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8 Reasons Why LinkedIn is Definitely for Librarians

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8 Reasons Why LinkedIn is Definitely for Librarians

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Constructivist - Andy Priestner - 19th Feb 2013

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8 reasons why LinkedIn is DEFINITELY for librarians

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Back in July 2010 when over 100 library staff from across Cambridge University's libraries were participating in Cam23 (a 23 things social media programme) there was widespread agreement that of all the tools and sites explored, LinkedIn - the professional networking site, seemed to have the least relevance to librarians.

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National Libraries Day - 14th Jul 2015

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Society of Chief Librarians

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This Digital Making Kit has been commissioned by and developed for the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) and the Association of Senior Childrens and Education Librarians (ASCEL) to support the launch of the Universal Learning Offer, which is available in all public library services across England. It is intended to:

Support the roll out of digital making activities in library services across England,

Demonstrate the important role that libraries can play in learning, creativity and the development of new skills in our communities

Offer public library services ideas for how to develop their Learning Offer in a way that is relevant to the interests and needs of children, young people and families.

What is digital making?
Nesta has developed a definition of digital making as: "learning about technology through making with it". This can include computer programming (coding), designing and making 3D objects, building robots and many other creative activities.
Why is it important?
In their recent report, Young Digital Makers, Nesta emphasises the importance of digital making, as distinct from simply using digital devices, because it helps people understand how digital technology works. The evidence suggests that there is a need for increased digital making skills in our country and for these skills to be continually updated:

A recent House of Lords report warns that the UK could be left behind in terms of our digital skills capabilities

The loss to the UK economy because of this lack of skills has been estimated at £2 billion

90 per cent of new jobs require digital know-how

Nesta predict that there will be 1 million additional creative jobs over the next 10 years, the majority requiring the creative manipulation of technology

Over 60% of teachers who responded to a recent Nesta survey reported that their students did not currently receive enough teaching time to achieve expected levels of ICT and coding skills in the new curriculum

82% of the 10 million school-age young people want to engage in digital making activities but Nesta have only been able to map opportunities for 130,000 of those to engage in digital making outside of school

Nearly 2/3 of parents and carers say that they are also interested in digital making themselves

Digital making is way of teaching youth problem solving, logical thinking, communication skills and teamwork as well as responding to the current skills shortage

What's the relevance of digital making to libraries?
Nesta has called on organisations to capitalise on and develop the widespread interest and enthusiasm in digital making among parents, carers, children and young people. They also state that face-to-face interactions are very important in introducing children and young people to digital making and engaging them in practical tasks.

Public libraries are ideally placed to support digital making for families, children and young people. They are able to provide a safe space in communities where children and young people can get access to the digital making opportunities they need to develop their creativity and skills for the 21 st Century. A high quality digital making offer will help to position library services as key delivery partners for developing crucial new skills in our society.

The ASCEL website hosts a report by Shared Intelligence on children's digital needs and libraries. This report contains research evidence from a programme of qualitative research with children, young people and their carers as well as a number of case studies of cultural organisations' innovative digital work with children and a trends analysis of future developments in digital technology and education.
About Code Green: Digital Making Kit
This Digital Making Kit is for library staff working in a public library setting to use to help you develop your enhanced learning activities to complement the Universal Learning Offer.

It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the digital making activities that libraries can undertake with children, young people and families. It is intended to give you ideas and practical advice on how to start new learning and making activities in your library service.

The Digital Making Kit has 7 main chapters about different digital making activities you can do. It starts with simple activities and moves on to more advanced ones. Each chapter has:

a list of resources required to get started

person specifications for activity leaders

signposting to useful organisations and resources

a case study for where this activity has already been done in a library

There are 5 "Top Tips" chapters that focus on critical success factors for building your digital making offer. These are:

targeting your offer for different audiences and being inclusive

recruiting volunteers

marketing your activities effectively

community engagement

evolving your offer

You can find out more about the Universal Learning Offer on the SCL website, which also includes useful advocacy materials to make the case for learning activities in libraries.

It is also possible to engage with the ASCEL community and share your digital making projects and challenges via the ASCELALL email list. Please get in touch with ASCEL via their website if you wish to find out more about this.

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As an international ambassador for libraries, who gets the opportunity to visit and explore many different public libraries across the world I am constantly surprised and amazed by the inventive ways that libraries are responding to the needs of individuals and communities

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Sense & Reference - 8th March 2013

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Wow. It's been two months since my last post. But I can explain. You see, back in January we got a new roommate and in between dealing with his insomnia and his incontinence I just haven't had time to sit down and think about library stuff.

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Codeacademy

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Top 10 Social Media Questions You Always Wanted to Ask

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Top 10 Social Media Questions You Always Wanted to Ask

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CILIP - Phil Bradley - 23rd May 2014

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Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online 

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Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online 

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The Public Domain Review

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This guide is intended to assist people who are interested in exploring interesting works which have entered the public domain. It covers:

Leads on interesting public domain works can come from a wide array of sources - from exhibitions, museums, concerts, television, the radio, books, newspapers, talking to people, etc.

The internet of course is another great resource. Blogs such as the excellent BibliOdyssey and Res Obscura regularly feature interesting works, (although, after following their links, it often takes a bit of snooping around in the small print of various institution's copyright policies to determine whether something is published to the public domain or not). Social media has also offered new ways of exploring material that has entered the public domain. There are various archive/history focused tweeters out there calling attention to interesting works. If you're a Twitter user, it is perhaps worth setting up a #publicdomain feed as people are increasingly using this tag when tweeting about interesting works that have entered the public domain.

On top of this there are also mailing lists dedicated to discussion about the public domain, where people often message each other about recently entered works. The Open Knowledge Foundation hosts one such mailing list and it can be subscribed to on the PD Discuss Mailing List info page.

If links from blogs, tweets, etc. lead you to copies with restrictions on use then don't get too disheartened as there is often more than one copy available on the internet, and hopefully one licensed openly.

So, be it for the casual idle browse with nothing specific in mind, or to try find that wondrous work you heard about on a radio programme, saw at an exhibition, or saw featured on a blog, it is to the online collections which one should turn. The next section will give you a quick whistle stop tour of the largest online collections of public domain works.

Just before we get into the various collections out there it is worth noting that, although works may have been created long ago and so themselves are in the public domain, this unfortunately doesn't always mean that their online digital versions are too. All too often they are published online under a restrictive license - often under CC BY-NC, which means there can be no commercial use of the material. Because of this it is important to have a grasp of the different Creative Commons licensing tools which people often use when uploading public domain material. Please see the Licensing section below for an explanation of all these various CC codes, knowing them will make navigation of the great resources below even easier....
Europeana
Europeana is an online portal for exploring Europe's cultural collections. It is currently collecting vast quantities of data from cultural heritage institutions across Europe about the collections of material they hold. That a work can be found on Europeana is, of course, no guarantee that it is in the public domain so additional filters must be applied in the search function. Once you've done an initial search you can use the "refined search" function underneath the search function on the left to search "by copyright". Clicking on the CCO option will show you items published under an open license, i.e. free for any use. (Clicking CC BY-NC will show you all works published under a non-commercial license, i.e. use is restricted to non-commercial purposes). A handy alternative is to use these links as your entry points: for public domain/CC0 material and for creative commons licensed material (which you can then, through the dropdown options on the left, filter by specific license).
Internet Archive
Often The Public Domain Review's first port of call when looking for interesting material. This vast collection of cultural content hosts and links to a huge variety of public domain works including films, music and texts (not so good on images). Highlights include the Prelinger Archives, a fantastic collection of ephemeral and public service films on a huge range of topics, from how to be popular to surviving a nuclear attack, and a great collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings. The Internet Archive has also recently introduced a Curator's Choice section for each major type of medium it provides access to, which can often serve as interesting jump off points into the the resources the archive holds. Again some stuff is only published under a CC BY-NC license, but you can use a special filter in the search function to help you just get public domain, CC BY and CC BY-SA material. For example say we want to use the key word "dog" for our search. For public domain stuff type into the search bar "/metadata/licenseurl:http*publicdomain/*AND dog", and then on the dropdown menu whatever other filter you would like to add (e.g. texts, audio or moving images, etc). For CC BY stuff simply replace "publicdomain" with "by/", and for CC BY-SA and CC BY-ND replace with "by-sa/" and "by-nd/" respectively. A little complicated but it does work! One important thing to note - you will notice many of the texts have been scanned by Google who have, unfortunately, published them under a license which restricts use to non-commercial activities. Also much of the licensing is done by users at the time of upload so do be aware of possible mistakes and mis-labelling!
Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia's media repository - the place to go for finding images, anything from 17th century anatomical engravings to the casual user uploaded snapshot of a shopping centre. They make a great effort to try and organise the content into categories to make navigation easier but it does sometimes take a little getting used to hit upon the (very useful) category section. Look out for Category:xxxxx (xxxxx being your search term) in the search results, or sometimes you are taken straight through to the category if your search is for something simple, e.g."dogs". They also work in partnership with various institutions to open up content - for example map dealers Geographicus donated an incredible set of over 2000 high resolution images from there collection in 2011. All content is in the public domain and so with a Public Domain Mark or else published with a CC BY-SA license.

Library of Congress
A brilliant resource for all things American but also further afield - a huge collection of print, pictorial and audio-visual material. Most of the material is public domain but not all so do check on a case by case basis. Use the search bar in the top right or navigate via their very interesting curated collections.
Flickr: The Commons

A great place to find old photographs: like an immense online version of the old box of random photos you might find at a flea-market. Flickr have partnered up with various institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum, Library of Congress, etc. to bring hundreds of thousands of images online in one place. The licensing situation is a bit ambigious, employing the "no known copyright restrictions". According to the website this either means that 1) the copyright is in the public domain because it has expired, 2) the copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions, 3) the institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control, or 4) that the institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions. If you click on the "no known copyright restrictions" license to the right of the image page then it should take you through to the institution's website with more information about the particular licensing for that image.
Wikisource
Good site to find plain text/html versions of texts. An online library of free content publications, collected and maintained by the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community. They have over 273,000 texts in the English language library, as well as many other language versions of the site. Unless otherwise noted, all user contributions to Wikisource are released under CC BY-SA.
Project Gutenberg
Another good repository of plain text/html texts. It offers over 38,000 free ebooks which you can download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. It features texts which are in the public domain in the U.S., so users in other jurisdictions should check before reusing.
Open Images
Relatively new audio-visual archive, but growing rapidly. A good place to go for old Dutch newsreels! An initiative of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in collaboration with Knowledgeland.
Biodiveristy Heritage Library
A fantastic initiative which brings together a huge collection of material related to the study of living organisms from a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries, all in accordance with open principles, i.e. what is in the public domain stays in the public domain. They have also teamed up with Internet Archive to feature all of the content there too.
Pond5
A wonderful resource making available thousands of historic media files for your creative projects - more than 60,000 image files, 2,500 audio files, and almost 10,000 film files, as well as over 100 3D models from NASA!

and of course, last but not least....

The Public Domain Review
... that bounteous gateway into the whopping plenitude which is the public domain.
....and others
There are of course lots of other digital projects (many belonging to universities) which provide free access to material, though it does sometimes take a bit of snooping about in the small print to determine whether the institution in question is publishing its public domain works under an open license. Unfortunately many don't. Some do however, e.g. the U.S. National Library of Medicine, The Walters Art Museum, University of Houston Digital Library,
and many others, such as Cornell University Library and the California Digital Library that have teamed up with Internet Archive to house and display their digitised material there. For a good list of institutions that have opened up their digital collections, check out this list being compiled at OpenGLAM.

also it might be worth trying out the CC search tool which effectively makes public domain collections from things like Google Images, etc....
Creative Commmons Search Tool
Another useful avenue through which to find public domain material is through the Creative Commons search tool. They search according to CC licensing via Europeana, Flickr, and Google Images, among others. But do be aware that, since there is no verification of the CC licenses attached to works by users, mistakes can be made! From the website: "If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the content."

In order of "openness" here are the Creative Commons licensing tools which many online collections use to license the works that have been uploaded to their websites.
Public Domain Mark 1.0 - No known copyright
This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Used on works that are thought to be in the public domain all over the world.
CCO - No rights reserved
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
CC BY - Attribution
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, to adapt the work, and to make commercial use of the work, providing that you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
CC BY-SA - Attribution Share-Alike
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, to adapt the work, and to make commercial use of the work, providing that you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
CC BY-ND - Attribution-NoDerivs
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to make commercial use of the work, providing that you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
CC BY-NC - Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work, providing that you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

ii. When Does a Work Pass Into The Public Domain?

In general its fairly safe to say that if a work was made before 1850 then it is almost certainly in the public domain universally - that's a lot of material that you are free to use however you wish without needing any kind of permission! As already mentioned, however, many institutions unfortunately claim copyright on scanned/uploaded and uploaded images of public domain works, so look out for the copyright status which should accompany such uploads.

For works more recent you have to know the law. Frustratingly, each country has different laws about when works enter the public domain, laws which normally vary depending on the medium of the work. Some countries go by the death of the author, some countries go by a cut off date for publication. For literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, in most countries in Europe and many other countries around the world, a work enters the public domain after 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies (for film this includes the principal director, screenwriter and composer of any music). For some countries its 50 years (Barbados), for others its 100 years (Mexico). For the U.S. its a completely different story as they work partially from a "cut off date model", with lots of other factors involved based on when, or if at all, copyright was renewed. Here are some links to help you navigate the choppy legal seas!

Public Domain Calculators - Great resource for those in Europe, including simple tools to help you to determine if a work is in the public domain in your jurisdiction.

UK Copyright Service - a clear explanation of the law for those in the UK.

Stanford site on U.S. copyright - A very clear explanation of the U.S. system, including lots of tools to check public domain status.

An article by Peter Hirtle (of Cornell University Library) explaining some of the complexities of the U.S. system.

Wikipedia list of copyright lengths by country - For other countries around the world, by typing the name of your country and "copyright law" into your search engine, you should hit upon something official. For those looking for an overview this Wikipedia site is useful: of course don't take this as the last word but its a good rough guide.

There often occurs, of course, the situation when you might want to use a work which is in the public domain in its country of origin but not in the public domain in your own country. Some countries employ the excellent "Rule of the shorter term", which means that they default to which ever term is the shortest when considering the copyright status of works published outside of that country - the copyright term provided by that country or the copyright term provided by work's home country. Be aware though that though they may profess that they follower the "Rule of the shorter term" many countries have adopted specific bi-lateral agreements with others which override the rule.

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Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online

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This guide is intended to assist people who are interested in exploring interesting works which have entered the public domain. It covers: Leads on interesting public domain works can come from a wide array of sources - from exhibitions, museums, concerts, television, the radio, books, newspapers, talking to people, etc.

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British Library Labs - Digital Collections

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British Library Labs - Digital Collections

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British Library Labs - Digital Collections

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Digital Research Support BL Labs Events Digital collections -Datasets -Images -Books / Text -Music -Maps -Sounds -Multimedia Resources and tools Digital Scholarship blog Contact BL Labs About BL Labs BL Digital Scholarship British Library website Competition Archive BL Public Domain

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Writer in Residence Update: No Copyright? Wonderful!

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Writer in Residence Update: No Copyright? Wonderful!

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British Library - 23rd May 2016

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Because I spent many years in business focused on developing new products I'm always looking for inspiration. New products rarely appear out of nowhere, instead we think of them because we see something that gets us thinking in a different way. I've been planning a new workshop for June based on using some of the British Library's archival materials and I think there's a whole new world to be explored when developing new products: the realms of expired copyright.
Alice in Wonderland: an out of copyright bestseller
Recently the British Library held an Alice in Wonderland exhibition, with an accompanying pop-up shop. So hugely popular was the shop that it stayed open well past the planned closure date. Most of the items were sourced through small independent designer-makers. Alice in Wonderland, of course, is a wonderful source of inspiration: it is a beloved classic, full of witty writing and illustrated with memorable flair. More importantly, it is out of copyright, and therefore any designer-maker is can develop their own interpretations of it and may freely use both the original text and illustrations. The result was badges, chocolates, clothing, colouring books, umbrellas, crockery, toys, bags and many more items.

So while copyright is an important protection, at the moment when it expires (in the UK, 70 years after the death of its creator, to give you a very rough idea - you should always check each item individually for any exceptions but there are experts on hand in the Business & IP Centre to do just that), it opens up a whole new world of inspiration and product possibilities which could be a goldmine for businesses.
A little exercise for your business
Here is an image used by the British Library in its shop, as a greetings card. It's taken from a book, Birds of America. What would you have done with this image in your own business? How would you have used that image and the rest of the illustrations within the book for inspiration? Stop reading right now and write down 5 ideas. Right now. I dare you. Thinking out of the box around unusual items often brings us new ideas, whether directly connected or not, so it's a useful exercise to do regularly.

Here are a few ideas: a game app where you collect endangered birds and protect them from poachers or other dangers; wallpaper (feathers are very 'in' right now in interior design); wrapping paper; fabric and lampshades; a children's story book; the decor for a themed restaurant; branding your 'kennels for pet birds' or wildlife sanctuary or aviary; a talk for schools on the importance of conservation; a range of 'superfood' products from the Americas.
Workshop
I'm running a workshop in June where we will be working with ten products taken from the British Library's archives. All of them are copyright free. We're going to practice working with them to develop new ideas, as well as exploring the new product development process and how you can make the most of it. We'll also have an expert with us who will give us tips on how to search the British Library archives and check what you find is usable. You'll leave buzzing with new ideas and I hope many of them will become real products in time.

There are millions of amazing items just waiting for your business to find them and turn them into bestsellers. Come along and explore.
Melissa Addey on behalf of the Business & IP Centre
Book for Melissa's upcoming workshop 'When Copyright Expires: Product development from the archives' on the 20 June here.

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Writer in Residence Update: No Copyright? Wonderful!

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Because I spent many years in business focused on developing new products I'm always looking for inspiration. New products rarely appear out of nowhere, instead we think of them because we see something that gets us thinking in a different way.

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School of Data - 25th August 2014

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If you have a story that unfolds across several places over a period of time, storymaps can provide an engaging interactive medium with which to tell the story. This post reviews some examples of how interactive map legends can be used to annotate a story, and then rounds up seven tools that provide a great way to get started creating your own storymaps.

Interactive Map Legends

The New York Times interactives team regularly come up with beautiful ways to support digital storytelling. The following three examples all mahe use of floating interactive map legends to show you the current location a story relates to as they relate a journey based story.

Riding the Silk Road, from July 2013, is a pictorial review featuring photographs captured from a railway journey that follows the route of the Silk Road. The route is traced out in the map on the left hand side as you scroll down through the photos. Each image is linked to a placemark on the route to show where it was taken.

The Russia Left Behind tells the story of a 12 hour drive from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Primarily a textual narrative, with rich photography and video clips to illustrate the story, an animated map legend traces out the route as you read through the story of the journey. Once again, the animated journey line gives you a sense of moving through the landscape as you scroll through the story.

A Rogue State Along Two Rivers, from July 2014, describes the progress made by Isis forces along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is shown using two maps. Each plots the course of one of the rivers and uses place linked words and photos to tell the story of the Isis manoeuvres along each of the river ways. An interactive map legend shows where exactly along the river the current map view relates to, providing a wider geographical context to the local view shown by the more detailed map.

All three of these approaches help give the reader a sense of motion though the journey traversed that leads the narrator being in the places described at different geographical storypoints described or alluded to in the written text. The unfolding of the map helps give the reader the sense that a journey must be taken to get from one location to another and the map view - and the map scale - help the reader get a sense of this journey both in terms of the physical, geographical distance it relates to and also, by implication, the time that must have been expended on making the journey.

A Cartographic Narrative

Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761, a cartographic narrative, a collaboration between Axis Maps and Harvard University's Vincent Brown, describes itself as an animated thematic map that narrates the spatial history of the greatest slave insurrection in the eighteenth century British Empire. When played automatically, a sequence of timeline associated maps are played through, each one separately animated to illustrate the supporting text for that particular map view. The source code is available here.

This form of narrative is in many ways akin to a free running, or user-stepped, animated presentation. As a visual form, it also resembles the pre-produced linear cut scenes that are used to set the scene or drive the narrative in an interactive computer game.

Creating you own storymaps

The New York Times storymaps use animated map legends to give the reader the sense of going on a journey by tracing out the route being taken as the story unfolds. The third example, A Rogue State Along Two Rivers also makes use of a satellite map as the background to the story, which at it's heart is nothing more than a set of image markers placed on to an an interactive map that has been oriented and constrained so that you can only scroll down. Even though the maps scrolls down the page, the inset legend shows the route being taken may not be a North-South one at all.

The linear, downward scroll mechanic helps the reader feel as if they are reading down through a story - control is very definitely in the hands of the author. This is perhaps one of the defining features of the story map idea - the author is in control of unraveling the story in a linear way, although the location of the story may change. The use of the map helps orientate the reader as to where the scenes being described in the current part of the story relate to, particularly any imagery.

Recently, several tools and Javascript code libraries have been made available from a variety of sources that make it easy to create your own story maps within which you can tell a geographically evolving story using linked images, or text, or both.

The Knight Lab StoryMap JS tool provides a simple editor synched to a Google Drive editor that allows you to create a storymap as a sequence of presentation slides that each describe a map location, some header text, some explanatory text and an optional media asset such as an image or embedded video. Clicking between slides animates the map from one location to the next, showing a line between consecutive points to make explicit the linkstep between them. The story is described using a custom JSON data format saved to the linked Google Drive account.

[ StoryMapJS code on Github]

Odyssey.js provides a templated editing environment that supports the creation of three types of storymap: a slide based view, where each slide displays a location, explanatory text (written using markdown) and optional media assets; a scroll based view, where the user scrolls down through a stroy and different sections of the story trigger the display of a particular location in a map view fixed at the top of the screen; and a torque view which supports the display and playback of animated data views over a fixed map view.

A simple editor - the Odyssey sandbox - allows you to script the storymap using a combination of markdown and map commands. Storymaps can be published by saving them to a central githib repository, or downloaded as an HTML file that defines the storymap, bundled within a zip file that contains any other necessary CSS and Javascript files.

[ Odyssey.js code on Github]

TimeMapper is an Open Knowledge Labs project that allows you to describe location points, dates, and descriptive text in a Google spreadsheet and then render the data using linked map and timeline widgets.

[ Timemapper code on Github]

JourneyMap is a simple demonstration by Keir Clarke that shows how to use the waypoints.js Javascript library to produce a simple web page containing a scrollable text area that can be used to trigger the display of markers (that is, waypoints) on a map.

[ waypoints.js on Githhub; JourneyMap src]

Google Earth TourBuilder is a tool for building interactive 3D Google Earth Tours using a Google Earth browser plugin. Tours are saved (as KML files?) to a Google Drive account.

[Note: Google Earth browser plugin required.]

ESRI/ArcGIS Story Maps are created using an online ArcGIS account and come in three type with a range of flavours for each type: "sequential, place-based narratives" ( map tours), that provide either an image carousel ( map tour) that allows you to step through a sequence of images that are displayed separately alongside a map showing a corresponding location or a scrollable text ( map journal) with linked location markers (the display of half page images rather than maps can also be triggered from the text); curated points-of-interest lists that provide a palette of images, each member of which can be associated with a map marker and detailed information viewed via a pop-up ( shortlist), a numerically sequence list that displays map location and large associated images ( countdown list), and a playlist that lets you select items from a list and display pop up infoboxes associated with map markers; or map comparisons provided either as simple tabbed views that allow you to describe separate maps, each with its own sidebar description, across a series of tabs, with separate map views and descriptions contained within an accordion view, and swipe maps that allow you to put one map on top of another and then move a sliding window bar across them to show either the top layer or the lower layer. A variant of the swipe map - the spyglass view alternatively displays one layer but lets you use a movable "spyglass" to look at corresponding areas of the other layer.

[Code on github: map-tour (carousel) and map journal; shortlist (image palette), countdown (numbered list), playlist; tabbed views, accordion map and swipe maps]

Leaflet.js Playback is a leaflet.js plugin that allows you to play back a time stamped geojson file, such as a GPS log file.

[ Code on Github]

Summary

The above examples describe a wide range of geographical and geotemporal storytelling models, often based around quite simple data files containing information about individual events. Many of the tools make a strong use of image files as pat of the display.

it may be interesting to complete a more detailed review that describes the exact data models used by each of the techniques, with a view to identifying a generic data model that could be used by each of the different models, or transformed into the distinct data representations supported by each of the separate tools.

UPDATE 29/8/14: via the Google Maps Mania blog some examples of storymaps made with MapboxGL, embedded within longer form texts: detailed Satellite views, and from the Guardian: The impact of migrants on Falfurrias [scroll down]. Keir Clarke also put together this demo: London Olympic Park.

UPDATE 31/8/14: via @ThomasG77, Open Streetmap's uMap tool ( about uMap) for creating map layers, which includes a slideshow mode that can be used to create simple storymaps. uMap also provides a way of adding a layer to map from a KML or geojson file hosted elsewhere on the web ( example).

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If you have a story that unfolds across several places over a period of time, storymaps can provide an engaging interactive medium with which to tell the story. This post reviews some examples of how interactive map legends can be used to annotate a story, and then rounds up seven tools that provide a great way to get started creating your own storymaps.

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GOV.UK - 4th Nov 2013

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If you have come to data.gov.uk wondering what open data is all about, this short guide will provide you with the basic information you need to start playing with government data and will point you to tools and resources that can help you further in working with open data.

The reasons why you are interested in open data can be many, you may be a student wanting to use data for research, a local campaigner or a charity looking for evidence to support your decisions or a business looking into how open data can enhance your products or inform your processes. Although this guide is aimed at taking the very first steps on the path to open data, those with a better understanding of data will find the resources section valuable.
What is open data?
It is only right that we start with a definition. Open data is data that is published in an open format, is machine readable and is published under a license that allows for free reuse.

Open format - you will be familiar with those .doc or .xls endings on your files, you see them every time you open up your folders in your computer or someone emails you the latest holiday pictures

An open format is one which is platform independent (It is irrelevant what operating system your PC is running to use it; Windows, Mac or any other) and it is machine readable (more on that in a bit). The most common open formats you will encounter are:

For numerical files (spreadsheets) - CSV, ODS

For text - ODT, TXT

Machine readable - This basically means that the data, both in its format (CSV) and its structure, can be read by a computer without human aid. This means that the data is clearly structured in a logical way...

In the example above, you can see how the first row provides the heading titles (the things for which the file provides values) and it is followed by the values corresponding to those headings, in the same order, separated by commas.

This allows the file to be read by computers and for awesome things to be produced from the data, from visualisations to detailed analytics.

Open license - Files generally come with restrictions or licenses attached to them. You may be able to use that great picture of a sunset that you found on the internet for your monthly newsletter, but it is likely that there will be a license attached to it that, either prevents you from doing so freely (there is a charge to use the image), or simply does not allow you to use the image at all.

The same restriction apply to data. In order for data to be of value to everyone it needs to have as few barriers to re-use as possible. This way you can pick up that data file and use it as you wish with no worries whatsoever of infringing someone's copyright. In the UK we have what is known as the Open Government License, which basically allows you to do whatever you want with government data under it.
What can I do with open data?
This is where things get interesting. Working with data can provide you with new insights into a subject, help you prove a point, provide your application or web service with what it needs to run, inform financial and social statistics or help you understand customer behaviour.

So, let's make it bit more real and try to do something basic with some data, let's visualise it and see if we get some new insights.

In a data catalogue, data is managed by creating datasets. The definition of a dataset is a hot topic amongst experts, but let's say that it is basically a collection of data files. So if you do a budget spreadsheet every month, for last year you will have 12 files which could be called Smith's Household budget 2012. That would become the title of our dataset and within it, just as we used to do by throwing receipts and bank statements in a folder and labelling it, in the case of our dataset, inside we will find a spreadsheet file for each month.

In the budget example, you probably would use very specific labels for certain items, calling, for example, a transaction for pizza: 'movie night' because that's why you ordered it. You may have entered amounts excluding VAT or you may have not broken down whole transactions (you went shopping, bought 5 things but three of those are toiletries, one is a kitchen appliance and one is a perfume). As the generator of the data, you know this but I don't, which means that if I want to analyse your 2012 budget by areas of expenditures I will end up with a less than accurate view of where your money went. To help those using data, we provide something called metadata, which is basically data about data; it tell us about the aspects of the data that may be relevant for it to be understood.

Let's start by downloading the following file (clicking the link will actually start the download, it should not take you away from this page) save it somewhere in your computer, maybe to your desktop for easy access: CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Now let's open it. If you have Microsoft Excel installed in your computer it should automatically open the file once you click on it, or it may be 'Numbers' in your Mac if you have it installed. Otherwise, it may ask you what software you wish to use to open it. If you see notepad listed in the options, choose that. Otherwise, you can download a free office package such as Libre Office or Open Office

If you open it in notepad on Windows you will see something similar to the earlier example shown. This is just to check that the file can be read. If you opened it in one of the office suites, it should look like any other spreadsheet you have seen before

The file we downloaded is a list of all government properties across the UK, with details of location, name of building and such.

We are interested in one bit of information for this first step; number of buildings in different cities across the UK. Can we find where the largest concentration of Government buildings is? Let's try it.

Close the file and go to Google Fusion Tables (you may require a Google account to use this site)

Click CREATE and it will take you to a screen where you can enter your data, it will ask you where the data is, the option 'From this PC' should be selected by default. Click on choose file and point to the file you downloaded earlier from this guide.

Once the file has been uploaded, Fusion Tables will show you the contents of the file as it understands it (this is where the machine readable bit comes in: if the file is well structured, Fusion Tables should be able to automatically identify each column header and all the values attached to each)

Notice how it also allows you, if the data is not well ordered (which is a common problem) to select which row contains the column names. This in the case there was some explanatory text on the first few rows, which would confuse Fusion Table and yield nonsensical results. Everything appears to be in order, the top row has all the headers and the rest of the rows are the values corresponding to each one of those headers. Click next to go and provide some details for our data.

We won't change anything on this screen, simply click finish to begin importing, you will see this message (this could take a minute or so).

Once Fusion Tables has uploaded your data, you will see a table view with the contents of the file.

Fusion Tables offers many of the functionalities of a traditional spreadsheet software, but it also has an extra tool; it can plot your data geographically using Google Maps. In the case of our file, it contains latitude and longitude for each building, which will allow Fusion Tables to plot the location of each.

Click on the third tab, Map of latitude, by default it will produce the map based on the latitude values on the file...

And you'll get something like the picture above, if you zoom in (you can use your mouse wheel or the + and - buttons on the left side of the map) you can click on each red dot and see information about that building. But it does not tell us concentration of buildings by place! We know, by looking at the table, that there is a column called region. It appears that is as close as we will get to have some groupings for this data, let's use that as counting buildings by town would be difficult to chart and impossible to read given the hundreds of buildings and the many towns they are in.

Click on the red button next to the 'Map' tab, the one with the white + in a red square, choose 'add chart' and you should now see the chart creation interface.

From the set of charts available, choose the vertical bar chart. Click on the button under the Category heading and select 'Region'. It will show the category as region and allow you to choose which values you want to measure and chart. Select the 'summarise data' tick box and you should see the data for each region, in terms of counts of each instance (building in the data file) for which the value of the column 'Region' equals a given region.

Now we have our info, we know how many government buildings within the dataset are in what regions.
Issues with data
Not all data is perfectly ready for use. The quality of the structure varies from publisher to publisher. Even if they have provided a CSV, results can only be as good as the quality of the original spreadsheet from which it was created. Issues with datasets are common and often require manual work to normalise and clean, enabling them to be usable and comparable to other datasets.

For example, the file you used for this exercise was modified for this guidance. The original had thousands of rows, which would have meant that the creation of the map would have taken far longer. The 'Town' column had mixed quality. In some instances it contains a town, in others it contains a sector of a town, such as Whitehall so we deleted it.

The post code column does not have a post code for all of the entries, which again, would have led to inaccurate or incomplete charting. The only column that appeared to be both complete and to contain geographical data was the 'Region' column, hence why we used it.

If you want to use the full version of this file, you can find it here titled 'Building Data 24--04-13'
There is also a guide that explains all of the headers here.
Further work
If we wanted to do more with this data there are plenty of variables in the data file that we could use such as post code and department and these could enable interesting comparisons and analysis. The following resources can help you explore further how to work with data (some may require registration).
Working with data Visualising data Desktop software

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If you have come to data.gov.uk wondering what open data is all about, this short guide will provide you with the basic information you need to start playing with government data and will point you to tools and resources that can help you further in working with open data.

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Market Assessment of Public Sector Information

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Market Assessment of Public Sector Information

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Deloitte - May 2013

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Information and Libraries as Innovation Catalysts

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Information and Libraries as Innovation Catalysts

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Guy Daines - 6th May 2016

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The Big Disconnect: Decision Makers and Information Experts

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The Big Disconnect: Decision Makers and Information Experts

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Robin Neidorf & Rob Mackinlay - 16th May 2016

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Chris Collison - 13th Jan 2014

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I've been looking back on the highlights of the past year, and previous years, and it's got me reflecting on the power of making KM engaging, fun and tangible in some way. Back in 2010, I wrote about KM Top Trumps, and how I used them with a group of business improvement professionals to help...

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Arts Council England - 3rd Oct 2013

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The Future of Libraries?  In Japan, Elevated Study Pods Encourage Conversation

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The Future of Libraries?  In Japan, Elevated Study Pods Encourage Conversation

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Yakuri Mitsuhashi - 3rd March 2013

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Photo via toto.co.jp

It can sometimes be difficult to find absolute silence in a library if a noisy student or two decide to be chatty. But that's not really needed at Japan's Seikei University thanks to the building's ingeniously designed isolation spheres (pictured above). Referred to as 'planets' these modernly designed elevated rooms can be used for meetings or for group work. Such a futuristic environment certainly looks like an inspiring place for young minds to develop!

But why bother to go to such lengths to create these isolation rooms? The sole purpose was to create a new type of library where speaking was not prohibited. In a traditional library, students come in to find books that they're looking for, and then they proceed to read or work quietly. Seikei University wanted to reinvent their library into a space where students have discussions and exchange opinions about their books.

The library was co-designed by Shigeru Ban, a graduate of the university and design/construction company Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei. Ban is perhaps best known for his gorgeously designed for Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, pictured below:

The library was built back in 2006 to mark the 100th anniversary of Seikei University. Although the modern building has been around for more than six years, it recently received a lot of attention when someone featured it on Naver Matome, a heavily used Japanese curation site [1].

People who reside in vicinity of the university are allowed to use the library, but I'm not sure if it is open visitors who live beyond those areas. Perhaps if some sci-fi movie director decides to shoot a film there, then maybe you can enjoy a more thorough view of this modern library in Tokyo!

Photo by Liss Blog

Photo by pbs.twimg

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The future of libraries? In Japan, elevated study pods encourage conversation

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Photo via toto.co.jp It can sometimes be difficult to find absolute silence in a library if a noisy student or two decide to be chatty. But that's not really needed at Japan's Seikei University thanks to the building's ingeniously designed isolation spheres (pictured above).

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Hans Rosling - TED Talk - Jun 2006

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It's the age of Big Data. But what, exactly, do we do with all this information? These talks explore practical, ethical -- and spectacularly visual -- ways to understand near-infinite data.

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JP Rangaswami - TED Talk - May 2012

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How do we consume data? At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.

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Karen Blakeman - 7th March 2013

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Yesterday, I was in Manchester leading a workshop on search techniques and business information. As well as looking at sources of information we went through some advanced search techniques, so the the top tips that the participants suggested at the end are an interesting mix of business sites and search commands.

1. DomainTools http://www.domaintools.com/
If you want to find out who is behind a web site try Domain Tools. Type in the URL of the web site under the Whois Lookup tab and DomainTools will look for details of who owns it in the domain name registries. However, if the owner of the site really does not want to be identified they may hide behind an agent or a service such as http://privacyprotect.org/.

2. Personalise Google news and web search for location
Personalisation of search results is not always a bad thing. Google tries to work out your location from your IP address but it does sometimes get it wrong. Or you may want to specify a more precise location so that Google gives priority to content more directly relevant to you. Run a web search and then click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the screen. Select 'Search settings' from the drop down menu. On the the next page select 'Location' from the menu on the left hand side and enter a location in the box provided.

In Google News, click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the page. You should then see options on the right hand side for personalising topics and below those an 'Advanced' link. Click on the link and on the next page go to the 'Create a custom section' on the right hand side of the screen. Under 'Add a local section' you can enter a town, city or post code.

3. Company Check and Company Director Check
http://companycheck.co.uk/ and http://company-director-check.co.uk/
These related sites repackage data from Companies House and offer access to a lot of it free of charge, although you will have to register to some of it. Company Check provides 5 years of figures and graphs for Cash at Bank, Net Worth, Total Current Liabilities and Total Current Assets. You can also download accounts, and monitor a company for financial changes or for when new accounts are filed. The directors are listed and you can click through on a name to view their record on Company Director Check and see details of current and past directorships. Credit and risk reports are priced.

4. Zanran http://zanran.com/
This is a search tool for searching information contained in charts, graphs and tables of data and within formatted documents such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets and images. Enter your search terms and optionally limit your search by date and/or format type. Zanran comes up with a list of documents that match your criteria with thumbnails to the left of each entry. Hover over the thumbnail to see a preview of the page containing your data and further information on the document. If you click on the title to view the whole document you may have to register (free of charge) as the title link sometimes takes you to copies of the indexed documents that are stored on Zanran. If you prefer to go to the original document click on the URL button next to the summary of the page in the results and click on the link that is then revealed. Unfortunately, you may see "page not found" especially if it is on a UK government department web site. Many of these have now been closed and their content archived making it difficult to track down the document.

5. intext:
Google's automatic synonym search can be helpful in looking for alternative terms but if you want just one term to be included in your search exactly as you typed it in then prefix the word with intext:. For example UK public transport intext:biodiesel. It also stops Google dropping that term from the search if it thinks the number of results is too low.

6. filetype: to search for document formats or types of information
For example PowerPoint for experts or presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics, or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. Include filetype immediately followed by a colon (:) immediately followed by the file extension in your search strategy.

For example
waste vegetable oil energy generation filetype:pptx
Note that filetype:ppt will not pick up the newer .pptx so you will need to run searches on both. You will also need to look for .xlsx if you are searching for Excel spreadsheets and .docx for Word documents. The Advanced Search screen file type box does not search for the newer Microsoft Office extensions.

7. Google Finance for historical share prices
https://www.google.co.uk/finance
As well viewing historical graphs for share prices you can download the data as a spreadsheet. The data goes back to 1999 but you can only download one year at a time. You can change the date ranges in the boxes above the table on the Historical prices page. You can also specify a much shorter time span than a year, or put the same date in both boxes if you want a price for just one particular day. To access the data, first search for your stock on the Google Finance home page. Then from the menu on the left hand side of the screen select 'Historical prices'.

8. Verbatim
Google automatically looks for variations of your terms and no longer looks for all of your terms in a document. If you want Google to run your search exactly as you have typed it in, click on the 'Search tools' in the menu above your results. A second menu will then appear. Click on 'All results' and then Verbatim at the bottom of the drop down menu.

9. 'Clear' your search options when you start a new search
If you use the menus above your results to refine your search, for example by using Verbatim or Translated foreign pages, use the 'Clear' option to return to the Google default. Otherwise your choices will be applied to the next search.

10. Disappearing sites and documents
Web sites close down, documents are deleted, and industry guidelines and standards are superseded. If you know the URL of where the document or page used to be try the Internet Archive Wayback Machine ( http://archive.org/). Type in the URL of the page or document in the box next to the 'Take Me Back' button and click on the button. If it is in the database you should then see a calendar showing the snapshots and dates that are available. For UK government web sites a similar service is available at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/.

If you do not have an old URL or even a title of the document then it is time to start hunting around to see if it has been archived by a different web site. One of the workshop participants gave the example of trying to track down old engineering specifications and lapsed industry guidelines on deep sea oil exploration. The standard Google search techniques were not working. Thinking that Norwegian oil companies have a lot of expertise in this area, they changed the strategy to searching Norwegian web pages and used Google's 'Translated foreign pages' search option (Click on 'Search tools' in the menu above the results, then 'All results' and select 'Translated foreign pages'. Archive copies of the original documents, which were in English, were found!

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Top tips on search and business information

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Yesterday, I was in Manchester leading a workshop on search techniques and business information. As well as looking at sources of information we went through some advanced search techniques, so the the top tips that the participants suggested at the end are an interesting mix of business sites and search commands.

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'It's Not About the Books' at Shettleston Library

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'It's Not About the Books' at Shettleston Library

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The Scotsman - 3rd March 2013

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'HERE, hen, where's yer best murder mysteries?"

It's a question of the sort you hear a lot when you spend a day in a library in the east end of Glasgow.

Crime fiction seems top of the tree here, although there has been a recent craze for the Fifty Shades Of Grey novels. "First the daughters were taking them out," laughs one of the librarians, "then the mothers, then the grannies. They say it's responsible for a baby boom."

Shettleston Library is a rather grand, massy, dignified, sober building, built in 1925 of red brick and blonde sandstone, with the famous Glasgow crest - bird, tree, fish and bell - carved above the wooden front door. Its many large windows are protected, presumably from vandals, with a steel mesh to which, on occasion, curious magpies cling. They are attracted, perhaps, to the shiny pink spines of the Mills & Boons, with which this library is well-stocked. Should you ever desire a copy of Powerful Greek, Unworldly Wife or The Infamous Italian's Secret Baby, Shettleston is the place to come.

Once a byword for serenity, libraries have become, of late, the arena for a war of words, as councils make deep budget cuts. Scotland had until recently escaped the worst of the library closures affecting England, but last month came the news that Moray Council was to close seven of its 15 libraries, prompting outrage - and there is concern that there is more of the same to come. Many of Aberdeen's libraries have been under threat of closure, and across Scotland there have been significant reductions in staffing levels, opening hours, book buying budgets and mobile library provision.

The latest cuts were announced last week in Shetland, where £135,000 has been cut from the libraries budget over the past two years. Meanwhile, library use across Scotland seems actually to have been increasing during the economic downturn. The overall picture is everyone serving a greater need with lesser resources.

Meanwhile, Terry Deary, author of the bestselling Horrible Histories series, has broken ranks with the many writers protesting against the cuts, saying, "Libraries have had their day. They are a Victorian idea and we are in an electronic age. They either have to change and adapt or they have to go. I know some people like them but fewer and fewer people are using them and these are straightened times. A lot of the gush about libraries is sentimentality."

Could he be right? Are libraries out of date? Are we sentimental about them when, really, we should be hard-headed? The best way to find out, surely, is to spend a day in a library and talk to the people who use it.

It is a bitter morning of freezing fog, almost malevolent in its intensity, and before the library opens there is already a small queue of old ladies, stamping their feet against the cold, and waiting to have their borrowed Ian Rankins stamped as returned.

Inside the library it is warm, bright and pleasant. Above the counter is an old stained glass depiction of St Mungo, and against one wall a display of famous Shettlestonians, including the football pundit Archie Macpherson, photographed in his 1970s pomp. The computers, always in high demand, are busy with people applying for jobs, or checking Facebook, or both - often they cannot afford broadband at home. A plump middle-aged man nods, dozes and snorts over a copy of the Evening Times. Liz, a woman in her mid-sixties tells me that she first came here as a wee girl; later she brought her son and daughter, and now she brings her seven-year-old grandson. Esther Coumond - here with her daughters Eden, 6, and Elisha, 5 - is from Ivory Coast, via Paris, and says she is keen to improve her English; the girls already speak with a Glasgow accent, which she likes just fine.

Scotland has the highest level of library use in the United Kingdom at 61 per cent, according to a report by the Carnegie UK Trust. There are more than 500 libraries in Scotland, 33 of them in Glasgow, including the Mitchell, which - with its great green dome glowing in the darkness above the motorway at Charing Cross - seems emblematic of all the wisdom and grace which the city, at its best, can offer.

Libraries, it seems to me, are not simply places where you go to borrow books. They are profoundly social spaces, and some of the greatest stories are to be found, not on the shelves, but among the people who peruse them. You can come in for a blether and hear from auld Alex, who as a young man was caught up in the Ibrox disaster and on that day lost the use of one of the valves in his heart, or from Margaret, a single mother - borrowing a book on coping with anxiety - who brings her kids to the library after school so they can spend quiet time together without the distraction of telly or housework. Library users, just like library books, aren't always in mint condition. They - we - carry marks of age and use. We are faded and slightly foxed.

Take Cirion Devine. "I come here every day," he says. "This place saved me." A tall man of 59, he has long grey hair and glasses, and is wearing a heavy green parka. He's friendly and polite, with a survivor's eagerness to tell his tale.

A few years ago, he was drinking far too much. Black-outs. Fights. Relationship break-downs. Starving himself so he could afford more booze. He feared for his life and decided to seek help, confiding in both priest and doctor. He was given medication to help him stay off the drink, but it wasn't easy. He felt paranoid and alone, having changed his social circle, cooped up in the house and in his own head.

"Then one day I just decided, 'Right, I've got to get out.' I was looking for a safe haven. This was the only place I could think of. It was hard walking up the road. The paranoia was ripping at me. But I came in. One of the staff asked me was I OK, and I don't know why I told her but I said, 'Aye, but I've just taken this medication and I'm really rattlin'.' And she said, 'You're OK. Nothing to fear coming in here. Nothing to hide coming in here.' And that was me started. I've been coming in ever since."

He visits the library up to three times a day, and usually has the maximum of 12 books out at a time, history and historical fiction. Shettleston Library seems to function, for Cirion, as an airlock between his home and the sometimes overwhelming outside world. It is, he says, "a retreat" - a place he can come when he feels the walls closing in. The staff ask him how he's doing, tell him to take care, and he appreciates all that very much. He feels like he's part of something. And he is. He is a member of the library.

Libraries are important places - they offer free books. But they are also symbolically important - offering an idea of community, equality and social good, an NHS of the mind. That is why libraries suit Victorian and art deco architecture - all those carved torches and copper angels and knowledge personified in stone make manifest the deep feelings that many of us have for them.

Each Friday, at 10.30am, the peace of Shettleston Library is broken by the weekly bounce and rhyme class - 25 or so parents and grandparents with infants and toddlers, singing along to The Wheels On The Bus and the like. One rather sheepish looking young dad, to whose self-consciousness I can relate, has his son's name tattooed on his neck but can't quite bring himself to do the actions to Wind The Bobbin Up.

On one level, bounce and rhyme is just a bit of fun, a diverting way to spend half an hour, but these classes are also opportunities for parents to bond with their children, to make new friends, and perhaps to improve their own literacy and numeracy. Glasgow Life runs adult literacy classes in Shettleston Library on Monday evenings. There are around 65,000 adults in Glasgow who have difficulty in reading and writing - and most of these will be in the poorer areas of the city. The Glasgow North East constituency, of which Shettleston is part, has the greatest level of child poverty in Scotland at 43 per cent. Again and again, you meet people who tell you that they cannot afford to buy books, and that they themselves are not great readers, but they bring their children to the library to read.

Giovanna, a 10-year-old with an I Heart One Direction bow in her red hair, brings a child's simplicity to the issue: "The school library is quite small. And the shops are dear."

The library, these days, is as much a community centre as anything else. There is a knitting circle, beginners' computing classes, and volunteers who take books to the housebound. There is even a local history group, chaired by 79-year-old Tony Jaconelli, whose impetus for forming the group was some numpty who had the temerity to suggest that such an area wasn't worthy of study. "No history in Shettleston?" he huffs, still outraged. "Get lost!"

There is, of course, plenty of history in Shettleston. And one can only hope, as far as the library is concerned, plenty of future too. It doesn't seem to me sentimental to regard such places as important to the communities they serve, especially communities which are struggling in so many ways.

As half-five approaches, I get talking to the last borrower of the day. James is 66, a retired fork-lift driver in a wooly bunnet. He's a regular, always arriving 15 minutes before closing and always, always the last to leave. He loves a gab with the librarians and is typical, I'd say, of the type of library user for whom these places are not just useful but vital.

"I live on my own," he says. "This gets me out the house and gives me somebody to talk to. It's no' really about the books."

Twitter: @PeterAlanRoss

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'It's not about the books' at Shettleston Library

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'HERE, hen, where's yer best murder mysteries?" It's a question of the sort you hear a lot when you spend a day in a library in the east end of Glasgow. Crime fiction seems top of the tree here, although there has been a recent craze for the Fifty Shades Of Grey novels.

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Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators

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Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators

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Emily Badger - 19th Feb 2013

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Shutterstock

An old idea reinvented for the 21st century.

Co-working spaces are often treated today as a novelty, as a thoroughly modern solution to the changing needs of a workforce now more loyal to their laptops than any long-term employers. But the idea is actually as old as the public library.

One of the world's first and most famous libraries, in Alexandria, Egypt, was frequently home some 2,000 years ago to the self-starters and self-employed of that era. "When you look back in history, they had philosophers and mathematicians and all sorts of folks who would get together and solve the problems of their time," says Tracy Lea, the venture manager with Arizona State University's economic development and community engagement arm. "We kind of look at it as the first template for the university. They had lecture halls, gathering spaces. They had co-working spaces."

This old idea of the public library as co-working space now offers a modern answer - one among many - for how these aging institutions could become more relevant two millennia after the original Alexandria library burned to the ground. Would-be entrepreneurs everywhere are looking for business know-how and physical space to incubate their start-ups. Libraries meanwhile may be associated today with an outmoded product in paper books. But they also happen to have just about everything a 21st century innovator could need: Internet access, work space, reference materials, professional guidance.

Why not, Lea suggests, put these two ideas together? Arizona State is planning in the next few months to roll out a network of co-working business incubators inside public libraries, starting with a pilot in the downtown Civic Center Library in Scottsdale. The university is calling the plan, ambitiously, the Alexandria Network.

Participating libraries will host dedicated co-working spaces for the program, as well as both formal classes and informal mentoring from the university's start-up resources. The librarians themselves will be trained by the university to help deliver some of the material. The network will offer everything, in short, but seed money. "As we develop this pilot and start to scale it out," Lea adds, "we would like to be able to direct people on how to find those resources."

Libraries also provide a perfect venue to expand the concept of start-up accelerators beyond the renovated warehouses and stylish offices of "innovation districts." They offer a more familiar entry-point for potential entrepreneurs less likely to walk into a traditional start-up incubator (or an ASU office, for that matter). Public libraries long ago democratized access to knowledge; now they could do the same in a start-up economy.

"We refer to it as democratizing entrepreneurship," Lea says, "so everyone really can be involved."

Top image: gagliardifoto/Shutterstock

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Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators

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An old idea reinvented for the 21st century. Co-working spaces are often treated today as a novelty, as a thoroughly modern solution to the changing needs of a workforce now more loyal to their laptops than any long-term employers. But the idea is actually as old as the public library.

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Google and Google Scholar for Research Information

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Google and Google Scholar for Research Information

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Karen Blakeman - 26th Feb 2013

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Presentation Description

Presentation on search tools for research information with the emphasis on Google and Google Scholar.

Presentation Transcript

PowerPoint Presentation:

25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 1 Google and Google Scholar for Research Information Tuesday, 26 th February 2013 Presenter Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk Slides available at http://www.rba.co.uk/as/ and on authorSTREAM and Slideshare This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Outline for the session:

Outline for the session Google vs Google Scholar Five things you need to know about Google Advanced search techniques for research information Google Scholar Other specialist tools Homework! Top 10 Tips 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 2

PowerPoint Presentation:

Google Anything it can find on the web Web sites, blogs, images, videos, podcasts, PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, discussions Sometimes includes articles from Scholar at the top of the results Author self archived repositories (may NOT be included in Scholar) Google Scholar Research information, patents, legislation (US) from known publishers Open access Institutional repositories Anything that is structured like an academic paper Separate from main Google 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 3

Five things you need to know about Google :

Five things you need to know about Google 1. Google personalises your search 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 4 Non-personalised search Personalised search

Five things you need to know about Google :

Five things you need to know about Google Personalises search based on location past search history past browsing activity activity in other areas of Google e.g. YouTube, Google Reader content from contacts in your personal networks may be given priority what you and others have 'liked', g+1 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 5

"Un-personalise" your search:

"Un-personalise" your search Chrome - New incognito window FireFox - Tools, Start Private Browsing Internet Explorer - Tools, InPrivate Browsing Switch off web/search history Log out of your Google account Clear cookies 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 6

Five things you need to know about Google:

Five things you need to know about Google 2. Google automatically looks for variations on your terms and omits terms To force an exact match and inclusion of a term in a search prefix it with ' intext :' UK public transport intext:biodiesel statistics ".." around terms does not always work Verbatim - runs your search exactly as you have typed it in Google Scholar - does not drop terms Google Scholar - can still use '+' before a term to force an exact match 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 7

Google Verbatim:

Google Verbatim Run your search On the results page select Search tools, All results, Verbatim 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 8

Five things you need to know about Google:

Five things you need to know about Google 3. Google web search does not search everything Two indexes: main, default index and the supplemental index (lower "quality" material) Supplemental index may contain less popular, unusual, specialist material Supplemental index comes into play when Google thinks your search has returned too few results Using advanced search commands and Verbatim seems to trigger a search in the supplemental index 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 9

Five things you need to know about Google:

Five things you need to know about Google 4. Google changes its algorithms several hundred times a year Some changes are minor and barely noticeable, others are more significant e.g. dropping search terms How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm - YouTube http://youtu.be/J5RZOU6vK4Q 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 10

Five thinks you need to know about Google:

Five thinks you need to know about Google 5. We are all Google's lab rats Google constantly tests changes on users in "live experiments" Just Testing: Google Users May See Up To A Dozen Experiments : http://searchengineland.com/just-testing-google-searchers-may-see-up-to-a-dozen-experiments-141570 Mostly minor effects on search but sometimes totally bizarre results Google decides that coots are really lions http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/02/12/google-decides-that-coots-are-really-lions/ Update on coots vs. lions http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/02/21/update-on-coots-vs-lions/ 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 11

PowerPoint Presentation:

What I see on my screen will not be what you see on your screen, will not be what your colleagues see on theirs, will not be what your users see. Google Scholar more consistent? 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 12

Google commands:

Google commands Speech marks around phrases or titles of articles "Geochemical evaluation of flowback brine from Marcellus gas wells" Note: if Google finds no documents containing your phrase it will ignore the speech marks Verbatim - runs your search exactly as you have typed it Search tools, All results, Verbatim (see earlier slide) intext: before your term - term must be present and exactly as you have typed it UK public transport intext:biodiesel statistics 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 13

Google commands:

Google commands Think file format PDF for research documents, government reports, industry papers ppt or pptx for presentations, tracking down an expert on a topic xls or xlsx for spreadsheets containing data Use the advanced search screen or the filetype : command zeolites environmental remediation filetype:pdf nasa dark energy dark matter filetype:ppt nasa dark energy dark matter filetype:pptx annual average global temperature 1960..2012 filetype:xls annual average global temperature 1960..2012 filetype:xlsx 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 14

Google commands:

Google commands Site search For searching single large sites, or groups of sites by type for example academic, government Use advanced search screen or site: command marcellus gas wells hydraulic fracturing site:psu.edu marcellus gas wells hydraulic fracturing site:edu shale gas hydraulic fracturing earthquakes site:ac.uk shale gas hydraulic fracturing site:gov.uk 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 15

Google commands:

Google commands Numeric range search Anything to do with numbers and quantities: years, temperatures, weights, distances, prices etc Use the advanced search screen or type in your two numbers separated by two full stops as part of your search world oil demand forecasts 2015..2030 world oil demand forecasts 80..100 mb/d 2015..2030 toblerone 1..5 kg 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 16

Google commands:

Google commands Words in the title - can be single words or phrases Ensures subject is the main focus of the article Use advanced search screen or intitle: intitle:"diabetic retinopathy" Words in the URL - can be single words or phrases Use advanced search screen or inurl: inurl:"diabetic retinopathy" 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 17

Google search options:

Google search options Date Restrict your results to information that has been published within the last hour, day, week, month, year or your own date range Search tools , Any time and select an option 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 18

Google search options:

Google search options Reading level Changes the type of material that is returned Run the search and from the menu above the results select Search tools , All results and then Reading level 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 19

Google search options:

Google search options 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 20

Google Scholar :

Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/ "Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research". Search all scholarly literature from one convenient place Explore related works, citations, authors, and publications Locate the complete document through your library or on the web Keep up with recent developments in any area of research Check who's citing your publications, create a public author profile 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 21

Google Scholar:

Google Scholar Does not cover all key journals in all subjects - no source list Top publications for subjects and languages under Metrics link on home page or http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en Scholar indexes the full text but you may have to pay to view the whole article Groups different versions of an article together 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 22

Google Scholar:

Google Scholar Includes open access material, pre-prints, institutional repositories (but not necessarily author self archived repositories) Includes material that is NOT peer reviewed but is structured and looks like an academic article (title in large font, authors, affiliations, abstract, keywords, citations) Pre-prints and IR copies may differ from final published version - charts and images may be redacted because of copyright restrictions 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 23

Google Scholar:

Google Scholar 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 24 Does NOT use the publishers' metadata Date and author search looks in the area of the document where those elements are usually found Page numbers, part of an address, data item may be mistaken for publication year Sometimes gets the author wrong

Communicating with postgraduate research students: some themes from the library literature http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/2013/01/communication-with-pgr.html :

Communicating with postgraduate research students: some themes from the library literature http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/2013/01/communication-with-pgr.html 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 25

PowerPoint Presentation:

Jacsó, Péter . "Metadata mega mess in Google Scholar." Online Information Review 34.1 (2010): 175-191. Jacsó, Péter . Newswire Analysis: Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems [Online] 24 September 2009 [Accessed 4 February 2013.] http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html Jacsó, Péter . "Google Scholar Author Citation Tracker: is it too little, too late? " Online Information Review 36.1 (2012): 126-141. Jacsó, Péter . "Using Google Scholar for journal impact factors and the h-index in nationwide publishing assessments in academia-siren songs and air-raid sirens." Online Information Review 36.3 (2012): 462-478. Jacso - Savvy Searching Columns, Online Information Review http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/savvy-mcb.htm [Accessed 4 February 2013] 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 26

PowerPoint Presentation:

Gray, Jerry E., et al. Scholarish : Google Scholar and its Value to the Sciences. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. [Online] Summer 2012. [Cited: 11 February 2013.] http://www.istl.org/12-summer/article1.html Hamilton, Michelle C, Janz , Margaret M and Hauser, Alexandra. Can librarians trust resources found on Google Scholar? Yes... and no. Impact of Social Sciences: Maximizing the impact of academic research . [Online] 17 September 2012. [Cited: 10 January 2013.] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/09/17/can-science-students-and-researchers-trust-resources-found-on-google-scholar-yes-and-no/ Kramer, Bianca and Sieverts , Eric. Beyond coverage #ili2012. Slideshare. [Online] 27 October 2012. [Cited: 10 January 2013.] http://www.slideshare.net/bmkramer/beyond-coverage-ili2012 HLWIKI International. Google scholar bibliography. UBC HealthLib Wiki - A Knowledge-Base for Health Librarians. [Online] 1 February 2013. [Cited: 11 February 2013.] http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Google_scholar_bibliography 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 27

Google advanced search:

Google advanced search Use advanced search screen or commands as follows: + sign before a search term to force an exact match, for example + norne "...." around phrases for example "environmental remediation" intitle : to search for a single word in the title, for example intitle:zeolites environmental remediation allintitle : to search for all of your terms in the title, for example allintitle:zeolites environmental remediation author: to search on an author's name, for example zeolites environmental remediation author:rhodes site: to limit your search to specific institution for example marcellus shale site:psu.edu Commands can be combined for a precise search, for example allintitle:marcellus shale author:wolford site:psu.edu 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 28

h-Index:

h-Index h-index developed in 2005 by Jorge Hirsch, University of California in San Diego Attempts to quantify productivity and apparent scientific impact of a scientist. "A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other ( Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each". For example, an h-index of 20 means that the researcher has 20 papers each of which has been cited 20 or more times Calculated by Scopus, WoS , Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search (?) but only for those papers within the database 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 29

g-Index:

g-Index g-index - distribution of citations received by a given researcher's publications Devised by Leo Egghe in 2006 "Given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the g-index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g 2 citations." g-index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 30

Other indices:

Other indices i10 Index i10-index is the number of publications with at least 10 citations e-Index PLOS ONE: The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Excess Citations http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005429 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 31

Google Scholar h-index:

Google Scholar h-index 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 32 Author creates a profile and claims papers

Google Scholar h-index:

Google Scholar h-index 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 33 ScholarHIndexCalculator - mWiki https://www.mat.unical.it/ianni/wiki/ScholarHIndexCalculator Add-on for Chrome (development of new features stopped for Firefox)

Google Scholar - Scholarometer :

Google Scholar - Scholarometer 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 34 Scholarometer: Browser Extension and Web Service for Academic Impact Analysis http://scholarometer.indiana.edu/ Firefox and Chrome

Google Scholar - Scholarometer:

Google Scholar - Scholarometer 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 35

Google Scholar - Publish or Perish:

Google Scholar - Publish or Perish 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 36 Publish or Perish - Anne-Wil Harzing http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm Desktop application

Microsoft Academic Search:

Microsoft Academic Search http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ Journal articles, pre-prints, post-prints, conference proceedings, reports and white papers Free to use but the full text of some papers can only be viewed on payment of a fee to the original journal publisher Automatically computes author g and h index Author may have several different profiles and articles may be assigned to wrong author 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 37

Microsoft Academic Search:

Microsoft Academic Search 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 38 Note: G and H index have now disappeared - uncertain as to whether they'll return

Microsoft Academic Search:

Microsoft Academic Search 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 39

Institutional repositories:

Institutional repositories BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine http://www.base-search.net/ CORE ( COnnecting Repositories) http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/search DART-Europe E-theses Portal http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php Institutional Repository Search (IRS) http://irs.mimas.ac.uk/ Open DOAR http://opendoar.org/ RIAN - Pathways to Irish Research http://rian.ie ROAR - Registry of Open Access Repositories http://roar.eprints.org/ 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 40

Specialist search tools for research information:

Specialist search tools for research information ArXiv http://arxiv.org/ BioMed Central http://www.biomedcentral.com/ Chemistry Central http://www.chemistrycentral.com/ ChemSpider http://www.chemspider.com/ Deep Web Technologies Mednar http://mednar.com/ Science.gov http://www.science.gov/ Science Research http://scienceresearch.com/ WorldWideScience http://worldwidescience.org/ 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 41

Specialist search tools for research information:

Specialist search tools for research information Europe PubMed Central http://europepmc.org/ Mendeley http://www.mendeley.com/ Open Biology http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/ PhilPapers : Online Research in Philosophy http://philpapers.org/ PubMed Central http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ Scirus http://www.scirus.com/ TechXtra http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/ 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 42

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Google And Google Scholar for Research Information

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Presentation on search tools for research information with the emphasis on Google and Google Scholar. 25/02/2013 www.rba.co.uk 1 Google and Google Scholar for Research Information Tuesday, 26 th February 2013 Presenter Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk Slides available at http://www.rba.co.uk/as/ and on authorSTREAM and Slideshare This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Outline for the session Google vs Google Scholar Five things you need to know about Google Advanced search techniques for research information Google Scholar Other specialist tools Homework!

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How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques

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How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques

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John Tedesco Blog - 21st June 2012

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Daniel Russell stood in front of a crowd of investigative journalists in Boston last week and showed us this picture of a random skyscraper in an unknown city:

Russell posed a riddle:

What's the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped?

Let that sink in. He wasn't asking for a phone number for the skyscraper in the picture, which sounds hard enough. He wanted the phone number of the precise office where the photographer was standing when the picture was taken.

Nothing in that office was even in the photo. Yet in a few minutes, Russell, a research scientist at Google, revealed the answer by paying attention to small details and walking us through a series of smart Google searches.

"Once you know these tricks, you can solve problems that look impossible," Russell said.

There are plenty of Google search cheat sheets floating around. But it's not often you get to hear advice directly from someone at Google who offers you his favorite search tools, methods and perspectives to help you find the impossible.

Here are some of my favorite tips shared by Russell at the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. Some of these techniques are powerful but obscure; others are well-known but not fully understood by everyone.

Most of what you know about Boolean is wrong

Don't bother typing AND in your search queries - Google treats it like any other word.

But OR in all caps actually works. OR is great for finding synonyms and boilerplate language. Typing "Smith denied" OR "Smith claimed" OR "Smith argued" will find more pertinent websites about the controversy involving Smith.

Avoid using NOT if you want to exclude a search term. Instead, type a minus sign in front of the word. So if you're visiting San Antonio but don't want to visit the Alamo, type:
"San Antonio" -Alamo
That will search for the phrase "San Antonio" on web pages that don't have the word "Alamo." There's no space between Alamo and the hyphen.

Think about how somebody else would write about the topic

Search is all about someone else's language. Think about synonyms and use OR operators. Google's "related search" feature on the search page also offers suggestions.

"Part of the skill here is being fascinated about language," Russell said. "You've got to think about equivalent terms."

Use language tools

Knowing which words to search for means understanding their meaning. Typing define [space] [search term] in Google search will offer dictionary definitions. "'Define' 'space' 'word' is your friend as a writer," Russell said. "Trust me on this."

You even get a definition if you type define pwned and other lingo. "That means we have words that aren't in the dictionary," Russell said.

What if you know descriptions but not the actual word? Find one of the many reverse dictionaries online. Type the descriptions you know and you'll get the matching words.

Use quotes to search for phrases

Typing "San Antonio Spurs" will show you the websites with the phrase "San Antonio Spurs." If you don't use the quotes, Google will search for the terms "San," "Antonio," and "Spurs" individually and you might miss pages related to the basketball team.

Force Google to include search terms

Sometimes Google tries to be helpful and it uses the word it thinks you're searching for - not the word you're actually searching for. And sometimes a website in the search results does not include all your search terms.

How do you fix this?

Typing intext:[keyword] might be Google's least-known search operations, but it's one of Russell's favorites. It forces the search term to be in the body of the website. So if you type:
intext:"San Antonio" intext:Alamo
It forces Google to show results with the phrase "San Antonio" and the word Alamo. You won't get results that are missing either search term.

Minus does not equal plus with Google

Russell didn't talk much about this but it's worth noting. Since putting a minus sign in front of a word removes it from a search, many people, including me, incorrectly assumed that adding a plus sign in front of the word forced Google to include it.

Actually, that search operator simply stops Google from changing the word into a synonym or correcting the spelling. It's still possible that Google will drop the word from some search results, so it's different from intext:.

(After Google Plus was unveiled, Google dropped the plus sign operator and replaced it with double quotes. Typing "Alamo" is now the same as +Alamo.)

That's not to say the plus sign - now double quotes - is not a useful search operator. But note how it's different from intext: If you want to force Google to include an exact word or phrase in all your search results, use intext:.

"Control F" is your friend

Use this keyboard shortcut to find a word or phrase on any web page. It's faster than reading the whole page for a specific word or phrase. "If you don't know this, you're roughly 12 percent slower in your searches," Russell said.

Limit the time frame

If you only want search results for web pages published in the past week, past month, or some other time frame, you can click on that option on the left-hand side of the search results page under "Show search tools."

Search by region

If you only want web pages for a particular area, you can search by region on Google's advanced search page.

Find relational search terms

What if you're curious about search terms that are near each other on a website? [keyword] AROUND(n) [keyword] is incredibly handy for finding related terms such as "Jerry Brown" near "Tea Party." ("n" is the number of words near the search terms.) Typing "Jerry Brown" AROUND(3) "Tea Party" will show you all the websites where the phrase "Jerry Brown" was mentioned within three words of "Tea Party."

Google maps as a search tool

(Update: Google dropped this map feature, which is a bummer. It was extremely useful and I hope they bring it back.) Let's say you're searching Google Maps for hotels in San Antonio for next year's IRE conference and check out the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel:

This screen shows the "hotel" search in Google maps. But what if you want to know what's near the Marriott?

In the Google Maps search bar, type an asterisk. The results will show you every single place Google knows about in that map view. So you can see nearby businesses, stores, and whatever else is around:

Now you know where to find - or avoid - the Denny's across the street.

Restrict your search to a specific website

The search operator site:[url] restricts your search to that particular website. It's one of the most useful searches out there. I used this when I worked on a story about racehorse accidents and wanted to search the Texas Racing Commission's website for any mention of injuries. Typing injuries site:txrc.state.tx.us led me to a little-known state database of accidents that showed how, in a five-year period, 300 horses had died on Texas racetracks.

Find a particular type of file

Typing filetype:[extension] is useful for limiting your search to particular types of files, such as Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, pdf's, Word documents and just about any other file type you can imagine. Typing filetype:xls in a search will show only spreadsheets. It's incredibly useful for finding public data. Check this list for file extensions you can search for.

Think like a reporter

When Russell teaches his students search skills, he tells them: "Think like a reporter." What do you know, and how can that information help you find what you need to know?

A big part of a journalist's job is knowing where to find information. Which state agency regulates the issue you're interested in? How might that information be documented? Who would know more about the issue?

"You have to have a concept about what's possible," Russell said.

Time travel technique

Typing cache:[url] or clicking on the cache function in the search results will show you an older version of the website. Handy if the site owner takes something down or edits it because of a brewing controversy.

Mashup search

Computer-savvy journalists create interactive maps of public data. Searching for the term "mashup" and the issue you're interested in will show you what's already been published and might give you some good ideas.

Stay up to date

All these search terms work with Google Alerts. Google will email you whenever it crawls new websites containing terms you're interested in.

"This is a very good thing because you can now follow a topical area," Russell said.

Search your own browsing history

Visit Google.com/history to search your past searches. Handy if you vaguely remember a search but forgot the details.

See what the world is searching for

Google Insights shows queries people are doing over time and how they compare.

Google hot trends

Let's you view Google's rising search trends by day.

Beyond YouTube

As popular as it is, YouTube is a subset of all the video services indexed by Google. Searching video.google.com searches every service, not just YouTube.

Google Public Data Explorer

Search and analyze public data in interactive charts that you can share online:

Try a Google diagram search

If you're looking for a part of a machine or gadget but don't know the name of it, try including the term "diagram" in your search. A search for "bicycle diagram" gives you tons of images with parts:

Combine these Google methods to make awesome sauce

You can use all these search operators together. So let's say you're curious about what kind of forms and documents the city of San Antonio has posted online. You can type:
site:sanantonio.gov filetype:doc
This is a cool way to find interesting story ideas.

Epic image search

Sometimes, you don't even need to type words to search Google. Upload a picture of an object, place or other type of photograph you want to learn more about, and Google can search for similar images. Google might find a match and it offers relevant search terms for that image. This video walks you though it:

Use what you've got

So how exactly did Russell figure out the riddle of the office phone number?

The first step is using the available information in the picture, as scant as it might be. Scrutinize the image and see if you can pinpoint any telling details. There might be a clue.

Still stuck? Check out the answer at Russell's blog, where he regularly quizzes people about riddles that aren't so impossible after all.

Updates with more Google search tips from Daniel Russell:

More awesome search tips from Google expert Daniel Russell, with real-world examples

New search tips for 2014 from Google research scientist Daniel Russell

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How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell's awesome Google search techniques

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Daniel Russell stood in front of a crowd of investigative journalists in Boston last week and showed us this picture of a random skyscraper in an unknown city: Russell posed a riddle: What's the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped? Let that sink in.