In a June 25 session at the ALA Annual conference in Orlando, John Bracken, VP of media innovation for the Knight Foundation, said that the foundation has been focused on three key questions when working with libraries: What can be done to foster cross-discipline collaboration, possibly learning from projects in other civic sectors such as Code for America, 18F, or the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews collaboration; how can community be put “even more robustly” at the center of the foundation’s work; and how can the foundation help libraries tell their stories to wider audiences? “To succeed, particularly in a time of reduced public investment, it is vital to tell our stories in ways that people can understand the breadth of our work, and on platforms” where the public is present and listening, Bracken said.
How to Teach Internet Research Skills
Here’s what librarians need to know to work with—not against—the online information-seeking behavior of youth and achieve the best results.
EBSCO Rolls Out New Research Starters Feature for EDS
EBSCO has rolled out Research Starters, a new feature for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) that presents student researchers with short, citable summaries on frequently searched topics. Drawn from sources such as Salem Press, Encyclopedia Britannica, and American National Biography, more than 62,000 of these 500- to 1,500-word summaries are accessible, offering students an authoritative overview of their chosen subject, as well as links to other research starter summaries, or peer reviewed research where they can delve deeper into a topic.
Librarypedia: The Future of Libraries and Wikipedia
The Wikipedia Library is an open research hub started in 2010 when Credo Reference donated 500 free research accounts to Wikipedia’s most active editors. Partnerships with HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, and the Cochrane Library followed. Now, the Wikipedia Library is developing into a portal to connect editors with libraries, open access resources, paywalled databases, digital reference tools, and research experts. Two of the project’s leaders discuss the potential for collaboration between libraries and Wikipedia, as well as the new Visiting Scholars pilot program.
School Library Journal 2012 – A Year in Review
From the Hunger Games, the Common Core, and maker spaces, to Gangnam Style and the ongoing ebook wars, a look at the highlights and key themes of 2012, according to Twitter.
INFOdocket: Top Resources for K–12
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).
INFOdocket: Top Resources for K–12
Looking for new, timely online resources for your K–12 students? Gary Price, an industry analyst librarian and editor of LJ’s INFOdocket, has selected the following recent posts for school librarians. Topics range from current and past presidential debates to German Jewish history. Price is also co-founder and editor of FullTextReports.com.
Turn Wikipedia Articles into Ebooks | Screencast Tutorial
Wikipedia users can now create ebooks using articles from the English edition of the crowd-sourced reference. Library consultant Linda Braun shows how it’s done.
SOPA Is Top Story for Young People
Young people under 30 followed protests over SOPA more closely than news about the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.
DPLA, Syracuse, Library Blogs Take Part in SOPA/PIPA Protest
Thousands of websites, from major sites like the social news website Reddit, the Internet Archive’s main site, and the English-language version of Wikipedia, to small personal WordPress blogs, have “gone dark” today as part of a coordinated protest against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), currently in committee in the House, and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), scheduled for a Senate vote on January 24. Among the sites taking part are those of Digital Public Library of America and the Syracuse University iSchool, as well as several popular blogs in the library world.
