Editorial

Citation

Ashcroft, L. (2007), "Editorial", New Library World, Vol. 108 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2007.072108gaa.001

Editorial

A huge database is starting to unite the collective intelligence of Web 2.0 and the structure of the semantic web. www.freebase.com is collecting data from all over the internet to build a massive, collaboratively-edited database of cross-linked data “about film, sports, politics, music, science and everything else all connected together”. In her article, Sadeh provides insight into the changes that are occurring in the expectations and behaviour of researchers seeking scholarly information and the ways in which libraries and vendors are addressing these changes in light of the availability of Web 2.0 technologies. This paper provides a comprehensive, fully accessible overview of Web 2.0 tools as the enabling technology which is moving “vendors an libraries toward a new-generation, user-centric library experience”.

The LISU Annual Library Statistics show a positive picture in terms of higher education with resources increasing in line with student numbers generally, if not with inflation. Study spaces and opening hours are up overall, and library use is increasing overall. However, there is great variation in all these measures between institutions. The article from Yi and Herlihy demonstrates interesting employment of usage data within a higher education library in assessing student and faculty searching activities. Their article reports on an assessment of student and faculty use of electronic scholarly resources both before and after the implementation of an open-URL link resolver. Results show that the implementation of an open-URL link resolver has directly contributed to usage increase in the short and long periods under study. Usage patterns also indicate the technology has indirect impact.

Last year, Phil Bradley highlighted in his blog an article on the ten reasons why librarians should use Ask.com instead of Google (www.philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_;weblog/2006/09/10_reasons_lbr.html). These reasons include Ask.com’s “smart answers”, which provide quick factual answers to questions together with simple options for narrowing or expanding a search. Sveum’s article reports on a project between Library and Information Science students at Oslo University College and the Norwegian online reference service, Biblioteksvar.no (Ask the Library (ATL)). The performance of the students in actual reference work is evaluated, and Sveum discusses possible reasons for the result that the students’ answers had the same level of quality as the responses supplied by professional, experienced librarians working on the ATL service, confirming the importance of the reference interview for increasing the quality of responses.

The Chartered Institute of Information professionals (CILIP) has produced a comprehensive resource on ethics. “Information Ethics” is a joint initiative of InfoResponse Associates and Oxford Business Intelligence to support CILIP. The main role of the Information Ethics site (www.infoethics.org.uk) is to offer a point of reference for CILIP members to relate their practical experiences to CILIP’s Ethical Principles and Code of Professional Practice, providing editorial commentary on key issues, and facilitating member discussion of ethical dilemmas in the workplace. Ethical reference practice is the topic of Ulvik and Salvesen’s article, in which they aim to provide a better understanding of the ethical implications of the reference interview. By analysing reference conversations from an ethical perspective, they reveal that increased ethical consciousness among the librarians clearly would have improved the quality of the actual transactions.

Dr Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library, posts diary notes. Highlighted in these diary notes are some of the perils faced by the staff of the National Library – assassination, aerial bombardment, death threats, plunder and street fighting. Dr Eskander closed the National Library for three weeks during November/December last year in the wake of increasing sectarian violence that resulted in the death of several staff members. In his article, Garcia considers the destruction of cultural heritage, examining examples in the twentieth century of nations’ repositories that were purposefully destroyed, and pays particular attention to the problems of Iraq. The response by librarians and archivists to the destruction of Iraq’s historical collections and the actions taken are also discussed.

In the UK, the Society of College, National and University Libraries (Sconul) and CILIP’s Library and Information Research Group (Lirg) started an Impact Initiative in 2003. The objective was to develop methodologies to enable higher education libraries to assess their impact. The initiative has followed a facilitated action research model, in which participants undertook their own evaluation with support from experienced researchers. It seems that the initiative was successful in developing methods and skills for assessing impact and in promoting evidence-based practice, but was less successful in developing impact factors that could be used widely within the sector. The article by Chu discusses a comparative case study of academic libraries in two different countries. Whilst the libraries are comparable in many ways, such as student population size and number of librarians, the services, usage and collections at each library are distinct. Chu finds that Chilean students need the physical library more because there are simply no other resources available, while American students have more opportunities available primarily by having more widespread access to computers.

Linda Ashcroft