Celia's

The American Library Association (ALA) today released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through our nation’s libraries. In the report, titled “E-content: The Digital Dialogue,” authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell e-books to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment our cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered.

“Broad information access is essential for communities to compete in the global knowledge economy,” said ALA President Molly Raphael. “As more and more content is delivered digitally, we simply cannot afford to lock down books and lock out readers. This timely supplement addresses the need to protect fair and reasonable library access to digital information.”

The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, explores various licensing models and the state of librarian-publisher relations. Additionally, the report provides an update on the ALA-wide effort to promote access to digital content (co-chaired by Robert Wolven, associate university librarian at Columbia University, and Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library). The effort includes meeting with publishers, distributors and other important stakeholders; championing public advocacy, and writing position papers that advance practical business models without compromising library values.

“E-content: The Digital Dialogue” identifies a number of ways libraries and publishers can collaborate to lessen the digital content divide.

“Publishers, distributors and libraries must accept that new models of lending will not look like the old print model,” writes Robert C. Maier, director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and Carrie Russell, director of the ALA Program on Public Access to Information. “We are not just trying to solve a library lending problem, although that is the current emergency.”

After detailing his conversations with a reader, writer, publisher and bookseller, Douglas County Public Library Director James LaRue also asks librarians to “rethink,” and lays out directions to pursue, including an updated legal framework, new content management models and partnership opportunities with other stakeholders in the reading ecosystem.

“Libraries will have to transform into places that help citizens become full-fledged creative members of their communities, both producing and archiving personal stories,” writes Peter Brantley, director of the BookServer Project at the Internet Archive.

Lisa Long Hickman, sales and marketing manager of Dzanc Books, argues for open lines of communication to enable fair play, and Deborah Caldwell-Stone deputy director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, urges proactive steps to protect library users’ privacy rights.

“This report reflects both the here and now, and what is to come down the digital road,” said Alan Inouye, director of the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, and editor of the publication.

Read the Complete Report: “E-content: The Digital Dialogue”

From post on InfoDOCKET by Gary Price

IFLA Principles of Engagement in Library-Related Activities in Times of Conflict, Crisis or Disaster

From the Introduction:

At its meeting of 19th August 2011, the IFLA Governing Board set up an Advisory Group to draft Principles of Engagement to be used by IFLA and its members in library-related activities of disaster risk reduction and in times of conflict, crisis or natural disaster; with reference to IFLA’s engagement in the Haiti reconstruction activities and international treaties and agreements to which IFLA is a party. The Principles are part of IFLA’s Key Initiatives 2011-2012 programme: Cultural Heritage Disaster Reconstruction Programme – Culture is a basic need, a community thrives through its cultural heritage, it dies without it.

Read Background, Access Principles

From post in InfoDOCKET by Gary Price

The paper attempts to:

• Provide an overview of the issues relating to eBooks in libraries;
• Summarise the current positions of publishers in both the scholarly publishing and trade publishing sectors;
• Summarise the differences in the way that academic/research libraries and public libraries address the issue of digital collections;
• Address the legal context for eLending and library principles that must be upheld in any suitable models;
• Provide a detailed legal analysis of e-Lending

The e-Lending environment is changing rapidly at this point in time, and the paper will be reassessed in the coming months in light of any significant developments. Revisions of the paper may take place in light of any assessment.

Direct to IFLA E-Lending Background (35 pages; PDF)

From a post in InfoDOCKET

Who is Responsible for our Professional Literature” by Mary Francis, Reference Instruction Librarian, Dakota St. University
College & Research Libraries Preprint
This article was accepted on May 9. 2012.
It’s scheduled for publication in September 2013.

Scholarly journals provide a record of the research, issues, and concerns of a field. Authors have their names associated with their individual articles while editors are connected with a publication. However, there is another group of individuals who are often left out of the record although their contributions are just as critical in the formation of scholarly journals. This article will take a look at this group of peer reviewers providing demographic data as well as understanding for why individuals take on the duty of peer reviewer.

From post on InfoDOCKET

Hypothes.is will be a distributed, open-source platform for the collaborative evaluation of information. It will enable sentence-level critique of written words combined with a sophisticated yet easy-to-use model of community peer-review. It will work as an overlay on top of any stable content, including news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and regulations, software code and more-without requiring participation of the underlying site.

 Video link : http://vimeo.com/29633009

It is based on a new draft standard for annotating digital documents currently being developed by the Open Annotation Collaboration, a consortium that includes the Internet Archive, NISO (National Information Standards Organization), O'Reilly Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and a number of academic institutions.

Interested in participating once we go live? Reserve your username now. And please consider donating to help us get started!

Google’s search engine is a powerful and impressive tool for locating information online. Unfortunately for many students, the simplicity of the default search interface can lead to some pretty poor search habits and results. As I wrote in a previous post about Google’s efforts to provide information literacy resources, “it’s often a challenge (in my experience) not only to get students to search using something other than Google; it’s also difficult to teach them how to use Google effectively.”

In that previous post, I pointed readers to something Google was calling their “Search Education Evangelism” site, a resource designed to make it easier for instructors to teach information literacy. This week I received notice that Google has moved that resource to a new location, given it a different name, and updated the content.

The information hub provides several different lesson plans (with a Creative Commons CC-BY license) for use in the classroom:

• “Picking the right search terms”
• “Understanding search results”
• “Narrowing a search to get the best results”
• “Searching for evidence for research tasks”
• “Evaluating credibility of sources”

Each of the lesson plans is available in three levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Although it appears that these resources are perhaps aimed at students in primary or secondary school, I’m pretty confident that this material would be helpful in my first-year writing courses...

From ProfHacker post Chronicle of Higher Education By George Williams

The rapid growth in demand for spectrum increases the importance and the difficulty of efficient spectrum management. The GSMA has commissioned this report to examine the experience with mobile spectrum licensing around the globe to date and draw out the lessons for policy. A key focus is on what works well in emerging markets and how the lessons can be applied to the additional spectrum to be allocated over the new few years. Choosing the correct spectrum policy will be particularly important in emerging markets where mobile services can be expected to provide the principal access to high-speed data, as they have with voice. [From The executive summary] Via Docubase post by Peggy Garvin

Section on Africa: p.68-72.

+ Link to full report (PDF; 2.2 MB)

World Summit on the Information Society Stocktaking 2012: report.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was organized to establish a clear vision for building an inclusive global information society in our increasingly technology-driven, interconnected world

The first phase of WSIS took place in Geneva in 2003, and the second phase in Tunis in 2005. Since the first edition of the WSIS Stocktaking Report was issued back in 2005, biannual reporting has been a key tool for monitoring the progress of ICT initiatives and projects worldwide. The 2012 report will reflect more than 1,000 recent WSIS-related activities, undertaken between May 2010 and the present day, each emphasizing the efforts deployed by stakeholders involved in the WSIS process.  [From the foreword] via Docubase post by Peggy Garvin

+ Link to full report (PDF; 7.92 MB) Source: International Telecommunications Union

see also:  www.wsis.org/stocktaking

Paths of Discovery: Comparing the Search Effectiveness of EBSCO Discovery Service, Summon, Google Scholar, and Conventional Library Resources

In 2011, researchers at Bucknell University and Illinois Wesleyan University compared the search efficacy of Serial Solutions Summon, EBSCO Discovery Service, Google Scholar and conventional library databases. Using a mixed-methods approach, qualitative and quantitative data was gathered on students’ usage of these tools. Regardless of the search system, students exhibited a marked inability to effectively evaluate sources and a heavy reliance on default search settings. On the quantitative benchmarks measured by this study, the EBSCO Discovery Service tool outperformed the other search systems in almost every category. This article describes these results and makes recommendations for libraries considering these tools.

This article is scheduled for publication in July 2013

From InfoDOCKET 

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/Home.aspx

In any given week, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) might host a visiting scholar from Ghana speaking on agricultural subsidies, a panel of journalists talking about freedom of the press, and a conversation on the upcoming mayoral elections in London. It's part of what the organization does, and now visitors outside of London can experience some of these proceedings. This page contains the LSE's videos and podcasts, which serve as an introduction to its vast holdings. First-time visitors can scan through talks like "Dial M for Murdoch" and "The 2012 London Mayoral Election" to get started. Visitors can continue on to look over the LSE's iTunesU offerings, YouTube channel, and RSS feeds. Other great offerings here include "Capturing the Cut: On the Invention of Medical Illustration" and The Burning Issue series, which addresses a current controversy or urgent human wellbeing issue. [KMG]  From the Scout Report

In a follow-up study to the ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) Project, librarians at UIC compared the responses of first-generation college freshmen from the original study to those of seniors. The study’s aim was to determine whether student information literacy increases as a result of undergraduate education and to further explore the student research process with respect to the particular factors that inform and affect change in it. The findings showed that information literacy increased among these students, and they developed a more complex approach to the research process and the library.

Direct to Full Text (38 pages; PDF)

Note: Anticipated Publication Date: July 2013

The Research Process and the Library: First-Generation College Seniors vs. Freshmen

Authors:

Elizabeth Pickard, MSI
Liaison, College of Education, Assistant Professor, Reference Department, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago

Firouzeh Logan, MA, MLS
Head, Reference Department, Assistant Professor, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago

Source: College and Research Libraries

This report analyses the findings of the 2012 survey of various aspects of the student experience, including  the amount of contact students have with their staff,  the size of teaching groups, and the overall number of hours they devote to their studies. It updates the results of earlier surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007, and reflect on some of policy lessons to be drawn from the results. 17 May 2012 Author: Bahram Bekhradnia

 http://www.hepi.ac.uk/455-2060/The-Academic-Expereince-of-Students-in-English-Univesities.html

Google+ opened up to teenagers late last year. There are some good tools built into the social platform that students can use for group study. An important element of Google+ that you and your students should get to know is Google+ Circles. These are groups of contacts that you create in your Google+ account. When you share an item in your account, you can specify who can or can’t see what you’ve just posted. Google+ Hangouts allow you to video chat with the people in your Circles. While in a Hangout, you can share your screen, share and collaborate on Google Docs, and use a collaborative whiteboard. While still relatively new—it’s only nine months old—Google+ has the potential to be a great place for students to study.

Think Binder enables students to organize online study groups in which they can share files and links, chat, and collaborate on a whiteboard. Think Binder could be used as a place for all students in a course to share their notes. By sharing notes and other materials, a student who’s absent from class can catch up by viewing the materials created by others that day. Users can create and join multiple Think Binder groups.

Open Study is a collaborative study tool that enables students to create online study groups. At its core, it’s a message board to help those seeking help in answering difficult questions. In addition, Open Study offers students the option to create or join online study groups, subscribe to other users’ updates, and record their notes online. There’s also a “public access” option for students who don’t want to register. Students using this feature can view public study materials but cannot post questions of their own. Students can register for Open Study using an email address or connect to it with their Facebook account.

Study Blue is a free service for creating, studying, and sharing flashcards online and on mobile devices. When students create flashcards in Study Blue, they can view up to 30 related flashcards from the community. For example, if I were to create a flashcard about geometry, I could access 30 other flashcards on the subject. I could then review all related flashcards, including my own. In addition, I could import any or all of those community flashcards to my own set.

Study Hall is a relatively new service for sharing information and studying with friends. The basic idea of the site is to enable teachers and students to upload content to a common place for access via an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, as well as some Android-powered devices. Students can search for, view, and comment on course materials using Study Hall’s mobile apps. When using the iPad app, students can communicate in real time about the content that they’re viewing. The other mobile apps are currently limited to viewing only.

Together we’re smarter, and the same goes for our students, too. These tools can enable our students to connect, share notes, and work through difficult problems together. The next time your students bemoan the difficulty of getting together to study, you’ll have multiple places to send them online.

Post May 4, 2012 By Richard Byrne on DigitalShift

May 17, 2012 — Unglue.it (http://unglue.it) is launching on May 17, 2012, at noon EDT, with campaigns for books from five initial authors and publishers:

• Michael Laser, 6-321
• Joseph Nassise, Riverwatch
• Nancy Rawles, Love Like Gumbo
• Budding Reader, Cat and Rat
• Open Book Publishers, Oral Literature in Africa, by Ruth Finnegan.

...

About Unglue.it: Unglue.it (http://unglue.it) is a crowdfunding platform which rewards rights holders for making their ebooks available to the world under a Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org).  Unglue.it runs campaigns for previously published books, allowing book lovers to pledge toward giving them to the world.  When rights holders’ target prices are reached, they receive funds in exchange for issuing an unglued ebook edition which can be freely read, copied, and shared, noncommercially, worldwide.  For more information, see http://unglue.it/press...

Link to full article: InfoDOCKET