New Transfer email announcement list and blog

The Transfer project, an initiative of UKSG, is pleased to announce a new email list and blog for announcements about journal transfers between publishers.

Interested parties can join the discussion list to receive and post information about transfers. List membership is not limited to those publishers who have publicly announced Transfer
endorsement, although we do still encourage all publishers to sign up to the code.

Announcements on the list will also be syndicated to our new Transfer blog. More information about post etiquette for both the discussion list and the blog can be found on the Transfer website.

More information about the Transfer project and Code of Practice can be found at www.uksg.org/transfer.

Twitter: waste of time or worth it?

Back in March, at the start of UKSG's annual conference, Todd Carpenter of NISO wrote this interesting LiveSerials posting about Twitter and how it is used during conferences.

Today this subject is raised again by CrossRef's Kirsty Meddings, writing the editorial in the latest edition of Serials-eNews, UKSG's news bulletin. (Note that access to Serials-eNews is usually an exclusive benefit for UKSG members but all being well you should get access to this article by following this link - let us know if you have any problems!).

Both pieces are useful in helping to explain why Twitter is gaining such traction in our community, and both are generally in favour of Twitter as a channel for sharing resources and building relationships during conferences. Do you agree? what about using Twitter outside of the conference centre - are publishers, libraries and others in our sector putting it to good use, or wasting their time?

UKSG has set up its own Twitter channel, @uksg, and encouraged usage of the #uksg09 hashtag during the conference. Are we right to be exploring this medium? What more could or should we be doing? We're interested to know your thoughts so please do discuss via comments or trackbacks (or on Twitter! - #uksg).

Save the date: 33rd UKSG Annual Conference

A quick note to remind you that next year's UKSG Annual Conference will be held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre from 12-14 April 2010. Please stick the date in your diary and be sure to join us there!

A Wordle to represent UKSG 2009

Here's a nice Wordle of LiveSerials postings from the 2009 UKSG annual conference. I think it sums up UKSG's focus quite nicely, although I'm surprised at how small "publishers" and "publishing" have ended up.

UKSG Research - please send us your views!

We recently surveyed delegates at UKSG's 2009 conference in Torquay to find out more about them, what they thought and what they needed from the organisation. We would welcome your input into this discussion. The survey should not take longer than ten minutes and all feedback is valuable.

Tell us what you think