National Archives UK on Flickr

Thanks to Peter Scott's blog for reporting that National Archives UK has added over 200 images to Flickr. The photos have no known copyright restrictions so feel free to copy gems like this poster.

Satyagraha

Satyagraha, Philip Glass's opera about Mahatma Gandhi's early struggles against racial discrimination in South Africa, is currently playing at the ENO. I went to see it last week and the production is three hours of stunning music and staging. See here and here for expert reviews, and here for a digest of the plot.

Satyagraha was the Sanskrit name Gandhi gave his theory of non-violent, or "passive resistance". Central to promoting these principles was the Indian Opinion, a weekly publication that at its height had an estimated readership of 20,000 in South Africa alone. As such, newspapers are a running image in the production, particularly in Act II where giant rolls of newsprint are stretched across the stage, before Gandhi ends up disappearing into a mass of paper and people.

I was curious to know how the paper was viewed in Britain and so turned to the Guardian/Observer digital archive. As part of the Miscellany column, the following piece appeared in the Guardian on January 24 1905:

(click to enlarge)

Tweeting while you work

Twitter's detractors usually dismiss the site as a plaything for those with too much time on their hands. Supporters point to its social networking capabilities and power as a serious journalistic tool, citing its use in the June 2009 Iranian elections and Trafigura case.

But what value does Twitter offer for everyday working life and business? That was the topic under discussion at the recent SLA Europe's Tweeting while you work: Making the most of micro-blogging, discussion.

The three panelists - Hazel Hall, Julie Hall and Judith Woods all use Twitter in their working lives - for exchanging valuable information, promoting themselves and, in the case of the last two, generating business. Slides will be available soon. One piece of advice, though, that all gave was that it is important to maintain separate business and pleasure accounts. The aim should be to cultivate your own Twitter 'personality'.

It was refreshing to hear such enthusiastic and knowledgeable speakers. They were so good in fact that the Chair, Bob De Laney, LexisNexis Director, News & Business, UK & Ireland, had very little to do. However, he did lob in the question as to whether the panelists would still be such enthusiastic tweeters if they had to pay for the service. The response was, a yes, a yes, and a possibly. Good news for some.

Hazel Hall slides can be seen here.

BBC listening figures and the Freak Zone

With talk of the BBC closing 6 Music and the Asian Network dominating the headlines, it's worth looking at what sort of listening figures other stations get. Katy Stoddard, a Guardian researcher/librarian, has posted all the most recent figures on the Datablog. Bottom of the list is Five Live Sports Extra, although I suspect it's running costs aren't that high. Why though isn't anyone talking about closing 1Xtra?

I'm a fan of 6 music, or at least parts of it. If the station does close, I suspect that the brilliant Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone will survive although it will probably be reduced to an hour and banished to the early hours of Radio 2. A suggestion - why not drop Aled 'keep the faith' Jones's Good Morning Sunday show and replace it with Maconie. The Freak Zone includes plenty of spiritual music and the most recent show's featured album was Black Sabbath's eponymous debut.

Wikipedia (again)

Over the past few years, information professionals have spent spend an inordinate amount of time discussing Wikipedia. Everyone has an opinion, and usually an example of some inaccuracy. When interviewing wannabe librarians/researchers I often throw in a 'what do you think of Wikipedia?' question as the response can reveal a lot about an applicant's approach to information seeking. Many come out with 'don't trust it' - the 'official' approach that seems to be taught in most British schools and universities. In fact, exams watchdog Ofqual recently said that children should use Google and Yahoo to improve essays, but avoid the online encyclopedia.

Students need to learn how to discriminate between sources, but the fact remains that reliably sourced articles on Wikipedia can be unbeatable. I was reminded of this the other day when reading a post about the process of updating entries on Russell Potter's Visions of the North blog. Potter, an academic and leading authority on arctic exploration, writes about adding his comments to a Wikipedia entry on the sinking of the Karluk, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, in 1914. The finished article (for now anyway) is a model of a well researched contribution, "providing a balanced and informative reference entry where before there was only a dark corner with a few half-hearted scraps mingling with rumors and undocumented sources" (Potter).

Bibliomancy on the South Bank

To the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night to see Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer. An enjoyable evening although for anyone familiar only with the breathy solos and beats of his 1997 album Khymer, this was challenging stuff. "A 21st-century Bitches Brew," was how Guardian critic John Fordham described the material in a review of Molvaer's new album, Hamada.

Anyway, enough of all that jazz. Rather more pertinent to this blog is the Bibliomancer's Dream, an art installation consisting of hundreds of books, situated in the QEH foyer. Inspired by the ancient ritual of Bibliomancy- the art of divining the future with books, visitors are invited to "select a book at random and pick a line or verse to learn a truth or simply inspire the imagination". It looks rather good too.

The BBC's Virtual Revolution

Saturday night saw the final part of The Virtual Revolution, a four-part series on BBC2 that has looked at how 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives. Presented by Dr Aleks Krotoski, it's investigated everything from how commerce has colonised the web, the way social networks are changing our relationships, to evidence that the virtual world is leading to a new brand of politics.

The Virtual Revolution has been a great series - intelligent but entertaining programmes that show the BBC at its best (and I'm sure Lord Reith is nodding in approval). This has been in part due to Krotoski's skill in leading the viewer through the mass of information, but also down to the high calibre of the interviewees. These have included everyone from Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, Al Gore, the founders of Facebook, Twitter etc, to Stephen Fry - not to mention plenty of knowledgeable, and articulate, academics.

This week's programme, Homo Interneticus, included Professor David Nicholas of the independent research group Ciber, at University College London, who was talking about his study into the generational difference between how children and adults consume information online. Nicholas often talks about the 'Google generation' (see Digital Consumers) - young people who have grown up with the web. This group 'crowdsource' their knowledge, looking for the wisdom of their friends and networking what they know, rather than holding on to the information for themselves. Saturday's programme also included a Web Behaviour test (although according to Phil Bradley the BBC system soon crashed).

Nicholas has been looking at the changing information habits of various user groups for the past three decades. Back in the 1980s he was (probably) the first academic to start looking at the impact of online information on both journalists and news librarians. With the emergence of the internet in the following decade he conducted a huge study into how it was affecting information seeking in the media - a significant part of the research being carried out at the Guardian and Observer.

Aside from his research work, Nicholas was to be - although some would dispute this - the catalyst for the creation of the Association of UK Media Librarians (AUKML). As a senior lecturer at the (then) Polytechnic of North London, in the summer of 1986 he hosted a networking lunch for London-based news librarians that in turn led to the beginnings of the group. For more information about this see the News libraries chapter of British Librarianship & Information Work, 1991-2000.