Category: Ideas
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CFP: What is the role of distance education in the implementation of the right to education?
This might be an interesting idea for some of you: The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in collaboration with 5 international journals, is launching a call for research and “effective practices” papers to be published in 2008 concerning distance education and the right to education (in particular reference to article 26 of the Universal Declaration…
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Book sales get a lift from Google scan plan
Hmm, looks like I was right (me and every other sane person); publishers are starting to admit that the books that are available through Google Book Search and Amazon’s Search Inside program are <gasp!> actually selling more copies! Some quotes from the Reuters piece: ""Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said…
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Just what am I looking at?
I have been increasingly interested in how flat the world of research literature seems to appear to the average undergraduate student. I say "seems to appear" because I haven’t actually talked to any students about this, so it’s really just a wild theory. Here goes. I think students who have only researched through their computer…
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Collaborative Screencasts and Blog Recommendation
I’ve got an undersung blog to recommend to you: Brain_blog from the Library at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. The librarians there are using this blog more as a newsletter, and only publish to it once per month, with a single lengthy post, and that’s why it’s probably not as well-known as it should be. …
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Linking to chat services in the catalogue
Stephen Francoeur at Digital Reference has an intriguing post about how the New Jersey Instititute of Technology has a feature in their catalogue where a search result that ends in no hits provides a link to the school’s virtual reference service. That’s a great idea! I’ve already told our Catalogue Wrangler how lucky he is…
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Camtasia studio on the Mac?
Techsmith is trying to justify developing a version of Camtasia Studio for the Mac. As you know, this is something I’d love to see, and I’ve been contacted by other librarians looking for this to happen as well. Troy Stein, product manager for Camtasia Studio, has a survey up at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB225KKUB3JMP – if you’re a…
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Why D’Arcy Norman is a minor deity – reason #27 (Screencasting on the Mac)
D’Arcy Norman works in the Teaching and Learning Centre here at the University of Calgary, and has helped me with at least 26 projects or ideas prior to this, but I just wanted to share the latest with you. As you know, I’ve been looking for a tool that will produce screencasts on the Mac…
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Listen to why it’s good to give books away
Just finished listening to a short CBC piece in which SciFi author and BoingBoing.net contributor Cory Doctorow ‘splains how much sense it makes for books to be discoverable via Google Book Search and the like, and how he’s more sucessful commercially for having given away copies of his books. He points out that people don’t…