The Invisible Web Weblog

Search Retrieve via URL (SRU) is a successor to Z39.50. This website defines it as follows: “SRU has a simpler syntax and is designed to be easier to implement, making it suitable for a wide range of applications in and outside of libraries.”

I was in the university main library’s stack today and thinking about the size of all the printed materials which are out there. We may have all these materials stored in electronic format some day in future. However, whatever we called it such as electronic resources or virtual libraries or whatever, it is still physical! In fact, imagine once we reproduce all of these printed materials in the electrical format, but at the end the hardware that contains these resources are physical. In fact, in an ideal world all resources of a big library can be converted into electronic materials which of course require much smaller place but at the end of the day this is still physical and not totally virtual and we need physical devices to get access to them. Of course, I have not forgotten other important issues like remote access, multiple users, one copy for the whole world and things like that. What I am trying to say is whatever we have in the virtual environment like electronic materials, or...

A workshop on the use and development of e-Portfolio systems will be held by the Higher Education Academy Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) at the University of Bolton on 6th December 2006. For further information follow this link .

LILAC 2007 is going to take place in at Manchester Metropolitan University from 26t to 28th March 2007. The keynote speakers include Christine Bruce, author of the Seven Faces of Information Literacy, and some other well known figures in IL. According to their website, the conference themes are: Recognising the need, advocacy, marketing and promotion, practical approaches to Information Literacy, Information Literacy and citizenship, new areas for practice and research and ethical use of information. For further information have a look at the conference website .

My friend, Hamid who is a PhD student in London, emailed me and some other friends recently about Yahoo Answers. As his experience of this service was interesting to hear I asked him to let me upload his email here. He wrote to us as follows: “I'm sure you all have heard of Yahoo answers and probably have seen its ads around where you live. If you haven't tried it, make sure you do. It’s amazing how many people are spending time answering other people's questions. I've posted a couple of questions during the last few weeks and normally I got answers within seconds. If I was going to find the answers by browsing the web, it would've taken me hours. But with this service you have access to the experience and knowledge of many people. Especially if your questions have an element of point of view or recommendation, this is the way to find the answer. Of course it depends on the kind of questions."

Joint Use Libraries: An International Conference will take place from 19 to 21 June 2007 in the Lowry, Manchester. According to the conference website : “ ... joint use libraries are libraries serving more than one group of users (eg school-public libraries, university-public libraries)".

Since 1998 I have been interested in different methods that we can evaluate websites. I remember in 1999 I initially wanted to carry out my MA dissertation about the evaluation of library websites. However, I changed my idea later on and I did my dissertation about users’ satisfaction with the computerized information services. However, I remained interested about this topic. This link provides you with a good guideline about the assessment of ‘Content Accessibility’ as part of the evaluation of websites. Although this document has been published seven years ago, some of the fundamental aspects of it are still valid. Moreover, if you come across some points which are not valid anymore, it is good to see how the criteria for evaluation change over the time.

i-Conference 2006 will be held tomorrow, 15th October, and will continue until 17th, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. To learn more about the event you can follow this link .

This is just a quick link to Georgia Conference on Information Literacy which will be held in October 2007. You also can see the program of the conference in 2006, at this link .

Online Information 2006 will take place from 28 to 30 November 2006 at Grand Hall, Olmypia, London.

I wrote a book review which has been published in the recent issue of Webology. Mansourian, Y. (2006). "Review of: Ingwersen, P., & Jarvelin, K. " The Turn: Integration of Information Seeking and Retrieval in Context ." Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005. Webology, 3(3), Book Review 4. Available at: http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n3/bookreview4.html

The Journal of Digital Information, JoDI, has published a new special issue on Adaptive Hypermedia. Based on the journal’s definition “… adaptive hypermedia systems are those that build a profile of the user and then deliver content that is appropriate for these needs, rather than the more traditional "one-size-fits-all" approach of the web.”

In April 2006 I have been awarded a travel grant to attend the annual European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR). I attended the conference and it was very useful to keep abreast about the current issues and trends in IR. Next ECIR is going to take place in Rome. The conference’s website includes details the event.

Personal Information Management ( PIM ) is one of my favourite areas and I believe there is a promising future for this area in terms of research and practice. The following website which contains many useful links to various PIM resources succinctly describes PIM as follows: “… in the ideal world, we have the right information at the right time, in the right place, in the right form, and of sufficient completeness and quality to perform the current activity.”