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Merete Sanderhoff edited this collection of 18 articles on the topic of Openness in the cultural sector (predominantly museums). An excellent resource as museums struggle to retain image rights while at the same time fulfilling their both their educational and preservational missions.

This is really interesting! Thanks for sharing - I'll be reading this on my commute this week. The juxtaposition raised between safeguarding collections and allowing access (and possible re-use) is enlightening.

Caring for collection being shared is also a part of knowledge openness to access because all collections are precious for its timeless value , memoirs, and cultural heritage.

Very interesting site exploring the intersection of indigeneity & information and communication technologies.

Among other things you can find there a talk by dr. Shawn Wilson, author of the book "Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods". It was great to see how his field of research influenced academic etiquette; during the lecture there was time for the elders, some personal remarks, even a prayer. You can find it here: http://resources.ethnosproject.org/research-ceremony-indigenous-research-methods/

Interesting! Thank you! The content is very important because it takes understanding and knowledges about how groups all around the world communicate from their backgrounds etc. To be collaborative online takes skills about this.

In an earlier issue of ETR&D, the editors provided an hierarchical framework of components to support learning and instruction. That hierarchy included information objects, knowledge objects, learning objects, instructional objects, courses, programs and ongoing efforts, with each subsequent component building on the former components.

"Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes: In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions.He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones - many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - with examples of each in action"

The 20 fallacies: "ad hominem - Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously) argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia - but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out) argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous - perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives) appeal to ignorance - the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist - and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each in their own way enjoined to

Wonderful post, Kim! These are great guidelines alongside which to test ideas.

With these resources, you can create or participate in collaborative efforts to develop tools and methods for online education.

Many Open Education Resources (OER) have been introduced by governments, universities, and individuals within the past few years. OERs provide teaching and learning materials that are freely available and offered online for anyone to use. Whether you're an instructor, student, or self-learner, you have access to full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, assignments, quizzes, activities, games, simulations, and tools to create these components.

Thanks. An extensive list of resources. It may have been easier to use the list if it wasn't categorised only alphabetically but also further grouped into categories. It's still a valuable collection.

Kay, R., Lauriclla, S. (2011). Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Using Laptop Computers in Higher Education Classrooms: A Formative Analysis. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. 37:1

a. Laptops and mobile devices are ubiquitous in todays classrooms as students are digital natives. Because of decreasing prices of technology over the past few decades, an overwhelming majority of the university students surveyed own a laptop (87%). Because of this quick onset of technological adoption, culture has lagged, in terms of re-defining the social institutions that such mobile and computer technologies affect. According to this analysis, students feel that the use of a laptop helps in aiding studies, is useful for gathering course and supplementary materials and engaging in peer collaboration. Several challenges have been noted: communication based challenges, relating to social media, email and messaging services; and entertainment based challenges, relating to media consumption. These challenges serve as potential sources of distraction for the student using the technology and others. In their findings, 16% of students reported being distracted by pornography during class, on their own or others' computer screens, which ranked higher than computer games, at 1%. The authors conclude that the benefits of laptop use in class outweigh the challenges 2:1. Possibly, if the functionality of student laptops are integrated into course curriculum further, students can benefit from further peer collaboration, increased academic benefit and decreased distractions.

Exploring Digital Identity: Beyond the Private Public Paradox. A great article that explores how new media is transforming culture and how we identify ourselves online. The article uses a metaphor called digiSelves to describe how we are also creating a new identity too.

Indeed, maintaining the distance between the private self and public persona may be more difficult as we enter the virtual global village. As we continue to use the media, the proposition that we may become invested in the public persona possibly at odds with our private self seems to be a reasonable assertion. School shootings tend to support this.

People have a digital identity to surf on the Internet and get access to different kinds of information. Yes, there are a lot of good resources online for people to know and to learn. However, during the process, people's privacy also takes the risk of being viewed by others. On the other hand, everyone also has a chance to see others' privacy. So, is it good or bad to have such a digital identity. I think it is good and people acquire much more benefits than the risk they take.

Filed by on Recently published by The Primary Research Group. The Survey of Library Database Licensing Practices, 2014-15 Edition: The report looks closely at how libraries organize their database procurement and processing bureaucracy, pinpointing the number of positions devoted to digital information, and staff time spent on tasks such as procurement and invoice processing.

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

An article by an anonymous author on the Knowledge Commons Brasil. The article attempts to show how the Global North dominates the internet. Internet users as well as content (exemplified by geo-located entities) tend to cluster in the rich industrial countries of the so called "developed" wordl. This critique resembles the lament of the so called Media Imperialism spearheaded by the McBriede Report to Unesco (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066eb.pdf) "Many Voices, One World)". It should be noted that here more detailed studies suggested that news agencies reflect the interests of their audiences. So it would be interesting what the distribution of geo-tagged entities in the Igbo version of Wikipedia is like. Does it mirror a bias towards West Africa (Igbo being one of the principal languages of Nigeria)?

In 1996, the US computer entrepreneur Brewster Kahle set up the Internet Archive, its mission being to provide "universal access to all knowledge". This admirable project strives to store copies of every single web page ever posted: a ghostly archive of the virtual.

Thank you for posting. Although I am not very keen on reading fiction electronically, the article was very interesting and informative about the latest tendencies in electronic publishing.

I am one of those people who like reading books electronically and enjoy it. Kindle has been around for some years now but we still have books publshed in paper format. There is still a number of people who prefare to have paper copy of a book. Books are here to stay. I have a kindle but I hardly ever use the devise. I use the app on my mobile, computer or Ipad.

La UNESCO sostiene que el acceso universal a la educación de gran calidad es esencial para la construcción de la paz, el desarrollo sostenible de la sociedad y la economía y el diálogo intercultural. Los recursos educativos de libre acceso proporcionan una oportunidad estratégica para mejorar la calidad de la educación y para facilitar el diálogo sobre políticas, el intercambio de conocimientos y el aumento de capacidades.

This list is a helpful tool for authors who are publishing their work in Open Access Journals. It is also helpful for librarians who are acting as advisors for Open Access publishing. Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. It is recommended recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The long list of predatory publishers and journals by Beall is quite daunting. Is this another indication of how cynical a person has to be in every aspect of life - even scholary pursuit? Thankfully there's a record to alert stakeholders of potentially unscrupulous publishers and unvalidated journals.

As I was working on my final project I found myself only able to name 1 OA Journal: PLOS. I wanted to know if there were any other big players in the game, much like the top commercial journals. As a result, google came up with the above site, which works like an index or directory for OA Journals. It's good to see in light of the difficulties that closed access journals have been causing in countries that are digitally divided from affluent ones. Hopefully with the growth of open access titles we will see the digital divide and information gap close. Happy browsing! And please post any other open access titles you have come across! Lets popularize them in our network! One more: http://doaj.org/

While not exactly on topic, and newspapers are not generally considered Scholarly publishers, they do engage with the public, and frequently act as a liaison between journals/researchers and the public. In the past ten years or so, people have gotten used to accessing, for free, newspapers and television reports as a way to inform themselves. While this is good for the individual, it is not so good for the publisher. Many traditional news outlets have been struggling to find a way to generate revenue in a way that neither smacks of consumerism, nor excludes the average citizen from participating. IN the UK, the liberal-leaning newspaper The Guardian has begun selling 'memberships', and hosting events ranging from lectures to classes on things as diverse as photography and creative writing.