Wednesday, July 28, 2010
“What is the Center for Research Libraries?”
We collect the unique and little-known documents vital to humanities, science, and social science research.
We preserve the records of the past and the present to make them available for the researchers of the future.
We connect researchers, libraries, and institutions to vital source materials and information.
JSTOR Current Scholarship Program Price Calculator
Use our calculator to get a quick estimate for your 2011 institutional subscriptions.
1. Select your organization type and country.2. Click the icon next to a title to expand the list of subscription options.
3. Select a subscription type from the list that appears beneath the journal name.
Your price total is calculated and updated automatically at the bottom of the screen.
4. When you have made your selections, enter your contact information and click 'Send to JSTOR'.
JSTOR Outreach staff will verify your prices, add any applicable tax and shipping costs, and provide you with instructions for placing your order and completing the licensing process.
Science: New Searchable Database from FDA and NLM: Substance Registration System
This database provides access to the FDA Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII) assigned to substances by the FDA Substance Registration System).
The UNII is an essential element required for the listing of substances in the FDA Structured Product Labeling (SPL). The Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the FDA collaborated to make access to this code easier.
Users entering a substance name or a UNII will be directed to the FDA record. Spell checking and autosuggest are available for each query. If no UNII is available for a substance, the user is referred to the FDA to request one.
Links to the NLM ChemIDplus and the Drug Information Portal are provided for most drugs. The database is updated weekly with data provided by FDA.
New York Times: Readers Are Abandoning Print, Yet Don’t Trust the Web
July 27, 2010, 4:43 pm
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Where are people going to find news and information they trust, in a world with a dwindling number of print publications and an ever-expanding number of online publications?
Readers have not yet figured out the answer to that, according to a recent report released by the Center for the Digital Future at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.
Almost a quarter of Internet users who also read newspapers would miss the print edition of their newspapers if they disappeared, according to the study, and 18 percent have stopped subscribing to a newspaper or magazine because they can read the same material online. More than three-quarters ranked the Internet as an important source of information, yet just over half said newspapers were important.
While most people get their information online these days, they do not necessarily trust their new sources of news. Just 39 percent of people said that most or all of the information they read online is reliable, the lowest percentage since the university began doing annual studies a decade ago. Fourteen percent said that only a small portion or none of the information online was reliable, the highest level ever.
If that makes you think that people read the sites they trust and distrust the others, think again. Almost a quarter of people said that half or less than half of the information they read on sites they visited regularly was reliable.
As for print publications that are trying to figure out a way to make money from the flood of readers that are abandoning print for the Web, either by running ads or selling subscriptions, the study offered a bleak outlook.
Internet users overwhelmingly do not want to pay for access to Web sites that they already view free, yet half said they never clicked on Web ads and 70 percent called Internet advertising annoying. Still, just over half said they would rather see ads than pay to see Web sites.
“Online providers face major challenges to get customers to pay for services they now receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Dillard University S.O.A.R. Organizational Fair August 27th, 2010
Student Orientation Advising and Registration
Campus Technology Free Webcast: Learning Management That Fits: Where Cloud Hosting, Managed Open-Source and SaaS Converge
Moodlerooms combines the scalability of the Dell Services Cloud with the stability of managed open source and the support of software-as-a-service to deliver a solution that fits an organization’s needs. Moodlerooms transcends the bounds of proprietary learning management systems by providing something greater—one solution, one provider and one platform forever.
Presenter: Joe McAvoy, vice president of sales and marketing, Moodlerooms
Moderator: Linda Briggs, contributing editor, Campus Technology
Avoid Problems: New URLs for Some PubMed Web Pages
The URLs for these PubMed Web pages have been streamlined. The old URLs will be redirected to the new URLs so existing links should work. We recommend that you update your documentation and Web pages with the new URLs to avoid problems in the future. LinkOut libraries should also update specialized Single Citation Matcher and Clinical Queries URLs; please see the LinkOut Help for details. The links on the PubMed homepage have been updated.
+ Single Citation Matcher http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/citmatch
+ Batch Citation Matcher
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/batchcitmatch
+ Clinical Queries
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical
Source: NLM Technical Bulletin / National Center for Biotechnology Information
Google Editions: What We Know (and Don’t Know)!
Digital Book World http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2010/google-editions-what-we-know-and-dont-know/#ixzz0utVZUFsL
By Eric Freese, Aptara Solutions Architect
Publishers are just recovering from the earth-shaking impact of the iPad release and the next tremor may already be on the way. It has been widely reported that Google will be releasing their “cloud bookstore,” known as Editions, sometime this summer with upwards of 4 million books available.
Such staggering volume begs the question − what do we know about Google Editions? The answer, unfortunately, is not a heckuva lot.
This article summarizes what those “in the know” are saying, what the rumor mill is spinning, and what Google, with its tight lips, has inferred.
Which Books?
It is assumed that initially Editions will cover only books submitted by publishers, probably launching with 400,000 to 600,000 to start, many more than Apple currently has in the entire iBookstore. The settlement between Google, authors and publishers over Google’s scanning of books that are in copyright but out-of-print (aka Google Books) has not yet been approved by the courts. Whether Google plans to sell the out-of-copyright books has also not been announced, but it is assumed that they may be available to readers through Editions.
Platform
Google plans for the books to be read through a web browser rather than a specific reading program or device. They have also mentioned the possibility of building software to optimize reading for certain devices, like the iPad, but haven’t announced any specific plans. Since books are read from ‘the cloud,’ it is assumed that you must have internet access. What’s not clear is what the browser requirements might be and whether an on-device browser, like the Kindle’s, will support Editions.
Partners
While Google has said that nearly all U.S. publishers (20,000+) will be included in the Editions bookstore, no publishers have yet publically announced their participation. Since most publishers favor having as many outlets as possible, it is safe to assume that many of the large ones will be on board when the time comes. Editions is planned in such a way that book retailers, including independent booksellers, can use Editions to sell books from their own websites and keep most of the revenue.
Google Editions & EPUB
There hasn’t been any announcement that specifically states that Editions will support the EPUB standard. However, in an interview at BookExpo America this May, a Google manager stated that books that are downloaded, rather than cached, would be available using Adobe ACS4 DRM. ACS4 supports PDF and EPUB. So we can speculate that there may be EPUB support. Google Books also supports download of books in the EPUB format, so there is a precedent.
Cost & Price
As is typical, Google plans to derive most of its revenue from Editions through advertising, and hasn’t alluded yet as to what prices books will be sold (competitive is the best estimate right now), what pricing model they will use, or what cut they will take. Several sources have reported that publishers will be able to name their own price for their Editions books. Other sources have reported that Google will give publishers 63% of revenues from eBooks sold directly to customers, and 45% for those sold through retailers, with a small share going to Google.
Enhanced Ebooks
At this time it appears that multimedia will not be supported within Google Editions, and it is not clear whether live links will be supported.
Print on Demand
Google has been quoted as saying that they would like to provide this capability, but it will be largely dependent on publishers as to whether it will be supported on a book by book basis.
gPad?
The last wave of articles about Editions included new rumors that Google was exploring the idea of building their own tablet. The speculation that it will be supported by Verizon Wireless has recently been confirmed in several articles, including by Verizon. It’s not known if the tablet will be based on Android or Google’s new Chrome OS, although most guesses are with Android.
While there’s no confirmation of its existence, Google has been posting mock-ups of what a tablet running Chrome might look like. With more than 3 million iPads already sold, any new device will have to be pretty special to catch-up, let alone overtake it. That being said, the Android OS is giving the iPhone OS a run for its money, so anything is possible.
What does this mean for publishers? Most of the money being spent for iPad apps will need to be spent again if they want to support apps on a Google tablet.
To reduce or prevent this, proactive publishers and their partners should start developing enhanced eBooks and apps in ways that enable reuse and multi-platform support. This includes the use of open, non-proprietary standards (e.g. HTML5 instead of Flash, MP4 or OGG instead of QuickTime, etc.) among other things.
Tune in to the upcoming DBW WEBcast, eBooks vs. Apps: The Pros, Cons and Possibilities, to learn more about creating enhanced eBooks and apps with an eye to the future.
Eric Freese is a Solutions Architect with Aptara, which provides digital publishing solutions that deliver significant gains in quality, time-to-market and production costs for eBook publishers.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Reference: Fast Facts / “Fact Sheets”: IES Education (U.S.): Statistics
http://www.nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=89
Assessments
Adult literacy
Advanced mathematics and science courses
Arts New!
Reading
SAT score
State-by-state rankings
Student reading and mathematics achievements
Horizon Report 2010: Projects in E-Books, Open Content, Mobile Learning, and Augmented Reality
Abstract:
This web seminar includes speakers representing six projects featured in the latest Horizon Report. In this special one-and-a-half hour ELI webinar, you’ll be taken on a tour of their work in electronic books, open content, and augmented reality. The six presentations will be followed by an open question and answer period with the presenters.
IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) Awards $19.5 Million in Museums for America Grants to 178 Institutions; Several Projects Involve Digitization and Cataloging
“This year’s MFA grant recipients are truly an exciting and diverse group of museums, representing the remarkable ways that large and small institutions are serving communities. Funded projects support digitization and collections management plans, enhanced accessibility, environmental literacy, and much more. The work of these institutions will educate and inspire citizens of all ages,” said Acting Director Marsha L. Semmel. “IMLS is pleased to support museums as they engage their communities through programming tailored to their specific needs, and this round of MFA grants furthers this work.”
Awarded in three categories (engaging communities, building institutional capacity, and collections stewardship), MFA grants fund projects such as educational programs and exhibits, staff and volunteer training, research, planning, technological upgrades, and equipment purchases.
CLIR Council on Library and Information Resources: May-August 2010
Numbers 75-76 • May-August (double issue) 2010
ISSN 1944-7639 (online version)
Contents
The Unique Contributions of CLIR
Share Your Ideas: Sponsors' Symposium 2011
Humanists/Social Scientists Receive Library Fellowships
Lynn Yarmey Receives Zipf Fellowship
CLIR Appoints DLF Advisory Committee
Report Examines Transition of Research Collections from Print to Digital
CLIR Issues is now available in electronic format only. To receive the newsletter, please sign up at http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/signup.html
New from WorldCat: Find Books at the Appropriate Reading Level Using WorldCat and the Lexile Framework for Reading
Enter your Lexile measure, select your interests, and find books you'd like to read! Whether you're reading for school or for pleasure, you can use this site to build a custom reading list on the subjects that interest you the most.
Top 10 Reasons Hardbacks are "Better" Than eBooks
David Carnoy.Executive Editor at CNET.com
Posted: July 23, 2010 07:30 AM
LifeHacker.com: Five Best Book Recommendation Services
Friday, July 23, 2010
The July 2010 Edition of CNI Conversations is Now Online (Coalition for Networked Information)
In the July 2010 CNI Conversations, Executive Director Cliff Lynch and Associate Director Joan Lippincott provide a recap of the JISC/CNI Edinburgh conference; sessions on e-science, “digging into data challenge projects,” special collections, institutional strategies for digital content, and services for users of mobile devices were highlighted. Cliff also discussed the IATUL conference and the Microsoft research meeting. Joan Lippincott gave a summary of an article on the current status of electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) programs in the US that she and Cliff co-authored and that will appear soon in the ARL publication RLI (issue 270).
Microsoft Research: Info Retrieval Research: Expansion of Web N-gram Project from Microsoft Research & Bing
We invite the whole community to use the Web N-gram services, made available via a cloud-based platform, to drive discovery and innovation in web search, natural language processing, speech, and related areas by conducting research on real-world web-scale data, taking advantage of regular data updates for projects that benefit from dynamic data.
The Web N-gram services provide you access to:
Content types: Document Body, Document Title, Anchor Texts
Model types: Smoothed models
N-gram availability: unigram, bigram, trigram, N-gram with N=4, 5
Training size (Body): All documents indexed by Bing in the en-us market
Access: Hosted Services by Microsoft
Updates: Periodical updates
Late last year, we introduced a private beta testing of the Web N-gram Services. We are now expanding access in the Public Beta Web N-gram Services to include professors, students, and researchers from around the world.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Classroom Experiment: Ditching a Textbook
By Amy Cavender
July 16, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Let me start this post with a disclaimer: I'm not doing away entirely with textbooks for my courses, so the image in this post is somewhat misleading. There are some really worthwhile texts out there, and some of them work well for what I want to do with my students.
In the two sections of the course that I'll be teaching, I'll still be using two traditional textbooks: Glenn Tinder's Political Thinking and (for the writing-intensive section only) Harris' Prentice Hall Reference Guide. The former helps students understand some of the moral and philosophical assumptions underlying various policy positions. The latter provides students in the writing-intensive section with good direction on the writing process and citation styles.
I'll be replacing the traditional "conflicting viewpoints" textbook, though, with materials gathered from a variety of resources: the web, the news media, the popular press, and more traditional scholarly venues. As the semester progresses, the students will take on some responsibility for determining course content.
Why on earth would I do this? There are three primary reasons:
•Going this route enables me to take up much more recent controversies than I could if I relied on a textbook. It's hard to imagine, for instance, that issues such as schools disciplining students for their Facebook pages, schools monitoring students using the webcams on laptops issued to them, or Arizona's new immigration enforcement law have yet found their way into traditional textbooks.
•I want students to develop skills in locating and evaluating resources that help them think intelligently about topics that interest them. Allowing students to help determine the direction and content of the course will provide them with an opportunity to learn and practice these skills. (I'll be setting the first few toipcs and explaining how and why I chose the resources I did, and I'll be working closely with students as they suggest resources for later in the semester.)
•Finally, of course, there's the practical issue of cost. Though I always try to find paperback editions, it's still the case that textbooks aren't cheap. If a book is needed, it's needed, but it makes sense to go with low or no-cost alternatives to textbooks when those alternatives make pedagogical sense.
I'm also thinking about dropping the textbook in the Political Thought course I teach each spring, though for different reasons. I've long used Morgan's Classics of Moral and Political Theory. It's an excellent and reasonably-priced anthology, but all of the texts I teach from it are freely avaialable at Bartleby.com or Project Gutenberg. Allowing students to use electronic texts (they could still purchase paper copies of the anthology or individual works, if they wished) would save students money and might start some good conversations about the differences between various editions and translations, and why they matter.
I'll plan to report back in January about how the experiment with the Political Issues sections worked.
What are your thoughts on eliminating some of the textbooks from courses? If you've already taken this step, what has your experience been? Comments, as always, are welcome.
Resource of the Week: Library of Congress Science Tracer Bullets
Resource of the Week: Library of Congress Science Tracer Bullets
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
The Library of Congress SCIENCE TRACER BULLET SERIES contains research guides that help you locate information on science and technology subjects. With brief introductions to the topics, lists of resources and strategies for finding more, they help you to stay “on target.”
These pathfinders from the Library of Congress Science Reference Services have been for quite awhile — as far back as 1972, according to Reference Services Review — but in our humble opinion, they don’t get enough love. Covering a wide range of subjects in the natural and physical sciences as well as technology, they are updated from time to time, and the collection keeps getting larger and larger. Those available online date back to about 1990.
Each bibliographic-style guide focuses on a specific topic and includes such resources as introductory material, pertinent LoC subject headings, basic texts/other books/specialized titles, handbooks/encyclopedia/dictionaries, conference proceedings, government publications, technical reports, dissertations, abstracting/indexing services, journals and specific journal articles, vetted internet resources and additional information sources, including contact info for relevant organizations. New guides are announced on the What’s NEW on the Science Reference Service Web Site page, which is also available as an RSS feed.
Some recent Tracer Bullets — for June and so far in July — include:
+ Bridges
+ Introductory Physics
+ Science Fair Projects
+ Environmental Science Projects
While you’re visiting this section of the ginormous LC website, be sure and taker a look at some of the other resources available here, such as:
+ Science Reference Guides (bibliographies)
+ Selected Internet Resources in Science and Technology (vetted webliiographies)
+ Everyday Mysteries (which “deal with everyday phenomena that we often take for granted, but each can be explained scientifically)
+ Inside Adams (new science, technology and business blog; RSS available)
+ Science and Technology Webcasts (list of links to scheduled and archived webcasts)
This Science Subject Guide page, organized especially for teachers and students, is a good alternate way of browsing the science and technology content on this part of the website. Alternately, you can view Bibliographies & Research Guides Listed by Subject.
Top 10 Historically Black Colleges & Universities - July 2010
July 16, 2010 12:11 PM
When the time comes for selecting which higher education institution to attend, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are often forgotten, ignored, or viewed as second-rate in comparison with more traditional schools. Parents and prospective students alike are sometimes reluctant to consider these colleges, which they may view as homogeneous, rigid, and dogmatic. The truth, however, is that today’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities are highly dynamic, progressive, and diverse institutions of higher learning that offer academic and extracurricular programs on par or exceeding those offered on comparable “traditional” campuses.
Not to mention, these colleges generally provide a high quality of education at affordable prices at undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels and tend to represent better overall value than similarly-ranked traditional colleges. Complementing their academic credentials are these schools’ rich historical backgrounds and their unique social and cultural environments. It’s difficult to measure the impact of the “Black experience” for the alumni of the 100+ HBCUs in the country but it’s safe to say that these schools foster a high level of fellowship and camaraderie, helping students to not only establish life long connections but to also enhance a sense of cultural identity.
To illustrate Historically Black colleges’ academic prominence, The Atlanta Post has compiled a list of the top ten HBCUs, along with their 2009-2010 tuition and fee information (not necessarily including room and board).
10. North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC.
9. Dillard University, New Orleans, LA.
8. Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC.
7. Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL.
6. Hampton University, Hampton, VA.
5. Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA.
4. Fisk University, Nashville, TN.
3. Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA.
2. Howard University, Washington, DC.
1. Spelman College, Atlanta, GA.
The perfect gift for bookworms with authority...The Little Librarian Kit!
It was a red-letter day in our household when each child was old enough to get his or her own library card. They love picking out books, handing their card over to the librarian and then skipping out with their new reads. What they don't love is listening to me hound them to find those books under their covers, inside the couch cushions or off the floor of the car when it's book-return time.
But, now they've got a cool new kit that let's them play library whenever they want, and it's missing just the thing that bugs them the most about their real library privileges: Being Quiet.
The Little Librarian kit lets my kids turn their stack of favorite books into their own mini-library, complete with library cards, book pockets and even overdue slips for those forgetful borrowers. All the material is made of paper or cardstock, so don't expect the items to last years, but my school-age kids didn't seem to mind one bit.
This mother/daughter-created product is super cute and would make a great birthday gift for kids who love to read---I'd include a few new books to make it extra special. I'd love to see some of the individual items, like book pockets and overdue slips, available for refill purchase since it'd help extend the life of the kit, and I know my three kids would love to bring even more books into "their" library.
Ever the stickler, my oldest likes to remind her younger siblings of things like "due dates" and "proper book care." And while turning my living room into their library won't earn me any clean house awards, it's hard to be upset when they are playing with books.
Besides, this one little kit has kept them occupied for a lot longer than a trip to the real library. - Christina
You'll find Little Librarian at our affiliate Amazon.
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