African Universities Face a Looming Shortage of Ph.D.'s

Posted by Celia Walter | 26 Nov, 2008

...

The recruitment and retention of new faculty members has emerged as a top priority for institutions across the continent, as they have scrambled to hire enough faculty members to keep pace with recent rapid growth in enrollment. Many African institutions are staffed disproportionately by academics in their 50s and nearing retirement, on the one hand, and by younger academics who often lack advanced degrees, on the other, according to participants at the University Leaders' Forum conference, which continues through today in Accra, Ghana...

By MEGAN LINDOW , Chronicle of Higher Education

 

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"Online research is narrowing the range of modern scholarship"

Posted by Celia Walter | 26 Nov, 2008
..."perhaps the greatest boon is the sheer quantity of readily accessible knowledge. Millions of journal articles are available online, enabling scholars to find material they never would have encountered at their university libraries. From classic psychology studies to the most esoteric literary theory, it's all just a few clicks away.

A recent study, however, suggests that despite this cornucopia, the boom in online research may actually have a "narrowing" effect on scholarship. James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, analyzed a database of 34 million articles in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and determined that as more journal issues came online, new papers referenced a relatively smaller pool of articles, which tended to be more recent, at the expense of older and more obscure work. Overall, Evans says, published research has expanded, due to a proliferation of journals, authors, and conferences. But the paper, which appeared in July in the journal Science, concludes that the Internet's influence is to tighten consensus, posing the risk that good ideas may be ignored and lost - the opposite of the Internet's promise..." from Boston Globe

Thanks to Marilyn Wilford for this.

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Phaselus: Latin translations of popular modern novels

Posted by Celia Walter | 23 Nov, 2008

Phaselus
Phaselus is a website which aims to preserve the Latin language as well as making it fun to read for a modern audience; it does this by providing Latin translations of popular modern novels. The following works are translated: Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows; Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol; Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda; and George Orwell's Animal Farm. Each text is easy to navigate (there is an editorial index which allows the user to jump straight to a particular chapter), and is accompanied by notes on the translation and vocabulary used (as often there may be no Latin equivalent for modern terminology or specific words used in the English texts). The site will be of interest to those involved in teaching Latin prose composition, and could perhaps also be used as a source for translation exercises. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.phaselus.org.uk/

From Celia: Will anyone be brave enough to translate The Lord of The Rings?

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Wikipedia in Latin: Vicipaedia Latina

Posted by Celia Walter | 23 Nov, 2008
Vicipaedia Latina
This website is a Latin language version of the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. As with the English site, users contribute articles to this evolving reference source on a range of topics; in this case, however, all entries are in Latin. Articles vary in length and detail, but many are illustrated and fully referenced. A wide variety of themes is covered here. Broad topics which feature are: art and literature; human sciences; natural sciences and mathematics; technology; society; and the Latin language. Each of these is divided into sub-sections which makes the site easy to navigate. Many of the more detailed articles are on classical themes (dealing with, for example, Greek and Roman authors or other key historical figures). There is also a search facility. Whilst caution must be exercised as the quality of submissions may vary, Vicipaedia Latina is nonetheless a lighthearted way for users to exercise their linguistic skills. Intute.ac.uk
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_prima

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Open Index Initiative : search engine for Indian social science

Posted by Celia Walter | 23 Nov, 2008
Open Index Initiative: search engine for Indian social science literature
The Open Index Initiative is maintained by staff of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Library. It provides free access to a searchable database of bibliographic references to social science literature and resources held in major Indian research Libraries. It includes references to journal articles, conference papers, working papers, research reports and theses. Most articles are taken from English language titles such as the Economic and Political Weekly. Articles date from the early 1990s onwards. Entries include titles but not the full text. Topics covered include Indian history, politics and economics. There is also coverage of anthropology, development studies, the politics of Gandhi, nuclear weapons policy, relations between India and Pakistan and the political situation in Kashmir.The site also has a union list of key social science and management journals held in Indian universities. Intute.ac.uk
http://oii.igidr.ac.in/

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15 Useful Project Management Tools

Posted by Celia Walter | 18 Nov, 2008

If you are managing projects for your organization, you may want to check out the latest article from Smashing Magazine which discusses 15 Useful Project Management Tools. The piece covers six different types of tools for the job including:

  1. Basic Project Management Apps
  2. Wiki-Based Project Management
  3. Bug and Ticket Tracking
  4. Collaboration and Conferencing
  5. Invoicing
  6. Time Tracking

In addition to these I would add OpenProj which is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Project, and also Project Manager Plus, a free application built to work with Zoho Creator and available through the Zoho Marketplace. Know of any others? Please leave them in the comments!

From iLibrarian blog

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When Technology fails. Pew Internet & American Life Project Report

Posted by Celia Walter | 18 Nov, 2008

Pew Internet & American Life Project published a new report yesterday about what technology users do when their devices fail. A key finding from this study showed that 48% of technology users need help from others with new devices and many tech users encounter problems with their internet connections, home computers or cell phones.

From iLibrarian blog

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PhinisheD: support for PhD students

Posted by Celia Walter | 18 Nov, 2008

PhinisheD
This online discussion board, maintained by American academic Thomas B. Jankowski, is designed to provide support for students in the process of completing a PhD or dissertation. The forums include discussion on the technology being writing up a PhD (e.g. word processors), statistics and research methods, and general moral support. The site is free but donations are invited. It should be useful for students. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.phinished.org/index.php

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MacWorld: Tricks and Tips

Posted by Celia Walter | 18 Nov, 2008
http://www.macworld.com/howto.html

Who doesn't want to know about important new tricks and tips for their Mac? For those who would like to know about such useful information, this site offered by MacWorld is a real find. First-time visitors can check out the top row along the homepage to check out the latest tips, and then they can navigate down a bit to the "Most Recent" and "Most Popular" tips areas. Visitors looking for specific types of tips can use the category headings to look for help with video, audio, graphics, web publishing, and programming. That's not all, as users can also take advantage of timely tips for iPods (and related accessories), digital cameras, scanners, and printers. [KMG] Scout Report

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20 Great Online Image Editors

Posted by Celia Walter | 16 Nov, 2008

Mashable presents a list of 20 Great Online Image Editors. These are both free and subscription-based online applications which will allow you to import your images from social networking websites in order to crop, resize, remove redeye and more.

From: iLibrarian blog

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Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy

Posted by Celia Walter | 16 Nov, 2008

The American University’s Center for Social Media released a new Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy guide yesterday.

“This guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, wherever and however it occurs: in K–12 education, in higher education, in nonprofit organizations that offer programs for children and youth, and in adult education.”

 From iLibrarian blog

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100+ Free Applications for Mac OS X

Posted by Celia Walter | 16 Nov, 2008

UsingMac.com puts together a mega-list of over 100 Free Applications for Mac OS X. Each annotated entry in this guide has been categorized into the following application types:

  • Productivity Tool
  • System
  • Tools and Utilities
  • File Management
  • Application Launcher
  • Social Networking
  • Chat Client
  • Text Editor
  • Email, RSS and Atom Reader
  • PDF Reader
  • FTP Client
  • BitTorrent Client
  • Network
  • Web Browser
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Games
  • Image Editor
  • File Compressor
  • Google
  • Uploader
  • Programming IDE
  • QuickTime Plugin
  • Converter

115 entries in all, and if that’s not enough you can check the comments section for even more suggestions.

 

From: iLibrarian blog

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Librarian-Powered Search Engine

Posted by Celia Walter | 12 Nov, 2008

The Wired Campus blog covers the story of a new project in development called Reference Extract which will be a Web search engine powered by the expertise of librarians. The project is being developed by OCLC, Syracuse University, and University of Washington.

“Have you ever wished for a personal reference librarian, an information guru to point you to the most reliable sites whenever you search the Web? A new search-engine project aims to simulate something like that. The trick? Weighting search results so that librarians’ picks rise to the top.”

From iLibrarian blog

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International Comparison of Academic Salaries

Posted by Celia Walter | 11 Nov, 2008

International Comparison of Academic Salaries (PDF; 686 KB)
Source: Boston College Center for International Higher Education
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/salary_report.pdf

South Africa, is included.

From Inside Higher Ed:

“International Comparison of Academic Salaries,” prepared by three scholars at the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, represents one of the more ambitious efforts to compare faculty pay across national lines. While some existing studies look at members of certain groups (the Association of Commonwealth Universities, for example, which tends to have as members the leading universities of a country) or regions (Europe), there have been few efforts to compare salaries across different types of institutions and countries.

The new study covers only 15 countries, and generally includes only four-year institutions for comparative purposes. But it includes countries in the developed and developing worlds, and from regions worldwide. To reflect differences in the cost of living, the study is based on World Bank Purchasing Power Parity dollars. These are U.S. dollars for the United States average, but for other countries they are adjusted to reflect local purchasing power. So pure U.S. dollar averages would go up in countries where the cost of living was relatively low; that adjusted total would represent the World Bank dollar figure quoted in the study. The Boston College researchers acknowledge in the report that there are arguments to be made for alternative parity measures, but they ended up using the World Bank figures because they were available for all of the countries studied.

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InformAll : a searchable database of allergenic foods

Posted by Celia Walter | 11 Nov, 2008
InformAll
hhInformAll is a searchable database of allergenic foods. For each food listed, there is a short introduction, biochemical information on known allergens, and a description of the clinical presentation. Taxonomic information and references to clinical studies or articles is also available. InformAll is maintained by the UK Institute of Food Research, and supported by a grant from the EU. Intute.ac.uk
http://foodallergens.ifr.ac.uk/s

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