Overview of content related to 'rfid'

Book Review: Using Mobile Technology to Deliver Library Services

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:05:05 +0000

Fiona MacLellan reviews a practical guide to mobile technology and its use in delivering library services.

My initial thought upon seeing Using Mobile Technology to Deliver Library Services was available for review was that it was a topic of which I have limited knowledge – but part of its appeal was that I could learn about a new subject. After I registered to review the book I then had second thoughts. I began to worry that the book would be too advanced for me.

Internet Librarian International Conference 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Claire Tylee, Katrin Flemming and Elly Cope report on the two-day Internet Librarian International Conference focusing on innovation and technology in the information profession, held in London on 14-15 October 2010.

Table of Contents

Thursday 14 October
Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

Thursday 14 October

Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

A102: Future of Academic Libraries

Mal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)

Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)

Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus.

Don't You Know Who I Am?

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

John Paschoud looks into identity and access management in the pre-digital and digital age, and describes how the JISC Identity Management Toolkit can help us manage identities better.

Way back in prehistory, when libraries were buildings with books in, identity management was a pretty simple challenge for them. A library was either truly 'public', in which case you did not care who came in (the more people, the more popular you were, which was 'a good thing'). Otherwise, you had to be a member, and the security officer on the door knew your face, or you could show him (it was usually a 'him', then) a card or something to prove you were a member.

For a library to trust you to take some of its books away with you (without hiding them under your coat), you usually did have to be a member, and becoming a member entailed some sort of registration process in which you might have to prove who you were with some official-looking document. The details of each member could be recorded in some sort of register, and a card issued. Effectively taking someone's membership away again, for whatever reason, was a bit more difficult - unless there was an opportunity to wrest the precious library card from them physically!

Admissions Rules

A few years ago now our Projects Team at the London School of Economics (LSE) Library [1] was involved in documenting and analysing the admissions rules of academic libraries in London. This was before our own library agreed to provide full access to 'the general public' (in return for Heritage Lottery grants towards a £20m building project), but I was intrigued to find that our own admissions rules included all sorts of bipartite agreements with institutions such as Kings College London (proximity, I guess) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (a lot of common-interest post-colonial subject material in each of our collections).

The most interesting 'right of access' I found in our admissions rules was 'accredited diplomatic staff of a recognised foreign country, attached to an embassy, consulate or diplomatic mission in London'. I never actually observed anyone trying to exercise this particular right (I am excused counter duties at the library because I do not know enough about books), but I was aware that my colleagues who did serve on the Admissions Desk rota were a wonderfully diverse lot; with collectively far more knowledge of international and political affairs than this duty required. I imagined the possible scene of an intending visitor from some small state (in some dispute with the United Nations, perhaps) being rebuffed by one of our Library Assistants because he was not accredited by a recognised foreign country. I am sure all our LAs are much too diplomatic themselves for anything like that to actually happen now; but it did get me thinking.

What we also discovered in the course of the same investigation was the great number of other academic libraries to which I was allowed admission, on the strength of my status as a staff member at LSE. We decided to test this out with a small 'mystery shopper' exercise. Having retrieved a copy of the access rules for South Bank University Library (with, listed somewhere on page 2, the clause allowing LSE staff members reciprocal access) I duly set off on the 171 bus, armed with the plastic card that identified me as such (with the usual un-fetching photo and the magnetic strip that magically opened the turnstile at the LSE Library when I came into the office every morning). There were two serious flaws in this plan. The first was due to the fact that single-sided photocopying was clearly the norm at South Bank, and the otherwise very polite security officer at the Perry Library was only in possession of page 1 of their admissions rules, and so he couldn't see a reason to let me in. I would like to believe that the second flaw was a result of my personal fame in the library world; but it was really because quite a lot of librarians tend to circulate around jobs in London universities, and a former LSE Library colleague was currently managing the counters there, recognised me and told the officer to let me in. The project team decided that I would need some serious disguises before being allowed out to do any more mystery shopping!

The 2010 Information Architecture Summit

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Elizabeth Coburn reports on ASIS&T's 11th Annual Information Architecture Summit, held in Phoenix, Arizona over 9-11 April 2010.

Book Review: Information Tomorrow

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Lina Coelho is delighted by this pick-and-mix collection of reflections on the technological future of libraries.

The 16 chapters of this book focus on different aspects of the technological and societal changes that interact to shape our institutions. Some pieces read as manifestos, some are polemical, some are technical. But there is something for everyone who is interested in the future of libraries. This work asserts that, in order to succeed, whilst re-inventing ourselves and our presence, we have to remain true to the basic principles of librarianship. We have to continue to meet our users' expectations and create spaces, both physical and virtual, which appeal to them.

KIM Project Conference 2008

editor — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Alexander Ball provides an overview of the Knowledge and Information Management Through Life Project Conference held in April, 2008.

Book Review: Ambient Findability

editor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin reviews a book with interesting content despite a few rough edges.

Ambient Findability is to all external appearances an O'Reilly book. It boasts the familiar line drawing of an animal, on this occasion a Verreaux's sifaka, a large and engagingly thoughtful-looking lemur. Judging the book by its cover would suggest that it be placed on the shelf together with O'Reilly's classic line of reference books, upon which developers all over the world depend for sparsely presented, accurate information and advice. But this book is of a different breed.

Search Engines: Where We Were, Are Now, and Will Ever Be

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Phil Bradley takes a look at the development of search engines over the lifetime of Ariadne and points to what we might anticipate in the years to come.

Unfortunately, I was unable to contribute to the decennial issue at the editors' invitation due to a family bereavement, but since it was such a good idea to take a look back at where we were, and then relate it to the present day and beyond, I did not want to miss the opportunity in this issue.

Public Libraries: 2003, 2004: A Backward Glance and Thoughts on the Future

editor — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Penny Garrod looks at some of the broader issues affecting public libraries and information professionals.

Spam, privacy and the law

Another year gone and the millennium celebrations and Y2K bug already seem to belong to some dim and distant technological past.

As 2003 drew to a close the spotlight was on the use and abuse of Information Technology: never was so much havoc caused by so few. The language employed by the media to describe events in the online world reflected global concerns about warfare and disease. Viruses, worms and trojan horses 'infected' and 'invaded' international networks, and a 'war' on spam was declared.