London, Day 9, June 25, 2007

Monday, back to reality!

This was a heavy day on the lecture front. My personal opinion is this:

In England the higher education system is very different from the US system. People expect to get their education for free, or almost for free. Until Blair introduced the 3,000 pound tax, there was no fee for tuition. Everyone went to college for free, and for housing accommodations, most people got grants. So I think that when UCL partnered up with Pratt, they felt a little "guilty", perhaps subconsciously, or subliminally, that we were paying so much money for just one small summer course. So they wanted to make sure that we got our money's worth.

Well, I want to go on record as saying that I am firmly convinced that we got at least twice our money's worth with this class. They ask us for feedback on a regular basis, and we are all extremely happy with the entire organization of the course. Every minute is accounted for, and it all feels very well structured. In a class that takes place abroad, structure is more important that at home, because once we are left to our own devices, we are not home, and this does make a difference in the way we feel; emotionally, psychologically and intellectually. For the entire duration of this course I have felt anchored, and always aware of where I'm going next, where I'm supposed to be, and what is happening. And I know what to expect. It's a very good feeling for a study-abroad program. But seven lectures a day is a bit much. This is why I'm a little behind on the updating of the blog. By the time I get home at night I can barely see straight. And there is only so much information a human being can take in at one sitting, let alone process, mull over, digest, assimilate, and so forth. Next year, I think we have all at one time or another agreed, we think that the "school day" should end at about two or three, so that people still have some daylight left during which to use the library, for instance, read some articles, walk around London, rest up for the next day, take some pictures... you get the idea.

Okay, so back to school.

The theme today was: VISITS ALL DAY. In the morning we had a theme that connected our two visits: the Digital Transformation of Database Publishing.

First stop, Thomson Scientific, in the Johnson Building, at 77 Hatton Garden (I swear, if this blog were nothing but a list of London addresses, it would already be incredibly cool. Aren't the names of the streets too much? Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street, Fitzroy Square... Dickens, where are you when I need you?!?!?!).

First off, let me tell you that the inside of this building was very interesting. They have strangely shaped conference rooms, and open floor plan with no cubicle walls in the office areas, and a space-age bathroom accessed through a secret panel in a wall -- very cool! (When I commented on the interesting open plan for the offices, I was told that it has become the standard in England, and of course it has its pros and cons -- lots of people wear headphones so they can concentrate).

This is the main lobby just inside the entrance. I liked it a lot. Not that I would furnish my house like this, but for a corporate environment, it had an interesting feng shui, if you know what I mean.

Here I was able to take a peek inside one of these conference room "pods". I don't know how I feel about this space. It's a room inside a room, so there are no windows, of course. I think I might get a little claustrophobic if I had to spend a significant amount of time in here. On the other hand, maybe the lack of distractions allows people to focus.

And this is the open plan where one of the office areas is, as I mentioned. Most of the employees were quietly focusing on their work, but if they wanted to they could just look up and talk to a neighbor.

Our host was Simon Pratt (felicitous coincidental name, right?), and he gave us a tour of the offices, at some point. It was all very well organized.

The first speaker was Bob Stembridge. His presentation was very interesting. Thomson has gross revenue in the billions (pounds, dollars, take your pick), which distracted me for a couple of minutes while I tried to envision such sums, unsuccessfully.
Who they are: the "leading provider of integrated information solutions to professionals engaged in scientific research and innovation."

What does this mean, exactly? What are integrated information solutions? Well, as it turns out, what Thomson provides is extremely valuable, as I see it (obviously a rather large number of people agree with me, since their revenue, as I mentioned, is in the billions). Thomson is a SECONDARY PUBLISHER. They do not publish original scholarly material themselves, but instead they provide a single access point through which researchers interested in specific areas of study can find links, citations, abstracts, and pointers to the full text of the articles they are interested in.

Food for thought: I found the whole concept of secondary publisher fascinating. In a sense, all those that are successful as e-suppliers are secondary providers of something. Amazon sells books and other things that they don't make, but really they have a huge database in which things are ORGANIZED, and that is the key. You can find things because they are well organized. Search engines do the same thing, or at least they try to. You are looking for something, and they try to point you in the right direction, to a place where you can find many things that are related to what you're looking for.
So a secondary publisher gathers information on what is being published in its chosen areas of concentration, and organizes this information, making it readily available and useful to researchers. Mainly it saves time, duplication of efforts; and what you pay for your subscription is offset by the money/time you would have spent searching for all the things you need individually, and probably with less success. This blog in a way is secondary publishing. It does contain original material, but it also is a repository for links of all the materials, sources, references and people linked in some way to the course we are taking. It brings all these things together.


The next speaker was Doina Nanu, who gave us a presentation on the creation of the Derwent World Patent Index. Here Thomson is performing an additional service, which is that of workflow organization. Acquiring a patent is a long process with many steps that are full of complications. Thomson provides the service of streamlining the process by outlining all the steps and helping those who seek to patent their inventions. I found this presentation very interesting, because it shed more light on the value of aggregation and organization of information, as opposed to original creation of information. The patent index is useful to all those who seek patents because it allows them to see what others have already patented, thus helping in the prevention of duplication of efforts. Inventors protect their creations with patents, but at the same time the publication of the information related to the patent opens up avenues for licensing, thus creating revenue for the inventors. Doina showes us charts of the patent acquisition process in various different countries, and then she showed us the Thomson flowchart and highlighted its functionality. I encourage you to follow the link to her presentation, as it was very informative. The Derwent World Patents Index is the world's leading database of value added patent information, and if you think that two million patents are issued worldwide every year, you can imagine (or try to) the magnitude of this product.

Next, Simon Pratt talked to us about Web of Knowledge, a huge and ambitious Thomson product that is so enormous it is hard to describe. More than a database or a service, it is a research platform. It brings together many initiatives, like Web of Science for example, and allows researchers to perform a variety of searches in many different kinds of resources, such as citation indexes, journals, full-text articles, patent information, and so on. Then there are a number of alerting functions, so researchers can be kept abreast of the constant changes in their various fields.

Next we walked over to Britton Street, where we visited Euromonitor International. Here David Gudgin gave us a presentation that had a dual focus. First he told us about the history of the company: Euromonitor is "the world's leading provider of global business intelligence and strategic market analysis". Before the internet they used to produce books that held all kinds of statistical information on various aspects of world markets. They specifically focus on three areas: Industries (food, consumer goods, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, etc.); Countries (socio-economic, demographic and marketing data, trends, etc.); and Consumers (attitudes and opinions, lifestyle data and analysis, etc.). The second focal point of his presentation hinged on how the internet has transformed the quantity and quality of services they can provide.

Food for thought: What I found interesting in this presentation was the fact that because the data is now interactive, in an online environment, it can be broken down and looked at in different ways. The result of this is that the same information can yield new information. Even though they are not creating the data itself, but rather gathering it, the mere fact of being able to display it in different ways generates brand new information, and sheds new light on different aspects of whatever the particular data set refers to.

Next up was a colleague of David's, named Sybille. She gave us a very interesting demonstration of the GMID, Global Market Information Database, this wonderful tool that Euromonitor has created. Here we saw firsthand the flexibility of the data analysis that interactivity allows. WIth just a very small number of clicks the same set of basic data can yield many different sets of information, shedding light on all kinds of social, economic and political aspects of the markets. I found this demonstration fascinating.

= = = = $ $ $ $ = = = =

In the afternoon, we visited the British Library, definitely a highlight of the trip. We had a tour of the library first, only a partial tour, really, but we did see some great things. One I particularly loved was the huge glass enclosure in the center of the building that houses the entire library of King George III, visually stunning, and very evocative. Only a small number of people are allowed to actually go in there, but books can be ordered and viewed in the rare books room.

The British Library is not a public library, but once you have a reading card (proof of ID and address required) you can request and view pretty much anything they have. Some fun statistics, if you viewed 5 items a day it would take you 80,000 years to view the entire collection. Oh well, so much for that project :-)

After the tour we had three lectures, which I will describe very briefly since at this point I was beyond exhausted and had a lot of trouble staying awake.

The first speaker was Richard Boulderstone (how great is that name? I think that's all I need to say about him). He is the head of e-strategy at the British Library. Mr. Boulderstone's presentation focused on the creation and management of the Library's e-content. The main focus is on journals, because of their importance to scholarship. But in general, the Library is engaged in huge efforts to ensure proper archival, preservation and accessibility/retrieval of the digital content of its collections.

The second speaker, whose name regretfully I cannot find now, talked to us about UK PubMed Central. In his words, they have taken what the Americans are doing and adapted it to british needs. The British Library is the home of UK PubMed Central, This is a huge, free, open access database of biomedical and life sciences journals and articles, all peer-reviewed and open to all. Its purpose is to promote advances in these sciences and research all over the world in a free and open manner. The partnership between the BL and UKPMC was sponsored by a group of 9 scientific funders, led by the Wellcome Trust, the largest scientific charity in the world.

The last speaker of the day was very lively and helped me get my second wind, somewhat. Her name is Ruth Jones, and she is notable (to us at least) for having worked in the past for our own Anthony Watkinson and survived to tell the tale. Ruth has a corporate background, and used to head sales and marketing for Thomson Learning. She was brought in to the BL in order to lead product development. Her team works with publishers to license materials for use. They have an interesting model for dealing with digital content. Rather than publishing this content themselves, they allow publishers to publish and distribute it, and the Library perceives royalties. There is free use for academics, of course. Prior to this model, the Library had an expensive subscription model. This royalty system seems to work better. All this is good for the Library, but not so great for access for the general populace. There was mention of SUBITO in her presentation, so you can look it up. It's a library document delivery service, of some interest.

This brings to a close the first day of our second week. Intense, eh?

Goodnight to all my friends and loved ones.