College of Information and Computer Science, Long Island University
Published by November 20th, 2007
in libraries, education and librarians/information professionals.
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In library school, commentator Jennie Kiffmeyer learned all about the Dewey Decimal system, database design, and storytelling. But as she was to realize on the job as a school librarian in suburban Washington, that knowledge didn’t amount to a handful of jellybeans. Here is her list of ten things they don’t teach you in library school.
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Stuart Hamilton writes: ” I’m a librarian on a rather unique mission: I’m walking across the United States to find out what Americans think of the current world situation. After nearly five years immersing myself in topics such as the digital divide, Internet censorship, as well as 9/11, the war in Iraq, and legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act, I found myself keen for a break from media reports and set out to hear real opinions and in the process to see firsthand how U.S. libraries compare to libraries in the UK, where I have worked, and those in Denmark, where I live.”
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in archives and comics.
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The comic book industry made a long-delayed step into cyberspace recently when Marvel Comics unveilsed the industry’s first online archive of more than 2,500 back issues, including the first appearances of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk. Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited will offer the archive in a high-resolution format on computer screens for consumers at $59.88 a year, or at a monthly rate of $9.99, at marvel.com.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in corporations and digital.
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It seems like the whole world is creating, tagging, and delivering content these days. Once the domain of trained professionals, content is now everybody’s business. In many ways, the general public leads the publishing industry in its comfort with, and usage of, digital content tools—from blogs to podcasts to wikis. However, this does not make these consumer-only tools. Those of us in the industry well know we need to tap into the iterative process that characterizes Web 2.0—which means we need to play on the same field, using many of the same toys and tactics. For us at EContent, that can blur the lines between professional and consumer, but in a way it simply reflects the digital content continuum, with a fluid nature that makes content difficult to control, yet imbues it with limitless possibilities.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in libraries and librarians/information professionals.
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In his Library Man column, Brad Barker, librarian at Mark Twain Junior High School in Modesto, California, reveals some of the secrets of our profession: “At special ceremonies, librarians bump their right forearms together as a sign of solidarity (some baseball players known as the Bash Brothers stole this move from us). After the forearm bump, we touch thumbs and twist them as a symbol for the Dewey Decimal point.”…
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If it’s innovation you want, the worst thing you can do is set a goal, suggests William Duggan in “Strategic Intuition,” as reviewed by William Easterly in The Wall Street Journal (11/14/07). Take Napoleon, for example. Rather than storming “a pre-fixed position on the battlefield,” he instead attacked “any old position that came along where his army was at its strongest and the enemy’s at its weakest.” Martin Luther King, Jr. succeeded by steering away “from filing lawsuits and toward organizing nonviolent civil disobedience.” Both strategies relied more on recognizing opportunities “with large payoffs at small costs” than fulfilling specific goals. Then there’s Bill Gates, who seems to have forgotten about the power of strategic intuition.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in OLPC.
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While One Laptop Per Child computers are already slated to have a handful of open-source games included on them, one major game publisher will take that list of games to the next level by donating an old-school classic from its archives. Electronic Arts announced on Thursday that it would donate the original 1989 version of SimCity on every OLPC sold. Besides being a fun way to get kids using the computer, EA believes SimCity can also help them learn. “SimCity is entertainment that’s unintentionally educational,” said Steve Seabolt, vice president of global brand development for The Sims Label, in a statement.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in librarians/information professionals and wiki.
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This wiki was created as a place to gather information about the professional status of academic librarians. Specifically it is intended as an aid to Rank and Tenure committees, library administrators, librarian job applicants, and others interested in issues related to professional status in the library science field.
Love it or hate it, faculty status, the tenure track, and variations of these designations are facts of life for a majority of academic librarians. As such, peer reviews in one form or another are among the most relied-upon validations of a librarian’s work when up for review. One form of this is the external peer review that is sometimes solicited by a rank-and-tenure committee or administrator. When soliciting external reviewers it’s usually important that the requests be directed toward librarians with similar status. The chief goal of this wiki is to simplify the process of finding an institution comparable to one’s own in regard to the professional status of it’s librarians.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in YouTube.
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YouTube.com is the most popular video sharing website on the internet. You can upload your own videos, share and comment on others. Listed in this article is the collection of various tools and resources that can enhance your Youtube experience and help you in Video integration on your Blog or website. Also listed are some of the websites where you can fine the most sought after YouTube videos.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in librarians/information professionals and Firefox.
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Librarian Ellyssa Kroski writes: “Firefox has quickly become my number-one browser since I grudgingly tried it out a few months ago. It is very adaptable and customizable between all of its add-ons and themes, and is compatible with just about every application that I use regularly with the exception of my Settlers of Catan game from MSN. But by the same token, with over 1,900 add-ons, it’s difficult to wade through them all to find the ones which might be useful. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
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As online tools become more ubiquitous inside and outside the classroom, and the growth of distance learning continues, education researchers have begun to focus on how best to harness new technologies. Advocates for the classical lecture experience still exist, of course, but the general trend has been toward incorporating various technologies into the classroom, from course management software to digital photography. One approach, called “blended learning,” mixes traditional “face to face” techniques with cutting-edge developments in theory and technology. A new book, Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines (Wiley, 2008), summarizes the current theory behind blended learning but offers practical guidelines (with examples) on how to transform existing courses into the new framework. The authors, D. Randy Garrison and Norman D. Vaughan, of the University of Calgary, discuss the ideal conditions for a blended learning experience, how a blog and a wiki can enhance a class and how exclusively face-to-face encounters can lead to short attention spans.
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Imagine facing a reader who asks for book suggestions based on the newest cutting-edge slipstream novel by an author you have never heard of. You don’t even know if your library owns the title, but you gamely look it up in the catalog…only to discover that not only do you own it, but your sf/fantasy expert has entered some read-alike suggestions and provided a brief comment on the major appeals of the genre. In addition, patrons have tagged the book with a range of descriptors, submitted their own reader reviews and reading suggestions, and given the book five stars. Suddenly, you know a great deal more about this book and can not only make some better informed suggestions but can also invite the patron to join in the dialog by submitting comments, reviews, and ratings. This day is not far away in the future of readers’ advisory (RA) services
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in information, economics and EMEA.
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The market for information in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa is heating up so fast that it has the potential to outpace the Americas market within two years or less, according to a new report from market research company Outsell.
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Seth Montoya is a Sun Devil. He used to be a Lumberjack, a Thunderbird and an Artichoke. He had no nickname at one college because it doesn’t have a mascot. By the time he graduates from Arizona State University in May, Montoya will have attended five Arizona colleges to get his bachelor’s degree. The 24-year-old didn’t intend to transfer so many times. But he is part of a growing number of students who attend multiple schools to earn their four-year degrees. The practice has become so popular that college officials have come up with a name for the trend: “swirling.”
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in computer science and CAD.
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Autodesk’s former CEO Carol Bartz used to be fond of saying, “Look around you: If God didn’t create it, AutoCAD did.” That wasn’t just hubris, either. For a time — especially during the late ’80s and early ’90s — Bartz’s statement was actually pretty accurate. During that period, Autodesk’s computer-aided drafting (CAD) software was pervasive across a wide variety of fields. In fact, most of the buildings that went up during that time were designed, in some capacity or another, using AutoCAD. On Thursday, Nov. 15, AutoCAD — and the company that created it — celebratex their 25th anniversary. In that quarter-century, much has changed in the CAD world. The industry has become more diversified and competitive, yet the same things that made computer-aided design commercially popular 25 years ago remain just as true today. “What AutoCAD did, if you look at a snapshot of the past 25 years, was really to democratize computer-aided drafting,” says Mark Fritts, a senior manager at Autodesk and, prior to that, a licensed architect in California.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in education, Second Life and virtual worlds.
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Bowling Green State University is celebrating its newest campus, where faculty offices are on a mountainside, people from across the world routinely drop by, and students can fly to class. Obviously, this is not in northwest Ohio. It’s in Second Life, a virtual reality community becoming increasingly popular among educational institutions.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in libraries.
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For years, the staff at the Illinois Center for Autism dreamed of having a library. Recently, that dream became a reality, as the center in Fairview Heights dedicated its new 1,400-volume library. “This has all been donated through customers at the Borders located here in Fairview, Waldenbooks (in Fairview Heights and Alton), the Borders in Alton and the Borders in Edwardsville,” said Linda Davis, the center’s director of communications and fund-raising. “They did a book drive for us last August. Their staff approached people as they were checking out and asked them if they wanted to purchase books for the Illinois Center for Autism. Through all of the customers’ efforts and the staff at Borders we have about $8,000 worth of brand-new books for our kids.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in knowledge management.
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For nearly two decades, consulting firms, technology companies, R&D-driven corporations and other knowledge-intensive organizations have made significant investments in “knowledge management” initiatives. These initiatives are intended to facilitate the capture and transfer of company expertise as a way to spur learning and innovation. But research by Wharton management professor Martine Haas and Morten Hansen, professor of entrepreneurship at INSEAD, indicates that knowledge sharing efforts often fail to result in improved task outcomes inside organizations — and may even hurt project performance. However, organizations that plan carefully before launching a knowledge-sharing initiative, and support these efforts along the way, have a much better chance of adding value, the researchers say.
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You’d never see an English department chair reporting to the vice president for advancement instead of to deans and provosts. University of Oregon professors want to know why that principle doesn’t apply to the art museum. This summer, Oregon’s president took the uncommon if not unheard-of step of deciding that the director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, who has historically reported to the provost, would report to the advancement office instead — prompting faculty opposition that took the form of a University Senate resolution recently. More broadly, the shift in structure underscores a question that’s been raised as a number of college leaders have raided their art museums to raise funds in recent years: To what degree is a college art museum considered central to an academic mission, and to what extent is it seen primarily as a financial asset?
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in business intelligence.
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Business intelligence tools aren’t just limited to analyzing financials or vetting trial witnesses. Savvy law firms are also using competitive intelligence for business development: to prospect for new clients, profile client companies and to target opportunities in new industries. Although many firms and lawyers use subscription services, such as LexisNexis atVantage or Thomson Corp.’s West Monitor Suite, there is an abundance of online resources where you can get competitive intelligence for free. Here are some of the available tools.
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WorldCat.org, the destination site that lets Web searchers discover materials in the collections of WorldCat-participating libraries, has introduced links to the WorldCat Identities service developed by OCLC Research. WorldCat Identities presents an “identity” or profile of a particular person or company based on information and associations stored in the WorldCat bibliographic database. Profiled people can be authors, musicians, actors, directors and others in key creative roles; profiled companies can be publishers, film studios and other firms responsible for releasing a work.
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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind’s most divine creations: the book itself.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in demographics and digital divide.
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African Americans are becoming more active online. In fact, eMarketer estimates that they will make up 11.8% of all US Internet users in 2011, up from 10.8% in 2006. Yet, despite the fact that the costs of computer equipment and Internet access have fallen over the last few years, making the Internet accessible to all demographic groups, including African Americans, there continues to be a significant digital divide between White and Black America.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in education, books and copyright.
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If a book list is the blueprint for a course, Rio Salado College is about to start from scratch. Recently the Arizona community college announced a partnership with Pearson Custom Publishing to allow Rio Salado professors to piece together single individualized textbooks from multiple sources. The result, in what could be the first institution-wide initiative of its kind, will be a savings to students of up to 50 percent, the college estimates, as well as a savings of time to faculty, who often find themselves revising course materials to keep pace with continuously updated editions.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in education and digital.
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Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC) has announced that students and faculty members of universities across the country will now have online access to over 40,000 text books and research journals. Under HEC’s Digital Library Programme, an open access online portal has been set up through which all journals published in the nation are made available for worldwide electronic access. The site allows international exposure of research conducted within Pakistan and also helps in the international peer-review process of indigenous publications.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in digital.
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The head of Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the National Library of France, has said that the Library’s massive programme to digitise billions of books and documents should widen their availability without violating copyright rules. Over the past decade, the library has collected 10 billion documents online, and is currently scanning 300,000 books into digital format. The move is part of a plan to set up a European virtual library.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in digital and Library of Congress.
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The digital download project, launched in October 2006, has evolved well beyond the hopes of its architects. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Library of Congress, recently expanded the download project’s scope, allowing more patrons to participate in downloading and reading digital talking books and offering those patrons improved services. The project has also shifted its focus from testing the usability of digital audiobooks to now concentrating on optimizing the functionality of the download web site. As the download project improves, so too will the capabilities offered by the download project when it officially launches in late 2008…
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in collections and Library of Congress.
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Jimmy Hickey, 16, of Longview commemorated Veterans Day by hand-delivering 15 interviews with local World War II veterans to be cataloged in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Harold Findlay, Hickey’s 84-year-old grandfather and one of his interviewees, accompanied his grandson this weekend to meet the organizers of the Veterans History Project, a nationwide effort to catalogue and commemorate U.S. wars through pictures, personal narratives and correspondence.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in library services, Library of Congress and classification.
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The Law Team, Social Sciences Cataloging Division, has embarked on several projects to reclassify materials in the Law Library of Congress. The first such project is a major effort to reclassify approximately 800,000 “pre class K” titles. Arranged in the Law Library stacks simply by name of country, these titles often have duplicate shelf location numbers and are therefore difficult to retrieve. The Law Library requested that the Law Team focus first on materials from Latin American countries of strategic interest to the United States Congress.
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Published by November 20th, 2007
in education and search.
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Imagine you are taking an introductory biology course. You’re studying for an exam and realize it would be helpful to revisit the professor’s explanation of RNA interference. Fortunately for you, a digital recording of the lecture is online, but the 10-minute explanation you want is buried in a 90-minute lecture you don’t have time to watch.
A new lecture search engine developed at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) could help with this dilemma. Created by a team of researchers and students led by MIT associate professor Regina Barzilay and principal research scientist James Glass, the web-based technology allows users to search hundreds of MIT lectures for key topics.
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The contributions made by immigrant scientists and engineers for developing new U.S. technologies have been formidable—but not always well described. What we do know: While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with science and engineering doctorates. And at the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on.
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Published by November 12th, 2007
in libraries and LibraryThing.
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Tim Spalding writes: “We recently hit another big milestone—20 million books and 300,000 registered members! The exact 20-millionth book was All Day Every Day by David Armstrong (2002), added by Bernard Yenelouis October 31. Over 1.7 million books are singletons on LibraryThing, and five million books belong to a work in 10 or fewer members’ libraries. Sure we have 100,000 Harry Potters, but the long tail of books is very long.”
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Published by November 12th, 2007
in libraries and marketing.
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A scheme to put thousands of advertisements into library books will find borrowers taking home a little more than they had bargained for. Up to 500,000 inserts a month are due to be handed out by libraries in Essex, Somerset, Bromley, Leeds and Southend. The plan is being run by the direct marketing company Howse Jackson, whose business development director Mark Jackson said the company was “very proud” of what he described as “a brand new channel” for direct marketing.
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Published by November 12th, 2007
in libraries, education, librarians/information professionals and research.
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On a cold Monday afternoon in December, undergraduates study silently in the ornate reading room of a mid-sized university library. One floor down in the reference area, groups of four or five students work together, speaking in muffled voices. The reference librarian seated near the center of the room glances around, noting that students seem more intent as the end of the semester approaches. Such a scene might occur on any late fall day at the University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees Library, NY. But this year, something atypical was happening just down the hall. In a conference room, the library’s lead anthropologist, Nancy Fried Foster, sat interviewing a firs