Eric Broug : Activity

social media day !

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:04:31 GMT

Today has seen me working with my colleague Paul on two innovative projects for Emerald

Firstly we gave our South African librarian friend a live tour of the inTouch website so that she is up to speed on all the features. She was the author of an excellent business and economics blog when she worked as a subject librarian at one of South Africa's major universities. She has now moved to a different university and i have asked her to continue her blog on the Emerald InTouch website. She provided a good service by collating information that is of interest to (South) African students and researchers and it is good news that she continue to do so. I think this blog will be a great success for all parties.

Secondly, Paul and I have dotted the i's and crossed the t's for the University of Swaziland and Emerald SMS project. As I write this, the local librarian is sending out the first batch of 250 SMS messages to UNISWA students and staff. Very exciting developments!

trip to Israel & Palestinian territories

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:21:01 GMT

The annual academic librarians' pow-wow in Tel Aviv is scheduled for May. This is lively event at the Hilton Hotel; the most productive conversations are held over the fantastic lunches in the covered terrace. A veritable fresh fruit n veg n dairy cornucopia. There are still a few academic institutions in Israel who have been able to resist the appeal of Emerald's management resources, most notably their Number 1 business school, ColMan. A local Emerald author and friend has offered to make some choice introductions for me at ColMan and hopefully we can get the subscription ball rolling there.

One visit that I also need and want to make is to the Palestinian Bir Zeit University on the west Bank. On previous trips appointments have fallen through regrettably. I hope we can meet in East Jerusalem this time. I don't fancy going there, spending hours at a checkpoint and getting a problematic stamp in my passport.

Tel Aviv is a great city and I always enjoy going there.

SMS technology on African university campuses

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:49:36 GMT

Have been working with colleague Paul and a librarian at the University of Swaziland on a project to test the use of mobile phone technology in increasing awareness and usage of library resources and services. Interest among students and staff to be inolved in the oner month trial has been overwhelming, almost triple our target number of participants. Funnily, it has been impossible to create a control group of UNISWA students who will actively *not* have acess to txt messages from the UNISWA library. Everyone wants to take part!

upcoming trip to Kenya

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:39:32 GMT

Have been working on appointments for two trips: a week in Kenya in April and a week in Tel Aviv in May.

There are a number of good universities in Kenya and not all of them are in Nairobi. Moi University for example is in Eldoret (this sounds like a resort on the Spanish Costa del Sol rather than a city in Kenya!). They got in touch a ferw months ago expressing an interest in our content. Despite my best efforts they have opted for two Hospitality Management journal subscriptions instead of a subject collection. Their desire to subscribe is encouraging in any case. Eldoret is too far for me to travel to, it would cost me three days probably.

There are a few good business schools in Nairobi that I will visit and a friendly Emerald author has promised to organise a lunch with some academic decisionmakers for me. The Kenya School of Monetary Studies is also on the list of visits as is the Kenyan parliament. As is usally the case at the start of planning an African trip, my diary is scarily empty but within a week or so i have to start juggling appointments to fit everybody in. Am also meeting with a lady who used to work at the British Council is intereted to work with us. We'll see.