Friday, September 25, 2009

Times Are A Changing: Libraries of the Future

There was an interesting piece, entitled "Libraries of the Future", that appeared yesterday in InsideHigherEd. In broad strokes it casts the library of the future (or the emergent paradigm of the space of libraries) as one where academic libraries, namely, are highly decentralized and differently staffed (read euphemism for disappearance of traditional reference services). The piece does intimate a return to disciplinarity (literally--re: embedded librarians) and a shifting toward information literacy and outreach as core library service.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Living and Learning with New Media

For today's class I asked my ENGL 101 students to read Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. I also asked them to remark on "issues" (prophetic, accurate, "good", "bad", whatever) they may have had with the piece. Most of the students are 17 or 18 years old and were in the researchers' target demographic when the study was conducted. My students' remarks follow...

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Harvard's DASH (excerpt & link)

Harvard's DASH for Open Access

September 1, 2009—Harvard's leadership in open access to scholarship took a significant step forward this week with the public launch of DASH—or Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard—a University-wide, open-access repository. More than 350 members of the Harvard research community, including over a third of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, have jointly deposited hundreds of scholarly works in DASH.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Dealing With Budget Cuts: SPL Closes for a Week

Times are tough all over...I've found it interesting and enlightening to watch how libraries are dealing with new budget realities. An artifact below (click to enlarge)...