January 2012
77 posts
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“Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1)...”
– C. S. Lewis, in a letter to Sarah, his godchild, on 3 April 1949 via Stan Carey (via bobulate)
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Private Eye: six myths about why we don’t need... →
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ProfHacker: What I’ve Learned from Teaching with... →
I had high hopes when I handed out iPads to students in my graduate seminar this semester. I wanted to explore the possibilities of tablet computing and see firsthand how tablets might be used in higher education. I also wanted students to see for themselves where the iPad might fit into their lives and their careers – and into the future of media and communication.
For the most part,...
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Librarian.net: Getting serious about SOPA – what... →
I oppose SOPA unequivocally; it’s vague, it’s anti-free-speech, and it won’t solve the problem it’s designed to combat. One of the things that is tricky about SOPA–the legislation moving through Congress that threatens to enact stiff penalties for online piracy–is the number of things you need to understand to even understand what it does. I’m very good with computers and I had to spend...
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For Reading and Learning, Kids Prefer E-Books to... →
thelifeguardlibrarian:
thelibrarianontherun:
“Given the choice between reading e-books or print books, children prefer e-books, a new, exploratory field study shows. Children who read e-books also retain and comprehend just as much as when they read print books, the study also suggests.
A new “QuickStudy” – so named for its short duration and the small size of its sample group – from the Joan...
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LISNews: Is the Loss of Objective Search a Bad... →
Imagine a research database, that upon searching for “wind energy,” gives top results about the benefits of turbine technology to one student, while another student (with a different search history, or in a different state) is instead shown articles that focus on the noise and vertigo that wind turbines produce. Sound fishy? Google has unveiled a more personal search that does...
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AOTUS: "Yes We Scan" →
In September 2011, the White House launched an online petition web site, We the People, where anyone can post an idea asking the Obama administration to take action on a range of issues, get signatures, and get a response from their government.
It’s an experiment in democracy, which is generating new ideas and improving on old ideas every day. One of those rising ideas is “Yes We Scan.”
...
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PLA Blog: An eBook is not a Book →
I’d like to explain why I don’t think eReader lending (Nook, Kindle, Sony, any reader at all) is a good plan for public libraries. It’s not that lending eReaders is a *bad* thing at all: if someone gifts your library a garbage bag full of Nooks, what the heck, please use them! Instead I’d argue that libraries can have some foresight and spend their dollars on other programs, equipment,...
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PC Sweeney's Blog: Libraries – Arguments for the... →
This is the post where I defend our library’s decision to Loan Nooks and make the argument that we should drop eBook circulation altogether. I know there are a bunch of reasons why people are going to argue that we shouldn’t check out eReaders and not to Drop Overdrive so I’m going to handle each of the ones that I have encountered here. (Later I’m going to argue for all the reasons why...
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Censored Genius: The Internet is not a right →
Food for thought.
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Inside Higher Ed: Recalibrating Expectations for... →
This past fall fully 90 percent percent of the CIOs who participated in the annual Campus Computing Survey agreed that “eBook content will be an important source for instructional resources in five years,” up from 76 percent in fall 2009. Campus IT leaders were also bullish, if slightly less so, on the rising role of eReaders as a “platform for instructional content” (82 percent agreed in...
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“Who owns Lolita? Not the girl, of course — Humbert Humbert tried that and look...”
– Jennifer Jenkins discusses the public domain in “‘Til the End of Eternity” for HuffPost (via thelifeguardlibrarian)
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Oxford Patch: E-Reader May Be Invading Your... →
A tradeoff exists. E-reader users may sacrifice a degree of privacy in order to benefit from technology. And since the technological advantages are definite and the threat to privacy often seems like a vague possibility, it’s a trade that many consumers would deem fair.
So why would critics even bring up the concept of privacy? Does it really matter if our reading habits are being...
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Here we go again: Congress considers blocking... →
infoneer-pulse:
The federal government, and thus US taxpayers, provide more money for scientific research than any other single entity. In order to provide access to these paper to scientists and the public alike, the National Institutes of Health adopted a policy in which research it funded would be made open access one year after its publication in journals, even those that are normally...
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Bookish: 5 ways to really revolutionize the book... →
1. Let me subscribe to my favorite authors. 2. Keep books updated for one price. 3. Buy a print copy, get an electronic copy, too. 4. Give more of my money to authors. 5. Indie bookstores should sell e-books.
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Bibliographic Wilderness: Why a shift to ebooks... →
It isn’t because libraries can’t figure out, technically, how to loan out ebooks. It’s because publishers don’t want them to, and may be able to prevent it.
A shift to ebooks has been predicted for a while, and seems to be happening. I’ve talked to many people who wonder why their public libraries don’t offer more ebooks they can download on their e-reader of choice, assuming it’s because...
