OA policies and the policy applies to the images on the Wellcome trust. If the images are for teaching, academic research and non-commercial publication the fee is waived.

Intelligent Television a documentary company that looks to make educational material more widely available, chief exec Peter Kaufman begins talking about screen based visual material, which is what a TV producer considers and so do information professionals. Gartner believe that paid search is a $15bn industry. The JISC digitisation strategy doesn't talk about free  and open access and focuses on business models and public private partnership and Peter Kaufman thinks that is a practical approach.

In the Q&A Draycott describes an idea of using the same metric as PR companies use to quantify the value of media coverage compared to the cost of an advertisement, to the re-use of images from an image library and how that may be useful for archive holders, especially as they are subsidising commercial organisations by providing the images.

Chris Batt, chief exec of MLA has a hard hitting presentation.

Libraries contain the raw material of the future, Batt says, and describes knowledge as being about learning, cultural identity, social development, and it has to be available to everyone.

"Understanding builds empowerment and cohesion and Batt considers this his aspiration. Our mission is to help people to take learning journeys, whether it’s the time of the next bus out of

Cardiff

or genetics. Being motivated will encourage people to carry on learning.

The only successful technology are the ones that are invisible, no one worries about how the TV or telephone works. Batt points out that presentation is the most important thing to the user and he shows and criticises examples of an archive page and the 24 Hour Museum page, both of which he states do not demonstrate to the user what they can do there.

Museums, libraries and archives have collections and customers, there role is to be the connections between the two. Collections are cared for by cultural heritage, education and research and they are passionate about it. Batt believes users though "don't give a toss" about whether these things are cultural heritage, education or research, they just want stuff they need.

Public Catalogues Foundation, could be a fantastic digital resource, it’s a collection of images of the publicly owned oil paintings in Great Britiain, county by country in the

UK

.

Batt ends on the statement, compared with fighting a war, the costs are minute and the benefits infinite. He believes the strategic e-Content

Alliance

is very important. Content in a networked environment is more important than institutes. An image of a little girl at a library hit home as Batt reminds every one that what they do now is important for her future. He wants knowledge as a utility, as trusted and as accessible and invisible as pure running water.

IWR is in the Welsh capital Cardiff for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digitisation Conference, which has been opened by Carwyn Jones of the Welsh Assembly.

The event is the launch pad for the digitisation strategy from the education group; and will also show case the work that has already been carried out and to analyse the role of JISC as the conduit to academic digitisation and what lessons the organisation  and academia have learnt so far.

Based at the St David's Hotel on the regenerated Cardiff Bay area, this gleaming white tower is an example of the new Wales and the new Cardiff, a country at the forefront of technology and the cultural landscape, whether its the location for Dr Who or ground breaking broadband and content strategies.

The conference has launched a blog for the event and is asking attendees and members of the information community to contribute to the debate.

The event has attracted leading members of the information community from universities in Manchester and Oxford as well as the Open University.

Broadsheet newspaper The Daily Telegraph has claimed in an article that Pearson, the corporation which owns the Financial Times, is involved in an "desperate attempt" to buy US business information group Dow Jones. If successful the bid will scupper the plans of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

According to the Telegraph, Pearson has been looking for a partner to counter the £2.5bn bid from the Aussie known as Dirty Digger. Unnamed analysts tell the Telegraph that a combined Pearson and Dow Jones group, which owns news aggregator service Factiva, would be a "formidable force in business journalism". One describes the Dow Jones newswires as another useful arm to the FT. Not only would a combination include two of the world's most famous business newspapers, the FT and Wall Street Journal, as well as Factiva, but would also include leading magazine and market analysis group The Economist.  Pearson owns 50% of The Economist group.

There are global benefits from a link up between Dow Jones and Pearson. The latter has a strong presence in the US with its education division, but the FT has not fared well there, no doubt because of the power of the Wall Street Journal. Equally the Wall Street Journal has not done well in Europe.

According to the Telegraph Pearson is in deep talks with General Electric to construct a joint bid. General Electric owns the CNBC business channel in the US, which competes with Murdoch's Fox business channel. CNBC is supplied by Dow Jones and has close relationships.

There is widespread concern about Murdoch buying the Dow Jones group, the Bancroft family – a majority stakeholder - is concerned about Murdoch's famed reputation for meddling with editorial independence to push his own right wing agenda. The information and media industry is also deeply concerned about Murdoch owning another major slice of the information real estate.

Murdoch has been preparing his bid by wooing the Bancroft family and got shot of his share of weak Australian news group Fairfax to release more funds.

If Pearson and a partner are to be successful, they will need to beat the $60 a share  offer that Murdoch's News Corporation has placed on the table.

Recently I was lucky enough to be part of a discussion panel organised by the City Information Group (CIG). The discussion centred on the future role of research and information professionals in the face of new networking technology, all dubbed Web 2.0, and how this technology will affect the working lives of information professionals.

My  hat  goes off to the information professionals at the event who put their hands in  the air and admitted they didn't fully understand the technology and the issues it presented to their working lives. It's a brave move in a busy room full of your peers. But it is OK to admit you don't understand the full complexity of the Web 2.0 plot. I left the conference feeling that almost everyone, apart from my colleagues Euan Semple and David Tebbutt, is a little shaky on some areas of Web 2.0. I too feel out of touch with RSS and FaceBook.

The problem with Web 2.0 is that there are so many different iterations of this technology, blogging, wiki encyclopaedia, virtual worlds created by users, social computing networks and image systems for sharing videos and photographs.  Is it any wonder that information professionals are, despite their deep natural understanding for information issues, lost in a virtual Sargosso Sea. 

At first I was worried that the attendees didn't fully understand this technology, but as the evening progressed I was re-invigorated to learn that on the whole, information professionals do want to learn and engage with this technology. And that is good news, because if the information community does not, it will lose out, because the next generation of information users will interact with information in a way so radically different from the way we do.

The first step along the rocky road to Web 2.0 is admitting what your level of understanding is, and I have nothing but admiration for those information professionals that admitted to a packed room that they were not part of this next generation, because by doing so, the information community can step back and take a look at what is required to fully embrace the technology and the all important information professionals.

In a wide ranging conversation Forum host Euan Semple asks the panellist what their assumptions and predictions are for the future of Web 2.0.

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer of Sun Microsystems begins with the idea that a something starts out as a wild idea and then becomes less contentious as it is discussed through comments, and wiki tools, you get the feeling that he sees this as the concrete that will ensure the foundations of Web 2.0 are strong.

Phipps describes Atom as the thinking man's RSS and he thinks forums, blogs and wikis will have Atom feeds. Semple adds how you have lots of little things that no one pays any attention to within an organisation, but then it builds up. Phipps responds that all of Sun's tools have tagging tools that do just this.

Nick Ward, media analyst with Panmure Gordon & Co, takes on the debate about where will Web 2.0 go as a business. Phipps finds it difficult to believe the profits of these companies will be difficult realise. So far for these companies to be floated on the stock market would be difficult and points to the fact that Last.fm and Friends Reunited were bought by large existing vendors, CBS and ITV respectively.

Thomson-Reuters deal is a sign of businesses having to restructure.  The city is sceptical are worried whether the ad supported model for the likes of Myspace really has legs to it. I simply think the whole issue of the business model for these and the loyalty towards general social media sites will struggle and it’s the more specialist ones that will triumph. There are a lot of B2B businesses that operate through jargon and barriers and they will have a great deal to lose through transparency from Web 2.0, law firms and broker firms are amongst those that could be threatened.

People want the name of a very big bank like UBS in on a deal so that if it goes wrong they can say, "well we had the best people in the world on this," but I would argue there are a few years while the barriers to remain up.

Semple says he would pay to be part of high quality networks, the ad revenue can go, Ward reminds him that subs revenue model is very slow to develop.

Marc Monseau, PR person for drug giants Johnson & Johnson thinks there has to be some guidance, Phipps adds that Sun bloggers all have to go through some training. "I see that as being one of the advantages, you then have a well informed workforce and that has benefits," Monseau said. Ward believes because it is public, it can make people more sensible, it is self regulating. Semple reminds everyone that it is easy to consider Web 2.0 as geeky for teenagers, yet there is an audit trail, which is a corporate thing.

People are using Facebook to create and manage their own identity and it means they cannot be treated as demographics anymore. Phipps agrees, all of the internet's evils is because it doesn't have strong identity mechanisms and is looking forward to strong identity, which he believes will damage spam and other areas.

Sun has a lot of tools being developed for identity management. Ward adds that mass culture is no longer needed to make a profit, discussing the long tail. Instead all of us watch and read block-busters and absorb all its marketing, we can all indulge our individual tastes and there will be greater cultural diversity. He thinks it is already happening. Phipps responds that the long tail is also about monopolising niches, but Ward doesn't believe that its all niche businesses pandering to Rupert Murdoch, because it will be easier to make and distribute products and make a profit from them.

Adriana Lukas believes it is all about focussing on the individual and the organisation will follow.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is closing in on a deal to buy the Dow Jones media and financial information group according to the weekend's news reports. News aggregation service Factiva is part of the Dow Jones group following last year's acquisition of the remaining half from Reuters.

At the centre of Murdoch's bid is the Wall Street Journal newspaper, which "Dirty Digger" as Murdoch is affectionately known, covets. The Financial Times believes Australian Murdoch will raise his bid for the group to the expected $5bn. A series of alternative bidders may also surface, including Thomson-Reuters rival Bloomberg, General Electric, Yahoo and even the FT's parent company Pearson.

A potential stumbling block for Murdoch has been his reputation for meddling in editorial matters. The Bancroft family, which holds 64% of the voting power at Dow Jones has now agreed to meet with Murdoch to discuss these issues and it is reported that Murdoch is minded to offer the family a seat on the News Corp board, his news empire.

The Wall Street Journal is revered for its editorial independence and there is great concern that ownership by Murdoch will erode this.

Unlike News Corp, the Dow Jones group has been very successful at the transition from print to online information delivery, with the Wall Street Journal charging online users, just as it does offline. Murdoch's online attempts have so far not been as successful and he could benefit from an infusion of Wall Street ideas.

Acquisitive journal, books and business-to-business publisher Informa has acquired market analysts Datamonitor for £502m in cash today.

Under the terms of the agreement Informa will pay 650p per Datamonitor share. Informa, famed for publishing Lloyds List, has been on an acquisition spree of late, acquiring Triangle Journals, Institute of Physics book publishing arm and IIR Holdings in the last two years.

Datamonitor provides market intelligence and forecasts in six areas: automotive, consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare and telecoms and technology. Together the two companies expect to make savings of £3m. David Gilbertson Informa MD describes Datamonitor as a company that "slots" into Informa's existing offerings and will increase their range of products in those key six markets.

Datamonitor Michael Danson told the Daily Telegraph he founded the information company in 1990 on credit cards from a flat in West Hampstead.

With the ink barely dry on the sale of Thomson Learning, the Thomson Corporation has succeeded, barring regulatory problems, in taking over news provider Reuters. The deal worth £8.7 billion will create the world’s largest news and financial data provider. 

The BBC claims the deal is not popular amongst Reuters reporters and some users because Reuters legendary independence is  now in question.

By merging together Thomson-Reuters, as the new company will be know, has leap forged market dominator Bloomberg, the US provider owned by the mayor of New York. Michael Bloomberg.

Reuters and Thomson believe the tie up will create £250 million in savings, although no specific plans on these savings have  been released yet. A statement did highlight that together Thomson and Reuters will be in a better position to compete with Bloomberg. Niall Fitzgerald, Reuters chairman said in a statement,  “The shared expertise and complementary strengths of these two companies makes for a strategically compelling and financially attractive combination.” 

Reuters, Thomson and rival Bloomberg compete fiercely in the financial terminal information market used by stock exchange traders.

Great Britain

’s Reuters is also famed for its news agency that supplies news coverage to the world’s newspapers and broadcasters. Bloomberg has 33% of the terminal market, according to analysts figures out in April 2007, with Reuters holding 23% and Thomson 11%.

The new company will be listed  on both the

London

and

Toronto

stock exchanges and will have an annual revenue of around $12 billion.

According to the BBC, the merger could damage Reuters standing as an independent source of news information. “For more than 150 years, Reuters has been one of the great independent news organisations. No longer,” said Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor on the Radio 4 Today programme. “Reuters’ independence has been guaranteed by the structure of the business, which prohibits any individual from owning 15% or more of the company.”

He went on to say that Reuters journalists are unhappy with the deal because the “prohibition is being waved for the Thomson family” which will now own 53% of the new larger business.

One clear winner is Tom Glocer who has led Reuters back to health and presided over the sell off of its half of the Factiva business. Glocer will now take over the helm of Thomson-Reuters when Richard Harrington, Thomson president and chief executive retires.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has his sights set on the Dow Jones conglomerate which includes news aggregator Factiva. When a newspaper tycoon like Murdock looks to add another company and newspaper brands to his stable, the conversation is understandably dominated by the newspapers involved. But the strength of the Dow Jones group online, in my opinion has a lot more to do with Murdoch's ambitions than owning another newspaper.

He's admitted it himself, Murdoch has yet to make the most of the internet and the new information medium has dented his newspapers and television stations. Dow Jones meanwhile has a strong web strategy. The Wall Street Journal is a subscription access newspaper and a successful one at that. Factiva, now fully owned by Dow Jones has a wealth of technology and knowledge on extracting value from the web.

If Murdoch's News Corporation could adopt the technology behind Factiva, and learn Dow Jones' tricks of the trade in charging access to news the results could be staggering.

No doubt the news today that Reuters and Thomson are considering a tie up will add weight to the case for acquisition, the only question is, will the Bancroft family, which owns the majority of the shares sell?

Every time I use Wikipedia I discover a new widget or facet to it that I really enjoy. I enjoy it because these facets make my user experience better.

In juxtaposition to this I have been talking to publishers about the changing shape of the market and how they do feel threatened by Wikipedia. To combat this, publishers are, rightly, publishing promotional material to educate students and users to skip the fast food Wiki diet and tuck into some healthy peer-reviewed material from the library.

All well and good, but as our attendance to recent conferences regarding greener business practices demonstrated, telling people to turn the telly off standby just doesn't work. Instead we have to develop integrated processes that subtly change their behaviour by meeting them where they want and making their existing behaviour greener.

I can't help feeling that our own community needs to do something similar. IWR doesn't want to rubbish the teaching of good information literacy, but we can't help feeling that this education and an improvement in the information should take place within Wikipedia.

Now, before you all shoot me down, let me explain. Wikipedia is a community, not just of those that put time and effort into editing it, but also the users. Therefore the best place to meet your perspective users, introduce them to your content and advise them on better information gathering practices is at Wikipedia. Information professionals and information providers should be playing a considerable part in improving the content on Wikipedia; you can cite their own content and generate leads and users from there.

Wikipedia is in many ways a platform, it has a host of information within it, and it seamlessly leads users to other sources within and beyond Wikipedia, so therefore the information industry should accept and embrace Wikipedia. After all it would be a waste of time telling anyone not to use Google as the web search engine of choice today, Google is a platform and it has become a part of our landscape. Wikipedia has the same potential, IWR knows publishing houses in the business area that are updating entries for areas they are specialists in and have gained around 200 extra visitors a month from Wikipedia alone and the subsequent revenue.

Environmental issues are top of the agenda, so much so that even the Conservative Party has noticed them from deep within Notting Hill. To some of us, the affect of the environment is blindingly obvious, it is after all, well all around us. But business and politics have, until recently chosen to ignore the environment.

Now though the effects of climate change are beginning to affect businesses. Nothing gets attention more than a cost. Insurance companies must be beginning to wonder about how many Boscastle floods, or rogue typhoons in London and Birmingham their profit margins can absorb.

The good news is reaction is beginning to take place, but its not an easy issue to understand. Within the green agenda are many debates, these range from oil company sponsored "science" which denies many of the evidence based claims about climate change, right through to environmentalists campaigning against wind farms (sounds strange doesn't it) because they can damage bird migration routes.

When issues are too complex there is a danger that businesses will avoid them until it is forced upon them, which is often too late. Information, as we know, is the answer to these difficult issues, the trouble is, what information do you turn to in order to help your organisation go green?  The May issue of IWR tries to help by giving some pointers.

Tomorrow is the closing date for the 2007 Brit Blog Awards. No industry can exist these days without an award ceremony it seems. Sadly these awards, sponsored by web search provider Ask and organised by one of London's free newspapers has failed to recognise that blogging has taken off and offers a whole array of communities the chance to communicate.

There are categories for technology, sport, fashion, politics, arts & entertainment; travel, youth and weird and wonderful.

Perhaps because the organisers, the Metro newspaper and its parent the derisive Daily Mail have a poor track record at good news reporting there is no category for news, nor is there a category for business blogs, science and culture. Any one who has picked up either of these papers will be aware of their inabilities in these areas; and therefore it is perhaps sensible that they don't try to judge quality bloggers in these areas.

But the truth is, blogging has become a serious platform for creating, sharing and delivering information and if it is to have an awards ceremony, it needs one that has credibility.

Germany's Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the national funding body for scientific, technical and academic research has struck a licensing deal with British engineering and management academic publishers Emerald Group Publishing.

All registered students of higher education, faculty and research based government employees will now be given access to all Emerald journals online. The deal, negotiated by the Universitäts-und Stadtbibliothek Köln (USB)and Informationszentrum Sozialwissenschaften (IZ) provides access to content published between January 1994 and December 2005. 

Under the terms of the agreement 339 universities in Germany will gain access to Emerald titles, which include popular academic journals Management Decision, the European Journal of Marketing and engineering  title Soldering & Surface Mount Technology.

The British Library has today revealed its new public facing website, which dominated by a new search engine.

According to the BL the new site has been developed following research amongst users, who reported that they were finding it difficult to find content on the site. Now the simple search engine searches the site's 10,000 web pages, 13 million records from within the catalogues of the BL, the Collect Britain picture library and the pay as you go journals database.

The site is very clean in design, with a grey bar denoting the different departments of the BL that a user may need to use. Search results are delivered in a series of coloured boxes according to whether they are a web page, record from the catalogue or journal article. Overall the site appears to be an improvement.

Today's headlines about Britain failing its children highlight the dangers of international reports as sources of information. The Unicef report has rocketed to the front pages of just about every newspaper, yet the report provides little background information on the real issues of poverty that still dog this country from the last century, as a result these issues are not debated properly and the problems remain.

Although useful, international comparisons can be misleading. The top 10 countries have little in common with the UK other than being in Europe. Germany is probably the closest country in the list to the UK in terms of size, population, demographics and recent history. It pulls in 11th. Like the UK it has undergone a difficult post-war history and its recent re-unification is putting the economy under similar levels of strain as the UK experienced in the last half of the 20th Century.

Reports like Child Poverty in Perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries, grab headlines and make for shocking reading. To newspapers like the Daily Mail this type of report is a gift horse. The Mail takes glory in blaming any one and everyone for problems, but is too cowardly to do any hard work towards fighting a problem. Yet the causes of the problems this report rightly points out have been with this country for two generations. There is a plethora of information on poverty and alcohol problems that make good newsprint. But alas, the focus of the Mail, Express and often the better newspapers is towards the Royal Family and house prices.

IWR doesn't doubt the veracity of this report and welcomes it. One of the difficult to live with, but great attributes of this country is that everything is aired in the open and we don't live a myth pretending problems don't exist. But as experts point out, the report uses a wide range of information that is out of date in some areas, which damages the credibility of the report and diminishes the value of information. The report should be welcomed though and action should be taken.

Where Child Poverty in Perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries; and many international reports add to the problem is that they add to the perceived image of the UK being rich. Yes we are rich, when compared to Bangladesh. But to pretend that there isn't poverty, severe poverty, in this country is a major failing. In my living memory there has been rampant unemployment, severe social issues between races and a clear north/south divide that is only just beginning to be erased. Yet these issues are ignored and instead we waste information and talk up a few acceptable train and road delays because of ice and snow as if it’s a catastrophe.

Sadly the news agenda that follows reports like this are quick to blame the government of the day, despite one of the authors pointing towards child poverty from 1979. The report makes some very good points about families not eating their meals together and a number of basic problems in our social outlook. These are not problems caused by a government alone, we are all personally responsible for our daily lives and cannot blame everything on Whitehall. Listening to the Today programme this morning certainly made me consider the value of my family and how I will ensure I'm home for more meal times from now on.

It’s survey time again. The IWR reader survey is your chance to have your say about Information World Review and the general state of the information industry. Oh, and you can could win anything from a Creative Zen MP3 player (pictured) for downloading digital music and podcasts to a Nintendo DS games console (we all need to relax) or a DAB radio, thanks to our sponsors business information specialists Bureau van Dijk, providers of the Mint service.

We’ve split this year’s survey into areas to make it easier to understand and faster to fill out. As well as letting us know how you see the state of the information industry, we want to know more about you, the reader. We are not profiling readers to sell their personal details to a credit card
company, but the more we know about you as people as well as professionals the better we can make IWR. Questions range from associations you are members of, salary ranges, the size of team you work with and type of organisation.

We want to know what information management issues are of most concern to you, whether it’s free information or document management.

We also want to know more about how you use IWR, both the print publication, as well as our online titles iwr.co.uk and the IWR blog. No company or product can successfully develop without the input of its users and the more you let us know, the more we can do to make the product better for you.
You can fill out the survey and enter the prize draw by logging on to: http://www.cdsonline1.co.uk/vnu_online/IWR/iwr_2007-01-29.aspx.

In a briefing paper submitted to the Chancellor Gordon Brown and fellow MP’s, British Library (BL) officials have outlined the serious damage that will be inflicted on the institution if it is forced to make cuts in government enforced plans, writes Daniel Griffin.

Reports from The Guardian newspaper today suggest that the cuts could be up to five to 7% for the publicly funded institution and would entail a threat to key projects and services. To offset any decline in funds, the briefing paper by library officials estimated as a worse case scenario, charges would have to implemented on the use of reading rooms, used by 400,000 people a year, opening hours may have to be cut back, two galleries may close and spending on research journals and books would also face a decline in funds.

Just as significantly, plans for a digital library would suffer a massive blow, “We will be unable to fulfil our statutory obligations for legal deposit of electronic material. UK digital information will be lost for future generations” the BL paper states. Supporters of the library came out in force, with Python, presenter and patron, Michael Palin reported as saying “This is one of the great storehouses of world culture, and what I have seen of their archive material, both photographic and written is quite dazzling.” Lord Bragg added the library “needs to be nourished, not hobbled.” Accusations of “cultural vandalism” and “madness personified” were also flung in the government’s direction.

Responding to the barge of criticism, the newspaper quoted a spokeswoman from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as saying “We are working with the sector on business planning,” “We want to get the best value for money. There has been 10 years of huge increases in funding for the arts.”

Will Digital Readers, change the information world? IWR plans to find out by ditching its paper based books for a week and living with digital paper. iLiad, the digital paper device from iRex Technologies is on "road test" for a week.

Back in the dot com days people said the book was dead in the face of the internet, instead Jeff Bezos proved the opposite to be true and books have never been stronger, thanks to Amazon re-igniting people's interests. But Amazon is a story of increased access to printed books, not a radical change in the relationship and experience users have with a book. Digital paper promises to be that major change that technology has been promising for some time.

IWR isn't a hardware led title, but if digital paper takes off, it could change the information landscape you our readers work in. Digital paper claims to be easy to read indoors and out, and allows a user to scribble notes on top of your texts without permanent damage. It not only stores a library full of books on its hard drive, but you can download and add newspapers and if you are so inclined (or busy) work documents.

We will let you know in the next issue what we think, but in the mean time, we would love to hear your opinions on digital paper and digital books

Here's an article to send around to the management team that just may get them to invest in your department and in research and development.  Today's Financial Times profiles how Chinese scientists are making massive leaps in terms of invention and the all important knowledge economy.

The dragon's lab - how China is rising through the innovation ranks details how in 2006 China overtook Japan in research spending rankings and is now in second place and closing in on a weakening USA. China also overtook engineering experts the Germans last year in terms of the number of patents filed and is now in the top five.

Not only is R&D getting lots of Chinese funding, so is education to produce the researchers with the number of university students quadrupling to 16m, 352,000 of which are engineers, compared to just 137,000 in the USA.

Multi-national companies are keen to exploit this interest as well because Chinese scientists earn just 20% of what a western scientist takes home.

There are problems though, corruption such as the recent case of a dean at Jiatong University claiming to have developed a microchip that can process 200m instructions per second had in-fact scraped the name off a Motorola processor and the report highlight a number of studies and experts that show China is not an innovative country.

Stewart has now moved onto knowledge management (km). He's using a case study from a copier machine company that had a knowledge competition to answer questions.

The second placed person is the most interesting, a single mum that sat next to the winner, a rebel. An example of tacit knowledge, the most difficult problem for KM is how you manage tacit knowledge, he says. The work of km has gine into explicit knowledge and not people with tacit knowledge. This has created databases and information centres that no one goes to.

Managing explicit knowledge leaves you unprepared for a world of change, as you are looking at the information of the past.

Challenge for the next five years is the latest slide, the challenges are:

1 speed - "the world never slows down, your email fills, and markets are now 24/7. As things speed up you are more likely to make a mistake". The business challenges of speed is really interesting, he says and is inferring this is a role for information professionals

2 Customer power - "every insustry I know is being taken over by its customers, how do you manage that?" "Customers know more and mopre, the price game of poker has gone away. French cement company LeFarge has a great KM enviroment using councils, but the backbone is the customer visit that involves interviews, sales people are amazed that price is never mentioned."

3 Low cost competition - the threat of low price start ups or just good enough challengers

4 decision making under uncertainty and management without supervision: management has been about controlling risk, but there are risks that you cannot control, you cannot put odds on it, he says. "Most of what we know about management doesn't help us, increasingly this is the world we live in." Tech means we are more powerful individuals at work.

He has gone back to what creates the knowledge and then you can use to support your organisation, his opening theme.

We have to follow the money in the knowledge economy, opens the Editor of the Havard Business Review Thomas A Stewart. Knowledge is as fundimental as electricity.

He talks of knowledge as something we buy and sell, it is all sounding very American and capitalist, but the auditorium is full and listening attentivly.

His slide breaks information down into three strategies:
1 instilled knowledge (smart products)
2 distilled knowledge (knowledge as a product)
3 Black box strategies (knowledge services)

Discusses how different sectors have become knowledge/information suppliers through re-sellling the information they create in their main business, "selling what they know" for examp[le shipping insurers, bankers and office suppliers who have all become information vendors.

Mastercard used anti-fraud department providing information from knowledge collected as "you know this [in one department], why don't we".

Instilled knowledge, is information you "stick into something", ie a mobile phone collects data on numbers, times of calls, mobiles are knowledge products, companies can stick more and more knowledge into the devices they sell.

Every company needs to have an explicit conversation about its information.

Today's November issue front page story on the Labour government planning to reduce access to public information, is a sad tale of a government out of touch and the mis-use of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The box text on Frivolous Requests is both funny and saddening. Using FoI to trace bachelors within the Hampshire constabulary, or the number of times people have been charged with having sex with animals in Wale,  merely adds fuel to the argument of this government that it is correct in reducing our free rights to information.  There could be a genuine reason behind researching how much is spent on a particular brand of chocolate, but why was it narrowed down to one brand?

If there are to be changes made to FoI we need to see a much wider range of statistics on how the act is being used, not just a set of hand picked queries bound to anger the readership of the Daily Mail. 

This government has no respect for the public and their right to information, that was clearly seen in the watered down nature of the original FoI, and now they plan to reduce our rights even further. Information professionals need to be front line fighters to ensure the information they manage is freely available to the public and not abused by the Labour party.

Market intelligence vendor Global Insight has been increasing its tracking of the energy sector in Europe, as well as coverage of environmentally-sensitive industries like the automotive and transport sectors.

A new Global Insight service, the European Regulatory Outlook for Alternative Fuels, provides management briefings for those responsible for developing automotive products or automotive-related services.

European Regulatory Outlook for Alternative Fuels will provide background on underlying political debates and legislative developments that affect the industry across the European Union, with particular focus on six member states – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

The service will closely track the regulatory situation with regard to alternative fuels, providing overviews by the four main fuel types (biodiesel, ethanol, CNG, and LPG).

The service is offered under the generic title Sustainable Mobility, which is defined as providing for "the safe freedom of movement for people and goods in ways that use renewable sources of energy while creating no adverse impacts on the Earth and its environment".

Current projects include research into potential investments and/or initiatives that could reduce car-related CO2 emissions, and a paper on the likelihood of the various alternative powertrain technologies achieving technical and market success in the 2007/08 to 2025 timeframe.

The new initiatives come in the wake of the appointment of three senior energy sector experts – Scott Foster, Andrew Ellis and David Callanan – all co-founders of European analysis and forecasting firm ECON Energia.

All three have senior roles within Global insight dvisions: Foster is now managing director of Global Power, Ellis is a principal with the European Energy Practice, and Callanan is managing director of business development for the Energy Practice team.