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"Academic libraries that choose to emphasize services that are relevant in a digital world strike the authors as the most likely to find fertile ground." Academic libraries that choose to emphasize services that are relevant in a digital world strike the authors as the most likely to find fertile ground. They would be entering a realm of many opportunities; a realm characterized by rapid and discontinuous shifts. These institutions would be well advised to begin the process now. The trend-line is clear and the shift to a digital environment has tremendous momentum. Libraries cannot afford to wait until the smoke has cleared and the digital revolution is complete to take action. First the risk of being subordinated to more nimble entities within (and perhaps outside of) the academy is significant. Libraries will be hard pressed to reclaim lost territory once others fulfill these roles successfully. Second, the shift to a predominantly digital environment began more than a decade ago, shows no sign of slowing, and is creating a cascade of associated changes.

On Thursday, May 31, 2012 the Getty Research Institute (GRI) will launch the Getty Research Portal, an unprecedented resource that will provide universal access to digitized texts in the field of art and architectural history.  The Getty Research Portal is a free online search gateway that aggregates descriptive metadata of digitized art history texts, with links to fully digitized copies that are free to download. Art historians, curators, students, or anyone who is culturally curious can unearth these valuable sources of research without traveling from place to place to browse the stacks of the world's art libraries. There will be no restrictions to use the Getty Research Portal; all anyone needs is access to the internet.

Skip the first bit about the Chuck clip - not important and too long. Scroll forward to the part starting with "The Invisible Library" -- excellent food for thought about the roles we play. 

Now here's a new take on the "digital native" debate. I once bought into that whole concept, but find myself rethinking it. Perhaps the landscape has just changed so much that I'm on the path of deportation? I love this quote: Digital native is a fantasy invented by the fans of silicon valley to pigeonhole a generation for the sake of selling technology, but the truth is far less convenient. Not only the digital natives, but many people take on a feral state in their interactions with the internet, as it constantly shifts its boundaries, its cities and deserts. Likewise, the library is a place where we ought to allow for the feral. The ACRL information literacy standards are only useful to the domesticated to promote their efficient and purposeful use of the library.

"The ultra high-resolution images of works, both famous and less well-known, can be freely downloaded, zoomed in on, shared, added to personal 'studios', or manipulated copyright-free. Users can have prints made of entire works of art or details from them. Other suggestions for the use of images include creating material to upholster furniture or wallpaper, or to decorate a car or an iPad cover for example."

Researchers at the Information School at the University of Washington released an important and thought-provoking report in late 2009: "Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age."1 The study confirms and expands on the results of other reports. Its particular value is the size of the population studied, the diversity of institutions represented, and the use of both a survey and follow-up interviews for data collection.

In keeping with that spirit, The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has publicly released more than 161,000 digitally scanned historical maps spanning in excess of 130 years and covering the conterminous lower 48 states. This Historical Topographic Map Collection provides a comprehensive repository of the landscape of our Nation and tracks changes through time, providing essential clues critical in the understanding of our Nation's topography, geography and development.  

In the hurly-burly of digital content innovation and monetization, it's hard to figure out what things are, so we try to find apt comparisons. With the new Next Issue digital newsstand, let's think Netflix or Pandora or Spotify as the closest cousins. Next Issue, the offspring of five prosperous parents (Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, and News Corp.), launched last night what I think will be a model-changing product for publishers.

One way to read: Sign up once - and the new site is offering relatively generous 30-day trials - and you have but one navigation to learn. While the full content from each of the magazines is present, with added video, Next Issue says customers need only learn one way of getting around. If it's an intuitive design, that's a huge plus, as news- and feature-hungry readers find ourselves forced to learn the navigation nuances of each of our favorite apps.

The institution negotiates a deep discount off the list price of the textbook in order to have access to an e-text edition. In return for the discount, the university guarantees that every single student in the course will buy the e-text, which is charged like a lab fee. This is a definite change from the current textbook model, in which each student is personally responsible for showing up to class armed with the textbook, either in printed or digital form. As schools are discovering, as the prices of printed textbooks rise, so does the number of students who avoid buying the textbook. When we made this arrangement, we were considering, what does the publisher need to have, what does the author need to have, and what does the student need to have? You have to create a model, I think, that works out for all three of those pieces.

Completed in 2008 to the plan laid out in 1993, the Archive provides students and scholars with access to all of DGR's pictorial and textual works and to a large contextual corpus of materials, most drawn from the period when DGR's work first appeared and established its reputation (approximately 1848-1920), but some stretching back to the 14th-century sources of his Italian translations. All documents are encoded for structured search and analysis. The Rossetti Archive aims to include high-quality digital images of every surviving documentary state of DGR's works: all the manuscripts, proofs, and original editions, as well as the drawings, paintings, and designs of various kinds, including his collaborative photographic and craft works. These primary materials are transacted with a substantial body of editorial commentary, notes, and glosses.

When your formative years are spent working your fingers through apps and iPads, smartphones and YouTube, the digital world and its habits can bend and shape not just how you access information, but how you conceptualize it entirely.

The more I read about digital natives, the more I want to call the idea bunk. (I used to be a big proponent of the concept.)

Oh the idea is completely bunk. Just had a little rant about that on my blog.

Ah! I must read that. Perhaps an article on the topic? I've been keeping halfway decent records of reference/computer questions. Combine that with anecdotal evidence from you and we might have a nice little read...

For the fifth time since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in 1998, the Library of Congress is preparing to grant limited rights to crack DRM locks on digital content. Not that it matters much; despite an increased willingness at the Library to grant such permission, the actual tools most people need to bypass DRM remain forbidden.

Ebooks on EBSCO