Information gathered from ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots have been infiltrating the scholarly literature, according to several accounts appearing in the popular press, which is worrisome not only for scholars and librarians but also for the wider world. Distrust of scientific research has enormous implications. How bad is the problem? Marydee Ojala investigates.
Posted 2 April 2024
The new Bite-sized event features David Snowden as its keynote speaker.
Posted 2 April 2024
Taxonomy Boot Camp is once again presenting its Bite-sized series, which provides information on new technologies and insights on taxonomy tools in a webinar format.
Posted 5 March 2024
Mark Carden deserves congratulations for organising one of the most distinctive conferences on the scholarly calendar. This is a smallish conference, with around 160 attendees, but the attendees—publishers, librarians, and researchers—tend to return, because they know what to expect, and everyone I spoke to agreed it has a special atmosphere.
Posted 5 March 2024
Cyberattacks on major libraries, including the British Library and the Toronto (Canada) Public Library, have had a crippling effect on their ability to provide even routine services. We look at what happened, the repercussions, the cost involved to recover and how to prevent such calamities going forward.
Posted 6 February 2024
The world is now embroiled in intense discussions about ChatGPT. Canadian librarian Bill Badke adds his comments, from a library, information literacy and educator perspective. He looks at unproductive approaches to students' use of AI tools, worries about the future of research projects in academia and notes how AI-generated text could benefit international students.
Posted 2 January 2024
For the first time ever, the same person received both of these prestigious awards by the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG)
Posted 5 December 2023
This is your opportunity to share your knowledge and experience with colleagues.
Posted 5 December 2023
Beth Rudden delivered an inspiring keynote talk about moving responsible AI forward in our communities at Internet Librarian Connect (ILC), the virtual conference held 16-19 October, 2023. She concentrated on describing the AI revolution, giving a practical guide to AI experimentation, and stressing the need for librarians to be courageous stewards.
Posted 7 November 2023
In the session on "Decoding citizen science: Putting libraries in the public sphere," presented by IFLA's Science and Technology Libraries section during the World Library and Information Congress in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 21-24 August, 2023, four public librarians described citizen science activities at their libraries.
Posted 3 October 2023
This is it! The last Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp this year. On 11 October, you can brush up on taxonomies in SharePoint, see taxonomies in action and learn more about SKOS taxonomies.
Posted 3 October 2023
Initially very excited about ChatGPT, it didn't take long before some of the flaws in the program became evident to Phil Bradley. Consequently, what had looked like a very useful and powerful tool was quickly becoming nothing more than an idiot savant. Phil then found some plugins that are really helpful.
Posted 5 September 2023
Programs that reach out to artists and to minority youth interested in starting successful businesses can help individuals transcend dismal economic conditions
Posted 1 August 2023
Recognize great taxonomy work by nominating someone (or yourself) for this year's award
Posted 4 July 2023
Despite his many years in the information industry, following technological advances from CD-ROMs to the early years of the internet, the dot com boom, and the development of social media tools, Phil Bradley admits he has have never seen anything like the explosion of AI based tools, and the opportunities that they are bringing us.
Posted 4 July 2023
This half day Zoom event focusses on Airtable, recruitment, product & semantic taxonomies and more
Posted 6 June 2023
Librarians' skill sets align perfectly with the job requirements for prompt engineering
Posted 6 June 2023
Librarians around the world rejoiced that a fellow librarian, Tracie D. Hall, was recognised as one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine.
Posted 2 May 2023
Publishers Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed the lawsuit against Internet Archive (IA) in 2020, claiming IA had illegally scanned and uploaded 127 of their books for readers to download for free, negatively impacting their sales and the authors' royalties. On 25 March 2023, U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl ruled in favor of the publishing houses on strict copyright grounds, stating that IA was making "derivative" works when they created electronic copies of printed books. The Internet Archive said it will appeal the ruling.
Posted 4 April 2023
Join taxonomy experts for a half-day virtual boot camp covering the basics of taxonomy creation on 26 April 2023.
Posted 4 April 2023
Searching the web may seem simple for the average user: Just type in some keywords, and the search engine of your choice, often Google, will present you with the most relevant results. However, new search engines challenging that paradigm present interesting alternatives for information professionals.
Posted 7 March 2023
The next virtual Boot Camp is 22 March 2023
Posted 7 March 2023
At the 2019 Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) conference, Judy Verses, then Executive Vice President, Research, Wiley Inc., announced that Wiley had signed a partnership agreement with Projekt DEAL. At this year's APE conference, Irina Sens, Deputy Director, Head of Library Operations, German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), reported on "After the DEAL," an assessment of progress and a suggestion of possible ways forward.
Posted 7 February 2023
From his perspective as Strategy and Commissioning Manager - Universal Services, Warwickshire County Council, and President, Libraries Connected, Ayub Khan MBE shares his unique perspective on what's been happening in libraries, particularly public libraries, as they grow their services, change to adapt to new technologies and prove their value to their communities.
Posted 3 January 2023
In the opinion of Denise Carter, Managing Director of DCision Consult and a long-time information professional, the answer is yes, librarians should be interested in KM, but they should consider why and when, plus what value that interest could deliver for them.
Posted 6 December 2022
At the 2022 ISIC (Information Seeking in Context) biennial conference, held in Berlin, information researchers from around the world gathered to share their research about information seeking behaviours. If that all sounds very academic and scholarly, it mainly was. But that doesn't mean practicing librarians couldn't come away with a few nuggets they could use.
Posted 1 November 2022
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine lets you see what websites used to look like but it can only do that if volunteers actively save those sites and pages. Gary Price explains how to do that.
Posted 4 October 2022
Virtual Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp takes place on Wednesday 12 October 2022.
Posted 4 October 2022
Writing about university research rankings may not be everyone's cup of tea, but during the pandemic, it fit international librarian Ruth Pagell to a T. Rankings are relevant to librarians because almost all of them include at least one indicator based on bibliometrics from Clarivate or Elsevier. What a great opportunity for librarians to show off their expertise with different metrics!
Posted 6 September 2022
At the National Library of Finland, re-envisioning its core roles led to interesting challenges for library management. Liisa Savolainen, Deputy Director, asked "To be or not to be? A library or an IT house or both?" when speaking in Dublin during an IFLA Satellite event sponsored by the Knowledge Management section and the Digital Humanities SIG. Spoiler alert: The answer is "both".
Posted 2 August 2022
At Basingstoke College of Technology in North Hampshire, U.K., librarians have become learning facilitators and students turned into digital leaders, explains Scott Hayden. Library space was redesigned to support independent, flipped and blended learning.
Posted 5 July 2022
The Leibniz Information Center for Science and Technology (TIB) operates an open access platform, the TIB AV-Portal, on which scientific videos such as conference recordings, simulations, animations, lectures and visualized research data can be published and viewed free of charge.
Posted 7 June 2022
While we wait for the opportunity to host an in-person Internet Librarian International conference, we decided to go ahead with another Bite-sized one. On 11 May 2022, we'll have a half day virtual event, featuring librarians from the United States, Germany, and Mexico covering library technology, preserving videos, and information literacy topics.
Posted 3 May 2022
Bite-sized ILI is back for 2022! Save the date of Wednesday, 11 May 2022, for Internet Librarian International's latest half day of learning and knowledge exchange.
Posted 5 April 2022
Martin Paul Eve takes us behind the scenes to describe the development of Janeway, Birkbeck College's platform for scholarly communication that is used by universities in multiple countries and reveals the origin of the name of the platform.
Posted 5 April 2022
From his perspective as Librarian & Head, Central Library, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Nabi Hasan reflects on how libraries in India responded to the pandemic situation and celebrates the exciting stories of innovative library services formed during these difficult times.
Posted 1 March 2022
Infographics give an added dimension to textual information, as taxonomist and trainer Joyce van Aalten explains. Visuals provide powerful elements to get your message across--and they are not that hard to create.
Posted 1 February 2022
The call for speakers for the virtual Taxonomy Boot Camp London 2022 is very close to ending so now is the time to submit your speaking proposal.
Posted 5 January 2022
Artificial Intelligence (AI) pervades our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. AI technologies power our digital personal assistants, show us traffic flows on our roads, monitor our health and diagnose diseases, guide our product selections when we shop online, and give financial advice. Libraries also benefit from AI technologies and AI applications are increasing.
Posted 5 January 2022
Following the success of the 2021 virtual series, Information Today Europe has set dates for three half-day events in 2022 and issued a Call for Speakers.
Posted 7 December 2021
"If I cancelled my Netflix subscription, I might use the library some more" is a quote from a user interviewed in connection with a Danish project on the Future of Library space and dissemination of literature.
Posted 7 December 2021
Here are five sites that can help you broaden your knowledge of what's findable (mostly for free—although I'd always recommend using the pay-to-use sites for corporate intelligence also).
Posted 7 December 2021
Pippi Longstocking, the children's hero in the Astrid Lindgren books, was never afraid to try out new things. You could even say that she was always looking for new challenges, not afraid to take some risks and brave enough to wander out in a new world. How we loved to read about her adventures. Didn't we all want to be like Pippi, while we probably were more like her careful and responsible friends Tommy and Annika? We should adopt the mantra of: "I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that."
Posted 2 November 2021
Save the dates! Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp is back with another virtual session on 10 November 2021.
Posted 5 October 2021
Our wonderful Internet Librarian International community, confronted with the pandemic-dictated cancellation of our conference two years in a row, took full advantage of the virtual world to attend Bite-sized ILI on 22 September 2021. A half-day event, Bite-sized ILI featured three sessions and five speakers. Over 80 people registered, from 20 countries, emphasizing the truly international nature of ILI.
Posted 5 October 2021
Library professionals at the National Library of Scotland decided to see the pandemic as an opportunity. Revised work processes and innovative service provision to the public and to staff when library buildings were closed and physical access denied were the result. Craig Statham, Maps Reading Room Manager, explains.
Posted 7 September 2021
Information professionals have long been charged with educating people about information literacy, information management, copyright and licensing. Although librarians understand today's information landscape, non-information savvy people frequently don't. Even the word "research" has taken on different connotations. Mary Ellen Bates, internationally renowned independent information professional, consultant, speaker, and Online Searcher columnist, considers how we can better explain these concerns.
Posted 3 August 2021
The United Nations' Dag Hammarskjöld Library hosted a world-class, virtual Open Science Conference over 3 half-days, 21-23 July 2021. Designed to include speakers from around the globe, its tag line was "From Tackling the Pandemic to Addressing Climate Change". The host for the event, Thanos Giannakopolous, Chief Librarian at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, kept the conference on an even keel, despite a few technical hiccups.
Posted 3 August 2021
One of Internet Librarian International's most popular speakers, Ned Potter, looks at the different types of videos that librarians can create and shares his tips for making library videos. It's not as hard as you might think, as his examples illustrate.
Posted 6 July 2021
Need to brush up your taxonomy skills? Want to learn more about what taxonomists are doing that could help you in your job? Join taxonomy experts for the second Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp on 9 June 2021. It's all virtual; no travel involved.
Posted 1 June 2021