E-Lert # 363 / Cyberavis no. 363
Friday February 12, 2010 / le vendredi 12 février
2010
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NEWS / NOUVELLES
Judaica Europeana : 10 institutions in London,
Frankfurt, Athens, Bologna, Budapest, Paris, Rome and Warsaw join forces to
offer worldwide access to the treasures of European Jewish cultureFebruary 9, 2009
JUDAICA Europeana (www.judaica-europeana.eu)
is a new project that will provide open access to Jewish culture collections
through Europeana, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive. The
project will begin by digitizing millions of pages and thousands of other
items selected from the collections of partner libraries, archives and museums.
The second phase will be to aggregate other digital collections on Jews
in European cities — wherever they may be.“Jewish culture has
been predominantly text-based; it will be a particular challenge for us
to bring in as much audio-visual material as possible,” says Lena
Stanley-Clamp, the project’s manager and Director of the European
Association for Jewish Culture.
http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/news.html#Kickoff
Copyright Board makes controversial schools ruling
Paul Brent
Law Times, February 8, 2010
In a decision two years in the making, the Copyright Board raised the fees
on copied material to $5.16 per student, slightly more than double the amount
that was previously paid by schools for using photocopies as substitutes
for buying books. With the decision, the board split the difference between
the $2.43-per-student rate proposed by provincial ministers of education
(other than Quebec) along with Ontario school boards and Access Copyright’s
claim for $8.92 per student per year. Access Copyright stated that “the
Copyright Board accepted Access Copyright’s position that governments
were not paying a fair price for the hundreds of millions of photocopies
used in schools as substitutes for buying the books.” Copyright lawyer
Howard Knopf, however, described the decision as “bad news for Canadian
educators, librarians, students, and taxpayers. The price of knowledge just
went up a lot in Canada.” *
http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201002086342/Headline-News/Copyright-Board-makes-controversial-schools-ruling
A New Motion Picture of the Universe, With Free Admission for Colleges
Large and Small
Brian Terris
The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2010
A Giant telescope promises to reveal the hidden nature of the cosmos, and
let small institutions become big players in astronomy. The giant tool will
likely also transform the nature of academic astronomy; all the data—100
times more than in any previous astronomy database —will be public,
so many scientists will no longer require access to an observatory to do
their research, allowing small institutions to become players along with
large ones.*
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Motion-Picture-of-the-Sky/64003/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
University Puts Researchers on YouTube to Stir Commercial Interest
Jill Later
The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2010
Stephen Kinsey, technology-licensing officer for University of Maryland
at Baltimore's department of commercial ventures and intellectual property,
looked for a personal way to connect inventors at his university to
businesses that might be interested in their creations. He let researchers
do the talking, describing their research in videos on a YouTube
channel.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/University-Puts-Researchers-on/21094/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Ulrich Werneburg appointed Project Manager at Canadiana.org
February 3, 2010
Ron Walker, Executive Director, Canadiana.org is pleased to announce the
appointment of Ulrich (Ulli) Werneburg as Project Manager effective February
3, 2010. Mr. Werneburg brings to Canadiana.org over 30 years of experience
in planning and executing a wide variety of projects, within both the public
and private sectors. PDF
/
Ulrich Werneburg nommé responsable des projets à Canadiana.org
3 février 2010
Ronald Walker, directeur général de Canadiana.org, est heureux d’annoncer la nomination de Ulrich (Ulli) Werneburg au poste de responsable des projets depuis le 3 février 2010. M. Werneburg constituera un atout pour Canadiana.org puisqu’il compte plus de 30 ans d’expérience dans le domaine de la planification et dans la réalisation d’une grande variété de projets, tant dans le secteur public que privé. PDF
New UK strategy group set up to help steer the future of the internet
January 20, 2010
A new business and academic group has been established to help the
UK contribute to shaping the internet of the future - giving the UK a common
voice, highlighting R&D priorities, and advising government and contributing
to the European Commission with respects to initiatives on the development
of the internet. The Technology Strategy Board and its Digital Communications
Knowledge Transfer Network have set up the UK Future Internet
Strategy Group (UK FISG), with endorsement from the Department of Business
Innovation and Skills and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council.*
http://www.innovateuk.org/content/news/new-uk-strategy-group-set-up-to-help-steer-the-fut.ashx
ARTICLES
The Anatomy of a LargeScale Social Search
Engine
Damon Horowitz and Sepandar D. Kamvar
WWW2010, April 26-30, 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina
Horowitz and Kamvar present Aardvark, a social
search engine that enables users to ask questions by instant message, email,
web input, text message, or voice. Aardvark then routes the question to the
person in the user’s extended social network most likely to be able
to provide an answer. The architecture, algorithms, and user interface of
Aardvark, and how they are reflected in the behavior of Aardvark users are
described.*
http://vark.com/aardvarkFinalWWW2010.pdf
[See also - coverage of Aardvark in the NYT: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/a-search-engine-that-relies-on-humans/?ref=technology
, and Wired: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/google-poaches-social-search-service-aardvark/
]
E-Library Economics
Steve Kolowich
Inside Higher Ed, Feburary 10, 2010
Dean of libraries at Syracuse University, Suzanne Thorin, talked
the talk, at November 2009’s Educause, urging a crowd of university
librarians to “move on to a new concept of what the university library
is” - in her view, a place with fewer books and more space for students
to gather, and access library resources on their laptops. When she
proceeded to walk
the walk, Thorin met with opposition from hundreds of outraged students
and professors who chafed at her plan to ship many volumes to remote storage.
Although visionary in its efforts to relieve the library of some of its
print collection and cut library costs, the plan also appears to have been
ill-conceived inasmuch as it didn’t account for possible, significant
resistance on campus. So suggest two studies, slated to be published spring
2010 by the Council on Library
and Information Resources, examining the implications of the ongoing
shift to digital library collections.*
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/10/libraries
Droit d’auteur 2010 : entre une application modèle
et des limitations plus strictes
Monika Emert
Intellectual Property Watch, 9 février 2010
« L’Accord commercial anti-contrefaçon (ACAC), objet
de négociations secrètes, est aujourd’hui au centre
des débats internationaux sur le droit d’auteur. Tel est aussi
le cas d’un potentiel nouveau traité international sur l’accès
pour les déficients visuels aux livres en ligne, qui s’inscrit
dans le cadre d’un mouvement plus large en faveur d’une clarification
des limitations et exceptions au droit d’auteur. Cependant, certains
se demandent pourquoi tenir des discussions et fournir tous ces efforts
en matière de législation sur le droit d’auteur au niveau
national et international alors que le droit d’auteur est de plus
en plus souvent remplacé par des relations contractuelles ? »
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/02/09/droit-d-auteur-2010-entre-une-application-modele-et-des-limitations-plus-strictes/
The Mental Geography of Ebooks
Tony Horava
Access, Winter 2010, Volume 16, Number 1
This article discusses e-books from a conceptual and cultural perspective
considering how scholars and other professionals, living through a sea change
in the conduct of research and scholarship, view them. As for the libraries,
the future holds much opportunity and challenge. Fundamentally, it will
involve a re-thinking of how we understand our core roles of ensuring knowledge
access, organization, research support, and preservation. As scholars produce
texts in manner more embracing of mutli-media/format content, the new world
of “process over product” will challenge us.*
http://www.accessola.com/accessonline/everybook/index.php
Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact
for Higher Quality Research
Gargouri et al
PLOS ONE (Submitted) 2010
The authors compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving
for a sample of 27,197 articles published between 2002 and 2006 in 1,984
journals. The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Results of the
study suggest that the OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but
skewed. There seems to be a correlation with quality, just as with citations
themselves (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations).
Four additional PDF files provide supplementary analysis for the study.*
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18493/
Digital Libraries: Recommendations and Challenges for the Future
High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries
i2010 Digital Libraries Initiative, December 2009
This report provides an overview of the advice produced by the High Level
Expert Group (HLG) on Digital Libraries during the period 2006-2009, summarizing
the achievements and the recommendations on which the group reached a consensus,
and identifying issues and challenges that still need to be addressed, through
evidence gathering, experimentation, stakeholder debate and political initiative.
These issues should be included in the digital libraries' agenda for the
coming years. The European Commission set up the HLG early in 2006 in the
context of its Digital Libraries' initiative. The group was entrusted the
tasks of advising the Commission on how to address the organizational, legal
and technical challenges, and of contributing to a shared strategic vision
for European digital libraries. *
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/hleg/reports/hlg_final_report09.pdf
Where does Google go from here, parts I and II
The New York Times, December 2, 2009
Google’s dominance in Internet search has earned it billions in profits
and has allowed it to expand its ambitions far beyond search and advertising
to all other aspects of the online world, including publishing. It will
challenge Microsoft Windows when it unveils its Chrome operating system,
a browser-based technology. The NYT asked two observers of Google to discuss
its effect on the Internet and new and old media.*
Part 1: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/where-google-goes-from-here-part-1/
Part 2: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/where-google-goes-from-here-part-2/
RESOURCES / RESSOURCES
The State and Challenges of OERs in Brazil: from readers
to writers
Carolina Rossini
Open Society Institute, January 2010
Enormous investments are being made worldwide to integrate the Internet
into educational processes: broadband to connect schools, laptops distributed
to teachers at very competitive prices, and computer laboratories built
in schools. The focus, however, is often on infrastructure, which Rossini
argues does not alone create the ideal foundation for educational innovation.
Diverse elements of hardware, software, content, and applications all play
a role in networked innovation, and also in the success of collaborative
cultures aligned with modern education theories. But treating the elements
as separate items rather than a connected ecosystem misses a key dimension
of the discussion. How infrastructure and content are used in education
and research determines the culture of collaborative work which can transform
both teachers and learners for the better. It is essential to talk about
the content issues. Content means everything from theses to software to
modules to textbooks to research articles, and content issues cover a wide
variety of ground from teacher training to intellectual property rights,
content price, access privileges, access to taxpayer-funded research and
educational resources, technical standards, and more. *
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1549922
Assessing Europe’s University-Based Research
Expert Group on Assessment of University-Based Research
European Commission, European Research Area, Science & Society, 2010
University‐based research is the primary arena for the production
of new knowledge, and higher education is an important focal point for European
Union and national government policy‐making. They play critical roles
in the research‐innovation eco‐system, providing human capital
through education and training, attracting high‐skilled talent and
investment, actively engaging with local and regional communities through
knowledge and technology transfer, and underpinning the global competitiveness
of nations and regions. Thus, the status, quality and productivity of higher
education are a national strategic objectives and indicators of global competitiveness.*
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/assessing-europe-university-based-research_en.pdf
Pour une éthique de la recherche en Sciences et Technologies de l'Information
et de la Communication (STIC)
Joseph Mariani et al
Rapport validé par le Comité d’Ethique du CNRS (COMETS)
sur proposition du groupe de réflexion sur l’éthique
de la recherche en STIC, 12 novembre 2009
« Les premières réflexions sur ce sujet ont rapidement
conduit à la constatation que, si la pratique des recherches en STIC
soulevait des problèmes d’éthique, en particulier dans
l’utilisation de données personnelles, le point le plus saillant
était une carence dans la prise en compte des questions éthiques
liées aux technologies résultant de ces recherches (TIC),
au moment où elles sont conduites. Les évolutions apportées
par les TIC modifient profondément les relations et la médiation
de l’humain à son environnement naturel et artificiel. Il peut
ainsi s’adresser instantanément, directement et universellement
au monde entier et, réciproquement, le monde entier peut s’adresser
à lui. Cette nouvelle capacité engendre de
multiples possibilités, mais aussi de nombreux problèmes. »
http://www.cnrs.fr/fr/organisme/ethique/comets/docs/rapportComets091112.pdf
Main Drivers for Successful Re-use of Research Data
Knowledge Exchange
Report from Workshop in Berlin, 23 - 24 September 2009
The Knowledge Exchange working group hosted an international discussion
workshop entitled “Main Drivers for Successful Re-Use of Research
Data” in Berlin. The focus was on the benefits, challenges and
obstacles of re-using data from a researcher’s perspective. The
use cases presented by researchers from a variety of disciplines were
supplemented by two key notes and selected presentations by specialists
from infrastructure institutions, publishers, and funding agencies.*
http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=324
Presentations: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=353
5th Canadian Learning Commons Conference
EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS
A Journey in Progress: Been there! Done that! What’s next!
Kingston, Ontario, June 16-18, 2010
Queen’s University is hosting the 5th Canadian Learning Commons Conference.
In 2003, Scott Bennett of Yale University suggested that one of the core
activities of a learning commons is to support “collaborative
learning by which students turn information into knowledge and sometimes into
wisdom.” Seven years later, many changes have taken place: new methods
of communicating; new models of discovery and research; new standards of accountability
for colleges and universities including skills-based outcomes; changes in
teaching methodologies such as inquiry-based learning; changes in the way
course material is delivered; changes in the way students learn and think;
and financial constraints. The conference will present an opportunity to consider
the impact of these factors on the learning commons and what they mean for
future strategic positioning of the research library through continued development
of the learning commons.*
http://www.queensu.ca/qlc/clcc5.html
Supporting Clinical Care: An Institute in Evidence-Based Practice
for Medical Librarians
Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 2 – 5, 2010
This course is of interest to medical librarians who want to learn evidence-based
medicine concepts in order to comfortably support and teach evidence-based
clinical practice (EBCP) at their institutions. Attendance will be limited
to 32 participants to maximize individual learning. It is an intensive,
introductory, 3 day course. Through discussion and hands-on learning, participants
acquire skills needed to support evidence-based practice, through an active,
case-based approach in a comfortable, small-group environment.*
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/institute2010/
*Text adapted from source / Texte adapté de la source
