The Audiobook’s Evolution from the Analog Era to AI

Greetings from "The Audiobook’s Evolution from the Analog Era to AI" by Matthew Rubery, from Queen Mary University of London. We are at the the National Library of Australia in Canberra, sponsored by the Australian National University. He started with the origins of recorded audio, pointing out the first recording was a nursery rhyme: Mary had a little lamb. He then moved onto how audiobooks were first for the blind, then a general readership. He ended with an AI version of Melania Trump reading her autobiography.

Vale Kerry Webb

The Canberra Times announced the death of Kerry Webb, former ACT government Web architect and Director of Systems for  the National Library of Australia, 7 November 2015.

Kerry was central to getting the Australian Government on the web in the mid 1990s. He was a member of the informal "Internet Conspiracy" of government, academic and industry people who helped formulate Australian Internet policy. His vision is set out in "Provision of Australian Government Information on the Internet" (1996). Kerry was regular contributor to the "Internet Reality Check", held in Canberra during the middle to late 1990s, with Tony Barry and Eric Wainwright.

A contributor to his profession, Kerry wrote the "Webb's web" column in the Australian Library and Information Association magazine "Incite" from January 2005 to December 2012. Also he co-authored with Christine Frey (Goodacre) "Microcomputers in Australian libraries" (ALIA, 1991) and "Automating a small library" (ALIA, 1992). The NLA also has the sound recording by Kerry "Web based tools for libraries" (2008).

A long term contributor to the Link list on Australian network policy and communications, Kerry's first post was "Australian Government Web Page", 12 Apr 1995. There are 159 posts by, or mentioning, him.


I fondly remember Kerry Webb's bemused jibes at my presentations on matters to do with the Internet and self-promotion therein. I will miss his shouting "Bingo" whenever I mentioned the "USS Blue Ridge" in a talk. ;-)

National Library of Australia Cafés Reopen

Greetings from the National Library of Australia in Canberra, where I am delighted to report the NLA Bookplate and Paperplate Cafes have reopened. They closed in mid November, due to the commercial provider ceasing trade. The Wombok salad is back on (and better than ever) at the Paperplate Café, the less formal of the two, downstairs opposite the map room.

I have only had a coffee so far at the more formal Bookplate Café upstairs next to the NLA foyer (and with stained glass windows). The new management appear to have avoided the mistake of messing with the menu, but have done some redecorating. There are two large sets of dark wood bookcases, one full of antiques, such as typewriters, an old voltmeter and a plug-board from an analogue computer. If visiting Canberra, this is a good spot to stop, rest and eat. One catch is that the Federal government is now charging for parking in the parliamentary triangle area, so visitors also have to pay for parking when visiting the university (I avoided this by catching the Number 3 bus).

Fred Ward: Australian pioneer designer 1900-1990

The new book "Fred Ward: Australian pioneer designer 1900-1990" by Derek F. Wrigley celebrates the work of someone who has shaped the built environment for much of my working life without my knowing it. This book is more than a biography, going into detail of the elements and philosophy of furniture design. Included is a detailed case study of the iterative design process used for the CA10 chair for the John Curtin School of Medical Research (c1956).

In February 2012 I was asked to provide some advice on publishing for Derek Wrigley's biography of Fred Ward. I had never heard of Fred Ward, but agreed to I met Derek a few weeks later to discuss the topic over lunch at University House at the Australian National University. As Derek talked about Fred, it slowly dawned on me that the chair I was sitting on, and all the furniture around me, was designed by Fred Ward. I provided some advice on how to produce the manuscript and was delighted to see, a year and a half later the finished book (with an acknowledgement of me in the back).

It was only on reading Derek's book that I realized for much of my adult life I had been surrounded by Fred Ward's work. Along with the furniture and fittings in the ANU University House, Fred Ward designed the furniture at the National Library of Australia, the Shine Dome (which I attended the 2013 Marion Mahony Griffin Lecture), even the desks and chairs in the Reserve Bank of Australia, where as a junior clerk I used to make deposits.

The fine details of the curvature of the seats in a university office may not be of interest to many academics. But Derek also describes the wider work of the ANU Design Unit, which carried out research on the design of teaching spaces. In particular the discussion of the use of chairs, rather than fixed seating in teaching spaces is a topic of great importance to universities today. For the last few years I have been looking at how to provide more flexible teaching spaces which can be used for combinations of lecturing, tutorials and group work with changed teaching practices. The rigid division between lecture theaters, with large numbers of seats at a fixed pitch, facing the front and small tutorial rooms with movable seats, is not suitable. It was a surprise to find that ANU had a design unit looking into such issues decades ago.

The design of the book itself, by Gillian Cosgrove, is in itself, a lesson in elegant design. The paperback edition is available  from the Co-op Bookshop and the Portrait Gallery Store. Hopefully an e-book edition will be available soon for student use.

Great Library Cafés of the World

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a third of the population visit a library. But they may not go to read books. So I suggest we need to seek out the "Great Library Cafés of the World". My nomination is the Bookplate Café of the National Library of Australia. This has good food and on a sunny day the tables are flooed with coloured light from the stained glass windows , designed by Leonard French. Outdoors, there is a panoramic view of Lake Burley Griffin on the terrace. In addition it is easy to get in, unlike some other high status libraries, with no need to go through security, or show a reader's card, to get to the Café (or the reading room).

Trove Digital Culture Search Service at National Library of Australia

Greetings from Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum where Kent Fitch talking about Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service.. He started by showing a newspaper article by Caroline Chisholm "An Australian Bush Scene". As well as searching the NLA's catalog and digitized newspapers and other on-line sources. Kent pointed out that any member of the public can correct the OCR text from the newspaper, add tags and comments. This has proved popular with tens of thousands of Australians. Here is a search of Trove for "Tom Worthington". I notcied NLA have issued a Persistent Identifier for me: http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1017487

Kent mentioned that the NLA has archived copies of important Australian web sites, including that for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. This has proved useful to me as I can use it to teach my students about web accessibility.

NLA are using the open source Lucene search engine and Solr service wrapper for Trove. NLA uses commodity servers, with Internal Solid State Drives, which are essential to the operation of the system, due to the many searches each query generates.

One flaw in the NLA's setup may be that it only has offices in Canberra. Loss of access to Canberra will therefore cut off access to Trove and perhaps result in the loss of all data contained in it permanently. This is not ideal for national cultural heritage and at least one live hot site and one remote backup, at least 300 km from the NLA building, should be used.

Even Genius Needs to Do Paperwork

The exhibition "Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin" at the the National Library of Australia shows a great range of work over the centuries. Some of the manuscripts shown are of great works, such as a draft of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but others show that great people had to deal with paperwork, such as receipt from Michelangelo acknowledging funds from a patron. Others show that even geniuses don't always get it right, with Heisenberg's draft of a universal equation for everything which did not work out.

The exhibition's music room was of most interest, with a cacophony of the different music displayed being played in the background. There is an iPad on a wall with headphones, where you can pick from the works. The exhibition organisers need to install a set of white headphones on a white hook, as the room so dim (to preserve the manuscripts) and so the headphones and where to hand them up is almost invisible.

Other works to get my attention were Schliemann writing about the discovery of Troy, a patent by Watt (of steam engine fame), Diesel asking for state funding for his engine and several authors complaining about reviews they got.

It is unfortunate there is not a web site to accompany the exhibition, given the work which has gone into its preparation. Such a web site could be produced with a few days work, using the materials already prepared for the exhibition. This is something the ACT Government might consider funding to boost tourist numbers.

The exhibition is open until 18 March 2012 and is free, but it is a good idea to book a free ticket online (the NLA is using an Apple iPad to check the bookings at a desk in the foyer). There are also various events associated with the exhibition.

Manuscripts from Berlin State Library in Canberra

Greetings from the National Library of Australia, where Professor Everardus Overgaauw, head of the Manuscript Department of the Berlin State Library is talking about the manuscripts on display in Canberra in the exhibition: "Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin". The Berlin State Library was founded in 1661 and the story of the library and its manuscripts is bound up with that of the German state, with formation, war, partition and reunification.

On display are handwritten documents by: Bach, Beethoven, Cook, Curie, Dante, Darwin, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, Galileo, Goethe, Haydn, Kafka, Kant, Kepler, Machiavelli, Marx, Michelangelo, Napoleon, Newton, Nietzsche, Nightingale, Nobel, Pasteur and Watt.

The exhibition is open until 18 March 2012 and is free, but it is a good idea to book a free ticket online (the NLA is using an Apple iPad to check the bookings at a desk in the foyer). There are also various events associated with the exhibition.

National Library of Australia Newspaper Digitalization Project

Kent Fitch will talk about Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service, at the Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum, 6 December 2011.

Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum

Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service

Each week, the NLA's Trove search service, receives around 200K "real" unique visitors and delivers almost 3M page views. Although Trove describes a diverse set of 250M items, its most popular content are digitised Australian newspaper articles.

This talk will describe the technology behind Trove in general then focus on the technical aspects of digitising and full-text-indexing over 60M newspaper articles, discussing aspects of image formats and processing, OCR correction, the scalability of the Lucene text indexing library, search result ranking, and how commodity SSD has made the unthinkable both easy and cheap.

The presentation will encourage audience interaction and questions.

Biography:

Kent Fitch has worked as a programmer for over 30 years. Since 1982 he has been a principal of the Canberra software development company, Project Computing Pty Ltd. He has developed many commercial systems and communications packages and custom software for many clients. In the past ten years, his work has focused on library-related systems including AustLit, NLA Newspapers Digitisation, and Trove.


About this Event

Date: Tuesday 6th December 2011
Time: 4:45pm registration for 5:15pm start

CPD Hours offered: 02 hours

Registration: http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=load&temID=eventdetails&eveID=30215850566954



Who should attend:
All ACS members and non-members.
A light meal of quality hot and cold finger food and refreshments are also provided at the event.
Workshop Registration:

To ENSURE you gain your Professional development (PD) hours, please register online AND attend the events.

Online registration is required.

Event Prices (Inc GST)
Regular Fee:
Members: $0.00
Non Members: $40.00
Regular Fee - Guest:
Guest: $20.00
Onsite Fee:
Members: $10.00
Non Members: $60.00

Cancellation Clause
A cancellation refund will only be given to paying guests provided that notice is sent to Jenalle Wei no later than 2 working days prior to the event.

Contact Details

Jenalle Wei
Branch Events & Office Administrator
Australian Computer Society - Canberra
Tel: (02) 6230 1588 Fax: (02) 6230 0290
Email: jenalle.wei@acs.org.au

Opening Access to Government in Canberra

Greetings from the National Library of Australia where Professor Anne Fitzgerald from QUT has just opened "Creative Commons for You, and for Government". There are about 100 people here, many of whom have Commonwealth Government lanyards around their necks.

The QUT Creative Commons people ave been going around Australia talking about how the Australian versions of these open access licenses can be used to provide better access to information for business, education, government and the community. They left Canberra to last, as there considerable knowledge of this in the federal public service and universities already.

The most important point about CC is that it is based on copyright. Normally the emphasis with Copyright is on stopping people doing things with material, but CC emphasizes what you can do.

Stuart Corner wrote yesterday about "Ericsson calls for consumer-friendly, market-promoting copyright reform" (iTWire, 3 November 2011 13:30). Ericsson's "Guiding Principles to Copyright Enforcement in a Networked Society" (by RENE SUMMER, Ericsson Group and Dr Nicolas Suzor,
Queensland University of Technology). Unfortunately the report was not well formatted and so is hard to read on-line. Here is an excerpt:

A one sided approach which enforces copyright at the expense of all other stakeholders and the digital competitiveness of nations is not the cure for the problem nor a treatment of the symptoms. Economic history has already taught us well that a monocausal explanation of complex processes and hence one-sided solutions will not work. ..

While looking for open access material on-line I also came ac cross the Australian Governments Open Access and Licensing Framework (AusGOAL). This government website provides guidance on open access licenses. AusGOAL appears to be recommending the use of the Creative Commons Australian licence for government as the preferred option. However, I am not sure as I could not get their License Chooser to work (I got as far as "About the Licensing Review" and then got stuck).

It is not clear who has endorsed and is using AusGOAL. While it has a national Australian government domain name (gov.au) and is written as if it is providing official advice for federal government, the domain name is registered to the Queensland Department of Public Works.

There is a need for clear authoritative advice on how to implement open access in Government. Unfortunately the current initiatives, including those by QUT and AusGOAL are not doing that effectively. This partly because they do not take into account the way government makes decisions in practice, at the level where devisions on web publishing are made.

In the mid 1990s I was part of the group which introduced the web to the Australian Government. Contrary to the official histories, this was a confused, messy process which involved considerable conflict. What got the federal government on the web was a loose alliance of public servants, academics, political staff and industry. What was needed was to show that it would work and was palatable to all concerned. A similar loose alliance is needed to advance open access.

From bitter first hand experience I found that simply writing and issuing government policy does not result in that policy being implemented. What is needed is to explain to those who have to implement the policy why it is in their individual interest, as well as in the public interest. They also have to see that people like them use and support it. They also need the education and support to implement the policy.

To help with open access I designed and run the ANU course COMP7420 with a set of notes available: Electronic Document and Records Management.

National Library of Australia Treasures Gallery Open

The new Treasures Gallery has opened at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. This is not on the scale of the Treasures from the World's Great Libraries, held in 2001/02, but is worth seeing. There is a Treasures Gallery mobile application for Android and iPhone with a guide to the exhibition and audio tour available. Some of the items on display which got my attention were a proclamation from the Rum Rebellion of 1808 (Australia's only military Coup d'état), the portable writing desk which Captain Cook took on his voyages, a print by Pablo Picasso and a page from a Gutenberg Bible. Unfortunately I could not find a web based guide to the exhibition on-line. I suggest the NLA list the items on display, with links to Trove. The same audio tour as provided for mobiles could be used on the web for a virtual tour.

Creative Commons in the Australian Government

Professor Anne Fitzgerald, Neale Hooper and Cheryl Foong from QUT will speak at "Creative Commons for You, and for Government", National Library of Australia, in Canberra, 4 November 2011.

Creative Commons (CC) is a new way of managing copyright in the digital environment. It is gaining widespread acceptance and use by creators, educators, cultural institutions, researchers, government officers and the general community.

If you are interested in finding out about the CC licences, looking for an update on recent developments, or wanting to know how CC licences are being used by others, register now! ...

About the presenters:

Professor Anne Fitzgerald is a Brisbane-based intellectual property and e-commerce lawyer. She is a Professor in Law Research at QUT Law Faculty where she has been involved in several projects including Access to Public Sector Information, Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law and Creative Commons Australia. Anne has a JSD degree from Columbia University, New York (2002) a LLM degree from Columbia University (1992) and a LLM (International Business Law) from the University of London (1989). She is a member of the Queensland Bar and has also been admitted to legal practice in Victoria and Tasmania. She graduated in law from the University of Tasmania (LLB(Hons), 1984). Anne has an extensive background in the areas of intellectual property law, internet and e-commerce law, international trade law and natural resources law. She is a pioneer of the study of law relating to the internet, digital technologies and e-commerce in Australia, having been an initiator of the landmark Going Digital series of seminars (in 1997 and 1998) and co-author of one of the earliest books in this area worldwide, Going Digital: Legal Issues for Electronic Commerce, Multimedia and the Internet (1998). Her latest book (with Professor Brian Fitzgerald and others) is Internet and E-commerce Law, Business and Policy (Thomson Reuters, Sydney, 2011).

Neale Hooper LLM, LLB, BA (Qld) was the principal lawyer for the Queensland Government’s Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) Project and has led the project’s legal work since its inception in 2005. The objective of the GILF project is the development of a legal framework to facilitate increased online access to, and reuse of, public sector information, in a legally effective manner, including by the use of standardized open content licences, particularly Creative Commons (CC) licences. Neale is a leading IP and ICT lawyer with over 20 years experience with Queensland Crown Law, providing specialist law services in these areas. Since 2004 Neale has been seconded sequentially to several Queensland departments – Queensland Treasury, Natural Resources and Water (now DERM), and most recently to Public Works, on GILF focussed work. Presently he is on secondment to the Queensland University of Technology, Law Faculty, researching CC licence implementation in the scientific research and other publicly funded sectors. For 3 years, 2007-2010 Neale was a lead researcher on the CRC-Spatial Information Project ‘Enabling Real-Time Information Access in Both Urban and Regional Areas’ (a collaboration between QUT, Law Faculty, and the Queensland Government). Neale has a Master of Laws from University of Queensland, and has been an adjunct lecturer at QUT law school since 2003.

Cheryl Foong LLB (Hons I) (QUT) is a researcher at the QUT Law Faculty. Cheryl has researched on CC business models, CC licensing and the risk of tort liability for government, and co-authored the CC & Government Guide with Anne and Neale. Her publications on these topics are available at .

Australia's first enhanced eBook?

Greetings from the National Library of Australia in Canberra, where cultural historian and folklorist Warren Fahey is talking about his book "Australian Folk Songs and Bush Ballads". This is claimed to be Australia's first "enhanced" eBook.

A representative of the NLA did a gushing introduction about ebooks. Warren provided an entertaining history of his involvement with technology, starting with the crystal wireless and tin cans and string telephone. He then talked about his involvement with bush music and the ABC. But so far no explanation as to what an "enhanced eBook" is. I assumed it had digital audio files, along with images and text.

Warren went on to explain how he obtained a copy of his own field folk song recordings from the NLA and converted them to a suitable format for the eBook.

Warren used what appeared to be an Apple iPad for a demonstration of the eBook. He showed what looked like a traditional book format, with video displayed like a still image (click on the image to play the video) and audio controls (click the play button). The audio used seemed to be short excerpts, with links to on-line stores to purchase the full recording.

Warren said that volume was 600 Mbytes, due to the sound files. The publisher is splitting the book into volumes.

What was a little confusing was that I could only find an Amazon Kindle eBook edition of the book on-line. Warrne explained that Amazon refused to carry a Kindle eBook with links to Apple iTunes (for the audio). So a different edition had to be produced with different links in it.

This is a brave attempt at an "enhanced" eBook. But I am not sure that including the audio files in the eBook file is worth the effort. Instead the files could be downloaded from the web as required.

Warren ended by discussing what effect eBooks will have on book publishing and distribution. This provides a world market for the author, but cheaters challenges for the local bookstore and library.

At question time I asked what Warren's next ebook would be like. He said he wanted to do a book for children, being the 21st century of the Coles funny picture book for kids.

Someone asked how the cost of producing an enhanced ebook compared to a PDF ebook. Warren replied it was must more expensive by PDF ebooks were so static and dull.

This appears on topic for Senator Kate Lundy's Digital Culture Public Sphere on-line and in Sydney, 6 October 2011.

What is TEDx?

While helping out at TEDx Canberra 2011 today, at the National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra, I was asked "What is TEDx Canberra?". I said that TEDx is a local version of an event where people speak on ideas, which started 20 years ago in California and that this was the second to be held in Canberra. But I was asked what "TED" stood for, so I thought I should look it up:

TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."

TED was founded in 1984^[1] as a one-off event and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California.^{[3] ...}

TED grants licenses to third parties to hold free TEDx events in cities around the world. <sup>[26]

From:</sup> TED (conference), Wikipedia, 11 September 2011 at 18:15.

The first TEDx Canberra was held at the National Library of Aus­tralia on 24 Octo­ber 2010.

Listen and Learn at TEDx Canberra

Greetings from the National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra where TEDx Canberra 2011 is on today. The video is being streamed live on-line. It is being vieo streamed live on-line and audio streamed by 666 ABC Canberra Radio. Some segments will be broadcast later on ABC TV Big Ideas.

I volunteered to be on the door. There are about 300 people registered for the event and there was a steady stream of people through the door from 8am for the 9:15 start.

The talk I found most exciting was one of the shortest: three minutes from Emma Davidson on communicating with refugee and indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

Annette Zou and Richard Dear talked about ANU XSA, the ANU Cross-disciplinary Stu­dents Acad­emy. This grew out of Professor Ian Young's Vice-Chancellor’s Courses, which emphasize inter-disciplinary sharing.

TEDx Canberra Ready

Greetings from the National Library of Australia in Canberra where TEDx Canberra 2011 starts tomorrow. Speakers are practicing today. I am one of the volunteers helping with odd jobs.

Some of the speakers who got my attention were:

• Michael Engemann and Damien Tonkin
  Damien and Michael are year 12 stu­dents from Dick­son Col­lege in Can­berra. They are design­ing, build­ing and fly­ing UAVs to deliver life-saving res­cue sup­plies to lost tourists stranded in the outback.
• Annette Zou and Richard Dear
  Richard and Annette founded ANU XSA, the ANU Cross-disciplinary Stu­dents Acad­emy in Feb­ru­ary 2011, and are devel­op­ing a Global Cross-disciplinary Tour­na­ment to the held for the first time this Sep­tem­ber. They hope to spread the idea of the ‘cross-disciplinary atti­tude’ to all uni­ver­si­ties around the world.
• Thomas Pogge
  By reform­ing harm­ful supra­na­tional reg­u­la­tions, Thomas Pogge is devel­op­ing a com­ple­ment to the patent sys­tem to stim­u­late phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal inno­va­tions that would be acces­si­ble, with­out delay, to poor and afflu­ent patients alike around the world. A philoso­pher at Yale and the ANU, Pogge works with a stel­lar inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­na­tional team on pilot­ing the HIF idea and get­ting gov­ern­ments to col­lab­o­rate toward its implementation.

Expo Sound Chairs at National Library of Australia

Opposite the new "Treasures Gallery" of the National Library of Australia there are five Expo Mark II sound chairs, in a semicircle in front of a wall screen. These high-backed chairs were designed for the Australian pavilion at Expo 67. They have a hard cylindrical shell and sound adsorbing fabric, with a loudspeaker in the the wing next to each ear, providing a remarkable surround sound effect.

Unfortunately the chairs are not adjustable: I found the base too high for my legs and the back too low. As a result the chairs are extremely uncomfortable, unless you happen to have very long legs and a short torso. The design need to be brought up to date for the 21st Century by being made adjustable.

The uncomfortable seating may be deliberate, as the NLA has a 2 minute video loop running. If you sit for more than a few minutes you will be driven to distraction, hearing the same thing over and over again.

These chars are also on permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.

RFI Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement at National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia has issued a Request for Information for Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement. This might make a good case study for my Electronic Document and Records Management students:

In the context of its digital collecting, the Library seeks solutions to achieving suitable, scalable and sustainable digital library infrastructure that will enable it to:

(a) Scale up its collecting of digital materials;
(b) Support a full spectrum of collection workflows;
(c) Ensure ongoing access to digital materials;
(d) Support efficient user-centric content delivery;
(e) Manage content and metadata in an efficient, reliable, sustainable, maintainable and accountable manner; and
(f) Supply business workflow efficiencies. ...

From: Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement, Request for Information, RFP NLA 11/067, National Library of Australia, 18 July 2011

New Reading Room at National Library of Australia

Greetings from the new look main reading room of the National Library of Australia. The marble gallery in front of the reading room has been shortened to make more space in the reading room itself. There is a reception desk to one side just inside the door, and a row of walk-up terminals on a bench on the wall opposite. The space in between has two rows of round tables with arm chairs.

A head high partition behind the information desk is backed by new book and periodical racks. The racks are lit, and have glass fronts, making it much easier to browse than the old wooden racks.

The layout reminds me of an airport business lounge, or the learning commons of an up-market university and is well thought out and comfortable. On a cold and gloomy Canberra winder's day the reading room is comfortable and calm, with a scholarly but welcoming atmosphere.

While the furniture in the new foyer looks good, I found it uncomfortable. The chairs appear to be out of proportion, with legs which are too long and backs too short. The tables have a very thick central pillar, which makes it impossible for me to place my legs comfortably under the table. The library might wish to replace the arm chairs with the same gas lift models used at computer desks, but with the optional arms bolted on. The table supports have been designed for concealing cabling to the desktop, but this has not been utilized and so slim slim supported could be used.

One lack in the new layout are any breakout rooms for group work. The Petherick Reading Room remains unchanged, and mostly unused, at the rear of the reading room. The library might give some thought to making that space available for casual use, rather than having specific desks reserved for researchers. The current system seems to result in about 90% of the Petherick Room being unused most of the time. This could be changed to a "hot desk" system, to make better use of the space. Researchers could have priority, but casual users could otherwise use the space.

The refurbished exhibition space of the library is due to open 8 October 2011.

Information Awareness Month

Greetings from the launch of Information Awareness Month 2011 in the Brindabella Room of the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The Director General of the library opened proceedings by mentioning the need to keep access to information for the public and the excellent way the NLA helps this with the Trove system.

One of the less well known bodies involved in Information Awareness Week, is Disaster ACT (DISACT) , which helps protect cultural materials. Better known are NLA, IIM, AIIA, ACS, RIMPA, ALIA, ACTKM, AGLIN, HIMAA, PROV and ASA.

The official launch was by the Australian Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan AO. He mentioned three dimensions of information:

1. Information is valuable: The FOI act identifies government information as a public resource. Agencies are now required to publish details of what they do and what information they have.
2. Legal Obligations with Information: Organisations have obligations to keep personal information private. The Commissioner gave examples of companies which have "learnt" from failures to keep information private. But from the long list of recent examples, it appears that corporations have not learnt, or they have learnt there are few penalties for failure.
3. Managing Information Professionally: The commissioner pointed out that while there are numerous organisations involved with information, there is limited coordination between them. Many government organisations now use the FOI recommended icon on their front page.

ps: I will be speaking at the Meta 2011 Conference, as part of information awareness month.