Deal with it: Tablets are here to stay

There's no point living in denial: more and more staff are bringing tablets to work so organisations have to adjust their policies in response.

Tablets are becoming a standard business tool for many workers, so businesses need to rethink their attitudes towards devices, whether they are buying them or not.
Research by analyst Ovum found that 17.6 percent of the employees it surveyed had already been provided with a tablet by their employer, up from 12.5 percent in 2012: but of the respondents who owned a tablet themselves, 66.7 percent used that device at work.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/deal-with-it-tablets-are-here-to-stay/?tag=nl.e101&s_cid=e101&ttag=e101&ftag=TRE684d531

Useful resource for research and writing tips

30 tips for successful academic research and writing

from

Editing Tip of the Week: Using a Thesaurus

I came across this great site which offers writing and publishing resources for research - some useful tips available.
The hints on how to use a thesaurus  would be very useful to students, I'm sure.

Incunabula: The Early Printed Books

Incunabula: The Early Printed Books
 
The term Incunabula (also incunable or incunabulum) refers to a book, pamphlet or other document that was printed, and not handwritten, before the start of the 16th century in Europe.  The first recorded usage of the term incunabula came in 1639 when the noted bibliophile Bernhard von Mallinckrodt issued a pamphlet to mark the bicentenary of the advent of printing by movable type titled De ortu et progressu artis typographicae (“Of the rise and progress of the typographic art”). 

The end of libraries?

Provocative piece by someone who (in my opinion!) is blinkered and out of touch with the reality of the needs of real people - particularly those who do not have the gadgets (money?) available to the 'so-called'' privileged of society.
 
Excerpt:  "...It’s almost like some people want to interpret anyone talking about the end of libraries as talking about the end of learning — and, by extension, the end of civilization. The reality is that learning has evolved. It’s now easier than ever to look something up. And the connected world has far better access to basically infinitely more information than can be found in even the largest library — or all of them combined. This is all a good thing. A very good thing. Maybe the best thing in the history of our civilization. Yet we retain this romantic notion of libraries as cultural touchstones. Without them, we’re worried we’ll be lost and everything will fall apart...."
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I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99 

 

 

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99

My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.”
― Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Isaac Asimov

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo400908.html#q64oP5OvrJAy566k.99

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Isaac Asimov

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo400908.html#q64oP5OvrJAy566k.99

Altmetrics Bibliography

Altmetrics Bibliography
The Altmetrics Bibliography includes selected English-language articles and technical reports that are useful in understanding altmetrics.
The "altmetrics" concept is still evolving. In "The Altmetrics Collection," Jason Priem, Paul Groth, and Dario Taraborelli define altmetrics as follows:

Altmetrics is the study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments. The term has also been used to describe the metrics themselves—one could propose in plural a "set of new altmetrics." Altmetrics is in most cases a subset of both scientometrics and webometrics; it is a subset of the latter in that it focuses more narrowly on scholarly influence as measured in online tools and environments, rather than on the Web more generally.

This bibliography does not cover books, conference papers, digital media works (such as MP3 files), editorials, e-mail messages, interviews, letters to the editor, presentation slides or transcripts, unpublished e-prints, or weblog postings. Coverage of technical reports is very selective.

Sources have been published from January 2001 through September 2013. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works.

Altmetrics: What, Why and Where?

Everything you need to know about Altmetrics

Altmetrics: What, Why and Where?

by Heather Piwowar, Guest Editor
Altmetrics is a hot buzzword. What does it mean? What's behind the buzz? What are the risks and benefits of using alternative metrics of research impact – altmetrics – in our discovery and evaluation systems? How are altmetrics being used now, and where is the field going?
This special section of the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology focuses on these questions. Essays from seven perspectives highlight the role of altmetrics in a wide variety of settings.