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Deadline |
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October 2005
Editorial This is the last Deadline to be produced by the Guardian research department. After nearly five years and 18 issues, we are handing over the editorial reins to Paul Fairclough at Time Out. Like all the great publications we changed our format, but it came with a promise to our readers that the content would remain the same. However, over the years the content of Deadline has changed. A glance at any issue from the early 1990s will show the pages full of news about the latest technological developments and products. For many AUKML members Deadline was their main source of information about the industry as well as providing news about meetings and the conference. Of course this was a time before the widespread use of email. Now, there are all manner of websites and blogs that keep us informed on a daily basis. The AUKML listserv alerts members about meetings long before the newsletter appears. As a result, Deadline has had to offer something different which has meant more features about the actual membership. This might be something as simple as news about a job move, someone writing about their workplace or a meeting review. After all, one of the benefits of AUKML is networking and the exchange of news (and gossip). So, for the final time, please keep on sending in news and story ideas. Many AUKML members live and work in London so the terrible events of July 7 had a direct effect upon our lives. In this issue we have a piece about how various organisations coped on that fateful day. Also, Alan Power writes about Freedom of Information at the Guardian and Katharine Schopflin reports back from a CILIP seminar, Libraries in Danger. Finally, the questionnaire is answered by the writer John Crace who, amongst other things, is known for the Digested Read column in the Guardian. Deadline is produced by Richard Nelsson, Alan Power, Katy Heslop and Linda MacDonald from the Guardian Research Department. Please send news, reviews and letters to: Paul Fairclough. The opinions expressed in Deadline are not necessarily those of the AUKML.
People Old copies of DEADLINE
When the Guardian's research department was approached to help with the paper's freedom of information projects it seemed as if the librarian's role was about to undergo a seismic shift. But once the projects started it soon became apparent that the work involved was not so different to the kinds of things media librarians have been doing for years. The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act came into force on January 1, 2005. The Act allows individuals and organisations access to information held by public authorities. The 100,000 or so public authorities that are subject to the act include: government departments; local authorities; schools and colleges; publicly owned companies and parliament itself. The security and intelligence services and the courts are among the public bodies not beholden to the Act. From the start, the Guardian was at the forefront of the FOI campaign, requesting information that would be of interest to the public. Not content with just making stories, the paper set up a specific section on its website (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi) to give extended coverage of the issues and also act as a repository for the actual documents obtained under the Act. It is also the Guardian's aim to get public authorities to publish as much data as possible on the internet so that FOI requests are not necessary. Though most of the projects are carried out by reporters, the research department was called on to assist with the bigger stories. A very definite process needed to be followed. Firstly the information had to be procured through an FOI request. Once received the information had to be analysed and then organised so it could be readily retrieved. It then had to be presented in a retrievable format and finally, the documents had to be archived. So nothing new there: procuring, analysing, organising, retrieval of material and archiving are the key skills of librarianship and information management. The biggest project to date involved contacting over 200 local councils and individual schools for hygiene reports on school kitchens and details of contracts with private catering companies. Research was involved in three processes. Firstly over 200 emails had to be sent out requesting information (that was after the 200 or so email addresses had been established - a substantial task in itself). Next, a database had to be set up to track responses and log what information had been received. Once items were received they were physically filed and left for the reporters to analyse. The fruits of the labour appeared in a 470 word article, which featured prominently on September 14, 2005 (http://digbig.com/4ewwm) - in the launch week of the Guardian's new Berliner format. It may seem a small result for such effort but as Guardian reporter Rob Evans says, "We did the story because we thought that parents would be interested in the results, particularly after Jamie Oliver's School Dinners programme had already highlighted the lack of quality of school meals." He adds that, "the website also gives access to extracts from the council's inspection reports so parents can see how their children's schools fared." The story was picked up in the Daily Mail the following day and local media did follow-ups as well. Another project involved collating information from 35 hospitals and trusts on mortality rates during heart bypass surgery. The information requested from the trusts was collated on a spreadsheet and proportions were calculated. When the story ran on March 16, 2005 (http://digbig.com/4ewwn) it was the first time in the history of British medicine that the mortality rates of individual doctors in one medical speciality had been published. Since the Guardian report, St George's Hospital in Tooting, London, has become the first in the country to publish online mortality rates for all its specialties. Another project looked at the state of kitchens in the country's top restaurants. Like the school inspections enquiry, only smaller in scale, we contacted local councils for access to health and safety inspections for twenty restaurants. The requests led to a substantial report on May 2, 2005 which included access to some of the inspection reports on the website. The story was picked up by other national newspapers the following day. Some local authorities now publish health and safety reports from restaurants as a matter of course. The FOI website has grown in popularity. New stories are appearing on an almost daily basis. But its success has meant that it is becoming too big. Research, already involved in the day to day running of the site, such as uploading documents and editing the site, are being consulted on improving its taxonomy. When first launched, information was easy to group with stories appearing under a handful of headings. But as topics have broadened, with FOI covering everything from "the honours system" to "Whitehall secrets" and "immigration", the need for more organisation is needed. To maintain the site's popularity and goal of becoming a key repository of data it needs to serve the basic function of providing easy access to FOI Act-released documents. Librarians are always being told that their roles are changing. Research's involvement in the many stages of these, and other, FOI projects highlights this very well. Although the role is changing, the basic skills remain the same. With the days of cuttings files now in the past and so many information resources literally at the fingertips of the end-user, librarians have had to diversify to survive. These projects show that organisations will always need our skills, albeit in the most unlikely of places.
John Crace is a journalist for the Guardian and the author of the Digested Read: http://digbig.com/4exes. He has also written Baby Alarm: Thoughts from a Neurotic Father. CAN YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST USED THE INTERNET? HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO ONLINE? WHICH SEARCH ENGINE DO YOU USUALLY USE? CAN YOU NAME ANY OTHER SEARCH ENGINES? NOW THAT YOU CAN SEARCH THE INTERNET YOURSELF, DO YOU THINK THERE IS STILL A ROLE FOR LIBRARIANS/INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS? NAME YOUR THREE FAVOURITE SITES. ARE THERE ANY SITES THAT YOU FIND REALLY IRRITATING? DO YOU STILL USE OLD MEDIA? WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCE WHILST SEARCHING ONLINE?
Libraries in danger This one-day conference examined special collections in libraries, why they are dispersed or sold and how libraries can prevent this. It was organised jointly by CILIP's Rare Book Group and Preservation and Conservation Panel. I can say without reservation that it is the best CILIP event I have been to and was also excellent value, being free to CILIP members and only £5 to non-members. The introduction was read by conference chair Robin Price, but from words written by absent keynote speaker Philip Plumb. Both writer and speaker advocated the unfashionable view that libraries' core functions are to keep collections, especially books, and that they should aim towards excellence: quality not quantity. We were reminded to think of future users: what regular library user hasn't held a book that has never previously been issued? This was a refreshing viewpoint in an age when few libraries of any kind can store or buy material not of immediate use. Subsequent talks were case studies of different collections and how they fared. We heard about the Royal Commonwealth Society library which, when the Society went into serious deficit, was on the point of being asset-stripped and dispersed. It was saved by Cambridge University Library under circumstances which the speaker, Cambridge's Head of Special Collections Brian Jenkins, said would not happen today. According to York Minster's Acting Librarian John Powell, its library was threatened because the Minster no longer knew what the library did or who used it. Facing financial difficulty, they saw it as an easy target for cuts. Geoff Allen, Interim Head of Libraries at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, spoke about special collections in public libraries. These include not only local studies collections, not currently under threat, but subject specialist collections initiated through regional collaborative collecting schemes in the 1970s. The thinking behind this - that every public library user in a region should have interloan access to every title published - meant that local authorities built up rich collections within their subject specialism. Re-prioritisation and funding cuts in public libraries have caused many of these to be neglected or abandoned. The Science Museum Library's well-publicised difficulties were outlined by Museum Head Jon Tucker. They originated in financial problems in the museum sector and the Library's special difficulties being co-sited with Imperial College. It remains under threat, although every plan for its move or dispersal has been rejected. Finally, retired publisher and private collector Gordon Graham spoke about a collection he had assembled as a memorial to the World War II Burma Campaign and which he had persuaded the School of Oriental and African Studies to house under special circumstances. A discussion panel concluded the day, seeking concrete advice as well as opinions. Different contributors pointed to the signs warning that a collection is under threat. They included:
So why is this relevant to media libraries? Well, many of us do have special collections, especially of press cuttings and journals, or once did. But even those who don't can learn from the fact that disposal does not come from a collection's devaluation, but because the library is an easy target when money is tight. And the hazards are the same for all libraries facing cuts: expertise is lost, customers lose faith in the library and there persists a vicious circle of falling use. We can all benefit from the various strategies suggested:
In my opinion, the most important lesson was that if you apologise for the library or information unit's existence, you are already doomed. Your organisation may be prepared to pay for a Director's office, an editor's secretary or a journalist's expense account. Why not the assets of skilled staff, years of experience and knowledge and unique resources?
Until the recent stories about victims not getting compensation appeared, the memory of July 7 had already started to fade. Here a few AUKML members remember what happened on that summer morning. Mick Brunton: Newsweek In newsstand terms, a breaking story at week's end is great for us because it give us a fighting chance of still looking and reading fresh on a Monday. So from Friday till the early hours of Sunday morning, we were just nailing down what facts we could, splicing in fresh detail and trying to add credence to the flurry of rumours flying out of Washington or Islamabad. And in between, emailing, texting, phoning: "You OK?" In an age when instant, constant news fills the air, 7/7 was the kind of story Time excels at. But when it's on your own doorstep and you're stuck at your desk, it's hard to stay in touch with the real impact on friends, families, neighbours. For 24 hours, London seemed to reel and strangers reached out to steady one another. For a few days more, the streets were visibly friendlier, even drivers magically waving cyclists on. Then the city seemed to take a collective breath and get on with it. It's all you can do; that and shed a tear for the commuters of Baghdad too. Fiona Sanson: Granada TV My colleague put a note on the Unit's door which I thought was a nice touch and summed up everyone's need to reach out that day. "Fiona Sanson is OK but has been unable to make it in. The Library will be closed today." This was the first time in seven years that the Information & Research Unit was closed and I sincerely hope it will be the last. Richard Nelsson: The Guardian and The Observer On the work front, things were very busy rather than manic. It was the usual putting together of timelines and background information. The newsdesk wanted a list of all terrorist attacks in the city going back to the 1970s. Due to a bit of forward planning we already had one prepared on ResearchNet, the department's intranet, so we were able to send it within a couple of minutes. We were researching material for a graphic right up to deadline. We also managed to get all of the paper archived. It was only a couple of days later that we discovered that David Foulkes, a Guardian employee, was the youngest victim of the terror bombs. Rachel Mulligan: BBC
AUKML AGM 2005 The AGM minutes can be read at: AGM 2005 minutes Where's the media industry going? Predicting where the media industry might be heading is an unreliable business. That appeared to be Peter Goodwin's message at a well-attended meeting in the futuristic looking BBC Broadcast Centre. For example, few could have forecast the huge domestic commercial activity on the internet that followed the dotcom crash of 2000. Before talking about the future though, Goodwin explained that it was necessary to look at where the industry has come from. Going back to 1975, he described how in the UK, there were only three TV channels, telephones were attached to the wall and music was bought in the form of black vinyl discs called records. Three decades later and there are now hundreds of channels available, music is downloaded onto a little box and it seems as if everyone has a mobile phone. There are two ways of looking at these changes. One sees technology changing everything, as the world we're in now is vastly different to that of 30 years ago. The second acknowledges the changes but to borrow a Biblical phrase, sees nothing new under the sun. Witness the fact that 50% of the population still watches terrestrial TV and lots of music is still being bought, only in a different format to before. In truth, the future is probably a mixture of the two. Goodwin's few cautious pointers for the next few years included TV being fully digitised by 2012, films being delivered via the internet and a shift in advertising to portal sites. Technology will become a lot more mobile. This was all very interesting, but some felt there was perhaps too much emphasis on consumer behaviour rather than the industry itself. That said, a lively debate followed the talk. Inevitably the point was made about children being much more at home with the latest technology than their parents, thereby giving a clue as to what to expect in the future. Goodwin though suggested that attitudes change with age so today's whizz kids will behave differently in their thirties. Another point raised was that the way in which the media industry thinks technologies will be used is often at odds with how they are in practice. One example given was the public's lack of interest in TV interactive services. Finally, an area that was only just touched upon was the long-term decline in newspaper sales and the growth of blogging and citizen journalism sites such as OhmyNews (http://english.ohmynews.com) in South Korea.
We may have directed you to this place before, but there's always something new going on at the Librarians Rule site. http://www.cybercomm.nl/~miranda/lib.html. With Christmas almost upon us, you may want to place an order for the Desperate Librarians calendar (http://www.focol.org/desperatelibrarians). This really is desperate, barrel-scraping stuff and thankfully it's the last time we have to trawl the web for these sad representatives of our glorious profession. However, purely to show what you get for you money, here's a sample: http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/sep05/desperate091905.jpg. Someone once said that every time you write a text or an email, think of how it would look on the front page of The Sun. Wise advice. Michael Cole, quoted in Public Affairs News, October 2005.
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