Ramblings, citations and "brainwaves" of a college librarian in Toronto. 475 square feet refers to the size of my home, not the size of my office or library.



Internet's New Walls


Three sets of walls are being built on the internet:

1. National Firewalls (Ex. China, Australia). Block sites at ISPs.
2. Walled gardens, ex. Facebook; iPhone Apps.
3. Traffic tolling at ISPs & end users. Express lanes and clogged lanes. Pay to play. There will be nose bleed seats and front row. Which are you going to pay for?

Enjoy the amazing freedom and creativity before it is totally gone. It will be gone that much is certain.


Okay, We Should Be Doing This!!


Khan Academy
1600 - 15 minute educational videos for free~!


Google Instant Search vs Bing Type Ahead


PCMAG

Okay, why don't we have these live spellcheck, guess what you want technologies in library search engines, databases, etc?

Why are library content vendors always so far behind?


Rise of Apps Culture


Pew Internet Project

"Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones"

I wish library databases worked more like apps...the current interfaces are too old school, too cumbersome to use for most. They need simplification, to look and feel like apps.




Youtube Ad - Make Your Own




Everyone is chatting up digital textbooks, sounds like ebook chatter from 1998 to me. I don't see it. I see big bulky books at the coffee shop, on the bus, in the cafeteria...

Stephen, do you believe everything you read?


Digital Textbook Experiments




Maybe I should open my copyright sessions to faculty with this video?


Plagiarism Tariff


UK - National Plagiarism Guidelines

"Academics in the United Kingdom have drawn up a national tariff covering penalties for student plagiarism, which could be adopted as a worldwide system for dealing with offenders.

Studies in this area have found high levels of inconsistency in the penalties universities employ to punish students who are found guilty of copying, with wide variations between, and even within, institutions.

Now researchers from the advisory service plagiarismadvice.org have created a points-based system designed to act as a sector-wide “benchmark.” Setting out a range of penalties from informal warnings to expulsion, it allows staff to calculate a score for the seriousness of the offense and use this to select an appropriate penalty."


Internet Makes Us Slow Readers


Marjorie Kehe

"For many of today's readers – young ones in particular – reading has come to mean a rapid skim across a sea of websites, text messages, and e-mails.

Thomas Newkirk, a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, is one of a growing number of educators concerned that – in the rush to race through more material – something essential is being lost. "


Streetsview + Randomizer = Genie?



Blackboard Gets Into Textbooks


Blackboard partners with McGraw-Hill, Follett and B&N, and acquires Elluminate and Wimba.

I can only hope iin time textbooks fess get automatically added to a student's account, and populated to their course.

This whole option book purchase thing does nothing for student success...we need another way!



CNN

Ditto book reviews...



Only 15,000 of the library’s 96,000 books will be on display in the new library and the rest will be moved to off-site storage. Librarians will no longer staff the desk but will be available to students through e-mail, Facebook, online chatting, or phone.

Also:
Cornell University’s engineering library is also moving most of its print books to storage and then dividing the remainder among other libraries on campus. In addition, Johns Hopkins University has decided it will no longer have a physical location for its medical library. The library staff will now work within the academic departments.

from THE CITE





Nice Infographic. Not sure it is slavery though...


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