Backchat - Flashback - January 2001. Now that we're well in to the second half of the decade, an over-the-shoulder glance at our January issue five years ago reveals some startling surprises.

EEVL triumphs (sort of) as Roddy MacLeod scoops IWR award

Information World Review's former editor Helen Jezzard looked resplendent presenting an engraved crystal decanter to Roddy MacLeod, the winner of the IWR Information Professional of the Year 2000 award. MacLeod was (and still is) senior faculty librarian for engineering at Heriot-Watt University, as well as services manager of the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL). The article gave a career CV that included working in the libraries of the universities of Botswana and Malawi. MacLeod had also been active in the Resource Discovery Network, the online website network funded by JISC. MacLeod recalled his earlier years in the profession, when he "first got involved in the online world searching bibliographic databases from the likes of Dialog, STN, ESA and numerous others. This was on a very slow terminal with a 30-character-a-second dial-up line". The award was presented at the Online Information Delegate Party, a precursor of the International Information Industry Awards, held at the Kensington Roof Gardens.

NewsEdge offers cutting-edge service via WAP phones

We were almost breathless with excitement as we delivered the front-page news that NewsEdge, the 12-year-old news aggregator, had been talking up its News on the Move initiative at the Online Information show. NewsEdge was in its pre-Thomson phase, and it had wowed our reporter with its NewsEdge Unplugged offering, "delivering syndicated personalised content to WAP-enabled mobile phones and personal digital assistants"! Senior vice president for global sales, Jon McNerney, was upbeat and upfront about the ...