economics archive at Information Innovation Exchange

Archive for the 'economics' Category

Seven Ways Your Library Can Help During a Bad Economy

Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008 in libraries, library services and economics. 0 Comments

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Fight Over a Beloved (And Lucrative) Book

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in books, economics and publishing. 0 Comments

U of Nebraska Press sold almost one million copies of a book about American Indians on the Great Plains. The director moved to SUNY and now the book is moving too. Fair game or unfair edge?

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As Textbooks Go Custom, Students Pay

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in education, economics and publishing. 0 Comments

College students, already struggling with soaring tuition bills and expenses, are encountering yet another financial hit: Publishers and schools are working together to produce “custom” textbooks that can limit students’ use of the money-saving trade in used books. And in a controversial twist, some academic departments are sharing in the profits from these texts.

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$161 Million Invested in 16 Virtual Worlds-Related Companies in 2Q 2008, $345 Million Invested in First Half of 2008

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in virtual worlds and economics. 0 Comments

Virtual Worlds Management released a new report recently tracking the virtual worlds-related investments of Q2 2008. $161 million was invested in 14 companies, not including two companies that were acquired for unknown amounts. Full List Here. This compares with $184 million dollars in 23 virtual worlds related companies during the first quarter of 2008. That puts the total amount invested in the first 6 months of 2008 at $345 million.

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50 Things You can Blame on Rising Oil Prices

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in education and economics. 0 Comments

For a sense of how deeply the oil-price story is woven into the fabric of life in 2008, Buzzwatch compiled a list of 50 things being attributed, at least in part, to high fuel costs. Quite a few are relevant, among them: schools cutting back on field trips, community colleges cutting Friday classes, the return of the bookmobile, and longer waits for the campus bus.

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Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition

Published by rwatstein June 29th, 2008 in libraries, librarians/information professionals, library services and economics. 0 Comments

The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition is based on data from 75 college libraries in the United States and Canada. Data is broken out by size and type of college, as well as for public and private institutions, to allow for easier benchmarking. The report’s more than 300 tables of data present findings about trends in staffing and salaries, budgets, grants and endowments, special collections, content and materials spending, use of e-books and online services, capital budgets library building renovation and facilities management, information literacy, and many other issues of interest to academic librarians.

Some of the report’s findings are: Only 22.5% of the colleges sampled believed that librarians’ salaries had been going up faster than the rate of inflation, while more than 34% believed that their salaries in the past year had gone down in real terms. Librarians in private colleges were more likely than their counterparts in public colleges to believe that their salaries had gone down in real terms in the past year.

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A School For Kids Living In Poverty: A Question Posed: What Do You Call Homework If You Have No Home?

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in demographics, education and economics. 0 Comments

A teacher tries to shush her young students, telling them to be “as quiet as a mouse.” The familiar idiom sounds harmless, but it might carry a different meaning for children whose families can’t afford garbage service. Their home could be plagued with rats. If they live in a shelter, with disruptive bed checks throughout the night, children often come to school sleep-deprived. Uncertain of where they’ll be living the next week and traumatized by aspects of homelessness, impoverished students and their parents might view education strikingly different than middle-class families.

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Young Canadians More Educated Than Parents, Earn Less

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in education, economics and Canada. 0 Comments

A Statistics Canada report reveals that while twenty-somethings in Canada have more higher education than their parents did in the previous generation, they earn significantly less.

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Fostering Innovation Culture in an Unpredictable Economy

Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008 in innovation and economics. 0 Comments

With the looming threat of recessionary times ahead and predictions that 70 percent of today’s revenue generating products will be obsolete by 2012, 2008 brings some unwelcome challenges to business. While many companies are hunkering down to weather the storm, global leaders understand that in economically challenging times it is critical to drive the market, instead of being driven down by it. This understanding is stimulating renewed discussion among executives on how to establish a culture that drives sustainable innovation to build value in lean times. Yet, executive commitment to an innovation culture does not necessarily translate into high performance execution of the innovation agenda. Surveys from leading consultancies and analyst firms also confirm that most companies are lacking in leadership or tools to innovate successfully and consistently.

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Wikipedia Insiders Hotly Debate Future Fortunes

Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008 in economics and Wikipedia. 0 Comments

Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you’ll encounter the Internet’s richest corporate players — names like Yahoo, Amazon, News Corp., Microsoft and Google. Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation. With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia “anyone can edit” stormed the Web’s top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.

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Print Encyclopedias in Crisis

Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008 in economics and publishing. 0 Comments

A series of announcements from publishers across the globe in the last few weeks suggests that ahead of other books, magazines, and even newspapers, the classic multivolume encyclopedia is well on its way to becoming an internet casualty. Sales of the printed edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica are just 10% of what they were in 1990, Brockhaus is putting all 300,000 of its articles online for free, and Gyldendal has decided that the subscription plan for its online encyclopedia is misguided….

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Magazines Dust Off Their Back Issues

Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008 in archives, economics and publishing. 0 Comments

As magazines and newspapers hunt for the new thing they need to be to thrive in the internet era, some find that part of the answer lies in the old thing they used to be. Publications are rediscovering their archives, like a person learning that a hand-me-down coffee table is a valuable antique. For magazines and newspapers with long histories, especially, old material can be reborn on the Web as an inexpensive way to attract readers, advertisers, and money.

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UK Culture Secretary Recommends Home Delivery and Web-based Lending

Published by rwatstein March 16th, 2008 in libraries and economics. 0 Comments

Margaret Hodge, the Culture Secretary of the United Kingdom, on Thursday issued a tough challenge to the Association of London Chief Librarians, asserting that new programs like web-based lending with home delivery and libraries in shopping centers and train stations are necessary to revive public interest. Though overall library spending is up 17% over the last ten years, the number of books borrowed is down by 34%, she said: “I know you’ll plead resources, but I don’t think that’s the real reason for the decline. In my view the offer from libraries needs to be different

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