Academic Computing Blog

A “Candadian Studies” page and a “Tokyo Studies” page have been created as course page to explore the workiongs of the ScholarPress plugin to Worpress.

Following a suggestion from Geoff Duke, and seconded by Paul Martin, I’ve both upgraded this installation from 2.5 to 2.7, and installed the ScholarPress.Net “Courseware” plugin. 

Wordpress in general makes a nice content management system; perhaps this plugin will make it something that plays nice with Blackboard etc.

Joi Ito explains Creative Commons to Loic Le Meur in light of “transaction costs” ….

[

Originally found on Oliver Thymann’s “Oliver’s Stuff” blog .

The Google Notebook appliance has arrived with not much fanfare – the news competes with Apple’s announcement of the new MacBook, Sony’s announcement of a new pocket Vaio UX, Yahoo’s announcement of a new home page and probably others still to come. The Google announcement is byfar the most interesing one.

Google Notebook is a Firefox (and IE) extention that creates a notepad at the bottom right of the browser. You can “cut and paste” information from the current webpage (text, images, links), insert tags, and store the information on your Google “page.” The notebook can be private or public. Installing the Firefox extentions and then restarting the browser takes you to a startup tutorial page. After that, we’re on.

Although it’s branded “Google Labs”, not “Google Beta”, it feels more like betaware – some of the features are less than idea when compared to popular social network sites – or maybe I should just read the manual :).

[1] Google Notebook, for IE and FireFox, http://www.google.com/notebook

[2] Press release, “Sony delivers world’s first full-function, pocket-sized PC”, San Diego, May 16, 2006. http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/consumer/computer_peripheral/notebooks/release/22130.html

[3] Apple Website, Introducing the all-new MacBook, http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html

Using RSS to increase user awareness of e-resources in academic libraries
Jay Bhatt
Drexel University
http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/using-rss-to-increase-user-awareness-of-e-resources-in-academic-libraries/

Engineering Resources Blog:
http://englibrary.blogspot.com

Jay’s blog on the Digital Divide Network
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/jaybhatt

Jay’s Journal on LISNews
http://www.lisnews.org/~Jay/journal

Jay’s submissions on LISNews
http://www.lisnews.org/~Jay

Abstract:

There are numerous blogs and RSS feeds available from a variety of scientific databases, electronic journals and electronic books still not well-utilized by many academic libraries supporting scientific disciplines. Since one of the important roles of academic libraries is to promote and provide instruction in the use of electronic resources, it is evident that the libraries need to play a pivotal role in developing awareness about the evolving applications of scientific blogs and RSS feeds. Various course offerings such as those in biomedical engineering, chemistry and engineering management can effectively make use of such blogs and RSS feeds to support both face-to-face and distance learning. Their applications may include: current awareness services to keep up with new information, RSS feeds of new journal article citations, RSS feeds of research queries in electronic databases, and news alerts from different subject areas. Other library related uses may include RSS feeds of new book titles based on selected keywords, blog entries for course related information, and announcing library related events. A particular emphasis on the Engineering Resources blog created for the Engineering Departments at Drexel is highlighted to show how it is used by engineering students at Drexel. Faculty collaboration in the creation and use of course related blogs can further enhance their educational partnership with the libraries. RSS feeds can now be integrated into Refworks, a bibliography management tool, to facilitate citation of those feeds in student research papers. It is strongly envisioned that this presentation will further motivate academic libraries supporting scientific disciplines to seriously consider using them if they have not yet done so. Overall, almost all disciplines in academic libraries can benefit, provide additional avenues to reach their faculty and students and in the process help students learn valuable life-long learning skills.

This presentation attempts to answer questions such as:

1. What is a blog? What is RSS? How does it work? What is a feedreader?

2. Why is it important for faculty and students in academic libraries to learn more about it?

3. What are major electronic resources that provide RSS feeds?

4. What are some ways by which RSS feeds can be used in academic libraries?

5. Can academic blogs improve information seeking skills of faculty and students? If so, how?

6. What are different ways that information consultants/librarians can use to develop user awareness of RSS feeds?

7. Where are we heading?

Bonnie C. Carroll, President of Information International Associates Inc., will present the Keynote Address at the Opening Session of the Eighth International Conference on Grey Literature. This year’s conference is titled “Harnessing the Power of Grey”; and if there is one informational professional who can bring this to task, it is Bonnie Carroll. As President of IIa, she supports government and industry in managing information as a strategic resource.

Recent Keynote Addresses in the GL-Series were presented by:

GL7 – Dr. Laurent Romary, National Centre for Scientific Research, France
GL6 – James G. Neal, Columbia University, United States
GL5 – Dr. Helmut Artus, Information Centre for the Social Sciences, Germany

More information may be found at

http://www.textrelease.com
http://www.greynet.org

TextRelease
GL8 Program and Conference Bureau
Beysterveld 251
1083 KE Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Tel/Fax +31(0)20-672.1217
info@textrelease.com
http://www.textrelease.com
http://www.greynet.org

Re: Eprints, Dspace, or Espace?

Question:

I need to compare and choose a suitable software for a repository. I have decided to discuss ARNO, CDSware, DSpace, Eprints, and Fedora. Could you briefly discuss each one in terms of suitability for a university?

Answer:

The answer is very simple: It doesn’t matter! The only thing that matters is that it should not be “ESpace” (Empty-Space); in other words, there has to be a policy that ensures that the university archives are filled with the intended content.

All the main OAI-compliant archive-creating softwares are functionally equivalent, because after all, what they do is quite simple: They make sure that all deposited papers have the same metadata tags, the obvious ones: author-name, article-title, date, journal-name, etc., so that they are interoperable as well as harvestable by OAI service providers.

The article then goes on to provide anice background on ARNO, CDSware, DSpace, Eprints, and Fedora.

Article URL: http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind04&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&F=l&S=&P=87449

For more information about the Open Access Initiative, see http://www.openarchives.org/