On Stupidity, Part 2 Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'?

AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA

On Stupidity, Part 2
Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'?
By THOMAS H. BENTON

Last month I reviewed a collection of recent books (The Chronicle, August 1) arguing that Americans, particularly those now entering college, have been rendered "stupid" by a convergence of factors including traditional anti-intellectualism, consumer culture, the entertainment industry, political correctness, religious fundamentalism, and postmodern relativism, just to name some of the usual suspects.

Of course the anticipated consequences of the "stupidity crisis" seem dire enough — the end of democracy, the economic decline of the United States, the extinction of humanity as we know it — that one feels compelled to register opposition to the "Age of Unreason" by buying a few books.

I bought seven of them. And I am convinced — as if I ever doubted it — that, over the past several decades, we have become less knowledgeable, more apathetic, more reliant on others to think for us, more susceptible to simple answers, and more easily exploited.
The Link to the article is :

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/09/2008090501c.htm

Library Connect newsletter from Elsevier

The latest issue is now available at:
http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcn/0603/lcn060301.html

The overall theme is E-Learning.

Includes some useful insights on how libraries can support e-learning on campus and lots more.....

Book Southern Africa

For those of you who haven't discovered it (I have just come across it)
http://book.co.za/
"BOOK Southern Africa is a literary news and social network for publishers, authors and the general book-buying and -reading public. BOOK SA reports on local fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, book happenings, reviews and more: you can start exploring now by clicking the links above.
BOOK SA is also a free author and publisher website service for those involved in the world of Southern African literature. Our sites' special features help drive information about books throughout the web, attracting new audiences and creating more space for literary endeavours. Our goal is to help build the Southern African literary marketplace to new heights. "

Libraries go digital with Ipod

http://www.women24.com/Women24/BooksAstrology/News/Article/0,,1-12-68_20014,00.html

Online literacy

Two more interesting articles from the Chronicle of HE on this topic.

ONLINE LITERACY IS A LESSER KIND: Web skimming may be a kind of
literacy, says Mark Bauerlein, but it's not the kind that
matters most.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b01001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_me
d
ium=en
* DISCUSSION OF DIGITAL TOOLS' ROLE IN LEARNING:
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bauerlein/?utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

Digital generation???

(Interesting to note that this is talking about American students)

[from the Chronicle of HE]
NOT ALL YOUNG PEOPLE ARE TECH-SAVVY: Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a "digital generation," writes Siva Vaidhyanathan.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b00701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

user name: rulibrary
password: ru2007

Exceprt:
Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can't deal with computers at all. A few lack mobile phones. Many can't afford any gizmos and resent assignments that demand digital work. Many use Facebook and MySpace because they are easy and fun, not because they are powerful (which, of course, they are not). And almost none know how to program or even code text with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Only a handful come to college with a sense of how the Internet fundamentally differs from the other major media platforms in daily life.
College students in America are not as "digital" as we might wish to pretend. And even at elite universities, many are not rich enough. All this mystical talk about a generational shift and all the claims that kids won't read books are just not true. Our students read books when books work for them (and when I tell them to). And they all (I mean all) tell me that they prefer the technology of the bound book to the PDF or Web page. What kids, like the rest of us, don't like is the price of books.
Of course they use Google, but not very well — just like my 75-year-old father. And they fill the campus libraries at all hours, just as Americans of all ages are using libraries in record numbers. (According to the American Library Association, visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent from 1994 to 2004).

Recycle your A4 discarded paper

One of our student technical officers has kindly offered to be responsible for taking suitable paper to the computer labs on campus which offer students a facility for using recycled paper for printing. There is a box on the table in the photocopy room where you may deposit used A4 paper. This should be printed on one side only.

Journal of Library Innovation

The Western New York Library Resources Council is pleased to announce
plans to publish The Journal of Library Innovation, one of the first
journals devoted explicitly to innovation and creativity in libraries.
This peer reviewed, electronic journal will publish original research,
literature reviews, commentaries, case studies, reports on innovative
practices, letters, as well as book and product reviews. The journal will
also welcome provocative essays that will stimulate thought on the current
and future role of libraries in an Internet Age.
The inaugural issue will be published in January 2010. Please watch for a
call for papers in the near future. For more information, please contact
Editor-in-Chief Sheryl Knab (sknab@wnylrc.org) or Managing Editor Pamela
Jones (pjones@medaille.edu

KNOL: Google's new encyclopedia

WHAT GOOGLE'S NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA MEANS FOR ACADEME:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i02/02a01701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_m
edium=en

Drop in textbooks sales

TEXTBOOK SALES DROP, AND UNIVERSITY PRESSES WANT TO
KNOW WHY:
A negative trend in textbook sales has accelerated in the last
couple of months, and online piracy may be one cause of the
decline.
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/09/4480n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_mediu
m=en
--> MANY STUDENTS SEEK PIRATED TEXTBOOKS ONLINE:
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/09/4477n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

Top 25 articles in Journal of Academic Librarianship

Yesterday (2 Sept) at the Scopus/ScienceDirect workshop with Sunette Steynberg we were again alerted to the facility on SD for finding the top most cited articles in specific disciplines/journals.

These are the top 25 from the J of Academic Librarianship (Jan-Mar 2008) - for your interest.

SABINET Gateway - African Online Journal Archive

Sabinet Gateway, an organisation promoting and supporting library and information services in Africa, has chosen OCLC's CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software to store, manage and make available an African Online Journal Archive.

read press release at:
http://www.itweb.co.za/office/sabinet/0808260725.htm

"The Next Scholarly Communication"?

(I know this is a very long post but it is interesting. It is cut from Gerry McKiernan's latest offering to the
SPARC-OAForum@arl.org)

Colleagues

As some may be aware, I have long proposed The Wiki as The Next Scholarly
Communication/Publishing Environment
Gerry McKiernan. "Disruptive Scholarship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Re(Use) / Re(Mix) / Re(New)." Invited keynote presentation delivered at
Transforming Practice for An Authentic Future, 3rd International
Conference on Plagiarism, June 23-25, 2008, Northumbria University,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Director' Cut version self-archived at:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/IPC2008-DC.ppt (30 August 2008)
"Wikis: Disruptive Technologies for Dynamic Possibilities," Invited
presentastion delivered at Digital Libraries à la Carte: Choices for the
Future. Module 2: Technological Developments: Threats and Opportunities
for Libraries, Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources BV
(TICER), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, August 23, 2005.
Self-archived at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/TICER2005.ppt
(30 August 2008)

Thanks To Bernie Sloan, Sora Associates, Bloomington, Indiana has have
learned about a wiki called Mememoir and its associated implementation in
the WikiGenes project that I believe is a A Major Realization of The
Disruptive Scholarship Vision
"Reporting in [the September 2008 issue] Nature Genetics, scientist Robert
Hoffmann develops the first Wiki where authorship really matters. Based on
a powerful authorship tracking technology, this next generation wiki links
every word to its corresponding author. This way readers can always know
their sources and authors receive due credit.
[snip]

Clear authorship attribution in this next generation wiki makes it also
possible that users can rate each other based on their contributions. For
the first time, collaborative publishing can therefore be enhanced with
the advantages of a reputation system. Hoffmann describes how a
self-regulating reputation system can help to settle editing conflicts,
which were an important problem in first generation wikis and used to
depend on slow and refutable top-down decisions.
The scientific wiki project, introduced in the September issue of Nature
Genetics and released online today, is the first of its kind and a
milestone in the Mememoir project. "This release is an important proof of
principle, but our ambitious aim with the Mememoir project is to
revolutionize publishing in all of science," says Dr. Hoffmann, "with a
knowledge base that is open access, interdisciplinary and combines the
altruistic possibilities of wikis with explicit authorship."
Robert Hoffman / A Wiki for the Life Sciences Where Authorship Matters /
Nature Genetics / volume 40 / number 9 / 1047 - 1051 /September 2008 /
Published online 27 August 2008 / doi:10.1038/ng.f.217
Access to sample text from the paper as well as links to the full text of
the article (for subscribers (?)) in HMTL and PDF format as well as links
to the WikiGenes site and associated components (e.g., Introduction &
Tutorial, Sample 'Author' Contribution Page, Sample 'Author' Contribution,
etc.) are available at
[ http://tinyurl.com/582jq2 ]

Please share your thoughts/reactions/etc as a Comment on the entry for
this posting on the Scholarship 2.0 blog
BTW: Recommendations Of Any And All Other Radical Scholarly Wikis
Like/UnLike Mememoir / WikiGenes Are Most Welcome.
Regards,
Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu

Online journals on technology and libraries

Ariadne
Biblio Tech Review
D-Lib Magazine
Info Technology & Libraries
Library Hi Tech
Library Journal Digital
Library Technology Now
MC Journal

Techie blogs for Librarians

ASC Online
blogwithoutalibrary.net
Dave's blog
Free Range Librarian
iLibrarian
Library Technology Guides
LibrarianInBlack
LITA
Loomware
The Shifted Librarian
Tame the Web
NEKLS Technology Weblog
TechnoBiblio
walking paper

Amazon goes for E-Book reader for textbooks

Amazon Plans to Market Its E-Book Reader to Colleges
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3268&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

Libraries as portals

SCHOLARS' VIEW OF LIBRARIES AS PORTALS SHOWS MARKED
DECLINE:
The shift toward digital scholarship is changing the
relationship between libraries and faculty members at
institutions of all sizes, a new report says.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/08/4351n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

user name: rulibrary
password: ru2007

Survey of behavior and attitudes of faculty members and academic librarians

(this has been put on for Jeanne Berger - Eileen)

Ithaka has recently released the datasets from our 2006 surveys of the behavior and attitudes of faculty members and academic librarians. These complementary studies, co-sponsored by JSTOR and by Ithaka's incubated entities Portico, Aluka, and NITLE, have been of interest to academic librarians and scholarly publishers alike in presentations over the past year, but now we are making the dataset available as well. The faculty study focuses on attitudes and behaviors in the transition to an increasingly electronic information environment, examining perceptions and use of information services in the research and teaching processes. The findings shed light on the relationship between faculty and the library, faculty perceptions and uses of electronic resources, the transition away from print for scholarly journals, faculty publishing preferences, e-books, digital repositories, and the preservation of scholarly journals. The librarian survey provides the perspective of senior collection development officers on many of these same issues and thereby provides the opportunity to examine the similarities and differences between faculty and librarian views. We have prepared an in-depth white paper which details our findings and provides analysis and recommendations based on these studies, which may be found on the Ithaka website at http://www.ithaka.org/research/faculty-and-librarian-surveys. For those who are interested in investigating our data in greater depth, we have deposited the raw datasets from these studies with ICPSR, and the faculty and librarian studies are available at http://tinyurl.com/6rm3df and http://tinyurl.com/6hk6lg, respectively.

On Stupidity

AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA
On Stupidity
By Thomas H. Benton

A cartload of recent books suggests that it's time to reverse the customer-service mentality plaguing academe.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," said H.L. Mencken in the era of Babbitt and the Scopes "monkey" trial. Several generations later, one might speculate that no publisher has ever lost money with a book accusing Americans — particularly young ones — of being stupid.
The link to the article is :
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/08/2008080101c.htm

New online learning community for librarians

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

WebJunction, an online learning community for librarians and library staff, has launched new social and learning applications for the site. The site, first started with money and backing from the Online Computer Library Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, had 30,000 individual members even before the revamp.
There are three new items of note:
A “friending” utility allowing librarians to connect with friends, peers, and colleagues from across the library community. There are also public profiles, the ability to tag useful bits of information, and recommendations.
Librarians can now create their own content with tools provided by the site.
There are more flexible online courses covering business, technical, and library skills.
A report on Blogjunction, the site’s blog, says that since the new tools launched last week, the library site had had 15,000 unique visitors, a pace that, if it keeps up, will give them more traffic than in any other month of their 5-year existence. —Josh Fischman