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Espresso Book Machines are a really interesting idea, and despite the "hefty price tag" might be a great solution to users who still prefer print copies to electronic copies of books. It's also interesting to think about how Espresso Machines will influence library collections. This article argues that it supports a patron acquisition model, if all users end up printing books on demand (which will limit questioning during the collection development process) will that mean that for those who can't afford to print books, will not have access to them? Will the Espresso Machine bring the concept of the library and the concept of the bookstore too close together? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great idea, and the possibilities for self-publishing are great! As these machines gain more popularity, it will be interesting to see the direction of collection development in Libraries.

Interview with Jeffrey Beall on predatory publishing, his description of this, stories of scams, where it's most prevalent and his recommendations

Open Source and openness in Higher Education: MOOC, OCW, OER.

I think sharing is great but just throwing data in the Internet is rubbish.

I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.

At the Open Education Working Group we are interested in all aspects of open education, from Open Education Resources (OERs) and new learning and teaching practices, to open source tools and open licenses. One fairly new area that is starting to show real traction in opening up education is open education data.

Module 9

Coming soon to MITx on edX is a new kind of MOOC-a MOOC to help high school students better prepare for college. Many students who arrive at college find themselves struggling with the courses they must take, as their high school experience has not provided them with the necessary preparation to do well at college....

Bookmarking this as I have two students at home who enjoy learning via MOOCs.

I took this coursera course in the summer - Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/course/learning It was really well put together with lots of practical ideas to implement right away. It's being offered regularly and is only 4 weeks long, very worthwhile.

Life Science, Medical Science, Engineering and Pharma

América Latina avanza con paso firme hacia el Open Access pero todavía quedan desafíos importantes para que esta corriente se consolide. Los gobiernos ya parecen convencidos de que el acceso abierto es el futuro, y así lo demuestran las leyes de acceso abierto que se han aprobado en y .

If Google Translate gets it right, the article suggests 7 ideas to promote open acces in Latin America: - Promote a culture of open access among the young - Invite the new generation of researchers to build a new set of rules governing scholarly communication.- - Manage national access strategies - Promote awareness of the potential of open access - Provide training to scientists regarding intellectual property - Improve and standardize the taxonomy of documents to increase their visibility - Help Open Access journals to gain prestige These will apply to all other regions of the world as well. It shoul be noted that much of it can be done by the indivdual researcher, while some will best be untertaken by universities or libraries or even the state.

Publishing has transited from traditional to Electronic format making information resources available to users without much subscription. E-publishing is engendered by the introduction of information and communication technology (ICT), this development has brought about increase in the number of scholarly communication in circulation. The awareness and rate of e-publishing differs among faculties, it based on this that this study was carried out to survey the situation of e-publishing and open access of librarians in three federal universities in Southern Nigeria, five research questions were formulated to guide the study. The methodology adopted is descriptive survey, questionnaire was given to a total population of 64 librarians consisting of librarians from the institutions understudy, the data collected from the study shows that though librarians are aware of e-publishing but they have not being publishing as should have been expected in University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) out of the 95% that aware of electronic publishing only 30% have published there articles electronically, in University of Lagos (UNILAG) 100% indicated that they have published electronically while in University of Benin (UNIBEN) 45.4% percent indicated yes while 54.5% said they have not published their articles electronically. On availability of open access it was discovered that they have access as a total of 84% from UNN responded Yes, UNILAG 100% said Yes while in UNIBEN 90.9%. The following problems based on their scoring militating against e-publishing and open access in Nigeria. Inadequate power supply; inadequate computer terminals; inadequate funding for subscription payment.

Cursos Abiertos de universidades IberoAmericanas de la red Universia Está dirigido a manejar una aplicación de software libre (GIMP), gratuita y multiplataforma, dedicada al tratamiento y creación de imágenes. Su dominio y disponer de nociones sobre resolución de imagen, formatos, etc. va a hacer que el uso del curso tenga que depender menos de otras personas y/o programas para disponer de imágenes para presentaciones, trabajos, páginas webs, etc. Fecha de inicio: 2 de septiembre de 2014 INSCRIPCIÓN ABIERTA Duración: 9 semanas (27 horas de estudio estimadas)

Publicado el 28/9/2012 Anyone can create their own publication quickly and easily by following the same principles that the author, John Crossley-Stanbury used to start and run a successful magazine. You can use this book to help you create your own magazine in your village, town, city, region or even nationally.