Academic Computing Blog

RFID & the Internet of Things
Mediamatic, Amsterdam
May 9, 10, 100
http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11183-en.html

RFID will play a pivotal role in fusing the physical world with the digital. RFID allows for the unique identification of objects, and any kind of online data can be linked to these unique ID’s. Here is where the real world and the internet become two faces of the same reality. Things go online.

Questions that come up: What are useful things to have online? How can the sharing of information between things yield us new valuable meanings and experiences? What new kinds of play can we think of, when our ordinary stuff begins to talk among itself? Will objects gain personalities?

And the key question seems to be: What are valid and imporant kinds of human agency that should be designed into an Internet of Things?

The participants of this workshop will develop scenarios for an internet of things. Ideas can range from scripts for small new rituals to outlines of societal changes of epic scale. The critical, utopian or nightmarish scenarios will be informed by lectures with concrete knowledge about currently available technology; by handy workshop tools that give hands-on experience in developing RFID applications, and by insightful presentations by cutting-edge makers and thinkers.

The AIMSA conference series has provided a biennial forum for the presentation of Artificial intelligence research and development since 1984. The conference, which is held in Bulgaria, covers the full range of topics in Artificial Intelligence and related disciplines and provides an ideal forum for international scientific exchange between Central/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world.

As its name indicates the conference is dedicated to Artificial intelligence in its entirety. However, for AIMSA 2006, we would like to put the emphasis on a specific phenomenon that affects all areas of AI: the application and leverage of artificial intelligence technology in the context of human collaboration which today is mediated by the web. Artificial intelligence is used for supporting human communication in a wide variety of ways. For example, reasoning over the semantic web, analysing relationships between people, enhancing the user experience by learning from their behavior, applying natural language to large multilingual corpora, planning a combination of web services, adapting and personalising educational material, etc. All Artificial intelligence techniques are amenable to facilitating communication on the web. Moreover, these techniques are not deployed in isolation but are typically combined with results from other disciplines such as the social sciences, discrete mathematics, network computing, or cryptography. AIMSA 2006 aims to reflect this plethora of avenues whereby Artificial intelligence supports human collaboration based activities.

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2006 Workshop “Developing a Digital Libraries Education Program”

June 15, 8:30A-5P
Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Indiana University (IU) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) will be offering a full-day workshop, aimed at digital library professionals, researchers, and educators to cover prominent issues surrounding digital libraries education. It is based on an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded collaborative DL education project. It is the second year of a three-year project. We have spent the past year recruiting our first classes of Digital Library Fellows, learning about the requirements of the digital library profession, and developing new courses. The workshop will bring together a number of speakers on topics of interest to digital library educators and working professionals. The workshop will provide the opportunity for IU and UIUC, other IMLS grant recipients, and several representatives from DL programs in other countries to report on project details, including requirements analysis, curriculum development, and program evaluation.

Specific topics to be covered are:
- Defining the domain of “digital librarianship”
- Core competencies in technical areas
- Core competencies in user, social, and legal areas
- Management of projects, systems, and people
- Balancing theory and practice
- Advanced Registration Rates: May 15th, 2006

http://jcdl2006.org/program/

Dan Albertson
Indiana University

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?

From the Higher Ed Blog, http://www.higheredblogcon.com/

This week, HigherEd BlogCon takes a closer look at the technology for bringing institutions into the Web 2.0 era. It’s a diverse set of topics, ranging from the nuts and bolts of podcasts to a session covering one of the hottest development tools, Ruby on Rails.

Mon, April 24 – Legal Education Podcasting Project
Tue, April 25 – Student To-Do List RSS Feed: Combining Audience and Task Navigation
Wed, April 26 – Using Web Traffic with a Kaizen Methodology
Thu, April 27 – Know Enough to be Dangerous: Tools for Taking Control of HTML and CSS
Fri, April 28 – The Fast Track to Agile Web Apps: Best Practices for Higher Ed Web Development on Rails

Feed 1 : feed://feeds.feedburner.com/higheredblogcon

Feed 2 : feed://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/feed/

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