An Overview of the Textbook Market and Strategies to Reduce Costs

An Overview of theTextbook Market and Strategies to Reduce Costs   

OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere

Today’s mobile computers provide omnipresent access to information, creation and communication facilities. It is undeniable that they have forever changed the way we work, play and interact. However, mobile interaction is far from solved. Diminutive screens and buttons mar the user experience, and otherwise prevent us from realizing their full potential.

Pick n Pay launches Kobo e reader

Pick n Pay launches Kobo e reader: Pick n Pay has announced that it is launching the Kobo e-reader in selected stores.

Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories

Calhoun, Karen (2012) Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories. Research libraries have entered an era of discontinuous change—a time when the cumulated assets of the past do not guarantee future success. Bibliographic control, cooperative cataloguing systems and library catalogues have been key assets in the research library service framework for supporting scholarship. This chapter examines these assets in the context of changing library collections, new metadata sources and methods, open access repositories, digital scholarship and the purposes of research libraries. Advocating a fundamental rethinking of the research library service framework, the chapter concludes with a call for research libraries to collectively consider new approaches that could strengthen their roles as essential contributors to emergent, network-level scholarly research infrastructures.

Hat Tip: Open Access Explained!

What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about.

"One of the clearest, concise, and entertaining explanations of open access I have seen. Check-out this animated comic, Open Access Explained! narrated by open access advocates Nick Shockey, Director of Student Advocacy at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Jonathan Eisen, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at University of California, Davis on the PHD Comics website.
The piece focuses on open access to publically-funded scientific research. I wished for more of a nod to Humanities scholarship and the unique challenges of our disciplines relating to open access. But the explanation still translates very well. For example, this excerpt—I believe it is Jonathan Eisen speaking—could just as easily be applied to Humanities scholarship:.: