Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

In January 2007, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced its second multi–year technology grant program for America’s public libraries. The purpose of Phase II, Keeping communities connected: The next step is to help public libraries sustain the public access computing infrastructure laid down during Phase I. Now, as then, the goal of the program is to bridge the digital divide. But it is a digital divide as defined by Bill Gates and not the public library community. Situating Gates’ philanthropy within a critical policy frame, this paper considers two alternatives to Gates’ problem definition of the digital divide, and how knowledge of these might benefit those communities served by public access computing (PAC) services as found in public libraries. The two specific alternatives considered come from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and Community Informatics (CI). Significantly, both social movements promote the potential of free and open software as an important part of any solution. Finally, the public library literature is reviewed for patterns in the community’s use of FOSS, and the argument is made for its use in the delivery of PAC services.

The American Library Association and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute (http://www.ii.fsu.edu) in the College of Information at Florida State University, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is surveying a national sample of public libraries regarding their Internet connectivity and computing access resources.

he data from the enhanced study will help you to identify the impacts of your library's public computer and Internet access on the community that your library serves.

Web 2.0 Summit program chair John Battelle moderated a public policy discussion with Art Brodsky, the communications director of public Knowledge, Ebay's Tod Cohen and Amazon.com's Paul Misener.

This article focuses on the importance of public library Internet access in times of emergencies and for a range of electronic government (e–government) services at the individual and community–wide levels.

OFFSHOOT is a model of an online catalog that would be moderated by the public library community. Constructed as an alternate means to creating an OPAC, OFFSHOOT is cataloging from the "wiki" point of view. Traditional library catalogs, both the public side and internal side, have historically been "locked", giving library patrons little to no opportunity to annotate the library records. OFFSHOOT is the opposite extreme, giving library patrons complete control over the library catalog records. This enables two things within the library system: a veritable multitude of "catalogers" working on a volume of records that has been traditionally worked on by 3 to 10 people, and an intensive expansion in the amount of cross-referencing within the library catalog.

catalog and community where users can upload work or select a piece of public domain writing, create reading groups and tag literature.

a web-based format where users can read and discuss the book right inside the text. The Unbound Reader uses "proximity chat," which allows users to discuss the book with other readers close to them in the text (thus focusing discussion, and, as an added benefit, keeping people from hearing about the end). It also has shared annotations, so people can leave a comment on any paragraph and other readers can respond.

On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, Jon Udell's guest is Beth Jefferson, the founder of BiblioCommons. Her company's new software aims to transform public libraries' online catalogs into environments for social discovery of resources that are cataloged not only by librarians, but also by patrons.

Susan S. Lukesh discusses the long-term desire for scholars to have all the information on one subject — in this case prehistoric pottery — gathered together for easy access in relation to possibilities that are available today. The subject is far broader than pottery and directly relates to the critical issue of modern scholarship and access to raw data underlying all analyses presented in paper and digital publications today.

Case studies of eight e-portfolio projects were created from document analysis and interviews and surveys of learners and teachers. Findings relating to the impact of e-portfolio systems on learning outcomes and processes and commencing and sustaining e-portfolio development were drawn from cross case analysis.

As an accompaniment to this year’s Earth Day celebration, this site will provide information about the holiday itself, the numerous challenges the world is currently facing due to global climate change - both at home and internationally - and perhaps most importantly, what each and every one of us can do to help combat climate change.

Our Mission: To successfully establish the public library as the hub of the community in which collaborative information sharing by community members and library patrons enriches and informs their library experience, their cultural and recreational life, and their community involvement.

Wex is an ambitious effort to construct a collaboratively-created, public-access law dictionary and encyclopedia.

Connotea [1] is a free online reference management and social bookmarking service for scientists created by Nature Publishing Group [2]. While somewhat experimental in nature, Connotea already has a large and growing number of users, and is a real, fully functioning service [3]. The label 'experimental' is not meant to imply that the service is any way ephemeral or esoteric, rather that the concept of social bookmarking itself and the application of that concept to reference management are both recent developments. Connotea is under active development, and we are still in the process of discovering how people will use it. In addition to Connotea being a free and public service, the core code is freely available under an open source license [4].

The general public and experts collaborate, using their real names. A new knowledge society.