May 4, 2024

CourseSmart to Analyze Etextbook Reading Habits

By on November 15, 2012

CourseSmart, the world’s largest provider of digital course materials, has announced a pilot test of CourseSmart Analytics, a program that will evaluate how students use specific textbooks, measuring page views, total time spent reading, as well as notes and highlights made. In aggregate, the data will allow professors, course designers, and academic administrators to assess the effectiveness of digital titles. Faculty will also have access to the etextbook reading habits of specific students enrolled in their courses.

Filed Under: Ebooks Tagged With: , , , ,

Cleveland Public Library Hires Buffy Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian

By on November 14, 2012

Buffy Hamilton, best known as the Unquiet Librarian, will soon be joining the Cleveland Public Library. Starting next year, Hamilton will become CPL’s Learning Specialist and will work to engage Cleveland’s patrons, from students to the greater public, through “library-supported communities of participatory learning.”

Filed Under: Featured, K-12 Tagged With: , , , ,

Digital Research Technologies Offer More Information, More Distraction for High School Students, According to Pew Report

By on November 13, 2012

Though a recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that in general, digital research tools impact students’ work positively, the study also reported that teachers believe that access to technology is also making students much more easily distracted.

Filed Under: Featured, Research Tagged With: , , ,

Open-Source Redistricting: MIT Libraries-Supported Software Takes On Gerrymandering

By on November 12, 2012
DistrictBuilder from the Public Mapping Project

An open source program created as part of an effort to make the U.S. redistricting process more transparent was awarded one of five inaugural Strata Data Innovation Awards at last month’s O’Reilly Strata Conference, a gathering of leading minds in the emerging field of “big data.” The web-based program, DistrictBuilder, was developed by the Public Mapping Project, an effort to engage the public in the redistricting process.

Filed Under: Featured, Public Services, Research Tagged With: , , , ,

Crowdsourcing Archival Transcription

By on November 12, 2012

In a recent post, Rose Holley describes how the National Archives of Australia is using crowdsourcing to help transcribe scanned archival descriptions. Dubbed “The Hive” (a play on [arc]Hive), the site allows users to pick a scanned image marked easy, moderate, or difficult and edit the OCR’d version to better reflect the actual document. Work […]

Filed Under: Cataloging and Metadata, Digital Libraries, Digitization, Roy Tennant: Digital Libraries

INFOdocket: Top Resources for K–12

By on November 12, 2012

From a linguistic search technique to Wikipedia’s questionable coverage of Hurricane Sandy, the latest online resources selected by Gary Price, industry analyst librarian and editor of LJ’s INFOdocket (@INFOdocket).

Filed Under: Ebooks, K-12 Tagged With: , , ,

Groups Digitize Local History with Help of Scottsdale Public Library

By on November 9, 2012
Porter's / Saba's - Funtastic, Suntastic Scottsdale

The Scottsdale Public Library (SPL) recently went live with the Papago Salado Story Tour Collection, a digitized project that features historic photos of several of their city’s most notable buildings, accompanied by audio files of locals telling stories about those buildings. The collection got its start last year, when Arizona’s Papago Salado Association received a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council to record memories of historical buildings.

Filed Under: Cataloging and Metadata, Digitization, Discovery, Featured Tagged With: , , , , ,

Authors Guild Appeals HathiTrust Decision, Library Copyright Alliance Issues Statement

By on November 9, 2012

On November 8, the Authors Guild appealed the verdict in its case against the HathiTrust to the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit. The Guild had filed suit against the Trust in 2011, alleging that the Trust’s digitization efforts constituted copyright infringement. However, on October 10, Judge Baer of the United States District Court Southern […]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

An 81-year-old Startup Entrepreneur, Seymour Simon, Sees a Bright Future in Digital Publishing

By on November 8, 2012

Seymour Simon is not your typical start-up hopeful. At 81, he’s already had a long and prolific career as an award-winning author of science books for children. But like the researchers and explorers that he’s written about for more than three decades, he’s all about looking ahead to what’s next.

Filed Under: Ebooks, Featured, K-12 Tagged With: ,

3M Makes Its Presence Felt | Series: Exploring Ebook Options

By on November 7, 2012

It was a coup when 3M announced in June, just three months after Penguin Group had severed its relationship with OverDrive, that it had brought Penguin tentatively back into the library ebook fold through a pilot project with the New York Public Library (NYPL) and the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL). The deal typified the way 3M has made its presence felt in the library ebook market, from striking such notable content deals to bringing its considerable experience as a technology company to bear on the development of its 3M Cloud Library platform and hiring away LJ reviews editor Heather McCormack.

Filed Under: Ebooks, Featured, Hardware, Publishing Tagged With: , , , , ,
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