Thank you to all those who stopped by our stand at the BIALL conference in Harrogate. Sara Batts and Fiona Fogden had a great time meeting customers, friends and colleagues. It is no secret we’re both still Law Librarians at heart, still using the Information skills built up over the years in our work with Linex.
So what were the main themes we heard from people?
Existing customers were interested in our new features. By far the most popular is the ability to search all archive of an alert. There are real time savings in just this small feature, avoiding trawling through reams of email to find an article in response to a query along the lines of ‘I remember seeing in the Insolvency alert recently a story about…’.
On the final day of the conference the exhibition hall was transformed into the Saturday Kitchen – resembling a breakfast news TV studio. Exhibitors were invited to talk about what may be in store for the future. Fiona Fogden was one of these speakers, following the exceptionally witty and engaging Richard from the British Library.
Fiona’s brief talk centred on five main topics: big data; one size does not fit all; create once – use multiple ways and places; inter-relationships; complexity.
Big data is certainly an issue for our customers. Linex has been looking at ways to help you see what is of value. One of our recent developments allows creation of your own classification scheme. And we aim to empower the end user: introducing a quick and easy way to create your own simple, single alert. Fiona also highlighted how FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a real source of anxiety that those dealing with current awareness need to understand. Perhaps Information Professionals need to develop a grasp of psychology to reassure, challenge or support fears and concerns.
We meet customers of all shapes and sizes and we know that current awareness comes in all different sizes and needs, between and within firms. That’s why we have an interface that allows customers to create automated alerts, alerts that require a small amount of editing, or to create fully curated content.
Once those ‘alerts’ are created – why create again for a different platform such as the intranet or CRM system?. Linex can integrate with internal systems and deliver or make available that content in multiple ways, magnifying the impact of work that is done.
Linex sits as a solution that works with whatever our customers want us to work with. The simplest examples are user directories and intranets. We outlined a specific project we’d worked on with Research Monitor to enable both tracking and auto logging on via mobile devices where the content was sent via email.
All of the above sums up the theories about complexity. Life started as a single celled organism and we now have an amazing and diverse ecosystem. Human life and experience is developing in the same way. Legislation and rules are reflecting this, for example companies of a certain size are no longer reporting simple financial facts, but have to report risks, human factors etc and see themselves in the wider context that they operate. The information world is the same. Linex helps make sense of this complex environment through all of the above.
We would also like to congratulate Candace Guite of the University of Stirling on winning the Linex prize draw for £50 of Amazon vouchers.
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