I went to the the Schol Comm Working Group‘s brownbag yesterday, where Justin Watt, Jim Ovitt, & Mark Simpson-Vos gave a talk about Wikipedia. First of all, they did a great job: Justin did a terrific job of explaining wikis for those in the room who didn’t know how they worked, while managing to still interest those of us who did. Jim introduced the issue of authority & made some.. Read More
I’m a bit behind in reading my news@nature feeds, & just came across this one, from mid-March: Reference revolution, an interview with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame. Q: Do you think these flexible reference tools will overtake fixed sources of information? A: Definitely. But I think it’s going to vary across different domains. For example, an open Wiki-editing model, in my opinion, cannot replace peer-reviewed scientific research. If it’s really.. Read More
No, not a tattoo… I spoke to a reporter from the Daily Tar Heel yesterday who was writing (was writing at the time; has written now, of course) an article for today’s paper on open access journals. He spoke to Paul last Friday & Paul directed him to me on account of my having been on the planning committee for the Scholarly Communications Convocation. Here’s the article: Faculty touts online.. Read More
Legal Battle Brews Over Texts on Electronic Reserve at U. of California Libraries, from the Chronicle Publishers are objecting to an electronic reserve system at the University of California… Offering limited amounts of supplementary materials for educational purposes, without having to pay royalties, is allowed under fair-use doctrine. But how much access libraries can provide is not always clear under the law. Mr. Adler [vice president for legal and governmental.. Read More
Duke released a memo to faculty today about the iPod project for next year: The iPod will continue to serve as the core technology to enable digital audio and beginning in Fall ’05, DDI will shift the iPod program from a class based (i.e., all freshmen) to a course based distribution method. This will enable faculty members who see uses for iPods in their courses to build them into their.. Read More
This post to the Dig_Ref listserv announces the launch of the Bibliocasting listserv, “dedicated to a discussion of streaming media in the library environment.” Brought to you, natch, by the good people at the Information Institute of Syracuse. In an interesting experiment, you can subscribe to the list either by email or as a podcast, thanks to some text-to-speech app. I’ll be interested to see how sig blocks are handled;.. Read More
4 Universities Will Help Digitize Newspapers From the Early 20th Century, from the Chronicle of Higher Ed Four universities and two public libraries are sharing $1.9-million in grants to digitize newspapers from the beginning of the 20th century so the publications can be preserved and searched online. The two-year grants were announced on Monday by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the.. Read More
Group Puts $100 Laptops in Poor Countries, from AP If you believe that it’s important to bridge the digital divide in the Third World, then this is an incredibly cool idea. Me, I tend to believe that in the Third World food on tables & stable governments are just a bit more important than internet access. Though on the other hand, the Grameen Bank‘s Village Phone Program makes microloans so.. Read More
A Blow to Computer Science Research, from the NY Times As if it wasn’t difficult enough for CS research to get funded: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon – which has long underwritten open-ended “blue sky” research by the nation’s best computer scientists – is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a.. Read More
This is funny in that makes-you-want-to-cry kind of way: Feds Complete Internet Traffic Report, from AP Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million study, ultimately called “Signposts in Cyberspace,” under a 1998 law. Passed almost at the dawn of what became the Internet boom, the law required the Commerce Department to seek a study about Web addresses and trademarks by the National Research Council and wrap up the report within nine.. Read More