London Online 2011: Exhibit hall takeaway
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

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You do wonder if London’s Online conference and exhibition is jinxed. Veteran attendees know that each year the weather turns for the worse the week of the event, as was the case last year when public transport seemed to have ground to a halt in the wake of a cold snap. See Nancy Davis Kho’s report here.

This year, the weather was more clement, however the second day of the conference coincided with a public sector strike in the UK, which some feared would impact those travelling to Britain. In the event, the strike did not affect too many Online visitors. The consensus was that attendance was up on last year.

Since the conference theme was “keeping you ahead of the digital revolution”, it was not surprising to see that the exhibition was heavily represented by ePublishing and content management providers. The STM sector was also well covered; business and financial information providers, as well as legal and regulatory information publishers however took a back seat this year.

The seminar programme on the exhibition floor was comprehensive and from what I could see, was well attended. If like me, you cannot afford to attend the conference, these seminars are always worthwhile, since they are presented by highly experienced information practitioners. I always learn something new and come away inspired to add new sources to my search portfolio.

On day two of the show, the European Librarians Theatre featured a panel discussion sponsored by Ebsco on how social media is used to promote information services. Moderated by SLA Europe President Sara Batts we learnt of the increasing importance of Yammer for internal communication and collaboration. Dennie Heye, representing Shell in the Netherlands called Yammer the “social glue of the enterprise”, referring to it as a social leveller, since hierarchies within corporations become less important when using the service. Yammer, by the way, was recently upgraded to include an activity stream ticker and real-time collaboration, as reported by InformationWeek.

Jo Alcock of Birmingham City University had conducted her own survey of social media usage in UK academic libraries and reported that librarians are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to promote their services. Delicious, Flickr, Netvibes and FourSquare also feature in academic librarians’ repertoire.

Katrin Weller, representing The Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf mentioned librarians’ concerns over quality control as one of the main hindrances in implementing social media in libraries. Although there is still some resistance at management level towards introducing social media, it is clear that the vast majority of librarians realise that these tools are far from a trend and have a positive function to play in the library world.

All this is confirmed by a Europe-wide Ebsco survey, which found that although only one third of respondents currently use social media, 56% believe they have a positive part to play in promoting information services. The survey findings are viewable here.

This year marked the end of an era for London Online. After decades at the Victorian exhibition centre at Olympia, the show is moving east to the modern Excel centre – a more fitting venue for the digital age.

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