The modern news library

A 1960s news library

The current issue of Refer, journal of the Information Services Group, looks at library services for writers and journalists. As well as articles about the British Library's Newsroom and a look at how scribes are using social media, it includes a piece by me about the Guardian's Research & Information team. Archive picture on the left rather more interesting than the modern open-plan office.

Nelson Mandela: a life reported, an ebook I recently edited,  tells the Nelson Mandela story as seen through the eyes of the Guardian and the Observer.

From the first mention of him organising African independence movements in March 1953, to the reporting of his funeral, 60 years later, both papers have covered all the key moments of Mandela's life. This collection of news reports, interviews and commentary, offers a unique perspective on one of the 20th century's greatest statesmen.

It was during the early 1960s and the emergence of the so-called ‘Black Pimpernel,’ that the papers started to regularly write about Mandela.

The Observer in particular took a keen interest in South African affairs. David Astor, the paper's editor, founded the Africa Bureau in 1952 as a focus of anti-colonialism and anti-apartheid in London, and his Sunday paper led the way in rousing British opinion against the racist system

Colin Legum and later Anthony Sampson became the Observer’s experts on South Africa, and they were among the first to spot the potential of the ANC. The paper covered the 1964 “treason trials” in great detail and campaigned for the men to be spared the death penalty. Mandela also asked Sampson to cast his eye over the famous ‘Why I am ready to die’ speech.

During the long years of Mandela’s incarceration on Robben Island, the papers would print the occasional interview or scrap of information. However, it wasn’t until the launch of the campaign to free him in the early 1980s that Mandela’s name began to appear again.

The book mixes news reports with more personal pieces by writers like Mary Benson who knew Mandela in the 1960s (she showed him around London when he was on the run).

However, neither paper has shied away from carrying more critical pieces such as Chris McGreal’s Stain on the icon, a honest assessment of the Mandela presidency. But there is also commentary from the likes of Gary Younge who sought to restate Mandela as a determined political activist, rather than a kindly old gent.

David Bowie: A life reviewed

From hippie singer/songwriter, Ziggy Stardust, the ‘plastic soul’ phase, experimental electronic albums to 1980s global megastar, David Bowie’s musical reinventions have rarely been predicted. On top of this, he has confounded the critics by taking on serious acting roles (with good notices), becoming an internet pioneer, venturing onto Wall Street with his Bowie bonds, and dabbling in the art world.

Bowie: A life reviewed, tells the ever-changing Bowie story as reported by the Guardian and the Observer. Starting with his elevation to pop stardom via 1969’s Space Oddity it covers most of the classic albums and tours through contemporaneous reviews, interviews and features. The book gives an insight into what critics really thought at the time, rather than the nostalgia-tinged selective memory occasionally favoured by pop historians. As such, releases that have attained near-mythic status sometimes receive less than glowing write-ups.

The book closes with a review of the The Next Day - and the beginning of a new chapter in the life of David Bowie.

Nostalgia for press cuttings

Despite the prevalence of full-text databases, digital archives and other electronic sources, old-fashioned press cuttings can still be a valuable research tool for journalists. I wrote about this, along with the nostalgia for the scrappy files, for the Guardian's Open door column.

The response was predictably misty-eyed, with the piece providing an excuse for people to reminisce about the good old days of Fleet Street. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it was interesting to discover that a campaign has been started by a group of journalists in Leeds to try and preserve cuttings libraries. Presserve aims to identity titles which still have such collections, with a view to estimating the amount of work (and the costs) necessary to digitise the material and make it publicly available online.

More details can be found on their website and a letter about the group appeared in the Guardian.

Digging out gems from the archives

I recently wrote a piece about about how the Guardian library uses archive material in the paper. It was for the Open door column which is a good place to look if you're interested in reading about the day-to-day business of running a large news operation.

The Beatles: A band reviewed

Fifty years ago the Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do. It eventually reached No 17 in the UK charts, but this modest debut was the trigger for a musical revolution.

I've just edited a new ebook, The Beatles: A Band Reviewed, that tells the story of the 'revolution' through news items, reviews and interviews that appeared in the Guardian and The Observer. From the heyday of Beatlemania and the groundbreaking albums to the mixed successes of the solo years, it covers all the key events. It also includes not so well-known stories, such as that of a Guardian reporter who received hundreds of phone calls, night and day, from people asking if they could speak to 'Sgt J Pepper'.

Read about the very first Beatles related feature to appear in the Guardian on the paper's music blog, along some fascinating Pathé news footage.

SLA Europe: Engaging with social media

Finding the right social media voice can be one of the biggest challenges for those new to the world of Twitter, Facebook, and the community conversation. Just how much personal information should you reveal without damaging your professional persona?

This was one of the key themes to emerge from Engaging with social media for fun and career success, a recent SLA Europe seminar, held at Morgan Stanley’s Canary Wharf offices.

Three speakers, Neil Infield, Meghan Jones and Laura Woods, all early adopters of social media tools and with a wealth of experience between them, passed on tips, advice and a few words of warning.

Laura began the session by saying that when on Twitter it important to present yourself as a real person, not just an automated RSS feed. She suggested taking a ‘profersonal’ approach - that is blending professional comments with something a bit more personal. Instead of just retweeting and making dry comments, throw in tweets about your own interests and engage in conversation. The key thing to remember is that just because you’re talking about work issues you don’t have to erase your personality.  

This point was echoed by Neil who stated that you 'need to present yourself as a whole human being' when using social media. Of course to what extent you can do this varies from sector to sector.  Meghan suggested having multiple personas through different accounts and possibly using pseudonyms. All speakers emphasised the fact that anyone - not just your dedicated followers - can read your posts and comments, so think twice before writing or uploading pictures.

Perhaps it came as a surprise to some, but there are clear career benefits to using social media. Through blogging and tweeting Laura explained how she had raised her profile and as a result had been offered speaking and writing commissions. Meghan talked about the ‘serendiptious opportunities’, be it making new contacts or promoting work projects, while Neil said that his blog was an important tool for driving traffic to the British Library’s Business & IP Centre.

As a warning to those who still feel uncomfortable about the whole ‘engaging with social media’ business, Neil made the simple point that whether you like it or not, your clients are already out there using it. If you don’t get involved, they’ll pass you by.

That said, don’t feel obliged to sign up to everything. Sample different tools (take note: Twitter may not be around forever), but stick to what you feel comfortable with. As Meghan confessed, ‘I’m a Facebook refusnik’.

Other points made included the fact that LinkedIn is perfect for those with a bad memory as after an event you can remind yourself as to who you were talking to. Also, tweeting may be a much more effective note taking method than scribbling away in a notebook - condensing a point into 140 characters focuses the mind.

Possibly the best piece of advice though came from Neil who suggested that it is better to ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ when in doubt about something you want to publish. Perhaps this should have come with a disclaimer but is very much in keeping with the ‘never wrong for long’ approach taken by news website editors.

 Photographs: Seema Rampersad

Thanks to the three speakers for giving such excellent talks, SLA Europe for organising the event, and  Seema Rampersad for the use of the photos.

The Spoiler

My holiday reading included Annalena McAfee's novel, The Spoiler. Set in 1997, the book follows young reporter Tamara Sim as she profiles the much-feted aging war correspondent Honor Tait in the hope of landing a staff job on a national newspaper. A satire on what used to be called Fleet Street, the book includes very funny descriptions of life on both broadsheets and tabloids, as well as exposing all the backstabbing, lying and cheating that goes on. 

Having said that, students of journalism may well want to read it in the hope of picking up some tips - particularly on how/how not to carry out an interview. Also, a recurring theme throughout the book is how the media is on the cusp of technological revolutions - and the resistance of many of the characters to the internet shows just how far we have come over the past 15 years. 

That includes the library. McAfee's description of the old cuttings collection is almost spot on:

'the busiest department in the building, a maze of tightly packed, floor-to-ceiling metal shelves crammed with hanging files containing envelopes of photographs and wads of cuttings on everyone who had ever appeared in a newspaper'.

And as a senior editor explains its purpose to Tamara, 

'Here is the compost...which nourishes our freshest bloom; the poop behind the scoop. '

Very good. One minor quibble though is the use of 'the Morgue' as a name for the newspaper library. Perfectly fine for a North American archive but in Britain it's nearly always 'cuts' or just 'the library'. Of course this is something that any self-respecting fact-checker would have spotted...

The scandalous history of the Tour de France

All the scandalous stories - the drugs, drink and punchups - from The Tour de France...to the bitter end - can be found in a  recent G2 piece.

The Tour de France...to the bitter end

Over the past few months I have been putting together The Tour de France...to the bitter end, a collection of Guardian/Observer journalism about the world's greatest sporting spectacle. More information here and here.

LIKE 32: digital preservation

While over 90% of data is born digital, there is no official strategy in the UK for preserving the material. From private companies to public bodies, it is often unclear who is responsible for capturing all the emails, blogs, online videos etc. that are generated every day. As such, items of historical importance are simply disappearing.

This, then, was a perfect discussion topic for LIKE. Lena Roland started the session by stating that digital preservation is the process of ensuring the continued access to digital material of enduring value for present and future generations. She clearly set out the issues noting that while gaps in current preservation programmes could be filled with print versions, this will not be possible in the future.

Of course not everything can be archived - would anyone seriously think of archiving an individual's entire Twitter account? The key point is to have a clear selection and deletion policy. Lena also mentioned that she uses WebCite, an online service that enables readers permanent access to the cited material, for her own work.

Adrian Brown, Assistant Clerk of the Records at The Parliamentary Archives, then talked about his own digital preservation experience at the House of Commons. One of the most interesting points was an explanation of the 'performance' model as a framework for describing digital preservation strategies. Developed by the National Archives of Australia in 2002, the idea in its most basic form is for the archivist to concentrate on the actual information content, or 'performance', rather than the processes used to deliver it. Read more about the concept here as well as in a A digital preservation policy for Parliament paper.

There is no one answer to prevent digital obsolescence but current practices include migration, whereby file formats are changed so that information remains accessible, or, emulation which involves ensuring old software functions can still be read. There is always hardware preservation but, as Adrian pointed out while waving floppy discs of various sizes in the air, it is proving harder and harder to find machines that still work.
 

LIKE 32 was an informative evening that generated a lot of debate - as demonstrated by the fact that  people were still talking long after the food had finished. 

Jazz: From New Orleans to the new generation

Jazz: From New Orleans to the new generation is a new Guardian ebook that offers a distinctively British perspective on the history of jazz. Consisting of Guardian and Observer reviews and profiles  from 1919 to the present day, the book includes everyone from Duke Ellington, Miles Davis to Robert Glasper. I've written a bit more about this unique collection in a blog for the Guardian's music pages.

Knights of the scissors

The life of the news librarian used to revolve around a pile of newspapers, a pair of scissors and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the organisation's classification system. I was reminded of those long gone days when I came across an 1827 Manchester Guardian article about French censors chopping out offending passages from newspapers. The piece is an interesting read but it's the description of 'knights of the scissors' fulfilling 'thought-clipping functions' that caught my eye - a perfect description for all those people who used to gut the papers for their news archives.

Read the article here.

Guardian 190: 1821-2011

The first issue of the Guardian appeared on 5 May 1821. To mark the occasion, @guardianlibrary is tweeting articles from the Guardian and important moments in the paper’s history throughout the month – one per year, starting with 1821 and coming right up to the present. Even the dullest years, 1835 for instance, will get a mention in this rapid run-through of the past couple of centuries. Each tweet will link to an article or image on the Guardian’s new From the archive blog. We’ll tweet several times a day between now and May 30, providing by the end of the month 190 fascinating insights into the way the Guardian has evolved.

See more on the Guardian 190 site.

LIKE 24: The Human Library

The phrase 'Human library' has the whiff of Dave Cameron's Big Society about it - something, perhaps, along the lines of getting volunteers to run the reference desk. Well, that was my first thought when I recieved the invitation to LIKE 24: The Human Library. A little research revealed that in fact this is a scheme whereby readers 'borrow' a person or 'book' for a conversation - just as they would borrow a book from a library. Hopefully this leads to people engaging with others to draw upon their experiences.

It all sounded very interesting but I was still a little doubtful about the concept. Linda Constable, who has been involved with Human Libraries since 2007, began the talk by explaining that the idea started in Denmark in 2000 and used to be known as the Living library. To illustrate that power of the 'library', she talked about number of popular 'books' that can be borrowed such as a recovering alcoholic, Big Issue seller, or a Muslim lady who helped 'readers' gain a better understanding of cultural differences. This was all very interesting but can the concept be used in a business environment?

Once the explanation was over, it was time to put the idea into practice. The room divided roughly into those who had volunteered to be books and those who wanted to read. Topics ranged from KM issues, Italy, to something about adults and comics. There was soon plenty of conversation and from the people I spoke to the general consensus seemed to be that it was a useful technique for passing on knowledge. Initial reservations about the concept only being relevant to more marginal areas of society were dismissed and they could see it being useful in connecting work colleagues, seeing the benefits of being able to 'read up' from an expert.

In the LIKE experiment, the Human Library seemed to work best where the 'book' was about a specific subject or an autobiography, rather than a general topic like Travel. For example, I volunteered myself as a Mountaineering book. I chatted away about the subject but feel that it would have been better for my readers if I'd narrowed the title to a particular area of the subject.

An interesting evening that left introduced LIKE members to something new and useful. A short film about the Human Library can be seen here.

LIKE 23: Information in the palm of your hand

There seems little doubt that the future of computing is mobile. Eric Schimdt, Google's chief executive and chairman, recently said that soon mobiles will be able to "do things that we haven't even begun to think of." Numerous commentators seem to be predicting the same thing, backed up by the phenomenal sales of smart phones.

According to Mark Needham, Chairman of Widget UK, the technology that drives these devices has actually been around for 20 years. Mark was talking at LIKE 23 on the subject of Information in the plam of your hand: evolution of mobile information access. He started his career working at Psion, makers of the first handheld computers, and has been in the industry ever since. Interestingly Mark thinks that future generations will recognise the devices we use today in much the same as we see many similarities between today's cars and the Ford Model T.

Continuing with the evolution theme, he suggested that one of the the first written references to a handheld computer was in the 1974 science fiction novel The Mote in God's Eye. This book charts the first contact between humans and alien lifeforms and is noted for its attention to scientific detail. I was interested to see how the book was reviewed when it was first published. Martin Amis devoted a few words to it on the Observer's Science Fiction review (as an aside, his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, wrote the Observer's Science Fiction review during the 1960s).

Mark was followed by Andrew Swaine from ARM, a technology company know for its processors and software development tools. Points made included that mobile development is all about power consumption and the battery technology. Also that the industry has been surprised at the success of apps, plus the problem of losing data is becoming a thing of the past as most devices now automatically save data.

Some sort of manageable keyboard was top of the wishlists that arose from the following discussion.

The changing face of corporate information services

Outsourcing, the contracting with another company to provide a particular service, has been part of business practice for a number of decades. Originally this covered non-core areas such as pay-roll or data-entry. However, in recent years services to internal clients, such as law libraries, have been outsourced, or offshored (outsourced business processes carried out in another country.)

But is this practice an efficient business model that delivers benefits both to the an organisation and employees? If ever there was a subject waiting to be discussed by SLA Europe, then this was it. And so on March 30 around 50 people gathered at Balls Brothers, Mincing Lane, to take part in a SLA debate, The Changing face of corporate information services - new service models and partnerships.

The panel of experts included both those who had outsourced services - Sarah Fahy from Allen & Overy and Kate Stanfield formerly of CMS Cameron McKenna, and vendors Greg Simidian, CEO of Perfect Information and Liam Brown, CEO of Integreon. The event was chaired by Stephen Phillips from Morgan Stanley.

The debate centred mainly on the the legal sector but the issues raised were relevant to anyone working in information management. Excellent accounts of the evening can be read on both Nicola Franklin's Fabric blog and Tina's Library Related stuff. One thing that I'd add is that it was reassuring to find the whole subject of professionalism being discussed - both in terms of the efforts that have been made to maintain professional development for outsourced staff, and the fact that senior management, particularly in law firms, respect and expect to deal with well qualified information personnel. However, as Tina Reynolds points out: "if firms hive off their less complicated work but keep senior professionals in house then where will we find the next generation of professionals?"

The speakers were certainly knowledegable about the subject and generally delivered their points well. Perhaps the evening could have started with a general summing up of what exactly outsourcing is, along with an explanation of the terminology. At times the discussion veered into David Brent territory with a liberal use of acronyms and overuse of phrases such as 'moving the needle.' All in all though, a worthwhile attempt at trying to get to grips with what exactly outsourcing involves.

Digital archives and crowdsourcing

As regular users of newspaper digital archives well know, when a scanned image is turned into text as little as 60% of the resulting article's words can turn up in the right place. It is an irritatant but as the cost of correcting an entire archive is so prohibitive most institutions choose to only do this on an ad hoc basis. However, the National Library of Australia has turned to its users to amend jumbled text in a massive crowdsourcing exercise. This has has seen millions of lines of newspaper text being tweaked thus ensuring more accurate searching.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported that the public's help in working on the text has been particularly important over the past few weeks as, with huge areas of Queensland under water, many Australians have been seeking news reports from 1974 - the last time there was flooding on such a massive scale.

A video about the library's project can be see here while an article about how and why libraries should do crowdsourcing appeared in The Magazine of Digital Research. See also how newspapers such as the Guardian engage their readers in similar exercises.

Double Measures

Moral fears about drink have often exercised British newspapers, something that soon became apparent when I began compiling material for Double Measures: The Guardian Book of Drinking. From concerns in the 1860s about drunken children, the dangers of absinthe, the very act of drinking itself during WW1 to current debates about 24-hour licensing, the paper has not been afraid to warn of the dangers of drinking alcohol. That said, the editorial lectures are leavened by plenty of celebratory pieces about all things grape and grain.

Many of the articles were accompanied by cartoons. As Drawing Drunks, a new exhibition at the Cartoon Museum demonstrates, artists and cartoonists have long played out the dilemmas over drink in the country's press. The Today Programme recently reported on the exhibition and a number of cartoons can be seen here (unfortunately the museum's site is a little out of date). One of the most famous is William Hogarth's Gin Lane.

Read Martin Rowson's piece about the love-hate relationship between editors and cartoonists here.

LIKE 20 and the art of networking

With the Christmas party season almost upon us, LIKE20 focused on how to be more successful with your networking. Guest speaker Lesley Robinson passed on a few tips but the bulk of the evening was spent putting the theory into practice. Simple advice such as catching someone's eye or having a few pre-prepared opening gambits soon made sense and before long the room was alive with the sound of some serious networking.

So far, so good, but what happens when you want to move on from a conversation and engage with someone else? Extricating yourself from a group or person without giving offence is much harder to do than making the initial contact. Lesley offered some ideas but unfortunately there wasn't much time to put these into practice.

Chatting about this after the main networking session elicited a number of responses. More than one person suggested the simple, direct, and usually effective, 'eff off, you're boring me' approach. Fair enough, although someone else commented that having a host/hostess to connect the like-minded etc. might be a more subtle way of going about this. Good idea, although not always possible. At professional events it is usually easier to move onto the next person as everyone (hopefully) knows the rules of the networking game. Of course it's harder to do at social gatherings - guess it's just a case of getting out there and practicing...

Once again, a great LIKE event. More of Lesley's networking tips can be read here.