College Library News

Edition 226 of the University Computing Service Newsletter (October 2005) is now available. A PDF copy can be downloaded by anyone who prefers a copy to print for themselves and hardcopy versions will be available for reference in University Libraries.

Items include a special page on Advice for new users plus:
* The new University Directory (lookup service): what it is, how to use it, and how to edit your own information
* Security and how to protect your computer and the network
* Most people will need Raven passwords this term: how to get one
* Network charges are likely to increase for 2005-6

Collection of student passwords
All students who are new to the University this autumn, both undergraduate and postgraduate, have automatically been issued with accounts on the three Computing Service core services:
- Hermes for email
- the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) for access to workstation clusters
- Raven for web authentication.

Students can collect their passwords for these accounts via a web browser once they have arrived in Cambridge. The web pages at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/new-students/ describe the facilities available for new students, and include a pointer to the password collection pages.

Other items in the latest newsletter include: Windows Update CD, Magpie account renewal, misuse of ejournals, phishing, scam emails, copyright, EU tender 2005, collection of student passwords, account cancellations, pilot wireless service, port blocking, future of CUS, Web-based access to Public Workspace Facility (PWF) filespaces, PWF printing, PWF Linux, Condor, access to Hermes (the University email system).

As a pilot service, an RSS feed of the newsletter is now available as well as an an Atom version of the feed. For those using the excellent Firefox browser, live bookmarks usable with Firefox are on http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/news/, http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/ and http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/newsletter/.

A few of the more substantial articles that have appeared over the last few days about the Guardian’s total redesign on Monday 12 September:

- City of Sound: Assessing the new Guardian, with brief nod to the avant-garde (aka Grazia, Heat and The Sun)
- Mark Boulton (UK typographic designer): New look Guardian
- NewsDesigner.com: A Guardian in hand
- Media Week: Taylor hopes commercial nous will drive The Guardian forward
- Journalism.co.uk: Jilted Doonesbury fans besiege new Guardian
- Journalism.co.uk: The Guardian: my new favourite pygmy paper

The Guardian itself reports Sales of Guardian leap on day of relaunch. The first Berliner issue gained a massive 40% uplift in sales. This shows a high level of initial interest in sampling the new product. No doubt some of this increase is already falling away with time. It will take some weeks to more accurately assess the true level of increased sales. One of my local newsagents reports increased buying of The Guardian amongst young people.

I have bought it every day so far - somehow I cannot resist it. I love the feel of the product - but do not have much time to properly read it through. My opinion of it is improving, but I am still not sure about the headline font or (the need for) the mess of pictures on the front page above the masthead. Remember - it’s free to read the online ‘digital Guardian’ for another week or so - right back to the 1st September issue.

Google Scholar, Google’s specialized search engine for finding ’scholarly’ material on the web (using a small subset of its main index) has introduced a broad search by subject option on its Advanced Scholar Search page. Searches can be limited to any combination of the following seven subject areas:

- Biology, Life Sciences, and Environmental Science
- Business, Administration
- Finance, and Economics
- Chemistry and Materials Science
- Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics
- Medicine, Pharmacology, and Veterinary Science
- Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science
- Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities

On Google Scholar weblog, which first alerted me to the new search option, points out that the list of subject areas highlights one of Scholar’s drawbacks - it is heavily dominated by the Natural Sciences. As the list above demonstrates, The Arts are confined to only one category: ‘Social Sciences/Arts/Humanities’.

A commenter, who only calls himself ‘Brad’, points out another conclusion to be drawn from the subject area search: scholar is cataloging:

“Google employees are placing resources into subject categories. I doubt very seriously it’s 100% powered by AI. No, this isn’t LC cataloging, but it’s cataloging nonetheless.”

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Background
Google Scholar enables web searches specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

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Google has launched Google Blog Search. Google is the first major web search engine to launch a weblog-specific search option (if you don’t count Ask Jeeves who own Bloglines - although Bloglines is primarily a web based ‘feed aggregator’ for monitoring RSS feeds). The size of Google’s Blog Search index is relatively low at around 8.7m weblogs, but this will probably increase over time. It covers all weblogs, not just those published using Google’s own blogging site Blogger. It will be strong competition for existing weblog search sites such as Technorati - up to now considered to be the blog search engine and currently tracking over 17m weblogs - twice Google’s number. There are lots of other weblog search engines, for example: Feedster, BlogPulse, Bloglines, PubSub, Blogdigger, IceRocket, Gigablast, Daypop (which uses a high-quality, but much smaller, index hand-picked by human editors) to list the better know ones.

Technorati, which many consider should be afraid - very afraid - of Google’s move into its territory, says:

“[Google Blog Search] will mark a major milestone for the World Live Web. At Technorati, we have a tremendous amount of respect for the Google team and for everything they’ve done in the world of search. I’m sure that they’ll continue to improve over the coming months, perhaps including tags, recent images and links, zeitgeists, blogger tools, and other types of semistructured data. I’m sure that they’ll also start indexing the full-text of blog posts, not just the partial text found in most blog feeds.”

This translates to: what took you so long and, by the way, don’t forget all the stuff we do that you don’t. As SearchEngineWatch points out that Google Blog Search indexes only the XML feeds and not the actual HTML weblog text:

“Although Google Blog search focuses primarily on content published to the blogosphere, it’s not a true full-text search across all sources, according to Goldman. This is because some publishers only syndicate excerpts of content via RSS. Google’s blog search indexes all of the content it finds in [RSS] feeds, but does not attempt to access and index the full content available on a publisher’s web server.”

Unusually, the blog search results default sort order in Google is by ‘relevancy’ - although they can also be sorted by date. Most blog search engines default to a date-based sort which would seem to be the most useful order (generally we are looking for ‘breaking news’). As well as the usual standard Google Search operators, Google Blog Search adds four of its own to help narrow down weblog searches:

- inblogtitle:
- inposttitle:
- inpostauthor:
- blogurl:

ResearchBuzz is impressed:

“Google has an impressive advanced search for their blog search, which Feedster should take a look at. You can search by blog title (special syntax inblogtitle: ) or post title (special syntax inposttitle: ). You can limit your searches to particular URLs. There’s also syntax to limit results by date — either a particular set of dates or a time span (last 6 hours, last 12 hours, etc.) It’s about time that someone took the delineation offered by RSS feeds and made a nice advanced search out of it. I’m sure this is only the beginning.”

To take the example Google gives in its ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ (FAQ), the search query [mandolin inpostauthor:Graham] will find blog items about mandolins written by people named Graham. Two points to note here: (1) the square brackets are Google’s ‘official’ way of marking the beginning and end of queries - only the text within the square brackets should be entered - TIP: see them as the borders of the search box; (2) as with standard Google, there should be no space after the full colon of the search operator - as in inpostauthor:Graham. Google Advanced Blog Search achieves the same search in a more user friendly way - and it is the advanced search options which really set Google Blog Search apart from the rest. Also, according to Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer weblog Google Blog Search is very fast.

Google Blog Search, like a lot of search engines now, also allows you to subscribe to a ‘feed’ of your weblog search. The feed (often referred to as an ‘RSS feed’) automatically alerts you to new instances appearing which satisfy your search query. You will need to use a ‘feed reader’ - such as the (free) web based Bloglines - to subscribe to the update feed.

It is important to note that other ’scholarly’ search engines exist. Two excellent ones (considered to be superior to Google Scholar by the academic community) are Scirus which searches over 200 million science-specific web pages and OAIster which searches amongst a constantly increasing collection of freely available (and previously difficult-to-access), academically-oriented digital resources. Scirus offers a Scirus-Google test. The Charleston Advisor published a detailed review of Google Scholar [April 2005].

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Background
Google Blog Search is Google search technology focused on weblogs (or ‘blogs’). Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice. Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.

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Backlinks
Google Scholar Report - could do (much) better [20 June 2005]
New! Google Scholar search for academic material [19 November 2004]

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theguardian is offering its online digital Guardian service for free until Monday 26 September. It normally costs £10 per month. You can read the whole issue online every day. Enjoy!

theguardian has posted four video interviews on its change in format , including one with designer Mark Porter [thanks to the commenter at newsdesigner.com].

Also, it has reactions to the new format Guardian from rivals, peers and advertisers.

Finally, there is the new editors’ weblog which, last night, gave a blow-by-blow account of producing the first Berliner issue. You can add comments - such as what you think about the new format. Or email whatdoyouthink@guardian.co.uk.

That’s all about theguardian for now. theguardian is available on weekdays in the library during full term - plus one other quality newspaper (either The Daily Telegraph or The Independent).

The College website recently appeared in a new format. Unfortunately, it has a tedious ‘enter here’ front page (not so good - but at least it is not some ‘Flash’-based ‘intro’). Better to use this URL to get straight in. Also, again unfortunately, the website designers changed the URL of the library web page with no prior warning and no redirection - not web-friendly standard practice, surely? The library is now even more securely hidden away under ‘Teaching’ at http://www.homerton.cam.ac.uk/teaching/library/index.html (the ‘old’ web address still does not work at time of writing). Some of the text on our web page has still not been updated either - but we hope to have this done before next week when students are starting to return for the new academic year. On the positive side, at least they’ve got rid of the awful dark blue background.

Coincidentally, the University Library (UL) site has also had a change of format. Now this is definitely an improvement. There is even a more obvious link from the front page (under ‘Digital Library’) to DSpace@Cambridge - the university’s institutional repository where research and other material produced by University staff can be archived - mostly in ‘open access’ form so that anyone with internet can access it.

The way University of Cambridge libraries are arranged can be confusing at first. The UL front page includes this useful introduction:

“Welcome to the website of Cambridge University Library. As well as being the main library for the University we are one of six legal deposit libraries in the British Isles [like the British Library which means, incidentally, that UL should be given a copy of every item that is published]. Our main mission is to deliver world-class library and information services to meet the needs of the local, national and international scholarly community.

“The libraries in the University are organised in a tripartite system - [1] University Library and its Dependent Libraries, [2] Departmental and Faculty Libraries, and [3] College Libraries [that’s us]. Information about libraries in the University and Affiliated Institutions can be found at libraries@cambridge.”

The Cambridge University Library will be closed for Annual Inspection from Friday 16th September until Friday 23rd September.

Veteran arts presenter Melvyn Bragg is to present a new four-part ITV1 television series on the 12 books he thinks have changed the world. The Twelve Books that Changed the World, a follow-up to his last ITV1 literary series The Adventure of English, has begun filming for broadcast in April 2006.

The twelve world-changing books, according to Bragg, are (in chronological order):
• Magna Carta (1215)
• King James Bible (1611)
• William Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623)
• Principia Mathematica (Isaac Newton, 1687)
• Patent specification for Arkwright’s spinning machine (1769)
• The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith, 1776)
• William Wilberforce’s Commons of Commons speech (12 May, 1789)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792)
• Experimental Research in Electricity (Michael Faraday, 1855)
• The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin, 1859)
• The first rule book of the Football Association (1863)
• Married Love (Marie Stopes, 1918)

Lord Bragg also presents ITV1’s arts television programme The South Bank Show and BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time which has to be the most uncompromisingly intellectual programme on any channel in any medium. Interestingly, it is also the BBC’s most popular ‘podcast’ - see BBC Radio download and podcast trial for details of the BBC’s podcasting trial service of selected radio programmes which runs until the end of this year. Podcasts are mp3 downloads which can be played on any mp3 player.

An ITV spokeswoman said Bragg wrote the series himself: “When people think of things that change the world, they tend to think of extraordinary events: the assassination of leaders; the invasion of countries; the havoc wreaked by natural disasters. All extremely dramatic, but there is something less attention-grabbing, but just as powerful, which changes the world - books.”

Lord Bragg, who is Controller of Arts at London Weekend Television and president of the National Campaign for the Arts, also writes books - including the books to go with his many tv and radio series, not to mention 17 novels. Where does he find the time?

The 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced this afternoon. Out of the 17 longlisted books (see previous post), the following six were shortlisted:

- John Banville - The Sea (Picador)
- Julian Barnes - Arthur & George (Jonathan Cape)
- Sebastian Barry - A Long Long Way (Faber & Faber)
- Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (Faber & Faber)
- Ali Smith - The Accidental (Hamish Hamilton)
- Zadie Smith - On Beauty (Hamish Hamilton)

The main surprise is that Ian McEwan failed to make the grade with Saturday - thought to be a dead cert for the shortlist if not for the overall winner. Other literary heavyweights falling at the first fence were Salman Rushdie (for Shalimar the Clown) and J M Coetzee (for Slow Man) - both previous Booker Prize winners.

We have a local representative on the shortlist: Ali Smith, who lives in Cambridge. This year’s dark horse is Sebastian Barry with A Long Long Way about Irish soldiers in the Great War. Kazuo Ishiguro is a previous winner of the Booker Prize (as it was then known) with The Remains of the Day in 1989 - which became better known with the 1993 film version starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the butler.

John Sutherland, Chair of Judges, commented:

“The selection of a shortlist, the judges felt, was an unusually difficult process this year. There was sufficient quality for two distinguished lists. We were aware that the rules require that the award be to the best novel. The strength of the year’s competition can be measured by the fact that three good books by previous Man Booker winners were finally not selected. This shortlist, we believe, witnesses to the remarkable quality of the current state of fiction. We look forward to the final round.”

Reactions already out in The Guardian: Former winners absent from Booker shortlist, The Times: Booker shortlist delivers snub to some literary lions and BBC: Barnes and Smith make Booker list.

Last year’s winner was Alan Hollinghurst for The Line of Beauty, a satire of the 1980s Conservative government. The library has acquired this book and intends to acquire this year’s winning book.

The Guardian’s conversion to ‘Berliner’ format will happen on Monday 12 September.

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UPDATE: 9 September - An image (left) of the new look has been released by The Guardian - including a last-minute change of masthead.

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The announcement (official PDF here) was issued at 10:40 on 1 September 2005. [Note: you may find that free registration is required to access Guardian web pages] The new so-called ‘Berliner’ page dimensions are, at 470mm by 315mm, about the width of a standard UK tabloid but some 110mm taller. This format is new to the UK, but used by some newspapers in continental Europe (for example France’s Le Monde, Spain’s La Vanguardia, and Italy’s La Repubblica). The move has necessitated massive expenditure on totally new printing presses both in London and Manchester, with the side benefit of being able to print colour on every page.

The Guardian’s change of format - a major event in UK newspaper publishing (let alone for The Guardian) - has been, in part, forced by the recent gradual conversions of its daily rival The Independent, closely followed by The Times, to a standard UK tabloid page size from the autumn of 2003, both being fully tabloid by November 2004. These two tabloid (or ‘compact’ as they like to call it) quality newspapers have been growing their share of sales at the expense of The Guardian. Despite this, in February 2004, The Guardian rejected a move to standard tabloid format. Then rumours of the ‘Berliner’ page size were confirmed end of June 2004. Personally, I am glad that The Guardian has gone for something a bit different and distinctive. Now there are rumours that The Daily Telegraph, the only remaining daily broadsheet, might also go the ‘Berliner’ route.

Originally, April 2006 was pencilled in for the ‘Berliner’ relaunch of The Guardian, so the actual September 2005 date announced is a major triumph (although the original April 2006 date could have been a smokescreen to wrong-foot the opposition). It comes not a moment too soon, as The Guardian’s (latest) July 2005 average daily sales figure of 358,000 (source: Audit Bureau of Circulations) is its lowest July figure since July 1978! Interestingly, although The Guardian’s daily sales number is relatively low for a UK newspaper, its hugely successful GuardianUnlimited website has one of the highest worldwide audiences of any newspaper site on the web, seen by over 11m unique users in July 2005.

The Guardian is being redesigned ‘from scratch’ by an in-house team led by Creative Editor Mark Porter. It will use an exclusive, specially created new typeface, ‘Guardian Egyptian’. The ‘G2′ section, originally standard tabloid in size, will now be a half-’Berliner’ size (slightly larger than A4) stapled magazine - described as the UK’s first daily newsprint magazine. There will be a daily science page, a new economics section, and expanded comment and letters section. Lloyd Shepherd, Head of Development at Guardian Unlimited, says in his weblog:

“I have never for a minute subscribed to the “death of newspapers” theories, and believe me - the redesigned Guardian is beautiful and exciting and will want you to buy newspapers again. Just suspend any prejudices you may have, be they anti-Guardian or anti-paper, on September 12 and get yourself a copy if you’re in the UK or Ireland. You may disagree with what is said in the words, but you won’t be able to argue that the format isn’t spectacular.”

The last time The Guardian was completely redesigned was by David Hillman, whose influential design was introduced 12 February 1988. Despite being refreshed by Simon Esterson a decade later, today’s broadsheet Guardian retains much of the Hillman look (including the distinctive title with the italic serif ‘The’ followed by an extra bold sans-serif ‘Guardian’).

The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, will convert to the ‘Berliner’ format (and presumably also undergo a radical redesign?) ‘early next year’.

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UPDATE: 9 September 2005 - windows media file of Channel 4 News item about the Berliner Guardian with some shots of Berliner pages
UPDATE: 8 September 2005 - An excellent article in Press Gazette: Rusbridger: why I did it the Berliner way interviews Guardian editor Rusbridger and reviews a ‘dry run’ dummy issue of the new Berliner Guardian - in words only (no pictures were allowed!). Looks like the Berliner main section will have a 5-column page which means wider columns than usual - I think this is excellent news: columns have been increasing in number and narrowing over the years (to accomodate advertisers?) which, in my view, does not look so good. Quality = wider columns in my mind. (Take a look at old copies of newspapers - they tend to have less and/or wider columns).

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For useful background reading, see this year’s Hugo Young lecture by Alan Rusbridger (editor of The Guardian) ‘What are newspapers for?’ (March 2005) and The Observer article Will quality sell? Only you have the answer (August 2005).

There is a strange custom amongst newspapers that the newspaper undergoing the change is reluctant to say too much whilst, understandably, rival newspapers are not keen to give their competitors ‘free publicity’. So we find The Guardian itself, apart from a small announcement on Friday, strangely quiet about its imminent transformation with the best article appearing in a rival, The Independent on Sunday: Dateline Berliner: ‘The Guardian’ gets ready to be born again. Annoyingly, this may become pay to view after a few days, so here are a few interesting opinions from the article.

Paul Thomas, managing partner of the media agencyMindShare:”

“I have seen it [the Berliner Guardian] and I think the prospects are good. It has full colour throughout and the layout is refreshing. It is a brave decision to do something different, but the newspaper market in general is not at its most healthy and this will give them stand-out appeal.”

Terry Watson of the international newspaper design consultants Palmer Watson:

“Berliner is a great format. It is definitely the right move for The Guardian. Because of the associations the tabloid shape has in British minds I am sure that if The Times had been able to move directly from broadsheet to Berliner it would have done it. […] There will be several chief executives at other titles desperately hoping the Berliner Guardian is a flop. They know their editors wanted to try this years ago. Conservatism about formats was universal on the commercial side of the newspaper business until The Independent proved how attractive change can be.”

Lynne Anderson, communications director of the Newspaper Society

“The trend towards format change is new to the nationals and has been seen as very innovative, but many regional newspapers changed format years ago. Regional newspapers regularly canvass their readers and respond accordingly - to great effect in newspapers like the Western Mail, the Liverpool Daily Post and The Belfast Telegraph, all of which relaunched and achieved considerable circulation increases. Readers seem to prefer new-look papers.”

Roger Mosey, head of BBC Sport:

“The Guardian has been talking about being more a journal of record and looking at something like the BBC model where we try to get the maximum objectivity into our news coverage. As a consumer, I do sometimes worry that significant areas of the modern media have lost the art of reporting. If The Guardian achieves that and it filters into the wider market it would be a good thing.”

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Backlink: The Guardian to relaunch in smaller form this autumn [June 2005]

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News from Patricia Killiard, Head of Electronic Services and Systems, Cambridge University Library:

A new agreement for the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts collection of databases will increase the number of CSA titles available to members of the university from today (Thursday 1 September).

In addition to the Core Collection, ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts) and LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts), to which the University Library previously subscribed, the list now includes all CSA proprietary titles. New databases available through this arrangement are:

- ANTE: Abstracts in New Technologies & Engineering
- Aqualine (water resources)
- ARTbibliographies Modern (ABM)
- BHI: British Humanities Index
- CSA Aerospace & High Technology Database
- CSA/ASCE Civil Engineering Abstracts
- CSA Mechanical & Transportation Engineering Abstracts
- CSA Physical Education Index
- CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
- Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI)

Two further databases to which members of the university have access will continue to be hosted by CSA: Criminal Justice Abstracts and the Index Islamicus.

Access to all the databases is available from the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Illumina site . Note that this link will only work on-campus - no passwords are required within the ‘cam.ac.uk’ domain. Off-campus access is available using Athens passwords. CSA provides a user guide on its site.

The new titles will be added shortly to the list of electronic resources on the UL web pages.

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BACKGROUND
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts specializes in publishing and distributing, in print and electronically, 100 bibliographic and full-text databases and journals in four primary editorial areas: natural sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities, and technology. A privately held company, CSA is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, with offices throughout the U.S., as well as in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, Latin America and the United Kingdom. Researchers in more than 4,000 institutions worldwide use CSA information resources, and CSA’s print journals are used in more than 80 countries. CSA has been a leader in publishing and providing quality abstracts and indexes and an innovator in the information field for over 30 years. CSA Illumina is designed to provide a simple, more user-friendly approach to searching for novice users while maintaining powerful options for users who require them. The interface provides access to more than 100 databases published by CSA and its publishing partners.

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News from Patricia Killiard, Head of Electronic Services and Systems, Cambridge University Library:

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) The SEP is a dynamic online reference work, which is designed to be responsive to new research in philosophy. It is widely considered amongst the academic community as being an integral part of philosophy teaching and research in the UK. Institutions will have free online access to authoritative peer reviewed material to support those studying philosophy.

JISC’s and the Stanford University’s commitment to Open Access principles means that the general public can also access these materials for free. JISC funding of membership dues on behalf of UK further and higher institutions contributes to the permanent operating fund securing the SEP’s future. This means that it can continue to be provided on an Open Access basis as well as being run for the benefit of the global academic community.

With the SEP, staff and students can:

• Download and store SEP entries for personal use
• Keep up to date with new research as the authors and subject editors work together to constantly revise and review entries to ensure that the SEP remains current and authoritative
• Use SEP across a wide variety of subject disciplines within the sciences and humanities, including aesthetics, ethics, feminism, philosophy of law, logic, metaphysics and philosophy of science
• Access and download certain usage statistics . Easily find the information they are looking. Users are more likely to find the SEP entries through a web search than any other philosophy reference work .

The SEP will shortly be added to the list of electronic resources freely available within the university but note that it is Open Access and thus freely available from any internet access point.