tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-310230292024-03-15T21:09:26.724-04:00The Director's BlogHere you will find various musings of Jonathan Miller, the Director of the Olin Library at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. It is particularly aimed at the Rollins community. Don't expect anything too in-depth or scholarly, after all, it's a blog.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.comBlogger314125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-79304686745033658632012-08-27T15:59:00.000-04:002012-08-27T15:59:09.718-04:00What explains the dip in library use in 2011-12?We just published our annual <a href="http://www.rollins.edu/library/about/histplan.html" target="_blank">Leading Indicators Report</a> for the academic year 2011-12. Even though the news is not great (if you think an ever increasing quantity of service is good) we are committed to transparency so we publish such results -- warts and all. What we are wondering now is what led to this dip?<br />
<br />
In both digital services, physical services, and physical and digital resource use we have seen a marked decline of between 7-23%. Gate count, the number of people who actually come through the door declined by almost 22% which correlated with a 15% in total check outs and a 14% decline in reference queries. OK, so were people going even more heavily digital than in previous years? But no, we also saw a 23% decline in searches for digital resources, an 8% decline in digital documents views, and a 19% decline is visits to the library's website. A small bright spot here is that people's searches continue to become more efficient in that they seem to be finding the documents they want with less searching. We also saw a 23% decrease in instruction sessions. Did this decline cause the others? If faculty requested less instruction from librarians and we were in fewer classrooms, perhaps students used library resources less. This really concerns me because I don't think we are well enough integrated into the classroom, partnering with faculty to teach information literacy as it is. I really don't want to fall back from the gains we have made.<br />
<br />
Interestingly two bright spots are increased queries in Special Collections & Archives, admittedly from a very low base, and continued strong growth in interlibrary borrowing, which continued to rise, this year by just over 12%.<br />
<br />
With the renovation of the main floor and a full complement of public service librarians focused on instruction, we are looking to see if that number turns around in 2012-13. We are also planning to repeat LibQual to see if we can learn anything from that.<br />
<br />
Stay tuned.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-20007646477906598842012-08-21T16:26:00.002-04:002012-08-21T16:26:41.255-04:00Florida Survey Results from the Open Access Textbooks ProjectSome interesting survey results from this project.<br />
<br />
Here is a direct link to the executive summaries of <a href="http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/%5Cpdf%5C2012_Exec_Sum_Student_Txtbk_Survey.pdf" target="_blank">student</a> and of <a href="http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/%5Cpdf%5C2012_Exec_Sum_Fac_Admin_OER_Survey.pdf" target="_blank">faculty/administrators</a> survey results. <br />
<br />
The cost of textbooks continue to take a toll on students, but their are largely unaware of OER. Faculty and administrators are beginning to recognize open access textbooks and course materials, but not to use them very heavily. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/projectInfo.html" target="_blank"> According to their website</a>, "<span href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" rel="dct:type">The
Open Access Textbooks Grant Project is working with others involved in
open content to create a sustainable model for Florida and other
states to discover, produce, and disseminate open textbooks. This
three-year initiative was funded by a grant from the Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The project builds on
efforts in Florida and across the U.S. to create a sustainable open
textbook model and a collaborative community to further implementation
of open textbooks."</span>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-4490785706711740582012-06-24T17:00:00.000-04:002012-06-26T21:31:13.111-04:00ALA Annual 2012 -- Serial Solutions Intota.Intota is the name for SerSols upcoming ILA. Jane Burke gave the presentation. Here are my very hasty notes. Bottom line: they are furer than I expected, what they have looks quite good. But there is still a long way to go.<br />
<br />
EDUCAUSE research on users show they value self sufficient, don't ask, think they know more about technology that you, they are the next faculty.<br />
<br />
Three big buckets of pain for staff -- workflows, system maintenance, assessment.<br />
<br />
Not first to market, but unique for:<br />
Unified intelligent workflows -- cross training<br />
Knowledgebase -- rebuilding it for Intota.<br />
Assessment -- intelligence around usage data, blend it with outcomes data<br />
Interoperable -- with registrars system, etc.<br />
Developed and supported by SerialsSolutions<br />
<br />
API's from the beginning.<br />
Not print and not batch, immediate action.<br />
Freeing staff to work with users.<br />
<br />
Full functionality -- selection, acquisitions, description, discovery, fulfillment.<br />
<br />
Selection -- united, inherent PDA, <br />
resource mgmt and acquisition -- unified workflow, auto copy cataloging, etc.<br />
Description -- shared data, networked authority control, local editing possible, mutation formats ( MARC, Dublin core, other schema)<br />
Fullfilment -- all functions, reserves, interoperable with ILLiad, link to user records. <br />
<br />
Expanded Knowledgebase, building FRBR, using RDA toolkit.<br />
<br />
Multi-tenant SaaS. Individual instance, shared Knowledgebase etc.<br />
<br />
Subscription model, lower total costs, profile migration fee, <br />
<br />
Phase 1 data mgmt<br />
Phase 2 selection<br />
Phase 3 fullfilment<br />
<br />
SUNY Geneseo, Marist College development partner (closest in size to us)<br />
<br />
To prepare: Convert and organize data, benefit from centralized data mgmt now, export/migrate to web scale.<br />
<br />
Geneseo director. Cyril Oberlander cyril@geneseo.edu<br />
<br />
Aiming to free up time. <br />
<br />
Redefining academic libraries http://www.educationadvisoryboard.com/pdf/23634-EAB-Redefining-the-Academic-Library.pdf<br />
GIST get it system toolkit.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-12329905889245777412012-06-23T18:00:00.000-04:002012-06-24T13:45:45.094-04:00ALA Annual 2012 -- SPARC/ACRL Forum.SPARC/ACRL Forum on Open Access Author Funds<br />
<br />
First Heather Joseph gave some updates including: <br />
PLoS One now biggest biomedical journal.<br />
New OA journals -- Peer J and e-Life.<br />
Growing focus on campuses not on introductions of services, but on refining and making things work.<br />
Need a robust network of diverse funding sources. Which is where author funds come in.<br />
<br />
<br />
Sue Kriegsman (Harvard) <br />
<br />
<br />
Compact for OA Publishing Equity (COPE) http://www.oacompact.org/<br />
Current model -- costs hidden in library budgets, authors don't want to pay.<br />
Looking for sustainable, economical, and without market dysfunction.<br />
COPE -- right for own institution, timely, durable mechanism, reasonable publication charges, published in peer reviewed journal articles, OA journals., don't cover fees that others, like grant agencies, could cover.<br />
<br />
15 inst have signed onto COPE plus supporting groups and institutions.<br />
<br />
HOPE Harvard not supporting hybrid journals or when could have been written in grants.<br />
SPARC collects stats on OA funds. Most schools have caps, most around $3000. 849 articles funded overall.<br />
<br />
<br />
Check Eckman (Simon Fraser)<br />
<br />
<br />
Peer review article growth 3-4% per year, about 20% is gold OA. Perhaps top out at 27%.<br />
Article Processing Charge (APC) is the dominant model in OA. CERN found this as a barrier.(SOAP Survey)<br />
Carleton (2012) is the only lib arts college that has one.<br />
Accomplishments -- library visibility, school comm conversation, better understanding of publishing patterns, <br />
Do your homework, consult broadly, explore funding sources, define goals, establish eligibility criteria, consider hybrid journals, budget, cost control options, promotion, workflows, assessment.<br />
<br />
Average cost per article -$1500.<br />
<br />
<br />
I had to leave at the beginning of Andrew Waller's (Calgary) remarks.Rollins has not found a need for such a fund up to now, but we shall see as OA grows and faculty increasingly publish in such journals.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0Anaheim, CA, USA33.8352932 -117.914503633.8352932 -117.9145036 33.8352932 -117.9145036tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-33217091112616993792012-06-23T13:39:00.000-04:002012-06-24T13:39:50.969-04:00ALA Annual 2012 -- Copyright Discussion GroupACRL Copyright Discussion Group<br />
<br />
<br />
Jennifer Rothman http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/rothman.html<br />
<br />
Her advice: <br />
ARL code overemphasizes the transformative nature of these uses.<br />
Look for what commercial options exist.<br />
Be wary of code and set forth your dissent on paper.<br />
<br />
<br />
Cambridge UP v. Becker (GSU)<br />
<br />
<br />
Four Factors<br />
<br />
1. Not transformative use, not not profit and educational<br />
2. Factual and scholarly works, thinks 11th will overturn.<br />
3. clear lines 10% etc.<br />
4. Court focused on availability of exist license.<br />
<br />
Sage got most of these because they had easy to use licensing service.<br />
<br />
Court didn't decide on books with different authors, anthologies, came up too late.<br />
What happens if a licensing market comes later?<br />
<br />
Don't allow more than 10% or more than one chapter.<br />
<br />
Two pending cases to watch<br />
<br />
1. UCLA streaming of video<br />
2. Authors Guild v Hathi<br />
<br />
Read licenses!<br />
<br />
Congressman wants to get clearer fair use guidelines written. Sympathetic to users on this.<br />
<br />
She described as "Overly sneaky" = 10% in the first half of semester, 10% in second half, for instance. I agree.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-50671677617326923982012-06-23T13:26:00.000-04:002012-06-24T13:34:49.208-04:00ALA Annual 2012 -- OCLC's Worldshare.Attended Selecting OCLC Worldshare Management Services: Perspectives from Different Libraries 8:30am Saturday. Here are my notes. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Andrew Pace (OCLC)<br />
<br />
Collections and users are changing, our back office systems are anachronistic. Users flocking to the cloud and we are missing opportunities to collaborate.<br />
Strategy -- ensuring relevance -- syndication to the web, efficiency, meeting users at PoN on the web. Unified Col Mgmt. Break down the silos. collaboration and innovation between libraries.<br />
<br />
The system is INCIP (?) based. Links to 3rd party systems, standards based.<br />
<br />
Gives staff the same easy interfaces as users. Staff are users too.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Margie Harrison (San Juan Island Lib)<br />
<br />
implementation is a group experience, weekly meetings, chat, email, phone with User Support. 24/7 training tutorials. Live weekly training.<br />
Workflow changes really saves time.<br />
8 months from signing on to implementation.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Robert Powers (NASA Jet Propulsion)<br />
<br />
early adopter. 3-4 month intensive period of implementation. Pressure on staff and need to added value services. Archive and library. <br />
"We don't want the OPAC to get in our way." Looking for efficiencies in cat and acq staff. ERM seen great efficiency. Simplified Circ. <br />
Want to see improved metrics and reports.<br />
Discovery -- improving, but seems unsure. Satisfied with the knowledge base. <br />
Systems admin is very straightforward, all in the cloud at OCLC.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Gary Cocozzoli (Lawrence Tech Uni)<br />
<br />
Wants to give same level of service to distant as well as local students.<br />
Dissatisfied with previous ILS.<br />
Asked all the questions we at Rollins are: Open Source, trad SAAS, next gen, local consortium, which was more expensive than WMS.<br />
Buying a service, not a system, just joining in.<br />
Using OCLC so much already.<br />
Knowledge base and PubGet. Set it up in KB and it automatically updates KB.<br />
Saving money and time.<br />
More sophisticated vendor relationships/communication.<br />
Again likes cohort implementation system and training.<br />
4-5 months for implementation<br />
<br />
What are you going to do with items in OPAC that are not in OCLC?<br />
Review local serials holdings records LHR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
WMS-- vendors<br />
<br />
Auto load or order records<br />
Using API for transfer of data to Banner<br />
Single sign on<br />
Quarterly upgrades<br />
Roadmaps<br />
Drupal site for user support.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-9217529458773709472012-05-14T16:27:00.001-04:002012-06-04T09:28:22.890-04:00Course Reserves, Copyright, and the GSU decisionFinally Judge Evans has handed down her ruling on copyright and course reserves in the Cambridge, Oxford, and Sage publishers v. Georgia State University. Many university and college libraries, including us, have been waiting for a decision in this case before reviewing their own course reserve policies. The case will almost certainly be appealed, but even so we now have some guidance. Over the summer we will be reviewing our policies in relationship to Judge Evans' ruling and seeing if we need to make any changes.<br />
<br />
I am going to be using this post to collect various resources about the decision.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Enasims/GSU-opinion.pdf" target="_blank">The ruling</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://dockets.justia.com/docket/georgia/gandce/1:2008cv01425/150651/" target="_blank">Justia's Dockets & Filings</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2012/05/12/the-gsu-decision-not-an-easy-road-for-anyone/" target="_blank">Kevin Smith's post on the decision.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/PublishersGeorgia-State/131876/" target="_blank">The Chronicle's article.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/14/court-rejects-many-publishers-arguments-e-reserves" target="_blank">The Inside Higher Ed article.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2012/05/13/inside_the_georgia_state_opinion" target="_blank">James Grimmelmann's post on the decision</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/judge-rules-largely-for-1437124.html" target="_blank">Atlanta Journal Constitution article</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-14/georgia-state-cleared-of-most-publisher-infringement-claims-1-.html" target="_blank">Bloomberg's article</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/51930-judge-delivers-mixed-verdict-in-gsu-e-reserves-case.html" target="_blank">Publishers Weekly article</a> (which, touchingly, in the headline at least spins the decision in the other direction.) </li>
<li><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120514/04144818905/something-is-wrong-when-judge-needs-350-pages-to-decide-if-colleges-digital-archives-are-fair-use.shtml" target="_blank">TechDirt post.</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/14/schools-can-give-students-10-percent-of-a-book-or-one-whole-chapter/" target="_blank">Paid Content post.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/fair-use-mostly-triumphant-judge-exonerates-campus-e-reserves/" target="_blank">Ars Technica post.</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://homer.gsu.edu/blogs/library/2012/05/15/ruling-issued-in-georgia-state-university-copyright-case/">GSU Official response</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://copyright.syr.edu/publishers-v-georgia-state/">Matthew Dames' post on the decision</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3/en/toolbar/aboutUs/newsRoom/pressReleases/press_2012/press-release-12-05-15.html" target="_blank">Copyright Clearance Center statement</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.arl.org/bm%7Edoc/gsu_issuebrief_15may12.pdf" target="_blank">ARL Issue Brief .</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.jonathanpinkesq.com/fair-use-found-in-georgia-state-university-copyright-infringement-suit" target="_blank">Jonathan Pink's post on the decision</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.cambridge.org/home/news/article/item6922725/?site_locale=en_GB" target="_blank">Cambridge University Press response to the decision</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/gsu-e-reserves-decision-first-thoughts" target="_blank">Barbara Fister's post on the decision</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://publishers.org/press/66/" target="_blank">AAP's statement on the decision</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/05/copyright/georgia-state-copyright-case-what-you-need-to-know-and-what-it-means-for-e-reserves/" target="_blank">The <i>Library Journal</i> article</a>. </li>
<li>Karen Petruska's posts. <a href="http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2012/05/21/the-gsu-copyright-case-lessons-learned-part-one/" target="_blank">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2012/05/23/the-gsu-copyright-case-lessons-learned-part-two/" target="_blank">Part 2</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://campuscopyright.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/at-long-last-georgia/" target="_blank">Christine Ross' post on the decision</a>. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/georgia/gandce/1:2008cv01425/150651/300/" target="_blank">The publishers' proposed injunction</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2012/06/01/publishers-file-response-to-gsu-ruling/" target="_blank">Kevin Smith's response to the proposed injunction</a>. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<br />
So, do you know of any other posts that should go here? <br />
<br />Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-52837386381931985182011-11-04T11:56:00.001-04:002011-11-04T12:00:33.556-04:00A snapshot of the Olin LibraryEvery year the Florida Library Association runs a <a href="http://www.flalib.org/snapshot_day_results.php">Snapshot of Florida Libraries</a> project that shows how people are using libraries around the state. <a href="http://www.rollins.edu/library/yourlibrarian/susan.html">Susan Montgomery</a> took comments the users of Olin Library contributed and created this <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1940095449">wordle</a><a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4351871/Florida_Library_Snapshot_Day_at_Olin_Library"> word cloud</a>.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Wordle: Florida Library Snapshot Day at Olin Library" src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/4351871/Florida_Library_Snapshot_Day_at_Olin_Library" style="border: 1px solid #ddd; padding: 4px;" /><br />
What really strikes me about this is how closely their comments reflect what we are trying to achieve at Olin -- library, place, study, quiet, focus, friends, help, good. <br />
<br />
Nice job Susan.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-58874976540331789272011-10-31T09:37:00.000-04:002011-10-31T09:37:55.150-04:00Persistence Pays Off for Mobile Site.Paul Gindlesperger has been working for weeks to find a way to automatically redirect visitors using mobile devices who come to <a href="http://www.rollins.edu/library">our regular site</a> to our mobile site. This should not be difficult, but our CMS made it so. He finally did it (with an assist from Bill Svitavsky.) So, give it a whirl. Go to <a href="http://www.rollins.edu/library">http://www.rollins.edu/library</a> from your mobile phone or iPad and let me know what you think.<br />
<br />
I will be interested to see if this results in a bump in traffic from mobile users.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-45440285201491094182011-10-11T19:38:00.000-04:002011-10-11T19:38:08.664-04:00CLIR Symposium : Collaboration with untraditional partners (Sam Demas.)People had some great ideas for collaboration:<br />
<br />
Participating in art gallery crawls<br />
Local history collaboratives<br />
Information literacy in community engagement and service learning.<br />
Gaming nights<br />
Rock bands in the library (how about <a href="http://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/">tiny <i>reference</i> desk concerts</a>?)<br />
Flash lectures (advertised on Twitter.)<br />
Social tagging of archival images<br />
(evidently the new version of Contentdm will allow this.)<br />
A mobile library (<a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/street-books-bike-powered-mobile-library-for-homeless.php">on a bike</a>!) to take to event son campus with a laptop for check out.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-90920744291466732522011-10-11T19:29:00.000-04:002011-10-11T19:29:23.098-04:00CLIR Symposium (Chuck Henry, President of CLIR)This was a really interesting session in which we really began to think about what kind of futures we might have (if any.) <a href="http://libstaff.library.vanderbilt.edu/Communications/NewKey.pdf">Chuck introduced a series of what he called "deep collaboration" projects</a>:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/index.html">Hidden Collections</a><br />
<a href="http://www.diggingintodata.org/">Digging into Data</a><br />
<a href="http://dp.la/">Digital Public Library of America</a><br />
<a href="http://www.clir.org/news/pressrelease/11sloanpr1.html">Data Curation:building a new profession</a><br />
<a href="http://www.diglib.org/archives/832/">Linked Data</a><br />
Federated Research and Educational Depository System (secure digital preservation. Can't find a link for this.)<br />
Centers for Digital Humanities and the Liberal Arts (no link for this either.)<br />
<a href="http://www.medicalheritage.org/">Medical Heritage Digital Collaborative</a><br />
National Humanities Press (sorry, no link.)<br />
<a href="http://www.clir.org/fellowships/mellon/mellon.html">CLIR/Mellon Fellowships: Dissertations in Original Sources</a><br />
<br />
"From a strategic vantage point, there is no ambiguity: the future of academic libraries and higher education rests on the ability to reconceive ourselves holistically, with the various components of scholarly information-- discovering, reconstituting, publishing, and sharing knowledge, and keeping its various manifestations securely preserved and accessible -- understood as interrelated and interdependent. The inherited norms, customs, traditions, and institutions that have structured research and teaching now need to be constructively challenged, redefined, and subsequently reassembled." <br />
<br />
So what is the role of librarians at liberal arts colleges in this environment? Are we ready to connect our faculty and students to such macro solutions?Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-7399768241622198532011-10-11T11:21:00.023-04:002011-10-11T13:25:00.621-04:00CLIR Symposium: the Future of the Liberal Arts College Library (Victor Ferrall.)I am in Milwaukee at <a href="http://www.clir.org/activities/leadershipclircic/symposium.html">this symposium</a> with about fifty other college librarians worrying about whether we have a future or not. Victor Ferrall, author of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cJ1s33h1gRoC&lpg=PP1&dq=victor%20ferrall&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q&f=false"><i>Liberal Arts at the Brink</i></a> is giving the keynote.<br />
<ul><li>We fail to recognize that there has never been much demand for liberal education.</li>
<li>Single biggest change in US higher ed. was post war opening up to first generation students who were looking for a practical degree.</li>
<li>Are we selling education, or buying students?</li>
<li>Competition for students raises costs and cuts revenue. It is the tragedy of the commons.</li>
<li>Vocational education focuses the student on the utility of the knowledge they acquire. Liberal education focuses them on the utility of acquiring knowledge.</li>
</ul>What does the move away form liberal arts education mean for libraries (specifically collection use)? <br />
<ul><li>Vocational majors are likely to read more manuals, with more focus, and read less widely.</li>
<li>Since they read for answers, this will emphasize online information.</li>
<li>More pressure to support the curriculum, and less to support scholarship in general. </li>
</ul>Move from liberal arts to vocation is a trend not a cycle, we need to cooperate not compete.So here is my question:<br />
<br />
Librarians are good at cooperating, yet we still have a library at each liberal arts college. What if we had one library for all liberal arts colleges, with librarians available to each campus and all students? Would we save money and improve services? <br />
It turns out Victor Ferrall is specifically thinking about cooperation in marketing liberal arts education, but he is not getting much traction form other presidents. <br />
<br />
<ul></ul>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-29063407873535265492011-10-07T16:28:00.008-04:002011-10-07T17:09:44.679-04:00Oberlin Group 2011 day One.The day started with a discussion about organizational change in our libraries. While there are some common themes -- refocusing staff away from traditional cataloging and acquisitions and towards digital services, focusing our librarians outward to the faculty and students -- but what is really striking is our distinct this discussion on each campus. My colleagues have problems I had not even imagined, and <i>vice versa</i>.<br />
<br />
Then I moderated a discussion of e-books and open access. Joanne Schneider discussed progress towards the <a href="http://dp.la/">Digital Public Library of America</a>, Ray English discussed the <a href="http://openlibrary.org/">Open Library</a>'s digital lending library, Neil McElroy discussed the <a href="http://www.hathitrust.org/">Hathi Trust</a> and finally Bryn Geffert discussed the proposed Liberal Arts Open Access Scholarly Publishing Project (which has no website yet.)<br />
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We had a tour of the impressive Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center (<a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/105387697905441705819/LearningCommonsExamples?authuser=0&feat=directlink">you will find my idiosyncratic photos from the tour</a> in this folder.)<br />
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Then it was open mic: at Neil McElroy at <a href="http://library.lafayette.edu/">Lafayette</a> gave iPads to the members of their Library Advisory Council to get them thinking about mobile technologies, Deb Dancik at <a href="http://library.willamette.edu/">Willamette</a> is further along with records management than we are, Terri Fishel at <a href="http://www.macalester.edu/library/">Macalester</a> organized a reading group for librarians and staff around Char Booth's book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=4xu20384p4AC&lpg=PP1&dq=Char%20Booth%20reflective&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning</a> that seems to transformed their teaching, and lots, lots more.<br />
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The final session was about digital archives and repositories. Richard Fyffe just mentioned <a href="http://thedata.org/">DataVerse</a>, sounds interesting. Deb Dancik just mentioned <a href="http://pachyderm.nmc.org/">Pachyderm</a>. Willamette has developed a Contentdm/Pachyderm plugin (open source) and is using it to help students incorporate institutional repository images into presentations. She also mentioned <a href="http://www.fedora-commons.org/about/examples/islandora">Islandora</a>. Rick Provine also mentioned<a href="http://www.artstor.org/shared-shelf/s-html/shared-shelf-home.shtml"> ArtSTOR's Shared Shelf</a>.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-74243168695785916262011-08-20T18:37:00.000-04:002011-08-20T18:37:41.787-04:00Enacting the Mission<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">The title of this post is a quote from Scott Bennett (<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--><a href="http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.rollins.edu:2048/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v009/9.2.bennett.html">Bennett, Scott. Libraries and Learning: A history of paradigm change. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, vol.9, no. 2, (2009), pp. 181-197</a>.)</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">"Those of us responsible for libraries and other non-classroom learning spaces should be mindful of what [<a href="http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffpiu015.pdf">John Seely Brown</a>] says, however, if we want buildings that foster intentional learning and that escape the pitfalls of schoolwork, if we want to promote learning communities rather than trafficking in information, if we want ourselves to enact the mission rather than merely to support it." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">At Olin we are definitely interested in fostering intentional learning and promoting learning communities and we are working in all kinds of ways to make this happen. One small example of this finally came to fruition this summer. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">Readers of the library's<a href="http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/227111_10150199669875909_6933280908_6950334_8143478_s.jpg"> Facebook page</a> and <a href="http://rollins-olin-library.blogspot.com/2011/02/quiet-space-in-library.html">this blog</a> already know that we have done some <a href="http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150278357590909.350896.6933280908&type=1">small rejuvenation</a> on the 4th floor. Well we finally took possession of seven of the end tables created by students in Josh Almonds 3D Foundations course and installed them on the fourth floor. They look great.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">Why is this enacting the mission? Well the library is now a site for the display and use of student work, not just a place student study or 'traffic in information' in order to produce work of their own. I visited the class in the spring and explained what kind of end tables we needed, the dimensions, and specifications, and how they would be used. Then, at the final show, I negotiated with the students to buy the end tables that met my criteria. This was an important element in the course for Josh, who wanted the students to understand about the business of art. Finally, the tables are now in use, and on permanent display for the student artists to enjoy and as reminders to all students that their work has real impact beyond the classroom.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;">Mission enacted.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"> </div>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-79820147668608649532011-07-08T11:54:00.000-04:002011-07-08T11:54:25.077-04:00Check out Archive's new blog.Congratulations to Darla Moore for her first post on the <a href="http://fiatopen.rollins.edu/wp/libraryarchives/">Special Collections & Archives blog</a>. An interesting piece about Virginia Roush d’Albert-Lake, a remarkable alumna of the College.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-23777205370924385562011-07-01T11:49:00.000-04:002011-07-01T11:49:59.986-04:00What might the DPLA end up being?Update from John Palfrey on The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/dpla<br />
DPLA Beta Sprint: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dpla/<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PWrgjRYwTsk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-56776377522727378682011-07-01T10:07:00.000-04:002011-07-01T10:07:04.836-04:00Great library sign.I love this sign. Libraries always struggle with how to explain to users that they can ask for help. "Reference" is meaningless jargon to most users. Any particular library might want to change the words on the sign to reflect their services, but this can be seen from various angles, is entertaining, and covers all your bases. Anyone know where it is from?<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/5797565681/" title="An explosion of assistance by quinn.anya, on Flickr"><img alt="An explosion of assistance" height="333" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5315/5797565681_6b3321c45e.jpg" width="500" /></a>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-46856088044953138932011-06-26T21:05:00.000-04:002011-06-26T21:05:37.013-04:00Innovative Fund Raising -- ALA 2011Most of this was not new (for any private college, but it was useful to check that.) There were a couple of things though:<br />
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<a href="http://jvbrown.edu/">The public library in Williamsport, PA</a> has program to enable donors to support days of service. Literally, you call the library's general phone number and you hear that, "today's library services are brought to you by ...." I love this idea! What a great way to celebrate a birthday or anniversary. They are under charging at $100 per day, but I wonder if the idea would fly at Rollins? By the way, a day of service for the Olin Library would cost you $6,000, an hour just $400. Williamsport thanks donors with this card.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_xvJqkvvzYQ/TgfVRDqTkqI/AAAAAAAABgM/RHVPOWNxcng/s1600/20110626195536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_xvJqkvvzYQ/TgfVRDqTkqI/AAAAAAAABgM/RHVPOWNxcng/s320/20110626195536.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
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<a href="http://www.gettysburg.edu/library/">Gettysburg College library</a> accepts donations to supply coffee from friends and a poster asking students to, "thank a friend for coffee!" The student all write cute thank yous on the poster and then the library publishes this in their friends newsletter.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-36841513837933344302011-06-25T22:45:00.001-04:002011-06-26T12:48:59.180-04:00Berlin Declaration -- ALA 2011The <a href="http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/">Berlin Declaration</a> is one of the founding documents of the open access movement. <a href="http://www.berlin9.org/">Berlin 9</a> (the first of the Berlin Open Access Conference Series to take place in North America) "convenes leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around <i>The Berlin Declaration."</i> <br />
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<a href="http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/anglistik3/stein/">Dieter Stein</a> talked about the changing role of librarians in an open access environment. So much of our society is based on science and "free and equal participation and access" to scientific research is a necessary foundation for participation in "democratic discourse." I was reminded of the debate around global warming. This is true on a global, as well as a national level.<br />
He argued that open access is not just open access to the final, published end results of research, but throughout the research process and the relationship is changing between the research and the reader(s.)<br />
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<a href="http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/LorraineJHaricombe/57345">Lorraine Haricombe</a> gave a far more pragmatic presentation based on her experience at Kansas University:<br />
<ul><li>No whining!</li>
<li>Two of David Shulberger's Seven steps:</li>
<ul><li>6. "Develop habits of depositing articles." (But students will respond much better to a mediated service in which library staff add manuscripts to the IR on the author's behalf.)</li>
<li>7. "Develop PR program and outreach strategies." (Liaison librarians and faculty liaisons have been really useful in this regard.)</li>
</ul></ul>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-33536553872206096612011-06-25T15:59:00.000-04:002011-06-25T15:59:26.721-04:00Lunch with Brewster Kahle and Robert Miller -- ALA 2011Ray English arranged this lunch meeting with these <a href="http://www.archive.org/about/bios.php">two representatives</a> of the <a href="http://www.archive.org/">Internet Archive</a>. Unfortunately it was a long table at a loud restaurant, so I will have to wait for Ray's summary, but their project to create an <a href="http://openlibrary.org/">open lending library of digital books</a> will definitely appear on the Oberlin Group agenda in October. Stay tuned.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-70271580344577973042011-06-25T12:11:00.000-04:002011-06-25T12:11:35.274-04:00ALA 2011 -- ACRL Copyright Discussion Group<a href="http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/codefairuse/index.shtml">ARL Fair Use Best Practices</a> project released a <a href="http://www.arl.org/bm%7Edoc/arl_csm_fairusereport.pdf">report</a> in December 2010 -- there are problems and solutions out in the community, and identifies 'points of friction.' E-reserves, access for the disabled, digitization for preservation, digital exhibits, ILL, institutional repositories, and non-consumptive research. The project is designed to provide some kind of clear 'best practices' for libraries to follow to make appropriate, canonical, fair use of materials. Librarians end up being gatekeepers, they are on the front line for answering copyright questions.<br />
The <a href="http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/">Center for Social Media</a> has developed <a href="http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/best-practices">other codes</a> and the fair use principles will follow a similar format. Expect to see the code by the end of the year.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-34410835113894600392011-06-24T22:49:00.002-04:002011-06-25T15:47:44.762-04:00ALA 2011 -- the exhibitsToday was my time to check out the exhibits. Two things in particular: web-scale discovery/management systems and e-books.<br />
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But first a shout out to Lexis-Nexis (bet you didn't expect to hear that on this blog!) At the last ALA I whined at their both about the absence of a mobile site for their resources. <a href="http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/mobile/">Now they have one</a>. We will add this to our own mobile site, so stay tuned. Elsevier on the other hand has taken a different tack and created <a href="http://www.info.sciverse.com/sciverse-mobile-applications/overview">apps for Science Direct and Scopus</a>. Good, but they really need to create a mobile friendly site(s) as well.<br />
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<b>Discovery</b><br />
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Even though we have <a href="http://rollins.summon.serialssolutions.com/">Summon</a>, I try to keep up with other major unified discovery tools. Someone from EBSCO finally explained to me why libraries would want to choose <a href="http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery">EBSCO Discovery Service</a> even though they have to use federated searching to access none EBSCO resourses and those results are retrieved, late (of course, it is fed searching after all) and somewhat uncomfortably, to the left of the main results where students really aren't going to see them. The answer is; if you are a heavily EBSCO library EDS makes sense, particularly if you can swap even more resources to subscribe via EBSCO. EDS is basically EBSCOHost. <br />
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I also stopped by the OCLC booth to get an update on their <a href="http://www.oclc.org/webscale/">Web Management Services</a>, which get more impressive, comprehensive, and practical each time I check in. The big development at the moment seems to be in their electronic resources module at the moment. They are still pushing WorldCat Local as a unified discovery service and say it can provide discovery for all resources, but I think that is an over enthusiastic salesperson speaking. We shall see.<br />
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<b>E-books</b><br />
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Checked in with <a href="http://www.eblib.com/">EBL</a>, whose non-linear lending model looks interesting. Also <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/">Project MUSE</a>, who has a long way to go on the <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/about/new/ebook_collections.html">University Press Content Consortium</a>, but it looks very promising. I also stopped by the Overdrive booth. They are mostly knowne for working with public libraries, but <a href="http://www.overdrive.com/Solutions/Schools/HigherEducation/">do also contract with academic librarie</a>s. Everyone is working on downloadable copies to e-reader devices, but Overdrive is way ahead in this.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-73383434433446831992011-06-24T11:15:00.000-04:002011-06-24T11:15:31.682-04:00More from the Summon Advisory Board.Other recent interesting developments include:<br />
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<ul><li><a href="http://www.serialssolutions.com/news/detail/summon-service-to-enable-rapid-discovery-of-images-from-artstor-digital/">Artstor</a></li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.serialssolutions.com/news/detail/hathitrust-discovers-serials-solutions-summon-and-vice-versa/">fulltext indexing of Hathi Trust</a> (only about 1%of the fulltext is so far indexed in Summon) and matching and merging with local records for books so that you can search for words in the fulltext and retrieve a record for a book on the shelf in Olin.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.serialssolutions.com/news/detail/the-summon-service-to-add-full-text-indexing-of-elsevier/">Elsevier's Science Direct and Sciverse</a>.</li>
<li>Expanding the <a href="http://www.serialssolutions.com/news/detail/jstor-and-serials-solutions-partner-to-enhance-discoverability-of-resources/">JSTOR pilot</a>.</li>
</ul>Things we will see in the next few weeks/months include:<br />
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<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">A new, more scanable results lay out.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Better handling of multiple content types.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Fine tuning availability (so that users can easily and conveniently distinguish between an item available locally in fulltext and one available locally in print.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Discipline searching -- so that we can present a "physics" slice of the database (for instance) to users to a libguide, webpage, etc.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/567685">Tammy Allgood from ASU</a> and <a href="http://www2.hud.ac.uk/news/2010news/12_pattern.php">David Pattern from the University of Huddersfield</a> talked about embedding Summon in sites beyond the library. For instance Tammy has been successful in placing a default Summon search box in their iteration of Blackboard, in the campus portal and marketing info all over the ASU web presence. I would really like us to do more of this. They have branded Summon as <a href="http://youtu.be/iNe6yBSaORc">"Library One Search."</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> David is using QRcodes in marketing materials to take people directly to their Summon iteration. He is also making great use of the API to liberally sprinkle access to Summon in their catalog etc. </span></span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lwNrG9IqkQ4/TgSomiRSMII/AAAAAAAABgE/WqLuyiwCYLA/s1600/hudders+opac.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lwNrG9IqkQ4/TgSomiRSMII/AAAAAAAABgE/WqLuyiwCYLA/s200/hudders+opac.png" width="200" /></a></div><br />
Andrea Michalek, of Summon, gave us some background into how relevancy is calculated and has promised to share her PowerPoint with me, it might help with the librarians, and perhaps in advanced instruction sessions.<br />
There was lots more, but that is enough for now.Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-52452449985084561212011-06-23T19:44:00.001-04:002011-06-24T11:16:24.600-04:00Summon Advisory Board at ALA 2011Today was an all day <a href="http://rollins.summon.serialssolutions.com/">Summon</a> Advisory Board Meeting.<br />
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The Summon team are still focused on comprehensiveness and continuing to grow the index (currently up around 800,000,000 items, including those in local catalogs) and relevancy. They see their competition for student attention as Google. Good to see them concentrating on <i>both </i>comprehensiveness and relevancy.<br />
The big issue as this ALA is Serial Solutions announcement that they are moving into the <a href="http://www.serialssolutions.com/management/web-scale-management/">web scale management</a> marketplace along side <a href="http://www.oclc.org/us/en/webscale/default.htm">OCLC</a>. Their aim is to enable libraries to "turn off their ILS." This is going to get interesting.<br />
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More news:<br />
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Database recommender is now coming from an analysis of the retrieved results.<br />
Summon staff have spent a lot of time and money on the hardware and infrastructure underlying the system so that indexing and other good stuff can happen overnight.<br />
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<a href="http://rollins-olin-library.blogspot.com/2011/06/more-from-summon-advisory-board.html">More news coming very soon</a>:Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31023029.post-8875782884115368142011-06-06T09:31:00.000-04:002011-06-06T09:31:44.286-04:00Intriguing summer reads about technology's turning society upside down.<h1><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I have added this reading list recently published by the <a href="http://chronicle.com/">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> with links to available copies of the books. Interestingly, Rollins owns seven of the ten books linked here.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></h1><h1><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Geeks-at-the-Beach-10-Summer/127762">Geeks at the Beach</a></h1><h2 class="deck">9 intriguing summer reads (and a video) about technology's turning society upside down</h2><br />
Technology nowadays is supposed to be disruptive—in a good way— so let it disrupt your summer vacation. Enrich it, we mean, with these provocative books. Last grades submitted? Last commencement handshake done? Take a little time to find out what's in store next year and after that: Social media might rot students' brains—or create a cognitive surplus that improves society; hackers' pranks have definitely improved aspects of MIT; and Twitter may help repressive regimes more than it aids democracy activists. Also watch a video in which a professor outlines the future of smarter robots. Most of these are available in various e-book formats as well as print, so toss your tablet computer or smartphone into the beach bag along with the flip-flops.<br />
<div class="article-body" id="article-body"><br />
<a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/535492220"><b>Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other</b></a> (Basic Books).<b></b> You're not as good at multitasking as you think. That's a key take-away from the latest book by Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who blends personal observations with case studies from her research on how children, teenagers, and elderly people interact with various gadgets. She's not antitechnology—her once-gushing views on virtual identity landed her on the cover of <i>Wired</i> magazine in the 1990s, as outlined in a <i>Chronicle</i> <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Programmed-for-Love-The/125922/">profile</a> this year. In her new book, she argues that we're so excited about checking e-mail and Facebook that we're neglecting face-to-face relationships, but that it's not too late to make some "corrections" to our high-tech habits. It's time to turn off the BlackBerry for a few minutes and set some ground rules for blending cyberspace with personal space.<i>—Jeffrey R. Young</i><br />
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<a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/466335766"><b>Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers Into Collaborators</b></a> [note: link to an earlier edition, with a different subtitle] (Penguin). The technology enthusiast Clay Shirky argues for the transformative potential of the Internet, as more people use their free time in active, collaborative projects rather than watching television. Critics have argued that this view fails to take into account yet more opportunities for passive entertainment, but Mr. Shirky, an associate teacher at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program who was <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Souls-of-the-Machine-Clay/65827/">featured</a> last year in <i>The Chronicle,</i> points to examples such as Wikipedia and a ride-sharing Web site as proof that "the harnessing of our cognitive surplus allows people to behave in increasingly generous, public, and social ways." <i>—Ben Wieder</i><br />
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<a href="http://youtu.be/AY4ajbu_G3k"><b>The Future of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence</b></a> (Stanford University's YouTube channel). The dream of creating general-purpose robot helpers is back! Since he was a kid, Andrew Ng has wanted to build smart robots. Soon after becoming a computer-science professor at Stanford University, though, he advised his grad students that making all-purpose thinking machines was just too hard. But now Mr. Ng has had a breakthrough that renewed his faith in his childhood dream. In a short talk he delivered last month at a Stanford conference on new ideas, he showed off an algorithm that can be applied to different kinds of problems, so that the same algorithm can do speech recognition and also help a robot make sense of images it sees through its camera eyes. C-3PO is looking more realistic by the minute. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY4ajbu_G3k">The talk</a> is available on Stanford's YouTube channel, proving that some of the newest academic ideas these days can be found in video form rather than text. <i>—Jeffrey R. Young</i><br />
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<b><a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/555641621">In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives</a> </b>(Simon & Schuster) and <b><a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/646309306">The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)</a> </b>(University of California Press). The search to determine how Google came to be and how it has shaped society gets two new entries this year. For <i>In the Plex, </i>Steven Levy, a senior writer at <i>Wired,</i> interviewed hundreds of Google employees past and present, including top management—and ate countless meals at the company's Mountain View burrito joint—to document how Google grew from humble origins, in a garage belonging to friends of the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to its current ubiquity. The implications form the subject of Siva Vaidhyanathan's <i>Googlization of Everything.</i> Mr. Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia and frequent <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Can-Google-Do-No-Evil-/127274/">contributor</a> to <i>The Chronicle Review,</i> reminds readers that they aren't consumers of Google's offerings. Rather, their use of Google's services is the product it sells to advertisers. Both books look at the continuing evolution of the Google Books settlement as a key test of how far the company's reach could extend and a sign of how the perception of Google has changed from that of scrappy upstart with a clever motto, "Don't be evil," to global behemoth accused by some of being just that. <i>—Ben Wieder</i><br />
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<b><a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/515402494">The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires</a> </b>(Knopf). Is the Internet on its way to getting monopolized? That question underlies Tim Wu's <i>The Master Switch</i>. The eccentric Columbia Law School professor—he's known to dress up as a <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Can-Tim-Wu-Save-the-Internet-/126756/">blue bear</a> at the annual Burning Man festival—recounts how ruthless companies consolidated their power over earlier information industries like the telephone, radio, and film. So which tech giant seems likely to grab control of the net? Let's just say you probably won't see Steve Jobs reading Mr. Wu's book on the beach this summer. <i>—Marc Parry</i><br />
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<b><a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/702042799">Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century</a> </b>(Polity Press). To judge by the sometimes breathless news stories about publishing in the digital age, it feels like we're perpetually on the verge of a tipping point, when e-books will overtake print books as a source of revenue for publishers. John B. Thompson, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge, analyzes the inner workings of the contemporary trade-publishing industry. (He did the same for scholarly publishing in an earlier work,<a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/60367687"> <i>Books in the Digital Age</i></a>.) Mr. Thompson examines the roles played by agents, editors, and authors as well as differences among small, medium, and large publishing operations, and he probes under the surface of the great digital shift. We're too hung up on the form of the book, he argues: "A revolution <i>has</i> taken place in publishing, but it is a <i>revolution in the process</i> rather than a <i>revolution in the product.</i>"<i>—Jennifer Howard</i><br />
</div><div class="article-body" id="article-body"><b><a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/515438457">The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom</a> </b>(PublicAffairs).<b> </b>Sure, the 2009 rebellion in Iran was on Twitter. The uprising in Lebanon and pro-democracy movements in Russia and China also made Facebook and even old-fashioned e-mail. But technology is actually doing far more to bolster authoritarian regimes than to overturn them, writes Evgeny Morozov in this sharp reality check on the media-fueled notion that information is making everybody free. Mr. Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, points out that the Iranian government posted "most wanted" pictures of protesters on the Web, leading to several arrests. The Muslim Brotherhood blogs actively in Egypt. And China pays people to make pro-authority statements on the Internet, paying a few cents for each endorsement. The Twitter revolution, in this book, is "overblown and completely unsubstantiated rhetoric."<i>—Josh Fischman</i> <br />
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<a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/50745145"><b>Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT</b></a> (MIT Press).<b> </b>The word "hacking" is said to have originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sometimes referring to students' ingenious pranks involving the university's iconic buildings. The tradition of engineering-related pranks on the campus is celebrated in this well-illustrated coffee-table book by T.F. Peterson (described as "MIT historian" but actually a <i>nom de plume</i> hack), just released in an updated edition. One of the glossy photos shows a fire truck placed on campus's Great Dome in 2006 to commemorate the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001. MIT even employs a team of security officials charged with removing hacks, though they agree to let the most clever and harmless stunts stay around for a few days.<i> —Jeffrey R. Young</i><br />
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<a href="http://rollins.worldcat.org/oclc/449865498"><b>The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains</b></a> (Norton). Multimedia—dangerous! Online research—depthless! Classroom screens—dubious! If you want a contrarian take on technology, Nicholas Carr is your man. In <i>The Shallows</i>, just out in paperback, the Colorado-based author warns that the Internet is rewiring our brains and short-circuiting our ability to think. And that has big consequences for teaching, he <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Technology-Making-Your/66128/">told</a> <i>The Chronicle</i> last year: "The assumption that the more media, the more messaging, the more social networking you can bring in will lead to better educational outcomes is not only dubious but in many cases is probably just wrong."<i>—Marc Parry</i></div>Jonathan Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12959487328509948818noreply@blogger.com0