475 Square Feet of Ideas

IT Seems to Not Be Living Up to Its Promises

2011-03-09T09:18:00.003-05:00

MERS - bad data on mortgages

I can't help but look all around me and see the dysfunction IT brings to our world. For every plus, there are many more minuses it seems. Paper records were bad because they sat in one building, could get lost, etc. Online records seem to be even worse...again the technology is not the problem but the corporations using it certainly is. Corners get cut and people have no recourse for being victimized by bad data. People's lives are being ruined by bad data...Ruined.

I don't think Bradbury ever saw this coming...the Matrix looks less frightening than what we see going on in the U.S. foreclosure mess; online health records, etc.

12 Ways To Make Bad Decisions

2011-03-03T13:26:00.000-05:00

12 Ways to Make Bad Decisions
via The Heart of Innovation by Mitch Ditkoff

1. Selective Search for Evidence
2. Premature Termination of Search for Evidence
3. Inertia
4. Selective Perception
5. Wishful Thinking
6. Recency Effect
7. Repetition Bias
8. Anchoring and Adjustment
9. Group Think
10. Source Credibility
11. Attribution Asymmetry
12. Role Fulfillment

Antifeatures! I Love This Guy!

2011-03-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

Benjamin Mako Hill

Book Vending Machines are Not New!

2011-03-03T13:08:00.001-05:00

Freebie Takes on Exclusive ISI Impact Factors Service

2011-03-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

http://eigenfactor.org/

Course Hero.....IP Issues

2011-03-03T13:04:00.001-05:00

Seems there are all kinds of issues right now around who owns/controls course materials. One example is Course Hero.
You could upload a friend's course cheat sheet, that itself is full of insturctor supplied content...

Houston, we have a problem...

Open Education...bring on the lawsuits!

Something Entertaining About Mapping Mistakes

2011-02-16T22:21:00.001-05:00

Cartastrophe

My new favorite blog...

Ambiance App

2011-02-11T13:53:00.001-05:00

There are not many Desktop apps I'd recommend, but this is nice:
Ambiance

Great for that ocean waves, burbling brook, etc.

Turn Your Blog to a PDF Book

2010-12-17T15:11:00.000-05:00

BlogBooker

College Libraries Save Money By Ignoring Netflix Terms Of Use

2010-12-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

Consumerist

eBook Devices Cheat Sheet for Librarians

2010-12-17T15:09:00.001-05:00

Stephen Abram

Two Decades of e-Reader Evolution

2010-12-17T15:06:00.001-05:00

CNN Slideshow

Libraries in the Cloud

2010-12-17T14:58:00.001-05:00

Ellyssa Kroski

3D Modeling From FLICKR Images

2010-12-17T14:47:00.001-05:00

UNC Team Builds Model of Rome

"Today, three years is an Eternity"

2010-11-26T13:45:00.002-05:00

George F. Will

3 million iPods in 2.5 years
3 million Kindles in 2 years
3 million iPads in 80 days
3 million iPhones in 3 weeks

2001 iPod arrived. Les than 10 years later the number of employees of music stores declined from 80 000 to less than 20 000....but now folks shop online so the jobs are up at FedEx, UPS delivering what e-shoppers buy....destruction then creativity in three year blocks?

WWW killed the travel agent industry, is about to destroy Real Estate Agents, who is next??? Teachers?...I can see how technology can be used to teach more students with less teaching staff....at least at lower higher education levels...

Degrees - Business Sense = ?

2010-11-09T14:40:00.002-05:00

Ian Cook, Director Research & Learning at the B.C. Human Resources Management Association was recently quoted (my paraphrasing):

...it is easy to recruit people who have a degree, but they have no business sense. They're bright, intelligent people but you can't plug them in and have them effective on day one. They need to be shaped, mentored, they need time to learn and develop skills....but the pace, change, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity in which business is functioning right now, employers want 110% on day three. The talent pool has not changed, employer expectations have....apprenticeship and mentoring programs have been withdrawn, though they are still needed for long term grooming of productive employees.

Yup, employers want to take, they don't want to invest in their personnel assets. All the while higher ed. keeps pumping out more and more graduates, each cohort, having a lower success rate in finding meaningful employment. We focus on material waste in business, what about all the "human waste" being produced, by defective recruiting tactics?

Pre-internet it was difficult to connect job offerings with qualified candidates, so companies invested in providing students with experience to get a career under way. Today it is easy to fill most jobs that are fairly spec'd, so companies stopped giving back because it has no consequences to them. I love those job ads that list so many skill sets that nobody internal has, and it is for an entry level position.

"We want someone who can hit the ground running" is HR speak for we want to exploit someone who is vulnerable right now.

Creative Commons Public Domain Mark

2010-11-05T15:54:00.001-04:00

Public Domain Mark 1.0

eBrary Launches Patron Driven Acquisitions

2010-11-05T15:52:00.003-04:00

eBrary Announcement
155,600 e-books for PDA

Silly Space Shifting on Kindle

2010-11-05T15:43:00.001-04:00

Amazon.com Announcement

Long Tail Feeds It Self

2010-11-05T15:40:00.001-04:00

". . . . the same forces that created Amazon’s Long Tail in the first place may continue to make it longer over time . . . . First, exposure to niche products could drive consumers to develop a taste for more niche products. Second, by gaining access to “long tail” markets to stock their products, producers could have an increased incentive to create more new niche products over time. Finally, technologies that can drive consumers to niche products — such as search tools, product reviews, product popularity information, and recommendation engines — could improve over time, and consumers could become more familiar with these tools."

Brynjolfsson, Hu & Smith Download

Amazon Kindle Singles

2010-11-05T15:38:00.001-04:00

New Profiteering/Publishing From Amazon.com

"Kindle Singles, which are Kindle books that are in the company’s words, “twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.” Generally, Amazon characterized Kindle Singles as 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages)."

Tech Crunch

Science Blogging Directory

2010-11-05T15:32:00.001-04:00

scienceblogging.org

Google URL Shortener

2010-11-05T15:27:00.000-04:00

goo.gl

Lauren Indvik About 23 days ago Lauren Indvik 19 URL Shortener Bit.ly Now Generates QR Codes, Too

2010-11-05T15:26:00.000-04:00

Here
bit.ly

William Germano: Books Are Holiness

2010-11-05T15:18:00.001-04:00

Chronicle of Higher Education

I don't buy that if books vanish our civilization will suffer.

Speedism, Boxism and Markism: Three Ideologies of the Internet

2010-11-05T15:15:00.002-04:00

Jan Nolin writes....

"Boxism fits well with the needs of corporate actors and policy–makers. By adding a module landscape as a layer, the Internet becomes more predictable and regulated. With more transparent patterns of Internet behaviour, commercial exploitation becomes much easier. With this ideology, the chaotic and creative character of the distributed Internet is something that needs to be tame"

First Monday

Yes, this is happening.

Commercial Values are Homogenizing Collections and Clouding Librarians' Professional Objectives

2010-11-05T15:09:00.002-04:00

Chronicle of Higher Education

Approval plans + overworked reference staff + consortial purchasing = homogenized collections.

It's a problem....

The more homogenized we become, the bigger takeover target we become for L.S.S.I.

Karen G. Schneider Argues Tenure Is Not Compatible With Our Start-up Environment in Higher Education

2010-11-05T15:05:00.002-04:00

I am always, and I mean always, impressed what comes out of this woman's mouth. Here is the best attack on tenure for librarians...

I like the 'start-up' imagery she used. Much food for thought. I'm all for reasonable job security, tenure not so much....

Libraries Without Front LIne Staff

2010-11-05T14:58:00.001-04:00

From the mindset, front line staff cost too much, comes libraries without people..

L.S.S.I. Library Commercialization Gains Steam

2010-11-05T14:52:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of hub bub about L.S.S.I. taking over the operations of more and more libraries. We have "outsourced" many municipal services, are libraries in the same group as police, fire, urban planning? or roads, garbage, parking? time will tell..but like anything I'm guessing L.S.S.I.'s purchasing power will help some libraries...

eTextbooks Are Not Getting Penetration in Higher Education

2010-10-29T10:29:00.003-04:00

"The vast majority of students say they prefer print textbooks over electronic ones, and attitudes have not shifted markedly in the past year, according to the results of a survey by the National Association of College Stores."

Chronicle of Higher Education

Maybe they just see it for the scam that it is...pricing is still way too high for a license that expires and has no resale value.

Online education is nowhere near the marketing hype imagery used by Schools.

or you can force eTextbooks down student's throats via "materials fees" on their transcripts.

Prezi, if this is the Future, I'm Punching Out And Going Home

2010-10-15T09:12:00.002-04:00

Library Future Keynote using PREZI

Entertaining - Yes. Would I want to sit through this - hell no. I guess I'd like to push it on colleagues who read slides, it may help them....

Books Just For Decor

2010-10-09T15:32:00.002-04:00

Type Books

For a negotiated fee, they will build you a library collection that meets decor needs, existing shelving, current colours, current themes, integrates your current collection, etc.

They offer "libraries on demand", from small childrens' bedrooms to room sized master pieces full or rare copies and editions.

What a great business to be in!!!

LSSI Scares Me

2010-10-03T09:32:00.002-04:00

I remember working with these LSSI folks back in 2002. Seems they continue to take over libraries and operate them like franchises.

In my setting, I can't see it happening.

If these guys got Walmart like consumer demand data, they could in theory do a better job than most libraries today. Realistically, if our faculty really did their jobs to the highest standard, they would select all the library's materials, teach IL in the classroom and work with LSSI to make online course readings infrastructure.

But it will never happen...because faculty want to do less and less, not more work. The library is a service for them and their students to consume not be part of...

I'm still watching LSSI though...

Internet's New Walls

2010-09-29T15:47:00.002-04:00

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!!

2010-09-21T19:39:00.002-04:00

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

Google Instant Search vs Bing Type Ahead

2010-09-16T09:50:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-16T09:48:00.000-04:00

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.

Higher Education Industry Worth $2.2 Trillion and Employs 18 Million Academics Worldwide

2010-09-16T09:46:00.002-04:00

Times Higher Education Rankings

Youtube Ad - Make Your Own

2010-09-14T15:28:00.001-04:00

a friend made this one

Search Stories Video Creator

Everyone's Saying Digital Textbooks Are Taking Off

2010-09-14T15:21:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-14T15:16:00.000-04:00

New York University

Pron Star Anti-Piracy Public Service Announcement

2010-09-14T15:09:00.005-04:00

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

Plagiarism Tariff

2010-09-14T14:58:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-14T14:55:00.001-04:00

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?

2010-09-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

Globe Genie

Blackboard Gets Into Textbooks

2010-09-09T13:44:00.002-04:00

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!

Are Social Media Killing Film Criticism?

2010-09-09T10:53:00.001-04:00

CNN

Ditto book reviews...

Stanford University's New Engineering LIbrary

2010-09-09T10:41:00.001-04:00

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

San Jose Public Library’s Mobile App Goes Live!

2010-09-09T10:38:00.001-04:00

Thanks Sarah!

Student Debt in the U.S. Now Surpasses Credit Card Debt

2010-09-09T10:34:00.001-04:00

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

1986 eBook AD

2010-08-12T15:52:00.001-04:00

In an Absence of Regulations, Creativity Blooms

2010-08-12T15:49:00.001-04:00

Kowloon

Mapping Tweet Density

2010-08-12T15:48:00.001-04:00

via BoingBoing

Book Porn for Bibliophiles

2010-08-12T09:18:00.000-04:00

http://bookshelfporn.com/archive

Technology Undermines Privacy and Now Your Ability to Earn a Living Too!

2010-07-22T08:41:00.002-04:00

Human Resources generally likes everything black and white, and easy. It is not surprising then that companies are replacing letters of reference, reference calls, with credit checks (see CNN). The idea being that if your personal life is all in order, you will be a great employee too. Also they can peer into your mental state, folks with big money problems might be stressed, have low productivity, work multiple jobs, etc.

Who sets the evaluative criteria for the retrieved report?
A great way to screen out new grads from poor families, don't you think?

Lets just hire people like us....when have we heard that before?
One mistake or two, some bad luck, and it could be end of the road for you.
Don't forget the blood test before you begin your first day, soon it will be augmented by a genetics analysis too.

Amazon Sells More Ebooks Than Print Books This Summer

2010-07-20T11:01:00.003-04:00

NYTimes

"Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition."

"According to the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales have quadrupled this year through May."

but...is the U.S. recession causing folks to buy less new books? borrow more from libraries? are less people buying/reading books? My gut tells me it is not a consumer preference shift but a precipitate issue, the folks that are buying new are liking eBooks...but the aggregate has not changed.

MORE
NYTIMES

"If the number of brick-and-mortar stores drops, publishers fear that sales will go along with it. Some worry that large bookstores will go the way of the record stores that shut down when the music business went digital.

“The shift from the physical to the digital book can pick up some of the economic slack, but it can’t pick up the loss that is created when you don’t have the customers browsing the displays,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “We need people going into stores and seeing a book they didn’t know existed and buying it.” "

Google Strokes a Cougars and Cubs Spat

2010-05-18T13:06:00.002-04:00

We don't often hear what Google censors...in terms of ads, they seem to agree with Steve Jobs...keep everything "family friendly".

Cougarlife.com for example. Google gave up 100 grand a month!

Story in the Toronto Sun

New Word: "Infogreed"

2010-05-14T10:10:00.001-04:00

Infogreed:
lust for information -- a need to know anything, everything, right now.

CNN

Armies Led by PowerPoint

2010-04-27T08:46:00.003-04:00

The Slide that has people talking about the limits of PowerPoint.

Elizabeth Bumiller (NYTimes)has a great piece today:
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

I especially like:
"Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs."

Sounds a lot like higher ed today!

More

"Before PowerPoint, staffs prepared succinct two- or three-page summaries of key issues. The decision-maker would read a paper, have time to think it over and then convene a meeting with either the full staff or just the experts involved to discuss the key points of the paper. Of course, the staff involved in the discussion would also have read the paper and had time to prepare to discuss the issues. In contrast, today, a decision-maker sits through a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation followed by five minutes of discussion and then is expected to make a decision. Compounding the problem, often his staff will have received only a five-minute briefing from the action officer on the way to the presentation and thus will not be well-prepared to discuss the issues. This entire process clearly has a toxic effect on staff work and decision-making."

Many Blockbusters Are Simple

2010-04-15T12:51:00.001-04:00

Wired Magazine

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

Why Can't Library Catalogue companies get this point? ditto Discovery Layers, ditto Serials vendors, etc.

I guess it keeps us employed....

Do I Look Fat in This?

2010-04-14T16:22:00.002-04:00

GoTryItOn.com

Sometimes loved ones are not honest. Want honest, try this out!

The flipside?
"Haul Videos"

Online Book Piracy Study

2010-04-09T16:08:00.001-04:00

Attributor

Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally

2010-04-09T15:59:00.001-04:00

Macmillan has introduced DynamicBooks, think textbook can can be edited down to the paragraph, illustration level...professor notes that can be added, etc. Cool!

NYTimes

Scraping, Exerpts, Quoting...How Much is Too Much?

2010-04-09T15:57:00.001-04:00

NYTimes - Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt

Info Lit Spars With Critical Thinking

2010-04-09T15:31:00.000-04:00

Heather Davis mulls it over...

C-SPAN Puts its Full Archives on the Web

2010-04-09T12:55:00.000-04:00

160 000+ hour Archive

Stephen Abram Sums Up GeoSocial Services

2010-04-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

GeoSocial

eBooks Kill Informal Communication of What You are Reading

2010-04-09T12:47:00.001-04:00

How many times have you bough a book you learned about by seeing someone else reading it? A lot? Ebook readers eliminate that behaviour, opportunity.

OCLC Report: Research Libraries, Risk and Systemic Change

2010-04-09T12:42:00.002-04:00

Download it here

"Most institutions continue to direct resources in traditional ways towards operations that are marginal to institutional and national research priorities, towards processes and services that are ignored or undervalued by their clients and towards staff activities that are driven more by legacy professional concerns than user needs."

Sound the alarm!!!!!!!

DOAJ Is Growing at 2 Titles Per Day!

2010-04-09T12:28:00.001-04:00

DOAJ is now at 4,863 journals, having added a net total of 864 journals in the past year for a DOAJ growth rate of over 2 titles per day. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine now searches over 23 million documents; this is an increase of over 1.2 million in the last quarter, or over 13,000 documents per day.

Top 30 Library iPhone Apps – Part 1

2010-04-09T12:27:00.001-04:00

iLibrarian

iLibrarian Part 2

Cloud Storage for Libraries

2010-04-09T12:25:00.000-04:00

DuraCloud

100 Simple, Low-Cost Ways to Be More Creative on the Job

2010-04-09T12:09:00.000-04:00

100 Hints

"16. Introduce odd catalysts into your daily routine.
17. Get out of the office more regularly.
18. Play with fun toys in your office whenever you get stuck."

UIUC Library Goes Mobile

2010-04-08T09:35:00.001-04:00

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign launched its mobile library site March 29. The site allows people to access the library catalog, find library locations and hours, search additional databases with mobile interfaces, and send text-message reference questions to librarians. It can be accessed from any computer or cell phone, including the iPhone and BlackBerry devices.

Why Libraries Are Doomed! Part 1.

2010-04-06T15:48:00.004-04:00

Meredith Farkas has me thinking...

(me, not Meridth speaking)
Before the digital age, buying a item or subscription, was easy for libraries. Digital licensing changes the power relation completely. Vendors no longer need to sell to libraries at all. They can choose to embed exclusively licensed marquis titles in big expensive collection sets. Imagine if you went to the supermarket and wanted to buy an apple and the rule was, if you want say a Royal Gala, you have to buy one of each apple they sell? Maybe you would not buy that apple. Libraries are doing the same thing today. Where in the past they would have bought a book or journal when someone requested it, they no longer can given the strings attached and financial extortion taking shape. We are seeing a big re-set (as Daniel Pink would say) in library land, where big libraries distance themselves from the small; academic distance themselves from public and vice versa depending on the genre; and publishers by omission or design begin to bypass libraries to increase sales direct to consumer or limit technology and/or licensing expenditures. While we have an exposion in open access titles we also have more and more titles stopping print publishing and moving to one user, one login, online only access. If there is no technically possible communal access, the title is lost from libraries.

While the great recession has inundated libraries with users, as libraries begin to loose access to content, the masses will flock to online retail, underground online sharing networks or worst case, choose not to consume content at all. Aggravation can drive anyone to other pursuits.

Optimists will say libraries are getting cool again with all the ebook, online video offerings, but when book publishing revenue begins the big contraction, like the music business had, will they keep selling their content to libraries? or take a plug the dam approach and cut us off completely? Music did...we used to buy CDs, can we license collections of popular music for our patrons?...nope. Ditto feature films. I hear the buzz of Stephen King's "The Langoliers"...do you?

Amazon Adds More Devices to Kindle Content

2010-04-06T12:31:00.001-04:00

"Amazon site today announces availability of free downloadable
software that allows you to read your Kindle books on a PC, a
Mac, an iPad, an iPhone, or a Blackberry. I've tried both PC and
Mac and can attest that it works well: on a bright display,
rather handsomer than on the Kindle, and on a large screen,
easier to read e.g. maps that were too small to see on the
Kindle. When you open Kindle-for-PC, it tells you that you can
by one double-click access and start reading the books you
already have on your Kindle. That changes the "value
proposition" for me: buy a book once and read it on multiple
devices. Clearly a competitive move against the public release
of the iPad this weekend."

James O'Donnell

see also:
Amazon.com Debuts Kindle App for iPad

Tim O'Reilly Gives Us the State of the Internet OS

2010-03-30T13:37:00.001-04:00

State of the Internet Operating System

"Apple and Microsoft largely have visions of vertically integrated systems; Google's vision seems to be for open source driving front end interfaces, while back end services are owned by Google. But in each case, there's a major drive to own a front-end experience that favors each company's back-end systems."

eBooks in Libraries a Thorny Problem, Says Macmillan CEO

2010-03-24T11:42:00.001-04:00

""That is a very thorny problem", said Sargent. In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time. If it's a popular book, maybe it gets lent ten times, there's a lot of wear and tear, and the library will then put in a reorder. With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it, maybe you check libraries in three other states. You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing. "It's like Netflix, but you don't pay for it. How is that a good model for us?"

"If there's a model where the publisher gets a piece of the action every time the book is borrowed, that's an interesting model."

Sargent has clearly thought about libraries, but perhaps he's not talked much to them. His points are valid- the existing business relationship between publishers and libraries won't work for ebooks the way it has worked for print books and the "frictions" that exist for print materials could disappear for ebooks. But he has gaps in his knowledge of libraries. The patron-on-the-couch scenario wouldn't work for libraries either- why would a town support its library's ebook purchasing if everyone could get the ebook from a library 3 states away? The fee-per-circulation model would be a disaster for most libraries, which have fixed annual budgets, and can't just close in September if they've spent their circ budget.

On the other side, the models preferred by libraries are not necessarily going to work for publishers. While the subscription model will probably work for academic institutions, it would turn public libraries into unnecessary intermediaries. The "perpetual access" model would be suicide for publishers if applied to their most profitable top-line books."

Go to Hellman

Houston WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!!

McGill Podcasts

2010-03-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

McGill Podcasts

McGill Podcasts bring you into the world of fascinating McGill talks, interviews and performances. You can find riveting content updated regularly, for all to experience and completely free of charge.

Fact-Checking And Copy-Editing Don’t Happen As Much On The Web

2010-03-17T11:12:00.002-04:00

A new study out from the Columbia Journalism Review reveals print publications have a lesser set of standards for what they allow to show up on the web.

Bless this Mess? I Disagree Stephen

2010-03-17T10:59:00.003-04:00

Stephen Abram thinks this tech mess is awesome. I disagree. I think it is undermining our survival in the emerging media age. We seem to be just along for the ride, we have no steering, brakes, etc. Libraries are at the mercy of their vendors, something Stephen always leaves out.

Cognitive Edge

137 Years of Popular Science Free Online

2010-03-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

http://www.popsci.com/archives

What Consumers Will Pay for Online

2010-02-23T14:26:00.002-05:00

From Mashable

Seems newspapers are doomed...

Personally, I'd pay, if they could come up with a better menu system. Right now I like paper because they are easier to browse, I can't find anything online. there are too many levels of menus...

Magazines, I want paper. A website is great for video add-ons, but I'm not going to curl up on a chair outside with an iPad, or on the toilet, in the bath, etc...

10 Most Pirated eBooks of 2009

2010-02-23T14:23:00.001-05:00

All (e)books in this list were downloaded between 100.000 and 250.000 times via BitTorrent:

1. Kamasutra
2. Adobe Photoshop Secrets
3. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex
4. The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
5. Solar House – A Guide for the Solar Designer
6. Before Pornography – Erotic Writing In Early Modern England
7. Twilight – Complete Series
8. How To Get Anyone To Say YES – The Science Of Influence
9. Nude Photography – The Art And The Craft
10. Fix It – How To Do All Those Little Repair Jobs Around The Home”

By Torrentfreak

Collaboration: the most hated word these days.

2010-02-23T13:53:00.000-05:00

Dale Arsenault’s 8 Things You Need to Know About Collaboration

1. Collaboration is over used and mis-used and is becoming a buzzword for business people and technologists alike
2. Collaboration isn’t the same as cooperation or coordination – each have different processes, practices and depth of engagement
3. Collaboration is a human process – throwing technology at people won’t magically/automatically create collaboration
4. Meaningful, productive collaboration won’t happen without mutuality of desired outcomes, shared values of transparency and information sharing, compassion, compromise
5. Collaboration implies that “the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few or the needs of the one” and sometimes people aren’t really interested in living by that principle
6. Collaboration isn’t always the best process
7. Collaboration is not equal to Web 2.0
8. Collaboration can be a source of real value in the face of complex environments and situations where no single person has the right answer.

Custom e-Textbooks Arrive

2010-02-23T13:50:00.000-05:00

"Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and
textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which
will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of
textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.
Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload
course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and
perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs,
equations or illustrations."

NYTimes

Top 50 University Open Courseware Collections

2010-02-22T16:43:00.002-05:00

via DIY Learning

URL Redirection Service Makes Innocent URLs Look Sinister

2010-02-19T22:11:00.001-05:00

ShadyURL

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines

2010-02-19T15:16:00.002-05:00

728 page report

Scholarly Kitchen says:

"What is surprising is why so many publishers and new commercial venues have jumped into the Web 2.0 space hoping they could do for scholars what Facebook did to teenagers and relying on a Zeitgeist of “build it and they will come.” Yes, teenagers become adults, but they often drop their teenage habits through the socialization of the classroom and the enculturation of academic culture. Harley writes:

There is ample evidence that, once initiated into the profession, newer scholars—be they graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, or assistant professors—adopt the behaviors, norms, and recommendations of their mentors in order to advance their careers. Of course, teenagers eventually develop into adults. (p.iii)"

Food for Thought....

PhD Student's Take on Where Publishing Needs to Go

2010-02-19T15:09:00.002-05:00

Posted to liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Feb. 11, 2010

Quoted in full...
"There has been much useful discussion on this list about scholars
as authors, and rightly so. Today, I would like to introduce a
view of what we scholars need nowadays as readers.

Increasingly, my reading is onscreen. The copy of an article or
book that works best for me is the one that I can download to my
desktop, and mark up as I please with highlighting and
commentary. I want to be able to re-copy to multiple folders if
this suits how I work. If I am using the same article for two
different projects, for example, I may want two copies with
different highlighting reflecting the most salient points to each
particular project. This ideal is a copy that I can search,
along with everything else on my computer, either for keywords or
key phrases in the text, or for my own notes. I can share a copy
freely with colleagues or students, with or without my notes,
either privately, or openly, on the web. I may want to create a
new version before sending, with customized notes to fit the
needs of my fellow researcher or student.

My access to my ideal scholar's copy is not dependent on whether
or not my library can afford a subscription, or whether I
continue at the institution with the subscription. If I submit
an article for publication, I can keep copies of the works that I
referenced.

This is true of journal articles, reports of all kinds, and
e-books, too.

This is one of the reasons why we need libre open access. So
far, only a small percentage of OA is clearly libre OA.
However, once scholars like me begin to experience the
difference, my prediction is that demand for libre OA will grow,
while demand for digital rights management (DRM)-ridden works
will decrease.

It would be most useful if search services would permit limiting
to libre OA (e.g. CC-licensed works).

PhD Student
Simon Fraser University School of Communication"

Easy Polling App

2010-02-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

polleverywhere.com

British Library Offers 65 000 Free eBook Downloads

2010-02-12T11:51:00.001-05:00

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

TimesOnline

Book Rental From iTunes

2010-02-12T10:43:00.002-05:00

Seems iTunes may one day offer book rental.

Piece by piece, the rationale for public libraries, is being eroded by the marketplace. I'm worried about them.

Google Editions - Ebooks Not Owned

2010-02-12T10:32:00.001-05:00

"Google's strategy is the most disruptive: books read through a
browser; no copying permitted; no "ownership"; all data stored at
Google." (Joseph Esposito)

Libraries have been down this path for a long time, it is not so bad...

CBC Signs Up with American Copyright Bounty-Hunters

2010-02-12T10:29:00.001-05:00

"The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a "license" to quote 5 words from the AP).

iCopyright offers "licenses" to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author. Thanks for fostering a dialogue, CBC! "

BoingBoing

Music Blogocide 2010

2010-02-12T10:27:00.001-05:00

"In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet."

Guardian

Database Bidding Wars

2010-02-12T08:43:00.001-05:00

Posted by: Barbara Bibel to Points of Reference

Our collection development coordinator gave us some disturbing news today. It seems that some magazine publishers only want to deal with a single database and are selling to the highest bidder. First it was Consumer Reports. Now Time-Warner. This means that some of our most popular periodicals will not longer be part of our Infotrac Academic ASAP database. We will have to figure out if we can afford another subscription to get them, whether it will be possible to get a smaller package from the new vendor with those titles that we need, whether our consortium has any plans to work on this, and how to help our patrons deal with either the loss of their favorites or yet another interface. All of this is happening at a time of rock-bottom budgets and increased library use. The whole world of e-media has changed the business model for publishers and they have nothing but the profit motive to guide them.

More by Stephen Abram
"1. Do we want to support the introduction of restrictive practices in the world of knowledge, communities and learning? Do we want to support these sorts of restraints on people in their lives? Should vendors and content owners engage in practices that cause excessive limitations in the world of information content? Are you ready to have to purchase more due to a competitive situation that reduces the content in every vendor? Are your budgets ready for this and is this the right time for this situation? Shouldn't we compete on interface and usability?

2. Do we, as librarians, sit idly by and allow significant resources to be lost for access by every user in our community or institutional users just to satisfy the goals of one vendor’s market share and revenue model? Most library sector vendors are equal players in the library sector and support the culture and value systems of our clients.

3. If content becomes the exclusive of one vendor, do we now have to invest time and effort in a new thorough review of our electronic resources? Are we back to the serials rationalization efforts of the 90s only now dealing with e-copies? Is this the time to add additional efforts to our already stressed or downsized staff? How will these additional costs be passed on and are your budgets ready for a price increase? Is this the economy where one vendor shold be able to introduce these costs into?

4. What other impacts will there be on our staff that are already overstressed by the increases in usage, additional work, and change? Do we want to have to review every purchasing decision again or incur the hidden costs of changing suppliers and updating training sessions? Do we want to learn everything all over again? Are your staffing and financial models ready to add this additional stress?

5. In purchasing resources, are we returning to a point where we need to add additional evaluation time and complexity to our purchase and renewal decisions?

6. And when a particular vendor spends (maybe overspends two or three times more than the past) to acquire an exclusive on some content, how will they recover their additional costs? Who will they pass these on to? Will they assert that they can absorb these costs, and would you believe them?

7. We are also challenged with adapting to many of the great technological changes that allow us to create new transformational experiences for our users – citizens, librarians, students, researchers, learners, hobbyists and more. Isn’t this one of the places where you’d prefer to invest time, money and resources?

8. Is this the time to engage in a business practice of gaining exclusive control of certain electronic information content? Can you pay more? Can you add additional time commitments to your staff to adapt? Will you reward this behaviour with your business? Open competition that delivers the best products and features to libraries requires open markets and a level playing field."
(Stephen Abram)

Folks Want $9.99 eBooks or Else

2010-02-11T12:51:00.002-05:00

Funny piece today in the New York Times about folks pushing back on higher ebook pricing by giving titles low reviews and negative comments to try to impact sales.

"...publishers are hoping that a vast majority of people who have not yet tried e-reading devices will not have any expectation of the low pricing now available from Amazon and others, including Barnes & Noble and Sony."

"But some e-book buyers say that since publishers do not have to pay to print, store or distribute e-books, they should be much cheaper than print books."

Desktop Customization

2010-02-11T12:40:00.001-05:00

Customize.org