Group items tagged

"This paper provides a brief overview of the ideas and principles underlying the connected learning movement, highlighting examples of how libraries are boosting 21st century learning and promoting community development by partnering with a range of organisations and individuals to incorporate connected opportunities into their programmes"

Thanks Kevin for sharing this.

El lado oscuro de las bibliotecas: "¿Quieren leer? Pues a pagar" Es un delirio: cuando tomemos prestado un libro de una biblioteca será preciso pagar un canon http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/08/27/babelia/1409137321_870906.html

Perhaps a bit narrow, but relevant to me. The article touches upon some aspects of privacy and openness bothering librarians. On the one hand people themselves are sharing lots of information about their reading lists, reading habits and favorites. On the other hand, libraries are trying to preserve patrons' privacy and protect their privacy from unwanted eyes.

I enjoyed this reading very much, thanks! Not to spoil the end, but it is a good comment that in order to protect the patrons' privacy, they must do their part too. If they use machines that requires to log in to Amazon, for example (I don't own a Kindle so I don't know it that is true), well, libraries cannot protect their privacy on what they are reading. Which reinforce the idea of the role that libraries should play in educating people about online privacy. the example of combining books that were borrowed by the same person that allows to identify the patron is very powerful and shows how something that looks innocent like a list of borrowed books can be harmful.

I think this article really demonstrates how the meaning of libraries is constantly in flux, and in recent decades has been evolving quicker than it has in perhaps the past couple of centuries. But the library has always been evolving, first mostly accessible to academics and eventually democratizing its mission by bringing literacy to the masses with public libraries. Now we are evolving to decide how open and social the patron habits should be. I think there is a way that libraries can adapt to this change and incorporate ways for patron data to inform the collection and recommendations, but also give patrons the option of being completely private, perhaps similar to an "incognito" browser window. Ultimately, the library should take privacy seriously and give patrons options that do not deceive. Thanks for sharing!

Like many of you, I'm connected to the Internet virtually every waking hour of my day - via computer, tablet and mobile phone. Yet I still regularly visit my local public library, in order to borrow books, CDs and DVDs. Which made me wonder: are these two worlds disconnected, or is the Social Web being integrated into our public libraries? In…

"Data connectivity is intrinsic to most of our daily lives. The place which exists in almost every community large or small, rural or urban, is the public library. Ben Lee argues that not only do libraries provide free access to data, but they do so in an environment which is trustworthy and neutral, geared to learning. Access to digital technology increasingly overlaps with access to opportunity and it is important to recognise the role public libraries already play (and have always played) in keeping the gate to knowledge open. "

"Scholarly communication outreach and education activities are proliferating in academic libraries. Simultaneously, digital humanists-a group that includes librarians and non-librarians based in libraries, as well as scholars and practitioners without library affiliation-have developed forms of scholarship that demand and introduce complementary innovations focused on infrastructure, modes of dissemination and evaluation, openness, and other areas with implications for scholarly communication. Digital humanities experiments in post-publication filtering, open peer review, middle-state publishing, decentering authority, and multimodal and nonlinear publication platforms are discussed in the context of broader library scholarly communication efforts."

Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Very good and will be helpful to all

Welcome to Open Library! Looking for accessible books in the DAISY format? View our accessible book subject page, or search for accessible books.

Just thought I'd share a Frequently Asked Question from the Library of Congress site. The answer highlights the antithesis of open access. One would think that the LOC would lead open access given that our tax dollars fund it and democracy requires an informed citizenry. What online databases and indexes does the Library make available to researchers on site? The Library subscribes to a large number of online subscription databases which offer indexes to journals, information on library holdings, and other resources in a wide range of subject areas. Workstations for searching these services are available in all of the Library's reading rooms. The Library also subscribes to a number of Internet-based databases and full-text journal services, which are searchable on any of the public Internet workstations in the Library's reading rooms. Patrons onsite using their personal laptops or other wireless-enabled devices to connect to the Library's wireless network are also able to access these services. The Library does not offer access to these services off-site, but they are widely available at public and academic libraries...."

The same situation with all "large number of online subscription databases of indexes and full-texts" only in the libraries in many countries and many libraries, not only LOC.

"With the emergence of new publishing tools, public libraries are able to be publishers for themselves. In essence, we can build a Maker culture for local publishing. "

Thanks! I did not know about Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Quite useful!

Two competing views on the future of publishing, and how shifts in consumer behavior to purchasing or consuming electronic content is causing such a shift in the literary world. I found it interesting to read that a number of open source software platforms were identified as the harbingers of today's self-publishing model online. I never knew Wattpad existed - watt an awesome site (pun intended). I agree with the articles viewpoint about the role that public libraries can play in this shifting landscape. A good read.

Libraries have long been a source of mostly free information for many people dating back to the Library of Alexandria. Early libraries used scrolls, but Tod Colgrove suggests that more learning may have taken place via person to person learning in those spaces, then from the scrolls themselves. 2000 years later, although we have vastly upgraded the technology and have an abundance of information at our fingertips, right now we are still learning from each other by taking part in this MOOC and sharing our information and knowledge so that we can learn from each other. Another important point Colgrove makes is that as long as librarians can come up with cutting edge ways to share knowledge, there will be a place for libraries in our schools and public places.

Libraries have a role to play in our lives and the libraries of the past did the same on our ancestors. They continue to undergo metamorphosis in response to the demands of the future. Viva the spirit and the resilience of libraries!

"In a plan to scan all of its publications to the cloud, the National Library of Norway is digitalizing its books, and it and plans to make them all freely available to users with a Norwegian IP address. The library plans to have the project completed in about 15 to 20 years."

This is such a great initiative! And it falls under common sense, why would the documents obtained by legal deposit not be available for all the population of a country? Seeing my own country, Canada, reducing the acquisitions under legal deposit while others makes it more visible and accessible makes me want to weep.

Chattanooga (no, I don't work or live there) is building the infrastructure for connected learning for all citizens. Gigabit broadband. Public library spaces where learners and entrepreneurs can play with all kinds of tools, not just tech ones. Make.Play.Read.Learn is a summer program offered by the library and the local Mozilla Hive Learning Community. I love the statement, "If you are reading this, you are already participating."

DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (DJLIT), is an international, peer-reviewed, open access jounal that endeavours to bring recent developments in information technology, as applicable to library and information science. It is meant for librarians, documentation and information professionals, researchers students and others interested in the field. It is published bimonthly. It was formerly known as 'DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology (DBIT)'.

A description of the future of libraries being makerspaces - centres of production as well as consumption.

Gracias por compartirlo, esta nueva tendencia de la BIblioteca como espacios de creación y producción es muy enriquecedora.

This video shows the possibilities for libraries: Encouraging users to create content in addition to absorbing it. Melanie Florencio provided excellent exemplars, spanning generations (the old and the young) and showing that all can participate.

"By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

This article is fantastic, and speaks to just about everything I'm passionate about as an aspiring academic librarian. I'm somewhat worried about how smaller universities-my chosen workplace-will adapt to these newer models of scholarly communication and publication, and generally with how the academic conversation is changing. These exciting developments in what the university means have the potential to widen the already extensive divide between smaller and larger schools. I know the challenges section at the end talks a little bit about convincing decision makers to fund these projects, but has anyone read anything about how these changes can be made specifically by smaller or poorly funded universities?

"In a nutshell, Knowledge Unlatched would act as an intermediary between a global library consortium and individual academic publishers. The latter would approach Knowledge Unlatched with titles they would like to see published in Open Access. Knowledge Unlatched would then regularly send out a list of titles to libraries which would opt in to fund the unlatching, that is, the publication in Open Access, of certain titles. The titles so funded would be released with a Creative Commons licence by the publishers which retain the right to sell special editions and extra services around the titles. "

Michael Eisen is a researcher at UC Berkley and a co-founder of Public Library of Science. He discusses the news that the American Association for the Advancement of Science named Kent Anderson as its new Publisher, who is a critic of the open access movement. The most interesting thing for me was the mention in his blog post as well as in the comments section by another, that it is perhaps a trend for scholarly publications to produce open access journals. A peculiar motive, to perhaps "own" the open movement? It would be interesting to learn more about this trend, motivations behind it, and the implications on how that affects the OA movement.

And then a quick Google search found an announcement that Nature will be fully open access as of 20 October 2014... but still costs $5,200 USD to cover the article processing charges - perhaps Universities should (will) start to pay these costs instead of the high costs of subscriptions to scholarly journals as they continue to open up their access. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/open_access/index.html

Wow--these article publishing charges are ridiculous. I don't know if the scholars whose work gets published in these esteemed journals have budgets that would allow them to cover such fees, but I am sure that I wouldn't be able to get multiple articles covered by grants for my own work in the social sciences. And I'm 99% sure that the public universities I've worked for would not be ponying up that kind of money to cover my publication fees. This seems like yet another way to penalize scholars working in fields that don't get big grants or living in countries that don't have this kind of money to throw around. I prefer the UK's policy of requiring all nationally funded research to be published open access without any publication fees. That's the only way to even the playing field.

This article is an interesting take on how public libraries can participate in empowering patrons to develop a personal information management strategy. This can in turn strengthen a sense of community in the digital realm and support the development of community repositories.

"Even with abundant information and the removal of censorship, truth may not prevail. This the edited text of a plenary address to the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore, 20 August 2013. Journalists and librarians share a faith in the power of public knowledge, but the media are failing in their duty"

I took this sentence from the article that I think is crucial: Public media must provide more than just "naked facts"; they must provide the resources for people to make judgments effectively.