Group items tagged

The internet, cell phones, and other digital technologies have allowed people to have larger social networks, to participate in and learn from larger numbers of groups, to act in new ways to shape their world, and to gather, asses and act on information of all kinds from all kinds of "media." This marks a major shift in the social and civic lives of Americans that has big implications for libraries as they think about serving their communities. Lee will explore all these changes through the lens of the surveys and research of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.\n

"Oxford Scholarship Online is a vast and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which now offers quick and easy access to the full text of 2,557 Oxford books. In addition to Economics and Finance, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion, Oxford Scholarship Online now provides access to new Oxford books in Biology, Business and Management, Classical Studies, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Physics, and Psychology and Social Work."

John Willinsky: "This paper reviews and addresses the critical issues currently confronting monograph publishing as a matter of reduced opportunities for scholars to pursue book-length projects. In response, it proposes an alternative approach to monograph publishing based on a modular design for an online system that would foster, manage, and publish monographs in digital and print forms using open source software developments, drawn from journal publishing, and social networking technologies that might contribute to not only to the sustainability of monograph publishing but to the quality of the resulting books."

2007 Digital Future Report Source: Center for the Digital Future, Annenberg School, University of Southern California The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School is pleased to present the results of the sixth year of our project, "Surveying the Digital Future." The six years of longitudinal research comprise an absolutely unique data base that completely captures broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and, now, social networking.

"Welcome to Copia: the first social e-reading experience designed so you can discover, connect and share what's meaningful."

Our work aims to foster the further understanding of the significance of digital and analog books and their role in humanities scholarship. We are very grateful that a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) research cluster award made possible the preliminary work presented on the website. Research questions Key questions to be addressed include: * What do we really know about the ways in which we interact with new texts that replace the print artifact and re-present to us the knowledge and experience of the past, as well as deliver the direct-to-digital record of the present? * How do we understand the ways in which we interact with these knowledge objects, and the information they contain? * How do we understand the impact that the confluence of media formats in these digital objects has on our use of them, such that we may best facilitate interaction with the new digital artifact?

U21 eBooks is a bold step in a new electronic publishing direction. The multi-media books that you will find on this site are written and designed specifically for electronic delivery, and go well beyond the simple digitizing of text. The on-going series is a collaboration between members of the Universitas 21 international network of leading universities and Melbourne University Publishing. Each book is edited by U21 academics working in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and consists of six to eight essays on international themes that lend themselves to innovative use of new technologies.

"'E-journals: their use, value and impact' takes an in-depth look at how researchers in the UK use electronic journals, the value they bring to universities and research institutions and the contribution they make to research productivity, quality and outcomes. Journal publishers began to provide online access to full-text scholarly articles in the late 1990s, triggering a revolution in the scholarly communications process. A very high proportion of journal articles are now available online - 96 per cent of journal titles in science, technology and medicine, and 86 per cent of titles in the arts, humanities and social sciences. "

Abstract "Commercial publishing interests are presenting the future of the book in the digital world through the promotion of e-book reading appliances and software. Implicit in this is a very complex and problematic agenda that re-establishes the book as a digital cultural artifact within a context of intellectual property rights management enforced by hardware and software systems. With the convergence of different types of content into a common digital bit-stream, developments in industries such as music are establishing precedents that may define our view of digital books. At the same time we find scholars exploring the ways in which the digital medium can enhance the traditional communication functions of the printed work, moving far beyond literal translations of the pages of printed books into the digital world. This paper examines competing visions for the future of the book in the digital environment, with particular attention to questions about the social implications of controls over intellectual property, such as continuity of cultural memory."

Scholarly Publishing The Electronic Frontier Robin P. Peek and Gregory B. Newby Scholarly publishing is changing and the changes will have an impact on all members of the academic community and on how they will go about creating and maintaining scholarship. Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier examines the critical issues facing universities, academics, libraries, and scholarly presses in the turbulent time when publishing is likely moving from a print to an electronic paradigm. The essays by all of the major participants in this "electronic revolution" explore the technical, social, and organizational impact of computer-mediated communication. They examine both ends of the continuum and everything in between-from how the system might be completely overhauled to a gradual retrenching where much remains the same but paper is no longer the communication medium. Some of the subjects, implicit in the various possible futures for scholarly publishing and covered here, include the role of the library with respect to electronic publications, protection of intellectual and economic property, and plagiarism.

Library in Transition