Christmas break

Uncooked Data is taking a break for Christmas and will be back in the New Year with more events news, library ideas and generally relevant stuff. Watch out for a flurry of activity though over on phdinprogress as my second year end rapidly approaches.

I’ve got one last thing to share – a website I came across yesterday when looking for some stats on the growth of the internet. It’s a simple site that interests the geek in me. 22bn pages, that’s a lot. I wonder what percentage are funny cat pictures?

Filed under: Personal narrative, Christmas, stats

Outsourcing

Interesting, nay,  some may say bleak news from Legal Week today on Beachcroft & TLT’s outsourcing deal. On the one hand, one has to face business realities, and this is the world we live in. On the other, the thing that got me narked is the quote from Beachcroft’s managing partner. He says ‘”The information resources we buy are a commodity.” Yes, they are. Books, journals, law reports, databases: all just stuff that appears on your desk or your desktop.

I wonder what these firms’ lawyers would say if their clients (I could research who the clients are, but I don’t have time) referred to the legal advice they receive as a commodity. Would they point to the specialist legal skills that helped prepare the advice and suggest that there was rather more to it than meets the eye? Or would they say, “it’s a fair cop, guvn’r, it’s all straight from PLC ‘?

Filed under: Uncategorized, outsourcing

Reed Smith on Social Media

Reed Smith, the firm for whom I work has recently published a white paper on social media and the opportunities it offers. It’s been out a while but I have just got round to looking at it. It’s from the US offices, so their focus is slightly different, but they offer some interesting pointers:

“Every lawyer needs to take some important steps if he or she is going to be prepared for the new media revolution. Here are a few:

1. Read this White Paper
2. Surf the social media sites and read their terms and conditions
3. Join Facebook and LinkedIn and perhaps other social media sites
4. Review each site’s terms and conditions 
5. Audit your company’s social media programs. Find out what your company and your employees are doing. Do they have any customized pages on platforms like Twitter and Facebook? If so, make sure they’re complying with the site’s terms and conditions, as well as your corporate communications policies. Are they blogging? Are employees using social media during work hours? 
6. Find out what your competitors and your customers are doing 
7. Consider adopting a social media policy for both internal and external communications. But be careful to keep on strategy, don’t ban what you stop, and keep in mind the basic rules of engage, participate, influence, and monitor.
8.  Bookmark websites and blogs that track legal developments in social media”

No-one’s commented on this blog so far so I am guessing we’ve not quite implemented #5 here just yet, or at least, I’m under the radar (this may change things!)  Our London Library has its own Twitter identity so we can follow various interesting sources of information (well, if you think the BBA Libor rate is interesting).  Yet somehow I do feel guilty about scrolling through the Twitter items at the enquiry desk.  Still waiting to be challenged on what can be interpreted as a waste of time…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Online, Parliament & SLA

I spent a very pleasant afternoon at Online Information last week on the SLA stand. I enjoyed chatting with existing and potential members and it was particularly nice to be able to help promote the Early Career Conference Awards. [These have just been announced for 2010; it was strange yesterday seeing my own quote in the publicity coming in via my Loughborough University email.]

I didn’t attend any of the free or paid conference sessions; had this not been a week off dedicated to my PhD, (see progress here). I would have liked to, but thinking hard about something other than my methodology wasn’t really on the cards.  Feedback seemed positive, though, from the people I did speak with.  VIP have reported on the free sessions, many involving SLA members.

After the conference I was privileged to be included in the visit to the Houses of Parliament. Darron Chapman had arranged this for us via Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP. So rather than the standard tour we were given a highly personal account of the workings of the Parliamentary scene. Of course we did visit the Commons and the Lords; both magnificent chambers. And as I am sure everyone says for the first time, both considerably smaller than they appear in pictures. I spotted the Rt Hon Member for Maidstone & the Weald,  but also discovered that as a Radio 4 listener I am at a disadvantage; I hardly recognise anyone’s face, but I’d know their voice at a hundred paces…

It was a lovely evening and it was particularly nice to be able to help repay the hospitality that Anne Caputo had shown the four of us ECCA winners in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Moving on to dinner, I had a great conversation about the Alignment project with Anne and Stephen Abram; we as a table of SLA Europe Board members also generally put the world to rights.  All in all, a memorable afternoon – thanks to Darron and TFPL for arranging the Westminster visit in particular, and Penny for generally organising us all.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Free vs Fee: Economist article

Further to the debate on the viability of paid news content on the internet, there’s an interesting piece of research reported in the Economist.  (Newspapers online: the promiscuity problem. December 5th, p35).  Media consultants asked people which newspapers they bought, and which they read online. Turns out people will go anywhere. Daily Telegraph readers spend more time online reading the Sun or the Mirror than they do their own Telegraph.  Given the massive investment the Telegraph made in its online publication, that’s really rather interesting.

So this has implications, does it not? If your paywall model is based on the assumption of loyalty, then all well and good. This is probably what works for the FT. But if it’s just common-or-garden news or TV, and readers will go anywhere,  people aren’t necessarily going to pay for content if there is a free alternative available.

Also covered by the Guardian. I think I am about a week late in my post on this, but last week I was buried in PhD research.

Filed under: Uncategorized