Saving our farms and our Documentary evidence

Last Saturday the Dominion Post newspaper and others published this full page advertisement from the Save the Farms group.  The issue of foreign ownership is big in New Zealand right at the moment.

At the moment our largest export commodity depends on farms, and therefore it is an issue for exporters and international trade since foreign owners may not wish to continue to use the land in the same way.  The big question is do we want to protect our golden goose and keep the proceeds in NZ. 

But there is also the issue for information specialists of how do we in the future find the documentary evidence within our media - is it likely that this particular advertisement will be indexed?  What are we doing about this?

Another Conference - FREE!

The 3rd International Koha Conference is being held in Wellington, New Zealand from Monday 25th October to Wednesday 27th October.  And like the software it is FREE - can you believe it?

If you are not familiar with Koha, the New Zealand School of Export uses this software for its catalogue - ELIScat: http://ets.kohalibrary.com/ and so do hundreds of other libraries around the world.
The conference speakers are also from around the world: UK, France, Nigeria, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.   You can find the full programme here:
http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/program/day1.html and registration is now open.  The Conference Organiser is Chris Cormack who works for Catalyst IT in Wellington.

LIANZA Centennial Conference

At the Edge -- Te Matakāheru
LIANZA Centennial Conference
28 Nov – 1 Dec 2010
Dunedin, New Zealand

 The Conference Programme, the Conference Registration Brochure, and the online registration form are available on the Conference website – http://www.conference.co.nz/index.cfm/Lianza10 or at http://lianza.org.nz/ (click on the Conference logo).

The Centennial Conference theme is ‘At the Edge - Te Matakāheru’. This allows us the freedom to celebrate the many aspects of librarianship including history, innovation, space, integration and people. Matakāheru is the face of a Maori digging tool and the term is used figuratively in much the same way as the English ‘cutting edge’, particularly in relation to knowledge.

One hundred years ago the Libraries Association of New Zealand was formed. The Centennial Conference celebrates both our history and looks forward to the profession forever being at the [cutting] edge of the developing information landscape.
 
I have copied the above information from advertising for the LIANZA Centennial Conference but I did want to add a personal note.   I was a member of the Otago-Southland Branch of LIANZA (or NZLA as it was then), in the 1970s and 80s. Through that membership I became familiar with people such as Ada Fache, Dorothy Ballantyne, Mary Ronnie and Jock McEldowney.   All of them contributed so much to librarianship in Dunedin and in New Zealand.  I gave my first ever conference presentation at a LIANZA conference in Dunedin - on collecting posters in libraries.  My focus was of course on the Hocken Library collection which is where I was working at that time.  Michael Hitchings, who died earlier this year, was so encouraging and supportive of my efforts.  This paper was later published in New Zealand Libraries. 
 
 I am sure the Centennial Conference will be a superb event for everyone.

Tātarihia tō Reo Pākihi - Assess your business reo - Kōrero Māori

Tātarihia tō Reo Pākihi - Assess your business reo - Kōrero Māori

If staff at your company or organization have asked about resources for Maori Language Week - here is one place you can recommend from the Maori Language Commission website. You can also try this quiz from Stuff:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3957277/Place-names-quiz

Adult Learners Week 6-12th September 2010

Adult Community Education Aotearoa

The Week is a UNESCO initiative to celebrate adult learners.
It also incorporates International Literacy Day, Wednesday September 8 2009. Exporters studying any aspect of international trade are of course adult earners par excellence and thus to be celebrated during this week.

Time to Celebrate

The Catalogue of the New Zealand School of Export has reached a milestone - it now has over 1000 catalogued items! This is a significant achievement, not only because each of these items has been manually described, but because each has been selected for what it can contribute to the international trade community and of course to the work of the School.

Over 10% of all the items in the Catalogue are digital resources: pdfs, html, php, or websites which are immediately available to the user's desktop. We hope that this proportion will grow as time goes on.

Besides being a unique collection, the thesauri used to describe the items are also different and a different combination. We have used the International Trade Center's Thesaurus of International Trade Terms and where a resource focuses on a Maori aspect of trade we have used the Maori Subject Headings which are hosted by the National Library of New Zealand.

All of which is a real cause for celebration with some export quality New Zealand beverage!!!

Do take a look at our Catalogue http://ets.kohalibrary.com/ and if you want to see how a Maori suubject heading has been used - try "tauhokohoko"

Five Principles of Trade Librarianship

Looking back to the previous post, I see that there seems to be a very philosophical trend emerging! It was clearing out a folder of filed photocopies and course notes that uncovered Maurice Line's five laws of librarianship which lead me to thinking... So here are my five principles with a short intro:

Various notable librarians have set forth laws of librarianship: Ranganathan 1931, Line 1996, Gorman 1998, and in 2008 librarian Carol Simpson recommended that editing be done to Ranganathan's law because of the current richness of media available within libraries.

Ranganathan’s original five laws were:
1. Books are for use
2. Every reader his or her book
3. Every book its reader
4. Save the time of the reader
5. The library is a growing organism

Simpson suggested the following variations:

1.Media are for use.
2.Every patron his information.
3.Every medium its user.
4.Save the time of the patron.
5.The library is a growing organism.

Recently I re-read Line’s five laws of librarianship in The Library Association Record 98 (3) March 1996, and decided that it would be useful to enumerate some principles for the very specialised section of librarianship which I call ‘trade librarianship’. I use the abbreviation LIP here to mean a “Library and Information Professional”.

Principle 1
The LIP will serve the organisation in which he/she is working by the provision of a wide range of evaluated, high quality resources in whatever format is most appropriate. This may be through a digital information portal for example such as the one we call ELIS on the website of the New Zealand School of Export: http://www.export.ac.nz/library.html.

Principle 2
The resources will for the most part be digital in nature and available to the desktop. The LIP will ensure that appropriate help in using various media is available to all clients, and that the principles of information literacy are integrated into each transaction.

Principle 3
The LIP will use traditional methods such as subject headings in the catalogue and recently developed social networking tools, such as blogs, Twitter and facebook, to make links between related pieces of information and between information and users.

Principle 4
The LIP will be committed to his/her organisation’s ethos and will play a full part in achieving its goals while also ensuring that information sources used, and knowledge disseminated retain balance and integrity.

Principle 5
The most immediate focus for the LIP will be the provision of accurate and timely information that meets the needs of usersw. However he/she may also need to store and promote the preservation of information and knowledge produced by their organisation, through archiving, knowledge management and transfer.

What do you think? Any need for principles 6 or 7 or...?

Strands of international trade information

This photo taken by James Siddle is of some living weaving. It is harakeke or flax found near Paritutu, New Plymouth, and is still on the plant.

This reminded me of all the strands of information that might be needed to answer a query within our organisations. To fulfil the need for information on exporting to a new market for example, we may need to gather cultural and 'doing business in' information, phytosanitary guidelines, competitor lists and so on.

It is also information that needs to be refreshed and updated or 'kept alive' for the time of the project.

Appropriately Paritutu is a volcanic rock which is located near Port Taranaki, New Plymouth - a port with a lively international trade.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina || The Library of Alexandria

Photo: Plaza of Bibilotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt.  Bibliotheca Alexandrina 24 Sept. 2007 Creative Commons image.
The BA or Library of Alexandrina http://www.bibalex.org/home/ built in 2002 and is regarded as an attempt to rekindle of the brilliance of the ancient Library which was partially destroyed in 48 BC and completely destroyed by the the 6th century AD.  From the photographs it appears to be a stunning building, and although it does not have a dedicated trade libary or collection, I thought it was worth posting about.
Wikipedia suggests that it will never be funded properly and will always be subject to censorship.  Certainly the trade resources seem a little dated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina
It has four objectives and aspires to be:

• The world's window on Egypt
• Egypt's window on the world
• A leading institution of the digital age
• A centre for learning, tolerance, dialogue and understanding

In accordance with the third of these objectives the BA has developed a Digital Assets Repository (DAR) to create and miantain the Library's digital collections.   There are over 115,000 books available through the DAR.  These include 178 titles in Arabic on 'foreign trade'.
Tomorrow the BA will host a conference entitled: The Legal and Economic Aspects of the Development of Seaborne Trade in the Euro-Med Region.  This is being held on the occasion of the establishment of the Free Trade Area for Euro-Med based on the Barcelona Process and the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP).

PS.   There is a tribute to Paul Reynolds  on the Exportersblog posted yesterday: http://exportersblog.blogspot.com/

Mineral export index

Can any information specialist out there help with finding a "Mineral export index"?   There are lots of energy indexes but a search hasn't produced a mineral export index.  Any ideas?

And BTW following on from the Quiz post, here's a question for you?

Q. What is  the world’s largest harbour for supplying coal?

A. selaW htouS ni tsaoc tsae eht no eltsacsweN troP s’ailartsuA

What's in a name?

Obviously plenty when it's 'trade'.   The word dates from the 14th century and it came from the Old English tredan = to tread.   It is a little like the Old High German trata meaning track or course.
There are so many uses of the word trade or trades:

• the rag trade meaning the clothing industry
• terms of trade as in the ratio of the prices a country pays for its imports to the prices it receives for its exports
• 'vast crude finds excite oil trade' - presumably all the people involved; drillers, venture capitalists, oil companies etc.
• international trade - the selling and buying of goods across national borders
• trades - used on the stock exchange
• a trade as in bricklaying
• trade wind - one of the prevailing winds which facilitated the passage of ships carrying goods for trading.

There are almost certainly lots more with slightly different shade of meaning, and you can see that some have a core of that original meaning.  For example when you choose a trade like bricklaying, you choose a path for your immediate employment future.  Or even in 'international trade' there is a track to follow conforming to the rules, Incoterms and so on.

Just thought I would share with you some of my random thoughts...

Country Quizzes

Ever needed country quizzes for your colleagues as an activity at a Professional development session? Or even for a party?  Go no further than this page on the New Zealand School of Export website:

http://www.export.ac.nz/countryquizzes.html

It is being added to each week or fortnight and eventually will be a compendium of Quizzes, or a Quire of Quizzes!   The latest quiz is on Greece - very topical given Greece's current woes.

Industrious Kiwis: Archives and Industry

Records and Archives Week May 1-7, 2010

This is the stunning poster that has been produced for RAW 2010.  You can look at it by going to: http://www.aranz.org.nz/Site/events/RAW.aspx

The theme for RAW 2010 is archives and records of industry. New Zealanders are renowned for our ingenuity and clever ideas (our No.8 wire mentality). Archives and records are an important means of preserving our history of industry, innovation, trade, enterprise, research, science, technology and economic development. This is particularly relevant in the current economic state in helping us to reflect on our history of enterprise and ingenuity.

The organisers have suggested that these themes are considered:

• Retaining our archives and records of industry is important to our economic and social history.

• The economic development of New Zealand has been based on our primary industries, such as agriculture and horticulture.
• Our sense of pride and national identity is linked to industry; from the first export of frozen meat from Port Chalmers in 1882 to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy in 2001-2003
• The industries that New Zealand is engaged in is widening and changing from predominantly primary industries into more secondary industries.
• We need to be aware of the risk to these records that may be lost to future generations if these records are not retained

Exporting companies - of both merchandise and services are vital to this country.  This is a week when you might think about where your archives are, how they are being preserved and whether you should be asking for help from your local library or archival repository.   As you can see from the poster, photographs are so important as a record of what has happened in our international trade history.  Perhaps you have photos from when you went on a Trade Mission, or when you received an export award.  Or maybe you still have design materials from when you were developing your marketing for your overseas markets.  Better still do have the packages or containers?   All these are a very important part of our heritage and exporting companies are a part of that.

Company archives and records - THINK and ACT this week - 1-7 May 2010

Expo 2010 Shanghai - NEW Pathfinder

Looking for material on Expo 2010 - here is a short guide/pathfinder for you and your colleagues.   I would have liked to use the logo of the Expo which now starts in 9 days but haven't had any joy from the Expo people about using it!!

Click on the title to go to the Pathfinder.

TraLIS will be harvested in May

The National Library of New Zealand will be running its second harvest of the New Zealand internet from May 12th to 25th. As the National Library exists to preserve New Zealand's social and cultural history, this includes the Web. All internet sites with the .nz country code will be harvested. Other sites and blogs which have New Zealand content but which don't have the .nz code have to be nominated. Accordingly I have nominated this blog to be included.

The Library estimates that 130-140 million URLs will be captured. Click on the title to see more on the Web Harvest from the National Library website.

Beehive - Groser Welcomes Release of ACTA Negotiating Text

Beehive - Groser Welcomes Release of ACTA Negotiating Text

The text of the ACTA negotiations will be released tomorrow in the US Eastern STandard time.

Wellington Declaration

The Wellington Declaration which has arisen out of the PublicACTA Conference held on 10 April 2010, makes some important points for the business or international trade librarian/information specialist.  For example it says and I quote one only:

We recognise that the Internet has enabled creativity and innovation, the sharing of knowledge, citizen engagement and democracy, and is an engine of economic growth and opportunity.

Brenda Chawner has alerted the New Zealand library community to the Declaration on nz-libs and this morning LIANZA  has issued this statement:

LIANZA supports Wellington Declaration regarding trade agreement on copyright

LIANZA, the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa / Te Rau Herenga o Aotearoa, supports the points made in the Wellington Declaration (http://publicacta.org.nz/wellington-declaration/ ), which is addressed to the parties negotiating ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, meeting in Wellington this week.

LIANZA firmly believes that one of the principal purposes of copyright law is to encourage the dissemination and sharing of information, and is strongly opposed to any measures which inhibit these.

ACTA is a trade agreement being negotiated in secret.  LIANZA considers that any agreement relating to intellectual property should be negotiated openly and transparently, so that all potential stakeholders have input to the process. 

The Internet has become a vital tool for communication and dissemination of knowledge, and LIANZA believes that any measures, such as peremptory disconnection as envisaged in the now-abandoned section 92A of the New Zealand Copyright Act, that have potential to damage the open principles of the Internet should be avoided.

LIANZA also considers it is essential that exceptions currently included in copyright law, such as copying for research or private study, fair dealing, copying for educational purposes, and copying by libraries for library users and the users of other libraries, must be retained.

These and other exceptions are vital in maintaining an appropriate balance between encouraging creativity and protecting the rights of authors, publishers and other creators of literary, musical and artistic works, and providing for the needs of society to benefit from and make use of the ideas and knowledge incorporated within publications and other artistic works.   Maintenance of this balance is fundamental to good copyright law.

We recently had Richard Stallman in New Zealand and I posted about his talk in Levin (see below)

Op-Chart - How Green Is My iPad? - NYTimes.com

Op-Chart - How Green Is My iPad? - NYTimes.com

Here's a slant on iPads from the New York Times which I picked up off the nz-libs list.

Smartphones again - Love at First Touch

Ever since I attended the m-libraries workshop in January, I have been mulling over the potential benefits of a smartphone.   The December quarter issue of Exporter Magazine p.13 has an article by Mary McKinven in which she gets some feedback from users on the Blackberry versus the iPhone.  New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser uses a Blackberry!

Two of her key points were:

• the iPhone is simple to use and is like a personal assistant
• the Blackberry fits nicely into a suit jacket pocket

Well since then we have had the launch of iPad which from what i can gather it does not fit into a suit jacket pocket.   Has any one out there who reads this blog, bought an iPad?  Care to share your thoughts?   They  aren't available in New Zealand yet so any advice on how you are using your iPad, and how you are finding it  would be great.

The Internet in New Zealand 2009

The World Internet Project New Zealand Team has published its reports on The Internet in New Zealand 2009.   You can find the full report and an Executive Summary at the AUT website:

http://www.aut.ac.nz/research/research-institutes/icdc/projects/world-internet-project

As most of us are aware from the what is happening in our information services, the Internet is rated very highly as an information source.  In this report the Internet comes out on top as the most important information source in New Zealand in 2009:  65% rated the internet as important whereas libraries rated only 45% .  Libraries were less important than TVand newspapers.   I guess it highlights our role in making sure that the internet sources our clients use are the best!

The World site is to be found at: http://www.worldinternetproject.net/ so you can check reports for other countries.   It could be useful for the marketing department as well.