The Distant Librarian

The ABCs of Online Teaching

From an email I received. Not sure how much is relevant to librarians...:

You are invited to contribute and participate in this week's FridayLive! session.

Join the FridayLive! online discussion: Friday, May 30, 2008.

Topic: The ABCs of Online Teaching

Speakers: Steve Gilbert, TLT Group and Kathy Saville, Northern Michigan University

Description:

Today, there are many books and articles published discussing online teaching. The problem is today's faculty are not reading them. Faculty will focus their time on literature of their discipline not on how to teach online. Our method of using the ABCs provides a quick and easy 26 strategies for teaching successfully online.

Participate: Please register to participate in the session:

FridayLive! May 30, 2008

1:30-2:00pm EDT Tech Setup/Orientation

2:00-3:00pm EDT Main Session

3:00-3:30pm EDT After Thoughts

Click here to register!

People and adults...

This week's TWIT (This Week in Technology) podcast was a particularly good one for anyone interested in copyright and the PATRIOT act. Brewster Kahle kicked things off with a discussion of his fight against a National Security Letter that was served to the Internet Archive. According to Brewster there have been approximately 200,000 of these letters served, and his was only the 3rd challenge! (you may recall one of the others). A fair amount of other interesting stuff, including Roz Savage's attempt to row solo across the Pacific. The show ends with an excerpt from Cory Doctorow's latest book, Little Brother, which is available as a DRM-free purchase ($20) from Random House (apparently their first DRM-free offering, at Cory's insistence). I do believe I'll be getting this for my summer vacation drive.

(No affiliation)

Bye-bye Live Search Books and Live Search Academic

Roy Tennant points out that as of next week(!) Microsoft is switching off Live Search Books and Live Search Academic. Wow. I didn't go there first (ever), but it was good to have some competition for Google Book Search and Google Scholar. Interesting, definitely.

Two new online programs for Archives and LibSci

Library Journal reports that San José State University's School of Library and Information Science is offering two new online programs; a Master of Archives and Records Administration (MARA) degree and a "Gateway Ph.D. Program" in conjunction with Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Information Technology.

Specifying privacy amongst your Facebook friends

Well that's annoying, ScribeFire ate my original post :-/

At the beginning of the month I mentioned a keynote called Social Networking in the Academy.  During the Q&A session someone asked if it was possible to limit how much of your profile is shown to different "levels" of friends, and I didn't think it was.  But my colleague Jennifer figured out that you can create multiple groups for your friends, and then specify what each group can actually see.  So now if you wanted to friend students (or whoever) but not let them see your full profile, you can do that.  Here's Jennifer's screencast on how to do it, and you'll find the link at the bottom of the wiki page that was used during the presentation as well.  Thanks Jennifer!.

OSX Screencasting Faceoff

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a good roundup of free through expensive screencasting applications for OSX (Mac). Taking the top spot for freebies is Jing. Screenflick gets the nod for the "casual user", and ScreenFlow is the best overall. I love Jing for quick and dirty, and I own iShowU and SnapZ Pro for longer captures, but have never tried out Screenflick - guess I'll go do that.

How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges

From the Chronicle's Wired Campus,

Laura N. Gassaway, associate dean for academic affairs and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, says that a lawsuit recently filed against Georgia State University regarding electronic reserves could have implications for how colleges distribute course material online.

Full post.

Trends in e-learning: What does it mean for libraries?

From Stephen's Lighthouse:

Upcoming free SirsiDynix Institute Event

Trends in e-learning: What does it mean for libraries?
Date : May 21, 2008
Start Time : 11 a.m. Eastern
Length : 1 hour

While in some sectors e-learning may seem "old hat", the world of e-learning continues to change at a rapid pace. With newer technologies such as mobile devices, technologies such as Second Life, litigation in the e-learning vendor arena, and evolving standards, e-learning remains a dynamic area that we have to keep our eye on. And while many libraries have fully developed e-learning environments, many are just getting beginning to explore the possibilities. This workshop will focus on issues related to how availability and interoperability are changing the way e-learning is being delivered as well how developments in open source and open access as well as social networking are changing the way e-learning occurs.

Frank Cervone —Professor of Education and Director of the Library, Information, and Media Studies program, Chicago State University

The author of numerous articles and four books on topics related to information technology, he writes a regular column for OCLC Systems and Services: International Digital Library Perspectives and has been an invited speaker at library conferences in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and Brazil. He was a member of the NISO working group on metasearch and is the past chair of the CARLI (Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois) Learning Objects Task Force. He has a MSEd with a specialization in online teaching and learning from the California State University, an MA in Information Technology Management from DePaul University and a Ph.D. in Management and Information Systems from Northcentral University.

Register here.

CARL E-learning Research and Development Grant

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) E-learning Research and Development Grant is designed to support research and the development by librarians actively involved in the development and delivery of e-learning.

Two grants of $1,000 are awarded annually, when merited, primarily to members of CARL libraries.

The objectives of the grant are:

• to support research and development in the field of e-learning and libraries
• to encourage and support research and development undertaken by practitioners in the field of e-learning and libraries
• to promote research and development in the field of e-learning and libraries by and/or about Canadians

Criteria for Evaluation

Proposals for funding are judged on:

1. originality or importance of research or development;
2. relevance of the project to the goals and objectives of the Canadian Association of Research libraries;
3. cost-effectiveness of research in terms of the expected influence and ramifications of the results (pertaining to research or development only);
4. timeliness of the research (primarily for research or development) must be less than two years;
5. appropriateness of the proposed research method and development process;
6. comprehensiveness of application;
7. proof of effective management and control of the project;
8. indication of other funding sources to match the $1,000 CARL grant resulting in a $2,000 research or development project.

Preference will be given to submissions from practitioners in CARL libraries. However, years in which no suitable applications from practitioners are received, applications of suitable quality and content from other sources will be considered.

Submission of Proposals
Proposals should be submitted via e-mail as a Word document. The proposal should be in the form of a letter which explicitly addresses the criteria for evaluation listed above and also containing:

• name and address of applicant, mailing address and date of application;
• a reasonable description of the research or development project identifying methodology and development process;
• duration of the project, including a detailed project timetable;
• assessment of the potential utility of research results to the Canadian research library community;
• detailed assessment of costs and statement of other grants/awards received;
• a current Curriculum Vitae

Conditions of the Grant:

• the grant must be acknowledged in any promotional activity relating to the research or development accomplished through the CARL E-learning Research & Development Grant
• a report will be filed with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries within two months of the completion of the project or two years after receiving the grant, whichever is the shorter time period.

Deadline
Proposals should be submitted via email by midnight June 15 annually. Submissions by fax or post will not be accepted.

All proposals should be emailed to:

broe@uottawa.ca
Subject Line: CARL E-learning Research & Development Grant
c/o Brent Roe, Executive Director

Oh yeah, almost forgot - I got a new job!

Work life's been such a whirlwind I forgot to let y'all know that as of May 1 I'm now officially the Public Services Systems Librarian here at the University of Calgary. I've been filling the role since last October and have been having a blast, so I'm really tickled that I get to stay in the position. Big things to complete this summer - launch Federated Search, and migrate website to Drupal. Glad I've got great folks around me to help!

I'm not changing anything on the blog, and I'll still be keeping an eye on the world of DE, so I hope you stick around for the reads.

Social Networking in the Academy

I had the pleasure this morning of speaking on a keynote panel at our annual Faculty Technology Days here at the U of Calgary.  My fellow panelists were D'Arcy Norman, Dr. Maria Bakardjieva, and Todd Andre, and we were billed as "experts" on social networking as a communication and learning tool.  You can see the outline of D'Arcy's intro to Social Networking and my brief outline for how libraries are using Facebook specifically on the wiki page dedicated to this talk.  I found the session really interesting - we'd structured it to get a lot of audience participation (72 or so registered), and we did, including interesting thoughts from students (Todd) and teaching faculty.  I hadn't realized how overburdened some of them feel w/o having to learn about new social networks and how to work them into their curriculum.  Not that I'd recommend sitting through the whole thing as the quality of the recording is low, but I created an account with ustream.tv and we streamed the session live, and recorded it as well.  It's here if you want to give it a crack:

Happy Birthday, little guy!

Today is my son's 6th Birthday!  :-)

Open Doors and Open Minds: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution

SPARC and Science Commons have released "Open Doors and Open Minds: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution." The new white paper assists institutions in adopting policies that ensure the widest practical exposure for scholarly works produced, such as that adopted by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in February. Full Press Release.

Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition

From their press release:

Primary Research Group has published Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition, (isbn 1-57440-101-7).

Data in the report is based on a survey of 75 academic, public and special libraries. Librarians detail their plans on how they plan to develop their e-book collections, what they think of e-book readers and software, and which e-book aggregators and publishers appeal to them most and why. Other issues covered include: library production of e-books and collection digitization, e-book collection information literacy efforts, use of e-books in course reserves and inter-library loan, e-book pricing and inflation issues, acquisition sources and strategies for e-books and other issues of concern to libraries and book publishers.

Some of the report's findings are that:

• Well over 81% of the sample cataloged their e-book collection and listed it in their online library catalog.
• For the most part, librarians in the sample felt that their patrons were less skilled in using e-book collections than they were in using databases of magazine, newspaper and journal articles.
• The libraries in the sample had MARC records for a mean of approximately 74% of the e-books in their collections.
• Many libraries reported significant use of electronic directories. 12.5% reported extensive use and 30% said that use was significant. The larger libraries reported the heaviest use.
• Use of e-books in the hard sciences was particularly high. More than 30% of participants said that use of e-books in the hard sciences (defined as chemistry, physics and biology) was quite extensive and another 26% noted significant use.
• Libraries in the sample maintained a print version for a mean of 24% of the e-books in their e-book collections.
• Nearly 21% of the libraries in our sample have digitized out-of-copyright books in their collections in order to make their contents more available to their patrons.
• Libraries in the sample expect to renew a mean of 77% of their current e-book contract.
• E-book spending grew rapidly in 2008 but slowed significantly from 2007 growth rates.
• E-books account for only about 3.9% of the books on course reserve, with a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 30%.
• Nearly 70% of the sample's total spending on e-books was with aggregators, while just over 24.6% of the total spending was spent with individual publishers.

Data is broken out by library budget size, for US and non-US libraries and for academic and non-academic libraries. The report presents more than 300 tables of data on e-book use by libraries, as well as analysis and commentary.