Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Report: The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub147/pub147.pdf
The Idea of Order explores the transition from an analog to a digital environment for knowledge access, preservation, and reconstitution, and the implications of this transition for managing research collections. The volume comprises three reports. The first, “Can a New Research Library be All-Digital?” by Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry, explores the degree to which a new research library can eschew print. The second, “On the Cost of Keeping a Book,” by Paul Courant and Matthew “Buzzy” Nielsen, argues that from the perspective of long-term storage, digital surrogates offer a considerable cost savings over print-based libraries. The final report, “Ghostlier Demarcations,” examines how well large text databases being created by Google Books and other mass-digitization efforts meet the needs of scholars, and the larger implications of these projects for research, teaching, and publishing. The reports are introduced by Charles Henry; the volume includes a conclusion by Roger Schonfeld and an epilogue by Charles Henry.
The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education Learning Communities National Resource Center
These frequently asked questions have been culled from over fifteen years of experience working with campuses to initiate learning communities.
- What are learning communities?
- What about living/learning communities?
- How widespread are LCs and what types of colleges and universities are offering them?
- Why have learning communities?
- What do we need to know and how do we get started?
- Who leads learning communities?
- How are they taught?
- What role do libraries and information technology play in LCs?
- How should we assess our learning communities?
- What do they cost?
- How can we fund them?
- How do we market learning communities to students, faculty, advisors, and others?
- How can we encourage diversity in our learning community program?
- What approaches to faculty development work best?
The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education Website
November 4-6, 2010
15th Annual National Learning Communities Conference at Doubletree Riverfront Hotel
Bay City, MI
The Most Downloaded eBooks and AudioBooks from OverDrive - July 2010
Most Downloaded Books from the Library powered by OverDrive
Edward Waters College: Edward Waters Receives Gift of $2 Million from AME Church
July 13, 2010
http://www.ewc.edu/component/content/article/1-latest-news/391-edward-waters-receives-gift-of-2-million-from-ame-church
Edward Waters Receives Gift of $2 Million from AME Church Jacksonville, Fla. – The African Methodist Episcopal Church announced Tuesday in a media conference held at Edward Waters College its gift of $2 million to EWC to serve as a launch pad for the College to propel itself into academic excellence and financial stability.
The money was raised by the AMEC's 11th Episcopal District, which includes more than 500 churches throughout Florida and the Bahamas. Bishop McKinley Young, chairman of the Board of Trustees for EWC, spoke on behalf of the Church's 11th Episcopal District in awarding the money, and stressed the importance of financial and community support in order for institution to advance its mission.
"If you don't have any money, you can't do higher education," said Young. "That's how you get talented teachers and faculty; that's how you get talented students and scholarships."
He explained that the AME church has always backed EWC and believes Interim President Nathaniel Glover is fully equipped to advance the institution’s vision and goals.
Glover stated the gift should encourage other organizations and individuals, local and abroad, to give with confidence, trusting that their donations are being utilized to positively transform students' lives and thrust the College towards becoming an elite, nationally-respected institution of higher learning.
"We want everyone to know we are on the way up," Glover said in closing statements. "EWC is on the rise."
http://www.ewc.edu/component/content/article/1-latest-news/391-edward-waters-receives-gift-of-2-million-from-ame-church
Edward Waters Receives Gift of $2 Million from AME Church Jacksonville, Fla. – The African Methodist Episcopal Church announced Tuesday in a media conference held at Edward Waters College its gift of $2 million to EWC to serve as a launch pad for the College to propel itself into academic excellence and financial stability.
The money was raised by the AMEC's 11th Episcopal District, which includes more than 500 churches throughout Florida and the Bahamas. Bishop McKinley Young, chairman of the Board of Trustees for EWC, spoke on behalf of the Church's 11th Episcopal District in awarding the money, and stressed the importance of financial and community support in order for institution to advance its mission.
"If you don't have any money, you can't do higher education," said Young. "That's how you get talented teachers and faculty; that's how you get talented students and scholarships."
He explained that the AME church has always backed EWC and believes Interim President Nathaniel Glover is fully equipped to advance the institution’s vision and goals.
Glover stated the gift should encourage other organizations and individuals, local and abroad, to give with confidence, trusting that their donations are being utilized to positively transform students' lives and thrust the College towards becoming an elite, nationally-respected institution of higher learning.
"We want everyone to know we are on the way up," Glover said in closing statements. "EWC is on the rise."
Register for FREE TLT Group Third Annual Faculty Development Symposium: Frugal Innovations for Student Engagement - Faculty Sharing - Small Steps in the Right Direction
*Special prep session July 23 FridayLive!*
http://tltgroup.roundtablelive.org/Default.aspx?pageId=338009&eventId=177912&EventViewMode=EventDetails
Join Steve Gilbert for a brief summary of TLT Group work on Frugal Innovation for Student Engagement and the Nanovation Workshops. Also: What do you want to gain from this Symposium? What do you hope we will do in the sessions? Between the sessions? What could you contribute? Who else should you/we invite? How will we share the results with our colleagues?
Symposium
August 2, 9, and 16 at 2:00 - 3:00pm Eastern
Small steps faculty members can take to improve student engagement in undergraduate courses - without adding unrealistic workloads for their students or themselves. And ways to encourage and support collegial sharing of these steps.
To be explored in 3 sessions:
Shareworthy Course Improvements
Facilitators & Obstacles
Small Steps - Collegial Sharing Soon
Programmatic Support for Small Steps
Registration for TLT Group Subscribers and Individual Members if FREE. Fees for non-subscribers.
Sally Gilbert
sallygilbert@tltgroup.org
301-270-8312
TAA Text and Academic Authors Association Listen LIVE Podcast Session: Lack Motivation? Kickstart Your Writing Productivity!
'Professional Nag' Shares Creative Tricks, Tools & Techniques to Get Motivated
Wednesday, July 21
2:30 p.m. EDT
877-572-4281
Join us for an interview with "Pro-Nagger" Rachel Z. Cornell, an accountability and productivity consultant, who has helped authors increase their writing productivity and keep them moving forward with their projects by providing them with daily, direct support.
If you're stuck, lost your focus, have too many time commitments and end up getting very little done on an important project, or you need to self-motivate, you'll hear some ideas and suggestions for how to keep your projects on track in this 30-minute episode with plenty of time for questions.
You can listen live and call in to ask questions toll-free: 1-877-572-4281. You can also listen to the recording later on TAA's blogtalkradio page. No registration required. Open to members and non-members, so tell your friends!
Cornell will be presenting an expanded audio conference on this topic for TAA members on Tues., Sept. 14 at 2:30 EST/EDT.
Questions?Contact Kim Pawlak at kim.pawlak@taaonline.net
Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA)
PO Box 56359
St. Petersburg, Florida 33732-6359
Text and Academic Authors Association
(727) 563-0020
www.TAAonline.net
2theadvocate.com Letter: Access to LOUIS Databases Threatened
Already, Southeastern Louisiana University intends to terminate both its French and French education undergraduate programs, a decision both inappropriate and unfortunate when one considers the cultural history of our state.
Northwestern State intends to eliminate a number of essential undergraduate programs, such as chemistry, physics, political science, sociology and others.
LSU plans to eliminate funding for a number of research projects and the graduate program in library and information science. Furthermore, LSU’s School of Library and Information Science offers the only training for librarians in the entire state.
Should the school be closed, aspiring Louisiana librarians will be forced to find education and homes elsewhere, contributing to other states’ economies. Eventually, libraries in Louisiana might hire fewer qualified professionals to assist patrons in navigating information systems, but incidentally, large numbers of these information systems probably will be unavailable regardless.
The LOUIS consortium, which includes Louisiana’s public and private universities and colleges as well as other information institutions, combines resources to enable these institutions to provide users with access to scholarly databases that are essential to active research.
Especially in an information environment in which many periodicals are either too costly or published solely online, these databases are our only access points for articles in countless research journals.
If we wish to encourage pursuit of education, students, professors and other people all deserve access to these databases. The loss of well-trained librarians in our state will adversely affect those seeking information in a number of different settings, though only indirectly for researchers who happen to be as adept at navigating resources as librarians themselves.
However, the deficit of scholarly databases will have a direct and negative impact on every individual conducting scholarly research in Louisiana.
The Board of Regents has promised funding for no longer than the next two months, and this is unacceptable.
I anticipate both a substantial migration of people who do not wish to raise children in a state where education is unobtainable and an unwillingness of other people to pursue an education beyond high school if attaining a respectable one is impossible and unaffordable in Louisiana.
Our state has suffered from unprecedented levels of poverty and illiteracy for quite some time, and in the past decade has endured many hardships such as those precipitated by Hurricane Katrina and BP’s oil leak.
Increasingly, there is an urgency for our people to be well-educated so that our state can be properly equipped to improve its condition.
However, if LOUIS becomes a thing of the past, that goal will be unrealistic.
Hillary Warren
Librarian
Baton Rouge, LA
Inside Higher ED: Call for Better Sustainability Assessment
An open letter circulating among university sustainability officers has stirred debate about which of the many assessments of institutional sustainability is most useful and accurate.
Though the number of assessments of university sustainability has ballooned in recent years, the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card still typically attracts the most attention and is one of the most comprehensive. Annually grading 300 public and private institutions with the largest endowments from A to F on their environmental performance, the Report Card generates buzz each fall among sustainability officials who use it as a benchmark for tracking the effectiveness of their sustainability efforts.
Last fall, however, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education introduced the Sustainability Tracking and Rating System, and many university sustainability officials have since expressed their preference for this assessment. Unlike SEI’s Report Card — an external assessment with which institutions may choose not to cooperate — STARS is a voluntary self-assessment. Also unlike the Report Card, whose scoring formula is not fully disclosed, STARS makes clear how certain questions are weighed in generating the final score.
Paul Rowland, executive director of AASHE, says that about 150 institutions have signed as “charter participants” of the first full version of STARS. Those participating institutions include some community colleges, which Rowland notes are not rated in SEI’s Report Card. He acknowledges that STARS’ rise has been swift, but he says he is unsure if those institutions using the assessment are doing so instead of cooperating with the SEI for its Report Card.
The two-page letter, signed by two dozen university sustainability officers and formally released Tuesday, was primarily drafted by Davis Bookhart, director of the office of sustainability at Johns Hopkins University. In it, he urges external assessors of sustainability, like SEI, to change how they evaluate institutions.
“In these challenging economic times, we believe staff and university resources are best devoted to developing long-term, broad-based, and verifiable responses to the challenges of climate change and resources conservation,” he writes. “With a strong desire to move boldly and set new, higher standards for sustainability, we look forward to collaborating with independent evaluating organizations who share our high standards of excellence, especially those who facilitate public discourse on sustainability and the environment.”
The eight “principles” outlined in the letter include the order that all “evaluating organizations should disclose their process of assigning scores,” “seek to avoid the potential for misleading comparisons,” and offer an “opt out” for institutions that prefer not to participate.
Though Bookhart says the letter is not meant to imply a boycott of SEI and its Report Card, he acknowledges that some of its signees — including Johns Hopkins — have decided not to cooperate with SEI’s request for sustainability data from their institutions.
“Most of my efforts will be going to determine ways in which the process for all of these surveys could be better,” Bookhart says of his institution’s decision not to cooperate for the upcoming Report Card. “We had to make a choice, my colleagues and I, that if we do this, there could be some retribution. [SEI] could fail us. They could give us the worst grade. But we determined that we would accept that and recognize that, though we’re getting a bad grade, we’re looking long term to see that all schools benefit.”
Still, Bookhart notes that at least half of the letter’s signees have already committed to cooperating with SEI, and that those that are not are acting on their own accord, unrelated to their decision to sign the letter. The main point of this letter, he argues, is making sustainability assessors better.
“STARS is a self-evaluation tool,” Bookhart says. “It’s not an independent evaluation organization. We’d love for those organizations to change what they do and adopt those high-level principles. We hold ourselves to those standards, and we want them to do the same. If these organizations are willing to reach these high-level standards, then we’re willing to meet them halfway.”
Rowland, who notes that neither he nor AASHE was involved in the letter, says that he reads some “survey fatigue” between its lines.
“The sustainability officers I’ve talked to in the past year have indicated that they’re spending as much time filling out surveys as doing the things that the surveys are supposed to judge,” he says. “Until recently, anything that got campus sustainability in front of the public was a good thing. Now, we’ve reached a point of value where institutions have to make judgments about what they do.”
Rowland says that he does not see the sustainability assessment debate as one that pits STARS against SEI’s Report Card. He says he sees them as “partners.” For example, he noted that he has discussed how groups like SEI can use publicly available STARS data in the creation of their own rankings and assessments in the future.
Upon the release of the letter, SEI issued an official statement of its own in response.
“We take all suggestions seriously and many ideas submitted by sustainability coordinators, administrations, students as well as by our advisors, funders and independent consultants have been integrated into our research process,” writes Mark Orlowski, the group’s executive director, who did respond to requests for further comment.
“Last year, in response to suggestions, the Report Card became the only sustainability evaluation to publish (with permission) individual school survey data on hundreds of universities. Now, in response to the concerns raised in the open letter, [SEI] has initiated an internal discussion on how we can best adapt the relevant suggestions raised by the letter.”
— David Moltz
Blackboard Webinar: Listen to Mobile Learning: Empower Teaching and Learning without Limitation
Topic: Listen to Mobile Learning: Empower Teaching and Learning without Limitation
Recording date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 2:00 pm
Panelist Information: Craig DeVoe, Director, Product Sales Team, and John Dennett, Manager of Solutions Engineering
Duration: 1 hour
Description: Join us for a 60-minute webinar featuring our mobile team members, Craig DeVoe and John Dennett, who will share with you a candid view of the Blackboard Mobile Learn™ product. You should attend this event because you’ll have the opportunity to see Mobile Learn live, hear first-hand where this exciting technology is going and interact with our team of mobile experts.
We recently debuted Blackboard Mobile Learn, a two-way, interactive mobile learning solution that engages students and faculty in fresh new ways on the devices they use most. Blackboard Mobile Learn gives students and teachers instant access to their Blackboard Learn™ courses, content and organizations directly from their mobile devices, whenever and wherever they need to. Now we’ve taken the next big step in going mobile: the launch of native applications for the Android, BlackBerry® and Apple® iPhone® OS platforms.
Don’t miss out! Register to hear Blackboard Mobile experts discuss the strategy and vision of Blackboard Mobile Learn, our expansion onto additional mobile devices, our partnership with Sprint and the tie-in with Mobile Central, Blackboard's industry-leading campus experience mobile app.
We’re excited about mobile teaching and learning and look forward to sharing with you where two-way interactions in native mobile applications can take us.
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