Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in demographics, education and economics.
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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The Web 2.0 “buzz” starts with new technologies such as virtual worlds, cell phones and handheld devices that offer 24/7 web access, tagging, social networks, and blogs and brings together various web capabilities in unique combinations (known as “mashing”—such as maps that also include the latest real estate property assessments). But Web 2.0 is about much more than the technology—it’s about a change in focus to participation, user control, sharing, openness, and networking. Pulled together, these technologies are a “parallel information universe” next to our own universe. This parallel universe provides us with constant feedback, resources, monitoring, information, connections, education, and interaction. It can be individualized and personalized, and we can interact individually or collectively with it. The key for libraries is that this is a parallel information universe. Libraries—as institutions founded on meeting people’s information needs—need to take the lead in this parallel information universe. Some libraries are diving in already, but the library world as a whole must engage with these developments and determine how we can use them to meet our users’ information needs better.
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In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics’ “Amazing Fantasy #15″ — the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962. This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories — also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko — for the same issue: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case” and “There Are Martians Among Us”
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
Neil Hollands writes: “Libraries need to recognize book group readers as one of their core audiences, a population that deserves extra-mile service. Here’s my list of 25 ways that a library can support book groups. Consider adding one or two of the practices from this list to your repertoire.”
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In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library’s book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helps a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible. Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Book Search. The manual scanning is much slower than Google’s normal process.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in books.
The Telegraph presents its selection of history’s most notable cult writing. What is a cult book? Cult books include some of the most cringe-making collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; and some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon. In compiling their list, the editors were looking for the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem.
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In the first of a series of reports related to technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is drawing attention to challenges and opportunities related to available bandwidth for patron Internet access and online library services. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study (www.ala.org/plinternetfunding).“Internet Connectivity in U.S. Public Libraries” describes the range of Internet services public libraries broker on behalf of their users – including homework help, audio, video and digital reference; connectivity rates; wireless availability; and the diverse challenges faced by urban, suburban and rural libraries in being able to improve Internet connectivity to their communities through the library. The document also links to related research on bandwidth in the United States.
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Read the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study here
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The other day, I was engaged in a uniquely modern task: sifting frantically through thousands of bookmarks. I had promised my editor that I’d send in a cool idea for my next column. So I was trolling through the thousands of news tips and blog posts I’d archived using services like del.icio.us. But I was drowning; I’d saved so much that I could no longer find the really good stuff. What I needed was some help — an assistant to do some sifting for me.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in innovation, technology and hardware.
Jennifer L. DeLeo writes: “Specialized features like LED backlighting and ergonomic design have become the standard in today’s keyboards, which means that there’s plenty of room for a new crop of strange keyboards to emerge into the peripheral scene. For the past week, I’ve hunted down the most unusual and ridiculous keyboards—and I came pretty close to Ctrl+Alt+Deleting some of them from my head.” At right is the orbiTouch Keyless Ergonomic Keyboard for those with repetitive strain injury, which allows the use of hands and arms instead of fingers to type.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in education, environment and green.
The Sierra Club selected the top ten most environmentally friendly colleges and universities in the country. Results are based on clean-energy purchases, green-building policies, bike facilities, food served in dorms, recognition by environmental organizations, among other factors. Arizona State University, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Emory University, and Northern Arizona University received honorable mention for their efforts.
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Today we are migrants to a digital land, but it is our children who are growing up as digital natives. The rules of doing business and governing society as it evolves are challenging, with many misguided laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and social fallacies such as the concept of identity. Delivering the keynote address at the Gartner mobile and wireless summit in London, Nick Jones, research vice-president at Gartner, spoke of how difficult it was to predict how new technologies would be used. Today, prepaid mobile credits are emerging as a new form of currency in many countries, and the most popular way to dump a boyfriend among today’s teenagers is by a text message. “It’s a $450 billion industry, and politicians and lawyers are interested,” he said.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in information and open source.
Publishing Technology, a provider of software, services and content for the information industry, has announced the launch of a new web platform for BBC Monitoring, the global news resource. The BBC Monitoring Library provides subscribers with open source intelligence from the BBC’s unparalleled network. Articles are selected from traditional and new media worldwide, with over one hundred source languages being translated into English to provide a fully searchable digital current affairs resource.
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BBC Monitoring Library website
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The theme for the Summer Reading Program at many New Mexico libraries will be “Catch the Reading Bug.” Ami Segna, youth services librarian at the Alamogordo Public Library, is taking it one step further. She plans to tell children she will formally eat a bug for their viewing enjoyment. The choice of bug will be based on how much they read. “If it’s 60 percent of their reading, it will be a chocolate-covered ant. If it’s 70 percent, a cheddar-cheese flavored meal worm.”
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in web 2.0, blogs, education and wiki.
Web 2.0 tools sure are nifty and ‘next-gen,’ but are they actually making a difference in the way students and educators collaborate? Everyone seems to have a different definition for “Web 2.0,” but most people agree the phrase describes a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Technically speaking, these new technologies include blogs, wikis, folksonomies (collaborative or social tagging), and social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us. In the business world, these technologies enable colleagues in different offices to work together on projects, and thus move those efforts ahead quickly and more easily than traveling to an in-person meeting or even teleconferencing. In higher education, however, achieving measurable results with these tools is a bit more challenging. And maybe that’s because-for the academic community, at least-questions continue to swirl around the use of these technologies. Questions such as: What do these tools bring to the table? How can educators be certain students will use them? How does restructuring a curriculum around Web 2.0 actually make a difference in how students learn? Across the country, as more and more colleges and universities consider embracing Web 2.0, the educators and technologists involved feel a certain amount of trepidation, and even ponder the future of the movement.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in research, Wikia and wiki.
Even if they won’t admit it, students are using Wikipedia to kick off their research and fill the gaps in their class notes … right now. It might not show up in the bibliography, but the free, open source online resource has long since become the starting point for settling factual disputes, brainstorming paper ideas and even offering suggestions for further reading. If that’s an open secret, then so is this: For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review.
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President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released recently. The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.
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US Internet users ages 10 to 15 flocked to social networks last year as if getting a MySpace account would increase their allowances. Harris Interactive said in its April 2008 issue of Youth Trends that more than half of US girls ages 13 to 15 used social networking Web sites in 2007, roughly the same as in 2006. Social networking jumped among other boys and girls surveyed: more than twice as many children ages 10 to 12 reported using social networking sites in 2007 as did in 2006.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in demographics, internet and research.
Most Internet users worldwide use the Web primarily for e-mail and search, according to a global survey conducted by Gartner during the fourth quarter of 2007. Online banking is the third most popular use of the Internet (except in emerging markets), while sharing photos, videos and files is the fourth.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in education, economics and Canada.
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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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in Google and mapping.
Elinor Mills writes: “Google has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter. The tool—for now called Google Ocean, though that name could change—is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications.”
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ChaCha is a free cellphone service that lets you ask any question answerable via a web search, using almost any cellphone, by simply making a voice call. Just dial (800) 224-2242 and state your question. In a few minutes, you’ll get an answer via text message from one of 10,000 hired “guides”—students, stay-at-home parents, retirees, and others—who look up the questions on the Web and reply. They get paid 20 cents per answer. (Perhaps libraries should have thought of this?)
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in museums and experiential.
If Portuguese is seen as the step-sister to the rest of Latin America’s Spanish, then someone should tell the Brazilians.The Museum of the Portuguese Language in downtown Sao Paulo is a popular destination with visitors and one of the most visited in Latin America.
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Nearly all US teens ages 12 to 17 use the Internet, according to a September-November 2007 Pew Internet & American Life study. The 94% of teen respondents who reported accessing the Internet are doing so frequently. Two-thirds of teenage Internet users (63%) reported going online daily, while 35% use the Internet multiple times per day.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in innovation and internet.
Friday, April 25, was the first of the two-day ROFLCon, an event featuring the people behind current memes of pop Internet culture. The conference, organized by Harvard students and taking place at MIT, was a high-energy crowd of mostly college-age attendees touting signature red ROFLCon lunch boxes.
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A professor at the University of Central Florida challenged her students to unplug and live a technology-free life for five days, and most discovered they were incapable of doing so. “It’s something I’m doing to get us in touch with where our humanity is,” said faculty member Mary Ann Murdoch in coverage in the Orlando-Sentinel. “Are they really in charge of these devices, or are all these devices in charge of them?” Only two of 26 students in Murdoch’s English composition class were able to relinquish cell phones, iPods, portable CD players, text messaging, e-mail, computers, TVs, DVDs, and video games. The rest conceded that they were dependent on technology.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in education, books and publishing.
Plenty of professors are thinking about ways of introducing alternatives to traditional textbooks that they or their students deem too pricey. Some are involved in efforts to create material that is online, free and open source in design. A new effort announced Monday aims to help this movement grow at community colleges. As Judy Baker, dean of the distance learning program at the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, sees it, not enough people are focusing on compiling content tailored to two-year college students. “We have more economic and racial diversity than the normal population, so it’s even more important for content to be culturally relevant and meaningful,” Baker said. “It’s important for faculty to be able to localize the information, and because our students are not always as prepared for a college-level textbook that comes from the publishers, we need to provide supplemental information.”
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in literacy and emoticons.
Twenty-five percent of teens surveyed said they used emoticons in school writing and 38% said they used text shortcuts or abbreviations.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in libraries.
In its old, mustily glorious quarters in the British Museum, the British Library’s main reading room was as exclusive as it was glamorous, a club rich with tradition whose distinguished alumni included Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw.But in 1998, the library moved to a modern red-brick building on Euston Road, and four years ago, it liberalized its admission policy. It opened its new reading rooms not only to writers and academics who depend on material from its singular collection, but also to “anyone who has a relevant research need,” a spokeswoman said. Which is all fine. But “anyone” includes college undergraduates, and the problem with them, at least in the eyes of the older researchers, is that they tend to behave like the teenagers that many of them are.
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in innovation and corporations.
North American and European executives say business strategy depends largely on innovation, yet corporate responsibility for innovation is highly fragmented, Accenture survey shows.Frequency of innovation, “speed to market” are key competitive challenges Business strategy is driven largely by innovation, but corporate responsibility for the innovation process is highly fragmented, according to findings of a survey published by Accenture. The survey of 601 senior executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada found that innovation is a top corporate priority, but it also indicates that more senior-level accountability, greater CEO involvement and improved speed-to-market execution can help companies deliver on their promise of innovation and boost their competitiveness.
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in education and copyright.
University of Florida professor Michael Moulton thinks copyright law protects the lectures he gives to his students, and he’s headed to court to prove it. Moulton and his e-textbook publisher are suing Thomas Bean, who runs a company that repackages and sells student notes, arguing that the business is illegal since notes taken during college lectures violate the professor’s copyright.
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Information is only one of many things found in a library. While many people view and use the public library as an information agency, its original mandate, many more now come to it to learn, to interact, to explore, and, of course, to be entertained. Yes, they come to the library to have fun. Reading Bill Crowley’s “Lifecycle Librarianship” (Library Journal, 4/1/08, p. 46-48) made me realize how broad the mission of the modern public library has become. At the insistence of its users, the public library, indeed libraries of every type, provide an array of services and items that go far beyond “information” as it is usually defined. Reading Crowley, I too was shocked by the narrowness of the definition of library and information studies he quoted from the Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies adopted by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1992. Such a narrow statement of the field’s mandate would lead to the current conventional wisdom that something called “information” is the quintessential substance of librarianship, the embodiment of the profession. This is not only inadequate, it is inaccurate. Our professional outlook, our vision, is trapped in the 1992 Standards. (A recent minor revision did not address this issue.)
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
Ten years ago, stories like “B&N: The New College Library” (Library Journal 2/1/98) and “What If You Ran Your Library Like a Bookstore?” (American Libraries, 3/98) kicked up a controversy about the viability of libraries. Ironically, these days it’s the book business that has an aura of crisis and gloom, while visits to libraries are surging. Over two billion items are checked out annually, and nearly all libraries offer free Internet access along with many of the amenities of a bookstore. Truth be told, the book business has always had an aura of crisis and gloom. It’s the Eeyore of industries. But lately, it’s become clear that the book industry really does need to be saved: from itself.
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