Group items tagged

"Which of the following predictions about the future of libraries were made by university administrators? Within five years, libraries will focus exclusively on electronic resources Academic computing and libraries will merge. Librarians who do not produce will be reassigned or fired. The library will only house materials that are actively used. Libraries will shrink, in both collection size and staffing, and funding will be redirected from libraries to more critical and productive areas of the university." Sound familiar?

Librarians that are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.

"The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access": digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. In this talk, Peter Suber - Director of the Harvard Open Access Project - shares insights from his new concise introduction to open access - what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. This event includes questions and responses from Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more."

"We have to do more than check out books. One way a small local library can stay relevant is to become a repository of local information."

"I personally believe that the greatest role you [libraries] play is around the documentary national identity. People come to you to find out about their ancestors, to find out what life was like, to critically evaluate and understand the past."

Ahh so this is the future of RSS readers, but I hate paper.li Agree that Scoop.it is one to watch.