lfa

Educause has published their study of student’s use of technology. There was one question related to the use of library materials (Q2.14, How often do you use an electronic device to access a library resource on an official college or university library web site) and one that asked them to rate themselves regarding various technology skills (e.g., spreadsheets, presentation software, course management software). 94% of the students surveyed answered that they had used the library web site; the median use is monthly. About an equal number rate their skill level as basic (46.9%) or advanced (43.7%), with seniors more likely to rate themselves as advanced (50.0% vs. 36.9% for freshmen).

Educause has posted a podcast of Jeremy talking about LibraryFind and other library technology issues at the recent CNI 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting. The interview is about 18 minutes long.

Birnholtz, Jeremy P. “What does it mean to be an author? The intersection of credit, contribution, and collaboration in science.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Volume 57, Issue 13, Pages 1758-1770.

Interesting article on how the meaning of authorship is changing. While the focus is on the high energy physics community, it has implications for many scientific fields. Of particular interest is the What’s Ahead section of the paper, with its ideas on definining authorship

• All authors should be able to defend the research presented in a publication if, for example, they are challenged by a colleague from another experiment at a conference or meeting. Thus, people not closely familiar with the work should not be listed as authors (or at least as major authors)
• Authors who have made major contributions need means for distinguishing themselves from the rest of the people on the project. If hyperauthorship is to be used, there should be a way to draw this distinction. Indeed, many people already do this by listing their major efforts separately on their curriculum vita - but there is no formal way to verify these claims.
• Authors should be familiar with the work when they are listed as authors. This is similar to the first class, but here the point is that individuals should request to be removed or demoted if they are listed as an author/major author and are not familiar with the work. This raises interesting issues in the case of publications in people’s nonnative languages.

Just reporting on the following:

Casey Bisson named one of first winners of Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration

Casey Bisson, information architect at Plymouth State University, was presented with a $50,000 Mellon award for Technology Collaboration by Tim Berners-Lee at the Coalition for Networked Information meeting in Washington DC December 4.

His project, WP-OPAC, is seen as the first step for allowing library catalogs to integrate with WordPress, a popular open-source content management system.

The awards committee included Mitchell Baker, Mozilla; Tim Berners-Lee,W3; Vinton Cerf, Google; Ira Fuchs, Mellon; John Gage, Sun Microsystems; Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media; John Seely Brown, and Donald Waters, Mellon. Berners-Lee said, “These awards are about open source. It’s a good thing because it makes our lives easier, and the award winners used open source to solve problems.”

Library of Congress?
The revolutionary part of the announcement, however, was that Plymouth State University would use the $50,000 to purchase Library of Congress catalog records and redistribute them free under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license or GNU. OCLC has been the source for catalog records for libraries, and its license restrictions do not permit reuse or distribution. However, catalog records have been shared via Z39.50 for several years without incident.

“Libraries’ online presence is broken. We are more than study halls in the digital age. For too long, libraries have have been coming up with unique solutions for common problems,” Bisson said. “Users are looking for an online presence that serves them in the way they expect.” He said “The intention is to bring together the free or nearly-free services available to the user.”

This is from an Open Libraries post.

Paula turned me on to this presentation at CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication): “Insufficient informaiton anxiety: rebuilding pedagogy for researched arguments,” Rebecca Moore Howard, 2006. (It may have been the keynote address) rnrn
rnrnrnhttp://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Papers/CCCC2006.htmlrnrnrn
rnrnHoward’s description of the disconnect in teaching formats in an increasingly formatless world reminded me of Paula’s comment about students being “format agnostic.” She also articulates several of the things that have been swirling around in my brain these days: “rhizomatic” research process, experienced credibiltiy vs surface credibility and evaluating sources on the fly rather than reflecting on them in the context of other work.