E-Lert # 302 / Cyberavis no. 302
Friday November 14, 2008 / le vendredi le 14 novembre 2008
NEWS / NOUVELLES
Ottawa plans pullout from UN water program
Sue Bailey
Globe and Mail, November 14, 2008
The Harper government wants out of a Canada-led UN program that monitors
fresh water around the world - a move being slammed as the latest Tory abdication
of global causes once championed by Ottawa. Experts say they're shocked
Canada would abandon a database it designed and has managed for 30 years,
just as dwindling water supplies emerge as a critical issue.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081114.WATER14/TPStory/?query=water+un
In Boost for NIH Policy, Major Autism Research Organization Mandates
Public Access
Andrew Albanese
Library Journal, November 13, 2008
When the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created its groundbreaking
public access policy this year, advocates expressed the belief that it the
policy would spread, and other major research organizations would follow.
Today, Autism
Speaks, the nation’s largest autism advocacy organization,
became the first U.S.-based non-profit advocacy organization to develop
a public access requirement.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6614532.html?nid=2673&rid=reg_visitor_id&source=title
A copyright call to arms: The new Parliament should listen to Canadians
as it tries to balance corporate and consumer rights
Wojciech Gryc and Jesse Helmer
Globe and Mail, November 12, 2008
In the era of peer-to-peer file sharing, on-demand television and easy
copying of video games and movies, Canadians often take for granted the
availability and ease of using digital media. It's hard not to: the sheer
amount of digital content available online is astonishing. For many, the
Web is a black box that provides us with what we want, when we want it.
But with a new session of parliament a week away, a host of proposed changes
to copyright legislation threaten to tip the legal balance further in favour
of those who sell and disseminate cultural content, rather than everyone
who consumes it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081112.wgtcopyfight1111/BNStory/Technology/home
1 million $ pour donner le Wi-Fi à tout Québec
Jean-François Néron
Le Soleil, 12 novembre 2008
Mario Asselin, président de l'organisme à but non lucratif
ZAP Québec, croit pouvoir atteindre le chiffre de 1000 bornes sans
fil d'ici 2010 avec l'annonce faite par M. Charest, mardi. Jean Charest
entend en effet injecter 1 million $ dans le projet Québec sans fil
mené par le groupe ZAP Québec. Il est question de rendre accessible
gratuitement Internet sans fil sur tout le territoire de la ville.
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-soleil/affaires/actualite-economique/200811/11/01-38672-1-million-pour-donner-le-wi-fi-a-tout-quebec.php
Danger and opportunity
Nature, Volume 456, Issue 7219, November 12, 2008
"While innovation is commonly associated with growth, it is now more
correctly pinned to survival." That was one conclusion from a recent
meeting convened in Dubai by the World Economic Forum, a body best known
for its annual summit in Davos, Switzerland. With an economic crisis of
unknown proportions looming, more emphasis on science and innovation —
not less — will be crucial to achieving a sustained recovery.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v456/n7219/full/456141a.html
Science in the meltdown
M. Mitchell Waldrop
Nature, Volume 456, Issue 7219, November 12, 2008
The crisis that swept across the world's financial markets this autumn
is widely regarded as the worst since the 1930s. The global economic downturn
that helped precipitate the crash, and will be duly amplified by it, is
widely expected to be the worst in a generation, at least. The effect this
will have on the research enterprise will depend crucially on how the world's
governments respond to the crisis — on what stimulus they think is
necessary, and on what long-term commitments they may be willing to cut
to deal with present pain.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081112/full/456155a.html
New Google Services Could Burden Networks, Benefit Scholars
Lawrence Biemiller
The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12, 2008
Google has unveiled three new services — two that may make campus-network
administrators groan and one that could prove to be a boon to researchers
in a number of disciplines. The search giant’s voice-
and video-chat offerings could encourage more campus-network
users to switch from low-bandwidth communication technologies — instant
messaging, e-mail, social networks — to chat applications that consume
considerably more network resources. That’s the bad news, at least
as far as overtaxed campus networks are concerned. The good news is a new
flu-tracking service called Google
Flu Trends, which the
company says “may provide an early-warning system for
outbreaks of influenza.”
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3456&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Librarians Want to Out-Google Google With a Better Search Engine
Lisa Guernsey
The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2008
Have you ever wished for a personal reference librarian, an information
guru to point you to the most reliable sites whenever you search the Web?
A new search-engine project aims to simulate something like that. The trick?
Weighting search results so that librarians’ picks rise to the top.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3450&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Place au « papiel »!
Paul Cauchon
Le Devoir, 9 novembre 2008
Certains experts prévoient que le papier électronique déferlera
massivement d'ici 10 ans. On vit une époque paradoxale. Ainsi, même
si plusieurs prédisent la mort du papier journal, mercredi dernier
on s'arrachait les quotidiens américains au lendemain de la victoire
de Barack Obama. De même, on entend dire que le livre est en perte
de vitesse, mais le Salon du livre de Montréal fera encore courir
les foules la fin de semaine prochaine, et à Montréal la Grande
Bibliothèque est un énorme succès.
http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/11/08/214789.html
Web brings 90 years of war stories to life
Stefania Moretti
CTV News, November 9, 2008
The ink on cherished family photos and letters from loved ones who fought
in the Great War has faded in the 90 years since the Armistice. But modern
technology has made "leaps and bounds" in an effort to preserve
rare artifacts and changing the way we access our collective history.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081103/war_archives_081103/20081109?hub=Canada
Ottawa nixes plans for portrait gallery
James Bradshaw
Globe and Mail, November 8, 2008
The government has cancelled plans to build a permanent home for the Portrait
Gallery of Canada, a move that is likely to anger members of the arts community
who slammed the federal Tories during the recent election campaign over
cuts to cultural programs. Citing the uncertain economic conditions, James
Moore, newly appointed Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages,
and announced yesterday evening that after years of stops and starts and
squabbles, the selection process to grant the new gallery to one of three
competing cities has been cancelled.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081108.PORTRAIT08/TPStory/National
Les artistes engagent un nouveau combat
Radio-Canada.ca avec Presse canadienne, 7 novembre, 2008
Les conservateurs fédéraux n'ont peut-être pas trouvé
la meilleure recette pour se rapprocher du milieu culturel. Après
avoir décidé de maintenir les compressions de 45 millions
dans les programmes culturels décrétées à la
veille des élections, voilà qu'ils en remettent. Réunis
en congrès la semaine prochaine à Winnipeg, ils discuteront
d'une résolution sur l'abolition des redevances imposées aux
disques compacts et cassettes vierges, des supports qui permettent de faire
des copies audio.
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Politique/2008/11/07/003-RedevancesUDA.shtml
Bush E-Mail Records Could Be Lost To History
National Journal, November 7, 2008
Since the presidential transition from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush,
George Washington University's National Security Archive has been a watchdog
of federal e-mail preservation policies. Most recently the archive, which
manages a library of security documents, joined
a lawsuit that seeks to hold the George W. Bush White House
and the National Archives and Records Administration accountable for backing
up and cataloging electronic records, which must be preserved under the
Federal Records
Act and the Presidential
Records Act.
http://lostintransition.nationaljournal.com/2008/11/bush-email-records-could-be-lo.php
Google's growth makes privacy advocates wary
Rachel Metz
Associated Press, November 3, 2008
Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.'s increasing dominance of Internet
search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google's
broadening reach is giving it unchecked power. This scrutiny goes deeper
than the skeptical eye that lawmakers and the Justice Department have given
to Google's proposed ad partnership with Yahoo Inc. Many objections to that
deal are financial, and surround whether Google and Yahoo could unfairly
drive up online ad prices. A bigger long-term concern for Google could be
criticisms over something less tangible — privacy.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFDxaa3-HqlOPg2wba7rbW27vQNAD947I1RG0
ARTICLES
On the Move with the Mobile Web: Libraries and Mobile
Technologies
Ellyssa Kroski
Library Technology Reports Volume 44, Number 5, 2008
Today, most of us are primarily using our cell phones to download ring
tones and check our email, but there is an abundance of truly amazing services
we can access through the mobile Web right now. Armed with a smart phone,
PDA, or other Internet-ready mobile mechanism, users can retrieve local
traffic information, bus, train, and airline schedules, and look up weather
reports. But more impressively, they can also access mobile social networks
which will alert them when their friends are nearby, borrow e-books from
their library, take a guided audio tour of a museum, and watch CNN.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00015024/
Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next
Generation Web
Duncan Hull et al
PLOS Computational Biology, Volume 4, Issue 10, 2008
Many scientists now manage the bulk of their bibliographic information
electronically, thereby organizing their publications and citation material
from digital libraries. However, a library has been described as “thought
in cold storage,” and unfortunately many digital libraries can be
cold, impersonal, isolated, and inaccessible places. This review discusses
the current chilly state of digital libraries for the computational biologist,
including PubMed, IEEE Xplore, the ACM digital library, ISI Web of Knowledge,
Scopus, Citeseer, arXiv, DBLP, and Google Scholar. The authors also examine
a range of new applications such as Zotero, Mendeley, Mekentosj Papers,
MyNCBI, CiteULike, Connotea, and HubMed that exploit the Web to make these
digital libraries more personal, sociable, integrated, and accessible places.
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204#s2
Writing for the profession: The experience of new professionals
Fiona Bradley
Library Management, Volume 29, Number 8/9, 2008
The purpose of this article is to explore barriers and motivators for new
professionals who write and present for the professional literature. Authors
from the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) New Librarians’
Symposium held in December 2006 in Sydney, Australia were surveyed about
their experiences of writing and presenting early in their career.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00015027/01/writing_bradley_LM.pdf
Some graduates question thesis publication requirement
Nick Taylor-Vaisey
University Affairs, December 2008
Graduate students at many Canadian universities are required to submit
their theses to an online repository through programs operated by their
universities, and, often, to another program run by the National Library
and Archives Canada. The purpose of the programs is to make their research
available to a wider audience. But some students, particularly those in
creative writing, have raised concerns that if they post their work with
an online repository, it could become more difficult for them to get it
published. For creative writing students, their dissertation could be a
novel, a play, or a collection of poetry or short stories that they hope
to publish and sell to a wider audience.
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/some-graduates-question-thesis-publication-requirement.aspx
How technology is transforming the lecture
Suzanne Bowness
University Affairs, December 2008
Sometimes a teacher can learn from his students. For Dalton Kehoe, an award-winning
communications studies professor at York University, the opportunity to
record his lectures newscaster-style in a professional studio seemed like
a great idea – until he solicited student feedback on the finished
product.
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/2008/11/03/how-technology-is-transforming-the-lecture.aspx
The beauty of "Some Rights Reserved": Introducing Creative
Commons to librarians, faculty, and students
Molly Kleinman
C&RL News, Volume 69, Number 10, November 2008
These are difficult times when it comes to copyright on campus. Big music
companies are suing fans, publishers are suing librarians, and the principle
of “fair use” is under siege everywhere. Litigation-happy content
holders have fostered a climate of fear in which every student is a music
pirate and every professor a book thief. While there is undoubtedly some
copyright infringement happening on university campuses, the bigger problem
by far is the chilling effect of all these lawsuits and “copyright
awareness campaigns.”
http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2008/nov/beautyofsrr.cfm
Le syndrome de la protection intellectuelle
Pauline Gravel
Le Devoir, 10 novembre 2008
Le taux d'innovations scientifiques est en nette régression depuis
quelques années, et ce, particulièrement dans le secteur biopharmaceutique.
Selon le spécialiste de la propriété intellectuelle
et des technologies Richard Gold, les compagnies pharmaceutiques protègent
trop jalousement leurs découvertes par des brevets qui freinent la
recherche dans leur chasse gardée et qui empêchent les populations
des pays pauvres d'avoir accès aux nouveaux médicaments ou
technologies.
http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/11/10/215251.html
The Google library
Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2008
Google, whose corporate ambition is "to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful," has reached a breakthrough
agreement with book publishers to make millions of out-of-print volumes
accessible to the public. Unfortunately, it's not clear how useful the pact
will be to libraries and their patrons. That's because the deal promotes
a "pay to read" approach that's the antithesis of the free public
library model.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-google10-2008nov10,0,1285565.story
The Internet vs. books: Peaceful coexistence
Beau Friedlander
Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2008
It used to be that the printing press was the final arbiter, a micro-layer
of ink adding heft to words. Certain websites can do the same thing (the
Christian Science Monitor just announced plans to go to a Web-only daily
publication model), but there remains a chasm between virtual texts and
their printed counterparts.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-gutenberg9-2008nov09,0,6069729.story
Digital revolution comes to printed word
Eric Pfanner
International Herald Tribune, November 7, 2008
"Why are books the last bastion of analog?" Jeff Bezos, the chief
executive of Amazon.com, asked last November as his company unveiled the
Kindle, a portable, electronic book-reading device. Long after other media
had joined the digital revolution - in some cases only after suffering its
ravages - book publishers clung to the reassuringly low-tech tools of printing
press, paper and ink. A year later, that bastion is starting to yield.
The world of books is going digital, too.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/07/technology/book.php
The internationalization of higher education: Are we on the right
track?
Jane Knight
Academic Matters: the Journal of Higher Education, November 7, 2008
As we progress into the 21st century, the international dimension of higher
education is becoming increasingly important and at the same time, more
and more complex. There are new actors, new rationales, new programs, new
regulations, and the new context of globalization. Internationalization
has become a formidable force for change.
http://www.academicmatters.ca/current_issue.article.gk?catalog_item_id=1234&category=featured_articles
Digital Textbooks Gaining Favor
Dan Mascai
Business Week, November 4, 2008
It's a time-honored college tradition to spend big at the bookstore. Since
the mid-1980s, textbook prices have nearly tripled; now they set students
back an average of $900 per year, or 14% of annual tuition at an average
[U.S.] public school (BusinessWeek, 10/20/08). But in growing numbers, the
college crowd is demanding a cheaper alternative: the digital textbook.
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/nov2008/bs2008114_317122.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories
RESOURCES / RESSOURCES
A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project
Settlement
Jonathan Band
ALA and ARL, November 13, 2008
The settlement presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries.
This paper does not explore the policy issues raised by the settlement.
Rather, it outlines the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis
on the provisions that apply directly to libraries. The settlement is extremely
complex (over 200 pages long, including attachments), so this paper of necessity
simplifies many of its details.
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf
Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication: Results of an
Investigation Conducted by Ithaka for the Association of Research Libraries
Nancy L. Maron and K. Kirby Smith, November 2008
The decentralized distribution of new model works can make it difficult
to fully appreciate their scope and number, even for university librarians
tasked with knowing about valuable resources across the disciplines. In
the spring of 2008, ARL engaged Ithaka to conduct an investigation into
the range of online resources valued by scholars, paying special attention
to those projects that are pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional
formats and are considered innovative by the faculty who use them.
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/current-models-report.pdf
The Survey of Academic & Research Library Journal Purchasing
Practices
Primary Research Group, 2008
This report looks closely at the acquisition practices for scientific,
technical and academic journals of academic and research libraries. Some
of the many issues covered: attitudes towards the pricing and digital access
policies of select major journals publishers, preferences for print, print/electronic
access combinations, and electronic access alone arrangements. Also
covered in the report: spending plans, preferences for use of consortiums,
use of, and evaluation of subscription agents. Attitudes towards CLOCKSS,
open access, use of URL resolvers and other pressing issues of interest
to major purchasers of academic and technical journals are also charted.
http://www.primaryresearch.com/publications-Libraries--Serials.html
Digital Preservation Policies Study
Neil Beagrie et al
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), October 2008
A major business driver in all universities and colleges over the past
decade has been harnessing digital content and electronic services and the
undoubted benefits in terms of flexibility and increased productivity they
can bring. The priority in recent years has been on developing e-strategies
and infrastructure to underpin electronic access and services and to deliver
those benefits. However any long-term access and future benefit may be heavily
dependent on digital preservation strategies being in place and underpinned
by relevant policy and procedures. This should now be an increasing area
of focus in our institutions.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/jiscpolicyfinalreport.aspx
Semantic Digital Libraries
Sebastian Ryszard Kruk and Galway Bill McDaniel(Eds.)
Springer-Verlag, 2009
Libraries have always been an inspiration for the standards and technologies
developed by semantic web activities. However, except for the Dublin Core
specification, semantic web and social networking technologies have not
been widely adopted and further developed by major digital library initiatives
and projects. Yet semantic technologies offer a new level of flexibility,
interoperability, and relationships for digital repositories.
http://semdl.corrib.org/Book/Welcome.html
The support of teaching by libraries in higher education: towards
an analysis of past and future costs
Society of College National and University Libraries (SCONUL), 2008
The year 1995 saw the start of a revolution in information supply, with
the appearance of digital information delivered over the internet. This
transformation in the availability of information has now (2008) reached
the stage where students expect a high proportion of what they read to be
in digital format, and they equally expect to be able to gain access to
it virtually anywhere – certainly anywhere on campus. These developments
have had a profound and continuing impact on library and information services
and their means of delivery.
http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/pubs/support_of_teaching.pdf
Making and Moving Knowledge: Interdisciplinary and Community-based
Research in a World on the Edge
John Sutton Lutz and Barbara Neis (Eds.)
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008
It has been clear for some time that research does not automatically translate
into knowledge, nor does knowledge necessarily translate into wisdom. Whether
the immediate challenge is global warming, epidemic disease, poverty, environmental
degradation, or social fragmentation, research efforts are wasted if we
cannot devise efficient and understandable processes to create and transfer
knowledge to policy makers, interested groups, and communities.
http://mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=2204
Roman de la Rose Digital Library
The Roman de la Rose Digital Library is a joint project of the
Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque
nationale de France. The creation of this resource and the digitization
of the manuscripts from the BBF were made possible through generous support
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Roman de la Rose Digital
Library is to create a digital library of all extant manuscript copies of
the Roman de la Rose, of which at least 270 are known to exist.
Full digital surrogates of about 150 of these manuscripts available through
this project by the end of 2009.
http://romandelarose.org/#home
Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008
I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman (Eds.)
Babson Survey Research Group and The Sloan Consortium
The number of students taking at least one online course continues to expand
at a rate far
in excess of the growth of overall higher education enrollments. The most
recent estimate,
for fall 2007, places this number at 3.94 million online students, an increase
of 12.9
percent over fall 2006. The number of online students has more than doubled
in the five
years since the first Sloan survey on online learning. The growth from 1.6
million students
taking at least one online course in fall 2002 to the 3.94 million for fall
2007 represents a
compound annual growth rate of 19.7 percent.
http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/staying_the_course.pdf
EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS
2009 Winter Institute on Statistical Literacy for Librarians (WISLL)
Edmonton, Alberta, February 18-20, 2009
Librarians are facing more statistical information than ever before because
of the electronic dissemination of statistics over the Internet. Concomitant
with this are greater demands for statistics from user communities.
Greater availability to statistics online, however, has not made this information
necessarily easier to find or to retrieve. This Institute provides
training in the strategies and tools for finding statistics and providing
them in formats directly useful to users.
This Institute is valuable and relevant to professionals working in academic,
public and special libraries.
http://wisll.library.ualberta.ca/
Unlocking Audio 2 - Connecting with Listeners
British Library Conference Centre, London, U.K., March 16 & 17, 2009
This event will explore the use of sounds online. The conference will focus
on ways that researchers and other audiences expect to discover, browse,
audition and analyze archival audio resources.
http://www.bl.uk/unlockingaudio
IADIS International Conference: e-Society 2009
Barcelona, Spain,
February 25 – 28, 2009
The International Association for Development of the Information Society
(IADIS) e-Society 2009 conference aims to address the main issues of concern
within the Information Society. This conference covers both the technical
as well as the non-technical aspects of the Information Society. Broad areas
of interest are eSociety and Digital Divide, eBusiness / eCommerce, eLearning,
New Media and E-Society, Digital Services in ESociety, eGovernment /eGovernance,
eHealth, Information Systems, and Information Management.
http://www.esociety-conf.org/
6th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations
Las Vegas, Nevada, April 27-29, 2009
With the Internet rapidly taking on the role of a global marketplace for
the exchange of ideas, experiences and knowledge, an interesting research
area has emerged: social computing. Social computing lies at the intersection
of social behavior and computing systems. It focuses on the use of technology
to create social conventions and contexts, as well as the new relationships
and power structures that result. Three widely-agreed tenets of social computing
are (i) the shift of innovation from a top-down to a bottom-up model; (ii)
the shift of value from ownership to experiences; and (iii) the shift of
power from institutions to communities.
http://www.itng.info/
