~13 minute video talk by a journalist showing how news organizations verify information posted by users on the web (tweets, photos, videos) using technology such as Google Earth, etc.

How to Read a Book

Did you find an odd box with pieces of paper inside? It might be a book! Some of them still have real pages—and I’ll show you just how to read one.

The Business Value of Google Glass and Wearable Computing – Wearable computing is an emerging technology that’s affecting both the consumer and enterprise space.

Predatory Publishers Strike Back
Predatory publishing is what happens when open access publishing is subverted by manipulation, exploitation, and spammer mentality. Jeffery Beall is a librarian who uses his blog to expose predatory publishers, and they would rather he didn’t. Beall has written a Nature column piece  about predatory publishing, and his blog is Scholarly Open Access.

• The dark side of open-access publication… (Kolata, Gina. “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too).” The New York Times, April 7, 2013)
• The dark side of eTextbooks…(Streitfeld, David. “CourseSmart E-Textbooks Track Students’ Progress for Teachers.” The New York Times, April 8, 2013)
• A new service from Readability… (Mullen, Lincoln. “ProfHacker: Easy E-Books from Your Readlist.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2013)

Google Reader R.I.P.! (although not until July 1, 2013). Lifehacker offers alternatives to organize and sort your RSS news feeds.

The first is from Wired: Beyond the Buzz, Where Are MOOCs Really Going? by Michael Horn and Clayton Christensen.  “We believe they are likely to evolve into a scale business, one that relies on the technology and data backbone of the medium to optimize and individualize learning opportunities for millions of students. This is very different than simply putting a video of a professor lecturing online.”

The second is The Trouble With Online College from the New York Times and takes perhaps a less optimistic view. “Courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.”

The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation and the myth of a universal library, by Christopher Rowe.  via First Monday.

As a #PDFtribute to Aaron Swartz, O’Reilly Media is posting their Open Government book files for free for anyone to download, read and share.  The book asks the question, in a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness?  (via Slashdot.)

Ithaka, the non-profit organization that brings us JSTOR, on Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians: This study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, uncovers the needs of today’s historians and provides guidance for how research support providers can better serve them.

3D Printing:  Wondering what this technology is all about?  Read the latest CQ Researcher report “3D Printing: Will it revolutionize manufacturing?“  Trivia question: How was this technology used in the latest James Bond thriller “Skyfall”?

Some faculty and students have been reluctant to post undergraduate theses to Scholarship at Middlebury in part because they fear it could jeopardize their ability to publish the findings in journals later on. A report published in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicates there isn’t much cause for this kind of concern. (Read the comments too, where the validity of the conclusions is debated.) Putting Dissertation Online Isn’t an Obstacle to Print Publication, Surveys Find.

• E-books Reduce Student Burden – about the e-textbook pilot, quotes Rebekah Irwin.
• LIS Launches New Site Archiving College History – about Midd History Online, quotes Andy Wentink, Rebekah Irwin and William Guida ’12.5, a student research associate in LIS.
• New Science Data Librarian Blends Info and Academics – about Wendy Shook, who is quoted in the piece.

TV Advertising To Students Most Effective; Email Best Reach from a 2012 College Marketing Report from the Barnes & Noble College Marketing Division