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.

RSS Feed Search Engine

I have just discovered this search engine and wonder if anyone else has used it or is using it.   The AboutUs information says that more than 75 million blog posts and news articles have been indexed and are searchable.   Has anyone tested out the "Deep Search" which RSSMicro uses?

This links back  to the post on Trade Content Curators (TRACCs) as well.  Your comments?  (BTW there is no need to have a Google account before you post to TraLIS anymore)

World Trade Organisation

The WTO site is a fund of information as can be seen by clicking on the Trade Topics link. The WTO also has a library and the catalogue can be searched by anyone, but it is intended primarily for WTO Staff and Delegates. Here is the OPAC link:

https://elibrary2.eosintl.com/W10300FRStaff/OPAC/index.asp

It specializes in economics, statistical and legal materials related to international trade. The Library holds some 40,000 monographs, more than 1,000 periodicals, and over 800 current yearbooks. In addition, it is home to the GATT Archives. A search on 'New Zealand' retrieves 37 items.

Kowhai and Repositories

Kowhai at Aokautere Park September 17,2008. Photo taken by Graeme Siddle.

In line with the natural theme which this blog has developed, I wanted to put up a picture of kowhai. This is a photo of flowers on a kowhai in the grounds of Aokautere Park flowering at the moment, but there is also a larger tree in the bush remnant across Staces Road from the School. I don't have a particular connection between kowhai and repositories except that I guess kowhai is a repository of plant dna particular to this place.

I discovered this blog this morning and repositories are a tool which the Director has raised with me. John Mark Ockerbloom says:

At the same time, though, you can't plan the development of a library without thinking about its repositories. Repositories really are essential infrastructure for libraries but not simply as a place to "capture and preserve the intellectual output of university communities" (as a 2002 SPARC white paper put it), or, more pessimistically, as "a place where you dump stuff and then nothing happens to it" (as a 2005 JISC workshop annex put it).

Repositories: what they are, and what we use them for John Mark Ockerbloom post June 26, 2008.

The issue of repositories raises the issue not only of what do we do with the intellectual output of the New Zealand School of Export, but also of what is happening to the particular intellectual output in New Zealand which is related to international trade. Is this just for the National Library of New Zealand to look after, or an institution such as ours?

Graeme

Records & Archives Week May 1-7

Records & Archives Week celebrates the importance of records, archives and the recordkeeping professions. The theme for 2008 is 'Protect Your Records'. Everyone keeps records of some sort and those of us involved in some aspect of international trade are no exception to this, having photographs, contracts, marketing materials, supply chain flow-charts and so on. The thing they all have in common is that we would hate to lose them, because it would be very expensive and in the case of older material, it may mean a loss of our heritage.

The Records & Archives Week site has Advice on protecting your records. Have a look at it and do something this week!

MarketLine database

Are there professionals working in International Trade Library and Information Services who use this product? What do you think of it? What do your clients think of it?
Graeme