The Information Services Group (Scotland) is looking for new committee members. It also has an AGM and FOI seminar event to be held on Fri 18 April.
The Spring 2008 edition of the SLIC Further Education Newsletter (in PDF format) is now available.
Stirling Council has announced a reduction of 1.1% in its Council tax but residents were left contemplating the impact of the reduction in services. The central school library service will be discontinued and Saturday afternoon openings at the Central Library axed. This follows recent bad news of the axing of the Highland School Library Service, as part of a £10m package of savings.
The latest issue of TACIT, produced by ELISA (Edinburgh Libraries & Information Services Agency) is now available. It includes an extended article on the library of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
The European Information Association have just produced five new free 'Finding out about ...' subject guides. These are: Common Agricultural Policy; Data Protection; Human Rights; Innovation Policy and Treaties.
The Annual General Meeting of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) will be held on Wed 21 May 2008 at 4pm in the Mitchell Library, North Street, Glasgow. Notice of motions should be sent to the Director, CILIPS, First Floor, Building C, Brandon House, Leechlee Road, Hamilton, ML3 6AU, not later than 31 Mar 2008. The agenda for the meeting will be circulated to members and will be posted on SLAINTE.
The UK Intellectual
Property Office (UK-IPO) has decided to change their guidance on software
patents after the High Court ruled that it was wrong to reject the patent
applications of six companies on the grounds of them being for software.
The UK-IPO has decided not to appeal against the decision. (Taken from
OUT-LAW News.)
The European Parliament plans to criminalise copyright infringement and has asked EU ministers to agree to the proposed EU directive. This would involve the creation of new copyright protection rules and the passing of IP infringement laws in each EU country. (Taken from OUT-LAW News.)
Charlie McCreevy, the EU's internal market commissioner, has put forward plans to increase the copyright protection of recordings by performing artists and session musicians from the current 50 years to 95 years. McCreevy did not agree with the findings of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property which rejected such a change. (Taken from the Guardian.)
The Career Development Group Scottish Division has just launched the 'Passport to Latin America' reading challenge. All you have to do is sponsor yourself to read 3 books about Latin America or by Latin American writers. Proceeds will go to supporting a VSO librarian in Tanzania, the African Prisons Project, and a possible project with the National Library of Cuba. The scheme is open to everyone and all registered participants will be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 book voucher. For more information and publicity materials contact Victoria McAra e: mcarav@stirling.gov.uk.
The Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) launched a suite of Web 2.0 services during a seminar held by the Cataloguing and Indexing Group in Scotland (CIGS) on Thu 21 Feb. SLIC and CILIP in Scotland have been piloting flickr, del.icio.us, Slideshare and Pageflakes with a view to enhancing existing services on SLAINTE. The new developments are targeted at the Scottish library and information community and aim to encourage collaboration and communication. The Scottish Libraries Web 2.0 package also includes a blog to keep members up to date with SLIC and CILIPS events.
The work will be lead by the DCMI/RDA Task Group chairs: Gordon Dunsire of the University of Strathclyde and Diane Hillmann of Cornell University (with support from Tom Baker of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative). Other participants working closely with the project are Karen Coyle (independent consultant well known in the library world); Alistair Miles (editor for the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and member of the W3C SWDWG) and Mikael Nilsson (researcher in the Knowledge Management Research Group, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and co-chair of the DCMI Architecture Forum). Public information on the progress of the project is available on the DCMI/RDA Task Group wiki. Public mailing list maintained by the task group and available for open subscription.
The Scottish Parliament and MSP Linda Fabianni played host to the launch of the digitised version of Renfrewshire Council's 15th century Arbuthnott Missal on Wed 20 Feb. You may need to download Windows XP service pack 2 before exploring, the British Library Turning the Pages 2.0 website has more information on software required for viewing the maunuscript.
In their recent report on Inverkeithing High School, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) noted that the pupils had access to "the well-resourced and managed library, with good provision for ICT to support course work" and that the library was "a centre of good practice in encouraging independent learning for large numbers of pupils".
The latest edition of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) newsletter is now available online. EBLIDA is an independent umbrella association of national library, information, documentation and archive associations and institutions in Europe. Newsletters cover European information society issues, including copyright & licensing, culture & education and EU enlargement.
CILIPS will mark the centenary of the Scottish Library Association (SLA), the forerunner of CILIPS, by awarding 12 medals. The centenary medals aim to recognise significant contribution to libraries, librarianship and, in particular, to the professional activities of the SLA and CILIPS. Nominations should be received by Mon 31 Mar and the medals will be presented at an awards dinner on Tues 3 Jun during the CILIPS annual conference.
SLIC will shortly be working with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) to revise Libraries Supporting Learners, the self evaluation toolkit for school libraries in Scotland, in line with How Good is our School 3. A small series of improvement tools are being planned by HMIe and SLIC has been invited to participate in this. A Working Party has been established and it is hoped the work will be completed within 2008.
The JISC funded HILT project is looking for staff in information services or projects to help test and refine its developing terminology services. The project is currently working to create pilot web services that will deliver machine-readable terminology and cross-terminology mappings data to enhance subject search or browse services. The process is likely to begin towards the end of Mar 2008 and continue for at least six months. Individuals or services interested in participating should join the HILT-Collaborators email list.
The 2008 IDF is now open. For details on project funding priorities and how to apply, visit the IDF 2008 website.
The latest edition of Widwisawn, the webzine covering various developments in the Scottish library, museums and archives communities is now available. The free webzine features articles on library co-operatives in Scotland and the use of HILT's terminology services.
Scottish readers have an insatiable appetite for crime, according to Public Lending Right figures released on Fri 8 Feb. The list of the top ten most borrowed books in Scotland is dominated once again by tales of crime, with Scottish authors occupying several places. However, the top title in Scottish libraries, Alexander McCall Smith's Love over Scotland, shows the nation's softer side. The book is the latest instalment in the 44 Scotland Street series which portrays Edinburgh society. Other Scottish authors in the top ten include Ian Rankin and Quintin Jardine. James Patterson, who has three entries in the Scottish top ten, has toppled Jacqueline Wilson to become the most borrowed author across the UK.
East Renfrewshire has become the first local authority in the UK to use Facebook to publicise its libraries and sports centres. All 10 libraries in the area now have Facebook pages which contain information about opening times and facilities. Users can also interact with staff or contribute to discussion boards.
The Scottish Information Literacy Project has been funded by Learning and Teaching Scotland to undertake a project entitled 'Adding value to LTS Information Literacy Online Service: Exemplars of good practice'. The resulting exemplars and framework will provide school teachers with an identified standard of information literacy skills at the identified levels and contribute to the development of information literacy and media literacy skills among school pupils.
Scotland's Information
Research Collections Online
Scottish Library and Information Resources
Scottish Distributed Digital Library
Scottish Collections Network
Co-operative Information Retrieval Network for Scotland
© Send comments, suggestions and queries about SLAINTE to Gillian Hanlon. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License 11-May-2011
