Smith, Kevin, and J.D. “Setting the Record Straight about Elsevier | Scholarly Communications @ Duke.” Accessed January 28, 2014: Highly recommended article explaining some of the nuances of academic authors, license agreements, post-prints, and copyrights.  Well worth reading.

10 ways enterprise IT Is changing – From the rising influence of marketing to the impact of mobile to the realities of offshoring, 2014 is going to have its share of trends and disruptions that affect IT.

Goodbye net neutrality… Now what? – What will an Internet without net neutrality look like? As the opinions fly, Michael P. Kassner considers what makes sense and what doesn’t.

The World’s First 3-D Printed Book Cover: A limited edition of Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee’s new dystopic book, On Such a Full Sea is making a splash with a 3-D cover produced by MakerBot.

Blackboard Software Will Incorporate Virtual College Bookstore – The learning-management behemoth Blackboard is getting into the virtual-campus-bookstore business.

Hmmmm…it’s pretty snazzy looking but how do I know if I should I trust that infographic? Fast Company has some good tips here.  (Spoiler alert: the article title is “Infographics Lie. Here’s How to Spot the B.S.”)

Interested in a story for everyone? Check out the Big History Project and “explore 13.7 billion years of shared history…”

Speaking of stories – the New York Times has compiled “2013: The Year in Interactive Storytelling” Be sure to scroll down to view the Explanatory Graphics section. You can learn about the Higgs Boson or untangle the fast choreography of a successful field goal on the football field.

How do the Digital Humanities translate to the classroom? The Chronicle spotlights UCLA and Emory in “How the Humanities Compute in the Classroom”.

How many times do people switch devices in an hour? Quite a few, according to a UK study.

This year LIS met loads of incoming Middlebury students at the Student Services Fair. Brenda Ellis, Pij Slater, Stacy Reardon and Ian Burke staffed the table along with Helpdesk students Biswash Ghimire and Anis Mebarki. Ian distributed handouts on Cyber Security Awareness Month while Stacy and Brenda passed out shiny new LIS bookmarks with handy go/ links. The team spoke with students about connecting to wireless and avoiding phishing attacks. Students had quite a few questions of their own:

• How do I print?
• How long can I check out books from the library?
• How do I find books at the library?
• How do I get a job at the library?
• How do I get MS Office?
• Can I get the books I need for my classes at the library?

Students were very enthusiastic about library services. One student ran over to tell us, “The Middlebury library was probably a bigger factor in my college decision than it should have been!” (We politely disagreed. The quality of the library is indeed a very important factor!)

The library’s iPad was put to good use at the Fair, and students appeared to be satisfied with the help they received. We even heard an unprompted, “Always ask a librarian!” as they departed.

Last week, LIS liaison librarians Brenda, Stacy and Carrie attended a 2-day writing and teaching retreat for faculty, organized by the CTLR and held at the Mountain Top Inn in Chittenden. Along with Shawna Shapiro from the Writing Program and Adela Langrock from the Office of Planning and Assessment, we led a session called “Undergraduates as Researchers,” in which we reviewed the results of our 2012 assessment of student research and technology skills and discussed best practices for helping students develop strong research skills.

We  also attended workshops on syllabus design, developing and grading writing assignments, peer feedback, and foreign language pedagogy. We each were able to spend a few hours sharing assignment ideas and suggestions in small-group syllabus workshops, and we had plenty of time to talk with faculty and colleagues individually too.

Here are just a few take-aways from the event:

• Some faculty expressed interest in community-based, collaborative research projects. It will be interesting to look for models (a few come to mind already!) and elaborate on technology options for these faculty.
• If piloting a new initiative, program, or pedagogical technique seems daunting, try starting with a “lite” version. If that’s successful, you can scale up the next time around.
• When assigning small group work during class time, ask each group to report out at the end. This could be an effective way for students to share their research success stories and challenges.
• Writing is communication. When you write, take the time to imagine, understand, and speak to your target audience; ask students to do the same.
• Peer feedback on writing is most useful when it asks questions about sections of a text, or raises big issues such as clarity and purpose. Line-by-line editing (in effect, telling the writer, “this is exactly how I would say it”) is less effective because the writer implements the directed changes without needing to re-envision the paper from the reader’s viewpoint.
• Be intentional and design backwards.  Think of what you want students to be able to do and then provide the steps or “scaffolding” to develop the skill by sequencing assignments and instruction to achieve the goal.  This applies to research as well as writing skills.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

University of Oregon Ripple: An open source mobile audience participation application.

Web Content

Universal Analytics and user-centric analytics: What Google’s new Universal Analytics platform is doing and what it might be positioned to do in the future to track individual users across multiple devices.

Social Media in Higher Education: A curated Flipboard of articles from the last month on this topic, with many focusing on analytics.

4 Tips From Google To Make Your Website More Compelling: Resist organizing content according to pre-formed taxonomies of ideas and try to think from the user’s perspective–then make sure to test and test again with real users.

Higher Education Search Analysis Q2 2013: Good news for Middlebury! Searches for higher education resources with a strong relation to the liberal arts and a residential location were up compared to last year.

Facebook adds embedded posts

Google launches real-time analytics API beta

Matt Mullenweg: State of the Word 2013: Matt discusses the upcoming 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 versions of WordPress. The release video for 3.6 is at about 7:00 and features native audio and video embed support and a better revision browser. 3.8 will include a redesigned administration interface and is slated for release this December.

Web Development

Protect Your Website From Its Embedded Content: Security considerations for the new sandbox and seamless attributes to the iFrame element.

Facebook’s Huxley and the BBC’s Wraith: UI testing tools that compare screenshots of your web application and lets you know if things change that you aren’t expecting to change.

Google PageSpeed Insights: Updated to include tips for mobile speed improvements.

Reading

Students Prefer Print for Serious Academic Reading: A study that will be published in College & Research Libraries shows that while students read for pleasure on devices, they prefer print for academic work. Among other reasons, this preference may owe to print being a less distracting medium, with easier ways to highlight and take notes.

The Professor Who Declared, It’s J.K. Rowling: Stylometry software was used to help build the case that J.K. Rowling penned crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling under a pseudonym. The comments to this article are great reading, too.