Another event to make my shake my head in awe. It seems that a U.S. government funded health database no longer returns results when one searches for the term abortion.
Update: thanks to LISNews, who shared the news that Popline, the database noted above, unlocked the abortion search sometime today. Yay to the power of social software for bringing attention to the problem and inciting action!
Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted – as with most people I know, I’ve been incredibly busy. Luckily, I can now say that I’m on research leave! Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you view it) it will not be a slow, easy going research leave. I have tons to do – I am preparing for 4 conferences (presenting at CiL in a week, and preparing for presentations at CLA and WILU, as well as writing a paper which will be presented at IFLA). Busy, busy, busy!
It does mean that I get to catch up on some reading and do some much needed thinking (it’s also annual performance review time, which means goal setting and general planning). Once I have all of my presentations done, I hope to start spending some more time on exploring the role of technology in teaching – something that has certainly become a growing interest since I started Second Life.
In the reading department, I finally got to read Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail and Learning 2.0 (it’s only been sitting on my desk for the past couple of months). I quite enjoyed the article and it fits in to my new interest in teaching and technology. It notes that there is a change towards social learning, focusing on not what we learn but how we learn. The culture is changing from “I think therefore I am” to “We participate therefore we are”. Students are moving from learning about subject matter to learning to be a full participant in the field, and this is being aided by the internet and the social web.
While this has some interesting educational applications, it got me wondering what it means for academic libraries. If we are becoming a culture of participation, are libraries adjusting to meet this? We have always been the keepers and houses of information – how can we be key players in the culture of participation. Learning commons are one way to help this culture – providing the space for students to work in groups, become teachers to their peers – but is there more we can do? We see some libraries leading the way in the use of new technologies, such as Second Life. What else can we do to engage our students in a new culture of Learning 2.0?
One research leave just started and I’m already brewing up ideas for next year’s leave!
I was invited to speak at York University by the Emerging Technologies group about SL and libraries (I threw in some education too). It was a great turn out – I was impressed by the interest and questions. Perhaps we’ll see them in SL sometime soon. In case you’d like to see what I talked about, you can check out my York Presentation.
I’ve got a bunch of other presentations coming up (the next one at Computers in Libraries) and a research leave. Lots of work ahead. I’ll share when they’re done.
Another new site has popped up around here. We now have a site for our popular reading collection – a collection that’s been a huge hit so far! The site let’s you browse by cover, write reviews, share comments and recommend new purchases. Very cool – I’m busy spreading the word to students. Check this site out for more info.
The city of Windsor is trying to force the library board to cut $800 000, 10% of its budget, without closing branches or reducing hours. The library board is refusing to make the cuts themselves. More information on this fight can be found here.
Just heard about this huge project, which is undertaking to document all species of life on Earth. Pretty cool idea. The first release of about 30 000 entries was just released. You can check it out here or read more about it here. It officially launches tomorrow and hopes to document all 1.8 million species of life, with it’s ultimate goal being to help in conservation efforts.
In honour of the start of Freedom to Read week here, I thought I’d post this link. If you just followed it, you’ll know that it is a pic of the Parthenon, or at least a replica, made of banned books. Very cool way to combine two of my favorite things – books and antiquity. The best part – when it was taken down, the public was allowed to keep the books! It’s been out for a while but I felt it was good to share again.
I’m not sure how this one snuck by me, but it seems our catalogue now offers RSS feeds for saved searches! No more checking to see if anything is new, I can save the search and if any new material comes in that matches that search, I’ll get the results via RSS feed. Cool! More about this new feature here.
A fine idea (sorry for the pun)! Instead of paying for your fines, students are given the option to bring in canned goods. Every canned good brought in removes $2 from their fines to a maximum of $20. The canned goods go to the student food bank centre, where students in need can go and get help when they need it most. The only thing I might do would be to increase the frequency of this project and extend it out to local food banks too (1 time campus, next time local, etc). More info on this program here. Wonder if we could get this started here?
The Horizon 2008 report is out. I haven’t taken a good read through yet, just wanted to get the heads-up out there. I will certainly have more to say once I’m finished with it. A quick glance seems to note that some of the predications from last year have fallen off, in particular virtual worlds. I’ll post on this soon, so stay posted!
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