Archive for October 2008

Last month I posted about the interview I had with Jimmy Wales for my Open & Libraries class I’m teaching this semester. This month I was fortunate enough to speak with Peter Suber just in time for Open Access Day earlier this week, and again I thought I’d post it here for those of you who may be interested in Open Access issues. Other interviews I’ve had recently include a chat with Dorothea Salo about institutional repositories, and an interview with Stephen Francoeur about organizing unconferences.

Here are the questions I asked Peter Suber and here’s the link to the audio:

1. You are a Senior Researcher at SPARC, can you start by telling us a bit about SPARC and what exactly you do in your position there?
2. You are one of the drafters of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, how is it that you first became interested in Open Access?
3. Do you have any current or future projects related to Open Access that you can tell us about?
4. Earlier this year the faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University adopted a landmark Open Access mandate and other universities and organizations are poised to follow suit, why do you think this is happening now?
5. In a recent article on prestige and OA, you talk about the fact that most researchers will choose prestige over OA without ever realizing that they probably don’t need to choose; that many toll-access journals are compatible with OA archiving. What do you think needs to happen in order to significantly raise awareness about this?
6. SPARC is a founding partner in the first Open Access Day coming up on October 14th, can you tell us a bit about that?
7. Why do you think it’s important for libraries and librarians to promote Open Access?
8. Have you anything else you’d like to tack on about OA, your own experiences, or anything else I may not have asked you, etc?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports on the new connectedness of today’s families. The study looks at computer and cell phone use in American households. Some key findings include:

• 58% of those living in married-with-children households own two or more desktop or laptop computers.
• Both spouses use the internet in 76% of married-with-children households, as do 84% of their children aged 7-17.
• 89% of married-with-children households own multiple cell phones, and nearly half (47%) own three or more mobile devices.

The Hongkiat blog puts together an interesting list of 60+ Tools To Enhance Your Flickr Experience. The post provides a screenshot of each application along with a brief description of its functionality. Flickr tools are divided into the following categories:

• Flickr Downloaders & Uploaders
• Flickr Search Engines
• Flickr Slide Show & Gallery Makers
• Interesting Flickr Tools
• Flickr Wallpapers
• Miscellaneous Flickr Tools

In the spirit of Tuesday’s Open Access Day, the American Library Association has made its flagship publication, American Libraries, openly available to the public. Previously only accessible online to members, AL issues dating back to 2003 can now be read through ebrary and HTML versions of the issues are slated for January 2009. Non-ALA members can also now subscribe to the related AL Direct newsletter. See the press release here for more details as well as the new American Libraries blog – AL Inside Scoop.

Facebook has announced that the social network has just topped 10 billion photos uploaded by members. And actually, since FB stores four images sizes for each photo uploaded, that number is more precisely in the 40 billion area. This is quite significant when compared to other top photo-sharing websites including Photobucket which hosts 6 billion photos and Flickr which stores just over 2 billion.

Facebook members view over 15 million photos every day, and at peak traffic times, over 300,000 images are viewed per second.

Smashing Downloads compiles a guide to 28 Free File Storage Hosting Websites. These hosted storage solutions enable you to store all of you files in an online space which can be accessed anywhere. I was pleased to note two applications which I use regularly made the list; Box.net, and XDrive.

Here are a few of their suggestions:

• FileSavr
• FileDropper
• XDrive
• ADrive
• Drop.io

Set up in Q&A style, this Twitter Guide answers questions such as how to cross-post blog posts and Flickr pics via Twitter, as well as how to track UPS packages, add events to a Google Calendar, and how to set up simple polls using the microblogging application.

The New York Times looks at current news and media consumption habits in a time of burgeoning information outlets. In light of recent economic and politcal events, many people are finding that they are Overfeeding on Information.

“This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. They find themselves taking breaks at work every 15 minutes to check the latest updates, and at the end of the day, taking laptops to bed. Then they pad through darkened homes in the predawn to check on the Asian markets.”

via Social Media

The results from the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) annual survey of head and senior academic librarians in the UK was published on Thursday, indicating that the management of e-resources is perceived as the main challenge over the next several years. Read the entire JISC Attitudinal Survey 2008: Head and Senior Learning and Librarian Staff here.

“The research, supported by SCONUL3, found that in both the higher (HE) and further education (FE) sectors, the perceived shift away from print to a dependence on e-resources creates other challenges such as how to manage the volume of material, how users can access it and how libraries and learning resource centres (LRC) can provide or promote such resources. It also highlights financial issues such as potential funding sources for the increasing amounts of new technology, electronic materials and subscriptions likely to be needed by the learning institutions of the future.”

Other Key Findings:

• The SCONUL Top Concerns survey highlighted access management as a key issue among this audience. Encouragingly, the JISC survey shows the proportion feeling informed about access management issues has increased significantly since 2007 along with awareness and knowledge of JISC activity in this area and the UK Access Management Federation
• 61% of HE and 43% of FE libraries/LRCs report having digitised their own collections but relatively few currently have a digitisation strategy in place. A quarter of HEIs are planning to put one in place compared with one in ten in FE
• Around one in four HE libraries have collaborated with one another on jointly procuring collections, and a further 12% jointly digitising their collections
• Around one third agreed that academic libraries/LRCs could use social networking opportunities to engage students with their services but most were unsure especially in HE

via Open Education News

DJ Francis, author of OnlineMarketerBlog.com, writes a guest post for ReadWriteWeb titled 5 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss. For anyone who is currently trying to push social media at their library or organization, you may want to check out the article’s helpful recommendations:

1. Keeping Up With The Joneses
2. Listening (Customer/Market Research)
3. Responding
4. Talking To Actual Customers
5. Set The Boss’ Sights Long-Term

Chris Brogan discusses 25 Ways to Build Your Community online. This post is aimed at bloggers and offers solid advice on ways to encourage a steady readership, and effective marketing strategies. Here are his first five suggestions:

1. Read at least 100 blogs regularly. Not every post, but a variety. Extra hint: go OUTSIDE your particular passion circle.
2. Write brief, tight, actionable posts that people want to reference later.
3. Don’t ignore the value of linkbait and viral content. Don’t ALWAYS do that, but hey, it can work.
4. Give people your best. I know that sounds trite, but I’m saying don’t charge for the best and give away your crap. That’s a yard sale. Be Tiffany & Co.
5. When you write about people, use LINKS to connect your writing to them. This encourages good neighbor policies.

Over 100 organizations in 20 different countries have signed up and committed to participate in the first ever Open Access Day which will take place next week on Tuesday, October 14. Founded by SPARC, Students for FreeCulture and PLoS, Open Access Day will help broaden awareness of Open Access issues “including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public.”

via Open Education News

Zoho, the popular online application suite with over 1.2 million users, launched an application marketplace last week, enabling developers to build applications with Zoho Creator and sell or give them away for free. Over 100,000 applications have already been created by third-party developers. Many of these new apps are geared toward business use, but there are also offerings for personal use. I have already installed a free project management tool and have my eye on a personal expense tracker.

The Noupe blog writes about 25+ Incredibly Useful Twitter Tools and Firefox Plugins, one of which I just recently started using called TwitterKeys – a bookmarklet which provides symbols and funky characters for you to copy and paste into your tweets. Here’s a handful of their suggested tools:

• Just Tweet It
• Twitter Patterns
• Twitturly
• Twitterrific
• LessFriends

Inside Higher Ed reports on the upcoming two-year pilot program at the University of Texas at Austin which will switch select classes to e-textbooks only. Partnering with John Wiley & Sons, the university will foot the bill for 1,000 enrolled students who will have the choice to access their textbooks online through Wiley Plus or download their e-books onto their computers. This innovative experiment will test student and faculty preferences for e-textbooks and determine the scalability of future deployments.

“This pilot aims to improve student outcomes, provide students with equity of access to the most current materials and increase faculty satisfaction and efficiency while respecting faculty independence and freedom of choice in the selection of course materials,” Bonnie Lieberman, Wiley’s senior vice president and general manager for higher education, said in a statement released Monday. “Our primary aim is to improve learning and teaching outcomes while significantly lowering the costs of learning materials for students.”