Elsevier is demanding the removal of published articles from the authors’ own websites. They're getting more serious about protecting their copyright. At least authors will still be able to post previous drafts without worry.
Continued concerns about MOOCs. If you aren't already aware of the big issues, this is a nice summary.
Tired of people telling you that librarians are going the way of the print index? Well, a new study tries to figure out which jobs are at risk of being replaced by computers. Turns out that librarians probably won’t be replaced by EMERAC
anytime soon. Librarian is right in the middle of the pack, along with
home entertainment system installers and machinists. (See the very end
of the article for the list.) Library technicians, however, are going to
need reboots instead of coffee in the near future.
Are MOOCs creating a backlash against online learning? MOOCs aren't the only big news in online learning these days (the heat for-profits have taken recently also ties in, since so many are online institutions), but I can see a bit of buyers remorse among those who saw MOOCs as revolutionary (versus those who saw them merely as a useful addition to the education landscape).
Librarians see knowledge as things, while faculty see it as people. Every day I help students find the "things," but so many of them seem to miss the idea that it is also conversation between people. Once you have that mindset, "things" like a literature review make more sense. But in an environment where everyone is online and most interactions are procedural, how do you help students make the shift?
Israel has settled their own e-reserves copyright case, on terms that are much more pro-fair use than we’re seeing in the Georgia State case.
Scientific American outlines the benefits of paper over screens. Even Bill Gates is still in the paper realm (I share his disappointment with ebook note-taking, but I still love reading novels on my ereader).
A quick visual history of academic libraries as architecture (and a larger visual history of libraries published this year).
The We Are All Criminals project asks Minnesotans to confess to their uncaught crimes. Here’s a great one from a librarian (who knew that Library Club was so prestigious!?) It reminds me of the library school professor who confessed to her own library-related malfeasance. We've all got things in our pasts . . .
U Penn study finds that almost all of their MOOC students already have a degree. You can read their study. This isn't exactly breaking news, but it does change the way we should think about MOOCs in higher education. If most MOOCers already have degrees, it's more of a way to save money on professional development than it is a game-changer for those with poor access to higher education.
First book printed in (what became) the U.S. sells for $14.2 Million. New owner plans to lend it to libraries.
India is planning its first liberal arts college. Not that I have anything against engineers, but there's been so much anti-liberal arts talk recently. It's nice to see someone stand up for other types of learning and thinkin.
Creative Commons announces their 4.0 license, which is designed to work better with international requirements.
Goodbye Thomas.gov! All of the legislative information you love will now be on Congress.gov.
Need an icon for that? Here’s an interview with the founder of the Noun Project, which aims to create simple icons for everything. I was hoping for an icon for "online library," but I guess there's just not enough call for that yet.
Just in case your family doesn’t know what to get you for the holidays, you can send them this list.
A big win for Google in their book scanning case. This is making a lot of open-access proponents very happy, but I wonder how academic book publishers will respond.
HBR’s extra costs making librarians hopping mad. Where the norms of academia and the norms of business collide. And Library Babel Fish just wants to say “no” to HBR and everyone else. I'd love to say no, too, but just one week of no PDF printing for HBR articles was a reference headache.
African countries pushing to create more PhDs. I find it interesting that it doesn't mention the role of PhD-granting online programs. You no longer have to leave home to get an advanced degree from an accredited American university (well, not quite totally true - our doctoral students do travel to a few residencies, but that's a few weeks versus several years.).
