Information Takes Over

It’s high time I removed the dust sheets from this blog and tried to discipline myself to actually write something.  To be honest I think I should try to stop thinking in sentences of 140 characters or less.  Twitter has probably clouded my ability to think thoughts longer than a text box with a countdown.

So, change is afoot again. If there is one thing that Talis (my employer) isn’t, it’s static.  The Talis strapline ‘Shared Innovation’ is exactly what we do on a daily basis.  I am currently shifting my role from a purely library focus, dealing with library customers in the library world to dealing with anyone who wants to work with semantically formed data published on the web of data.

How is this different from libraries?  Well, to some extent it is no different.  We are talking about standardising the publishing of data in machine readable form, whereas Library’s deal with information published and catalogued in a fairly standard human readable way.  One of the reasons that it is so easy to find things in a library (no really!) is because there are standard ways to represent, through classification, where the main topic of a book sits, and therefore which books it should be next to on the shelf.

Thus it is with Linked Data and the semantic web, except here the field is so new that we are still evolving the ways to say things about things, and ways to find what other people are saying about things. I plan to explore some of this stuff in later posts.

So, over the coming months, in my consultancy role, I will be getting the opportunity to meet other people who are getting started with the idea of linked data, and sharing with you some of the first steps experiences that I too have been through.

Now, how many of those sentences are longer than 140 characters?

Today I visited a county library acquisitions department with bare concrete pillars (one of which had a notice “to demolish” chalked on it!), desks from the seventies, a carpet from the sixties, and computer equipment from the early nineties (woooh, a mouse with a ball in it!). Today I also finally started to read The Modernisation of Public Libraries – a Policy Statement. I didn’t get far before I wanted to start writing this…

Although there is no doubt that public libraries have received large chunks (£120m) of funding from National Lottery Funds, the thing that has been lacking is the ongoing funding. It’s all very well buying a bunch of computers 5-10 years a go, but now that those computers are wearing out, where is the commitment to replenish every 2 to 3 years?  For those buildings that have been ‘made over’ with £80m Big Lottery Funds, in 10 years they will need to be ‘made over’ again as long-term commitment to fund the public libraries seems to be absent from Local Council thinking. The library authority I visited today has just bought a shiny new library management system, and within 2 weeks of going live had to close a whole branch library. They now have three libraries.

The policy statement goes on to say:

But, as every good librarian knows, public libraries are not about sitting back and passively waiting for people to borrow your books – they are about active engagement with the community, making links to other public services, and responding to the policy imperatives of the day.

My impression of public libraries, is that they spend all their time chasing after involvement in whichever national and local ‘policy imperatives’ are flavour of the month. They are all short term plans. What ever happened to framework for the future? did that achieve anything? or just lead into a fresh round of “well that would be nice, but we are being job evaluated; restructured; forced to make ‘efficiency savings’, so won’t actually have time to think long-term because my job won’t be here in two months time”.

Whatever happened to keeping a good range of books on a wide range of subjects? I have first hand experience of finding a perfectly good book being withdrawn from stock because it had not issued in almost a year.  When a gentleman came to the enquiry desk and asked for it I was happy to tell him that although we had withdrawn it, I knew where it had gone, because I had rescued it and sent it to another library where I knew it would be valued. My point? Well, If we discarded every book that started to look tatty or had not been issued for years, there would be nothing for future generations to use. Today’s tatty book, is tomorrows antiquarian bookseller’s dream!

rant over… for now…

Well it was time.

After about 2000 miles on the Dahon Vitesse D7, it was time to get a new bike. The Dahon had it’s fair share of problems. The frame split where the seat post frame tube met the cross tube – luckily within warranty, so a new frame was fitted. The wheels on the Dahon where very poor.  On average a spoke broke on the rear wheel every three to four weeks.  Eventually I had the rear wheel rebuilt with new spokes.

Of course there was all the usual stuff with chains wearing and the like… but that is normal for a bike that does 8 miles a day four day’s a week. So the Dahon is being retired to ‘second bike’ for use in emergencies.

So, what about the new bike?

I am now a proud owner of a Birdy Touring bike.

This bike has 24 gears, nicely distributed from very low (hill climbing will be so much easier!) to pretty high. One of the things that I found with the Dahon was that there was not enough high end in the gears, and I was quickly at top speed, with a feeling that I could have gone further. The new bike has by contrast a massive high end in the gears. I topped 42 mph on the flat – with a tail wind!

It has full suspension using a combination of elastomer (rear) and spring/elastomer (front). And on a canal tow-path trip which varied from very uneven brick to muddy pools, it coped well.

It is fully kitted out with mudguards and Pannier racks (front and back).

And of course it folds.