Information Just Wants to Be Free

Exciting news from ResourceShelf which announced yesterday the premier issue of SAGE Open, "the only broad-based open access journal featuring content from the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities."  


No cost peer-reviewed articles!  SAGE Open will feature scholarly articles from social scientists who require their articles to be freely available because of personal choice or because of university or government requirements.  Good news for researchers who are trying to find new articles in the social and behavioral sciences or humanities.


New Trier Library will certainly add what is certain to become a goldmine of articles to our database offerings. This is a resource which will hopefully promote collaborative and interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities. Services include sharing of articles by email, alerts for corrections in publications, alerts for posted comments, and links to similar articles in the journal. Sign up for email alerts as each new article is published.


Citations may be sent to a "citation manger" which exports the citations to:

• EndNote
• ProCite
• Reference Manager
• RefWorks
• Zotero

Our students may groan when they realize NoodleTools is not yet enabled to accept exported citations. Yet, we all know they need to learn the elements of citations in a variety of formats.

Sir Ken Robinson to speak on creativity

Steve Hargadon just posted: Wednesday, May 25th... a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Sir Ken Robinson about the extensively revised and updated version of his best-selling classic, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative."

This session should be worth attending. Here is a short video you may have seen (it was shown at NICE earlier this year):

More Digital Content Than Ever

is being archived for subscription databases and available from universities for free.

Gale, and TheGreenInterview.com, to enhance the content of GREENR, Gale’s electronic resource offering new content in the area of sustainable development, the environment, energy and natural resources. 

According to ResourceShelf:  "TheGreenInterview.com will be providing Gale with video interviews covering a range of issues connected to our planet, humans on Earth, damage to our ecosystem, alternative development ideas, sustainability and more. Transcripts and audio (MP3) files of the video content and biographies of the interviewees in each video segment will also be available."  This is a welcome addition because up to now I have not been particularly impressed with the currency of articles in the GREENR database.  

In addition to Library of Congress National Jukebox  (historical recordings from the Library of Congress, mentioned in a previous post)  we also have access to Digital Images of Yale’s Cultural Collections. Yale is the first Ivy League university to make its collections accessible to the public, and already more than 250,000 images are available: Discover Yale Digital Commons.

"As works in these collections become digitized, the museums and libraries will make those images that are in the public domain freely accessible. In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration."

Open access and freely accessible in the public domain appears to respect the idea that information "wants to be free".  


At the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University has a call to librarians and other academics to come up with ideas for how to create The Digital Public Library of America.  They welcome submissions and ideas and expect this project to become a reality in a couple of years. Librarian Linda Straube shared this video of  John Palfrey on YouTube sharing the concepts of the steering committee of DPLA "Beta Sprint". See also the DPLA Wiki which shares readings on how a repository of human knowledge might be created for use across cultures.

Seth Godin Has Librarians All Fired Up Again

The Twittersphere is buzzing with comments on Seth Godin's latest article: Seth's Blog: The future of the library. (May 16, 2011)


Both Phil Bradley and Librarian By Day weighed in: Seth Godin Misses the Point on Libraries, Again. | Librarian by Day(librarianbyday.net).  Both disagree with some of his simplistic ideas on libraries and librarianship but Phil Bradley gives Godin cudos for realizing that "They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). " 


The saving grace is that Godin was way more positive than when he dissed librarians in 2010. Godin actually argues that "We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime." 


Andy (Agnostic, Maybe) writes sarcastically:  “Bring Me the Head of Seth Godin!” He argues that Seth Godin "should be waaaaaay down on the list of scalps to attempt to claim right now. Think about it."  PC Sweeney thinks that Seth Godin nailed it in his comments regarding libraries and Buffy Hamilton agrees with her! I do agree with some of Godin's comments but he gets way too simplistic for me when he makes silly statements such as, "Post-Gutenberg, books are finally abundant, hardly scarce, hardly expensive, hardly worth warehousing." Excuse me, but since when have print collections become totally irrelevant? So I tweeted in support of Librarian By Day's thoughtful response as I weighed in ...

• 4,068 people like Seth's post on Facebook
• 2124 have retweeted Godin's Blog Post from his blog
• All this happening in 24 hours
• Quite interesting that Seth's blog doesn't seem to accept comments.  
• He lets Facebook and Twitter do the heavy lifting.  

I just love this viral aspect of social media when everyone is willing to share an opinion and is trying to figure things out.  What do you think? 

National Jukebox

Great listening treasure!

National Jukebox

What a Difference 10 Years Makes!

How the Social Web Reflected on Bin Laden’s Death

Diving into Digital Books - fire up Elluminate for Webinar Monday Night

From the TL Virtual Cafe:

Be sure to attend:
Diving into Digital Books

Adding eReaders to Your School Library
Guests: Buffy J. Hamilton & Jennifer LaGarde
Host: Gwyneth Jones
May 2 - 8pm EST - 7 pm Central time
Session Wikipage - Resources and More!

Kindles, Nooks and iPads, Oh My! 

"Implementing eReaders into your library program is about more than just jumping on the latest technological bandwagon or attempting to reinvent your library in order to stay relevant. It’s about good practice. Join Buffy Hamilton and Jennifer LaGarde as they discuss how eReaders have helped them provide students with a) access to the most up to date titles, b) the unique ability to efficiently link works of fiction with nonfiction resources and, c) the opportunity to interact with texts in ways that are simply not possible with traditional, library owned, books – all in an environment that both appeals to and enhances their skills as 21st century learners."

Hope to meet you in the Cloud!