Author Archives for Fran
September 7, 2012 5:10 am
Published by Fran
Last night I popped in to “We are all a cyborg” an event as part of the Wellcome Collection’s Superhuman exhibition. It covered the history of human enhancement from ancient Egyptian prosthetic toes to visions of a transhuman future of hybrid bioengineered-human-machines. The relationship between society, the individual and the aesthetics of the “normal” was explored too. I was also drawn to the themes of embodiedness of cognition by an artwork in which the artist had built extensions to her fingertips to enable her to experience a greater area of space. By altering the physical confines of the body, how... Read more »
September 6, 2012 7:53 am
Published by Fran
On Tuesday I attended a very interesting event about information visualization and I have written a review for the ISKO UK blog. I was particularly fascinated by the ideas suggested by Martin Dodge of mapping areas that are not “space” and what this means for the definition of a “map”. So, the idea of following the “path” of a device such as a phone through the electromagnetic spectrum brings a geographical metaphor into a non-tangible “world”. Conversely, is the software and code that devices such as robots use to navigate the world a new form of “map”? Previously, I have... Read more »
September 2, 2012 4:39 am
Published by Fran
I don’t manage to get to many London IA events, so I was very pleased to be able to attend a UX field trip a little while ago, arranged by the wonderful Alison Austin, UX practitioner, who has a knack for spotting interesting people doing fascinating things. She arranged a visit to Inition Studios, which gave us the opportunity to get our hands on a selection of their gadgets and devices. Inition and their sister company Holition deal with all things 3D. I wasn’t sure what 3D printing had in common with 3D film-making but a lot of the modelling,... Read more »
August 22, 2012 9:44 am
Published by Fran
David Riecks of Controlled Vocabulary gave a presentation about indexing images. He pointed out that metadata is all around us, but we don’t tend to notice it. He described the sort of metadata needed to make an asset “smart” and how organizations like the PLUS registry are attempting to provide a simple, one-stop shop for rights and licensing metadata. The Embedded Metadata Manifesto sets out details of metadata that needs to be included in image files to promote easy and legal re-use of content and so protect the rights of photographers and others in the content creation and related industries.... Read more »
August 18, 2012 5:23 am
Published by Fran
Matt Johnson from EMC gave an extremely clear and useful presentation gave an overview of the taxonomy migration and revision project I have been working on for the past couple of years. Matt and I were delighted to have such a big and lively audience for our session, especially as it was at 8 am! Thank you to everyone who joined us, to SLA’s Taxonomy division for organzing the session, to the session sponsor Gale Cengage Learning, and to Larry Lempert for moderating.
August 14, 2012 4:27 am
Published by Fran
Although I don’t work in business research at the moment, subjectivity/objectivity is one of my pet topics, so I enjoyed hearing about how “truthiness” is being affected by online publishing and social media. [“Truthiness” is a term invented by US comedian Stephen Colbert and used in his political satire to refer to politiciins who seek to persuade us that something must be true because it “feels right” rather than because of the weight of evidence or rational argument to support it. ] Beware the echo chamber Cynthia Lesky of Threshold Information talked about the seductiveness of the “echo chamber” effect... Read more »
August 11, 2012 8:33 am
Published by Fran
Last month I had a wonderful time at the SLA (Special Libraries Association) conference in Chicago. I had never previously been to an SLA conference, even though there is a lively SLA Europe division. SLA is very keen to be seen as “not just for librarians” and the conference certainly spanned a vast range of information professions. The Taxonomy Division is thriving and there seem to be far more American than British taxonomists, which, although not surprising, was a pleasure as I don’t often find myself as one of a crowd! The conference has a plethora of receptions and social... Read more »
July 31, 2012 9:53 am
Published by Fran
I spent a wonderful afternoon at the New York Public Library on July 20th, thanks to Phil Sutton, reference librarian, who was kind enough to talk to me about his work and introduce me to several of his colleagues in the NYPL Labs, website, and local history teams. As the Library holds such vast and diverse collections, it is not surprising that the metadata work of the Labs team is varied and wide ranging. One project involves rationalising and mapping metadata across collections that use different standards, another involves creating metadata for content strategy and website navigation, while more experimental... Read more »
July 5, 2012 3:40 pm
Published by Fran
I was very grateful to Sarah Saunders of Electric Lane for inviting me to speak at the CEPIC Conference at the IPTC Congress in May. These are just a few of my personal highlights from a very full conference. Image content for mobile devices Dittmar Frohmann, Director of International Product at iStock and Getty Images, the keynote speaker of the day, covered a lot of ground, but I was struck by his recognition of the need for new business models for photo libraries. As has happened to the book publishing and music industries, the photo industries are reeling from the... Read more »
June 28, 2012 4:24 pm
Published by Fran
I am delighted that the Journal of Documentation accepted my article about subjectivity and objectivity in taxonomy work for publication. The article is based on the work I did for my MRes dissertation at UCL, and I am extremely grateful for the support of Vanda Broughton, everyone at the Department of Information Studies, the wonderful taxonomists and information professionals who helped me with my research, and ISKO UK.