May 20, 2013

In Light of Common Core, Seeking Ways to Circumvent Dewey

Photo by Sarah Reid (www.flickr.com/photos/sarahreido).

At one of the hottest sessions at ALA’s most recent Midwinter meeting, the Dewey Decimal System—that sacred cow of library organization—was trotted out in front of a packed room and subjected to intense scrutiny. But in the midst of Common Core, among other pressing issues, is this debate really worth our time?

Top Tools for Upgrading Your Resume | Cool Tools

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It’s spring, a time when students start looking for summer jobs or internships—and that requires some attention to their resumes and portfolios. In this month’s “Cool Tools,” Richard Byrne taps the best applications for creating an online showcase of your best work.

Google Drive as an Institutional Repository

Innovation comes in many guises. When we hear the word we probably most often thinks it means creating something new. But innovation can also be using something that already exists in a new way. Innovation of the latter variety was recently exhibited in an interesting post to the Code4Lib list. The message, from Chris Fitzpatrick, [...]

Understanding HTML Is Critical to Web Literacy, Especially for Young Creators | Opinion

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In a rebuttal to Roy Tennant’s recent blog post, Paul Oh of the National Writing Project maintains “that knowing HTML—even just knowing how to find the HTML on a webpage or knowing just a few of the tags that comprise the language—makes us increasingly Web literate and gives us critical knowledge in relation to the most important writing production engine of our lifetime, the Internet.”

SLJ Reviews the WiFi Smartpen Sky by Livescribe | Test Drive

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Beyond the bells and whistles, “where the Sky smartpen really shines—like the Echo and Pulse models before it—is its capacity to record and post audio-enhanced notes called “pencasts,” writes School Library Journal gadget columnist Jeff Hastings.

Why We Miss the First Sale Doctrine in Digital Libraries

John Palfrey

In this article, the fourth installment in a series on the initiative to build a Digital Public Library of America, I examine the underlying role of law in the ebook lending debate, explore potential solutions to the problems, and consider how the DPLA can contribute to solutions for those we serve. At the core of this issue is the way the copyright law works–or doesn’t–when it comes to books, libraries, and readers in the United States today and into the future.

Why You Should Not Learn HTML

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It pains me a great deal to write this post, since at one point I advocated that librarians learn HTML, and not just as a lark. I was quite serious, and I even wrote a book to help librarians learn how to do it. The sales figures for that book should have been a clue. You [...]

Being Different, Part 9: How Not to Die on the Plain of Suckitude

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In parts one through eight I first introduced, then explained and summarized my Topography of Skill Acquisition. But as I made clear in Part 3, the absolutely essential event to ever add a skill to your resume is to not die on the Plain of Suckitude. Because if you do, you are never coming back. [...]

Alternative Search Tools: These options to Google will help students become better researchers

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Cool Tools columnist Richard Byrne presents some free options for research that don’t require a login, along with a few quick tips to aid student searches.

Being Different, Part 8: A Summary of the Topography of Skill Acquisition

In Part 2 of this series, I formally introduced my Topography of Skill Acquisition. It is comprised of five distinct parts, which I described in the following posts: Part 3: The Plain of Suckitude — “When acquiring a new skill, everyone begins on this plain. It is flat, since when you are on the plain [...]