GSIS Annual Meeting USA

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Many thanks to Cynthia Prosser and Kay Johnson who have put together a summary of the GSIS Annual Meeting which was held as part of the 2012 GSA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Charlotte, USA.

Some of the highlights included:

  • a free seminar on Geoscience Librarianship 101;
  • a round table discussion encompassing topics such as GeoRef, open access journals & the activities of the USGS Library; and
  • a presentation on ‘Investing in the Future of Geoscience Research Services’.

You can view the full summary here GSIS 2012 Summary

Geoscience Information 101 – version 3.0?

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AGIA’s National Committee is planning a revival of the Geoscience Information 101 seminar/workshop, tentatively scheduled for October 2013. AGIA is seeking input from members about the content of this professional development event:

What do you want to learn?

Who do you want to hear?

What would you like to share?

Previous Geoscience Information 101 seminars have included topics such as finding geoscience information, issues in managing information transfers and migration, and data available from the Geological Survey of Western Australia. Themes so far suggested for the 2013 seminar/workshop include Geoscience Information Management in the 21st Century, and Preservation of Geoscience Information Today.

Suggestions for topics will be sought from members attending the AGIA Easter Breakfast on 26 March 2013, and these will be shared with the membership via The Great Australian Byte newsletter and AGIA’s LinkedIn®  group to encourage further feedback.

Building a library catalogue with SharePoint

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Alison Jones who is a librarian at a law firm in Canberra has documented (see below) her experience of building a library catalogue from scratch using SharePoint. Alison discusses benefits and pitfalls, as well as the process of commissioning (internally) a purpose built search engine for SharePoint.

Alison has kindly supplied AGIA with the speaking notes for her 2011 presentation and says “I would be delighted to communicate with any librarian in the WA resource sector (or more broadly) about my experiences with SharePoint and the range of ways I have made use of it”.

Charting the progress of a custom-built library: Designing, building and implementing library and knowledge management applications in SharePoint: Presentation for ALLA conference “Cross Currents: Charting our Future” Melbourne 2010: October 1, 2010

Intranets for information management and accessibility: Presentation [PowerPoint] for ARK Group event “Information Management for the legal profession”: August 25, 2011, plus speaking notes

Further feedback received from Alison:

I have had a lot of fun with SharePoint but a couple of brief points that I make about my context, that might help others considering its use:

1)      I am in the unusual position of being able to do pretty much what I want with my part of the Intranet. So when I wanted to add a new knowledge management repository (of many intranet pages), I could just build it myself without reference back to anybody, not even the IT department. I know a lot of library staff need to get permission to change anything on their website, even if it is on SharePoint. For me, that would largely defeat the greatest advantage of SharePoint, which is that it is so easy to develop new tools on and to adapt these tools over time.

2)       Although I love SharePoint dearly, when it came to creating a catalogue, I had to use SharePoint, for a whole host of reasons. For me, a catalogue (which is all that it is) on SharePoint has worked fine. I think I could add in circulation as a layer on top of the straight catalogue if I needed to in SharePoint. However, when other librarians talk about replacing a proper library management system with SharePoint, I urge some caution because the functionality of even the simplest library management system is likely to be so much greater than anything that could be built on SharePoint. I regard SharePoint as an option to be used instead of a database system or similar, not really an option in place of a proper library management system.

Alison’s contact details are available at the end of her PowerPoint presentation.

Welcome to the new-look AGIA website!

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In this second edition of the AGIA website as much of the content of the original site as possible has been preserved, whilst access to information and resources has been improved through a revised page architecture. You will now find pages dedicated to AGIA Publications and Events, as well as an expanded Resources section which includes Publications and Articles of Interest, Databases and Geoscience Groups. The Home page will be regularly updated with short news items – more detailed articles will continue to appear via AGIA’s Great Australian Byte newsletter.

The shift to a WordPress platform for the website was driven by pragmatism. The easy-to-use back-end broadens the pool of people able to update the website – those without any experience of writing code can navigate their way around WordPress quite effectively (although a little HTML knowledge is handy!).

The ephemeral nature of the internet means that occasionally you may encounter dead links. If you find yourself at a virtual dead end please let me know at webmaster@agia.org.au with as much detail as possible, and every effort will be made to update the link.

Acknowledgment and thanks are extended to Ernie Laidlaw who created the first edition of the AGIA website – it is that foundation upon which this site is built. Thanks also to AGIA’s National Committee for their suggestions and feedback during the construction of the new website.

AGIA members and guests are welcome to join us at the launch of the new website at the AGIA Easter Breakfast:

7.30am, Tuesday 26th March 2013

City Square (BHP Billiton Building)

Level 03.33

Brookfield Place

125 St George’s Terrace Perth

Register at Level 1 on arrival to receive your pass

RSVP IS ESSENTIAL FOR BUILDING ENTRY

RSVP Friday 22nd March to Lyn Trouchet at Ltrouche@barrick.com