I've been continuing the discussion of libraries over on Eduhacker. What happens when the vision that librarians have of the role of the library is at odds with the community whom they serve? If you are a faculty member or a student, I encourage you to contribute to the comments. What does a library mean to you? How do you see it's role on your campus?
Read the complete post: What Do Faculty and Students Want from a Library on Eduhacker.
Ah, time to feel old again, thanks to the Beloit mindset list (HT Inside HigherEd). The ones that hit home this year :
From INFOdocket :
Dr. Alison Head from Project Information Literacy recently spoke at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. An audio file of her presentation is now available online.
Here’s the Blurb:
What is it like to be a college student in the digital age? Alison Head — lead researcher for the national study, Project Information Literacy, Berkman Fellow, and Research Scientist in University of Washington’s Information School — presents a working typology of the undergraduate information-seeking process, including students’ reliance on and use of Web sources.
Learn More About Dr. Head, the Presentation, and Project Information Literacy (with Link to a Recent Report) in this January 4, 2012 post.
From EDUCAUSE :
The ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology sheds lights on how information technology affects the college experience. ECAR has conducted this annual study since 2004, and though students' ownership and utilization of technology changes from year to year, students consistently rely upon their instructors and institutions to meet their technology expectations and needs. The 2011 study differs from past studies in that the questionnaire was reengineered and responses were gathered from a nationally representative sample of 3,000 students in 1,179 colleges and universities.
This is amazing: there are now 66 universities sponsoring HASTAC Scholars. We are currently at 160 Scholars, with more scheduled to enroll in the next week. I am going through each application, and confirming the Scholars while trying to get them connected to other Scholars so they can begin their conversations right away.
From the ResourceShelf :
Pew Report: Adults Prefer Text Messages to Voice Calls
From the report:
Some 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project asked those texters in a survey how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone and 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53% said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14% said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation.
Time to feel old again, thanks to the Beloit mindset list (HT to Inside HigherEd). The ones that particularly strike me as indicative :
7. As they’ve grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts have constantly fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.
12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
37. Music has always been available via free downloads.
49. Public schools have always made space available for advertising.
From the FastFoward blog a post that makes me think on multiple levels, including mobile apps for patrons & mobile apps for librarians (I really want a YBP Gobi app!) :
Forrester on Designing Mobile Apps
by Bill Ives
Mobile collaboration is an increasingly important topic... It is a matter of when, not whether that mobile devices exceed desktops. The new Forrester Wave™: Mobile Collaboration, Q3 2011 by Ted Schadler for Content & Collaboration Professionals offers some useful advice on how mobile collaboration requires a new app approach.
We are now living in a work everywhere world. ... Forrester notes that your most productive employees m now use four devices to get work done. This means that “client/server solutions with on-premises servers are inadequate, simply not responsive or agile enough for escalating user requirements and expectations.” [emphasis mine]
They note that mobile apps need to be designed to run well on any mobile device...With so many different mobile platforms and form factors to target, app developers will have to organize differently, code differently, and execute differently. In this new environment design skills grow ever-more important (and scarce). There will be new abstraction layers that separate presentation from interaction from back-end services. Teams now must design for mobile first. [emphasis mine]
Mobile apps must be delivered as a cloud service. Forrester notes that latency is already a problem for distributed organizations and even waiting for email to upload or download to a remote site can be painful. ...
Here is another perspective on mobile app creation from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. This session discussed three components that any mobile strategy should have, which includes deciding what goes mobile, understanding how to mobilize applications and services, and designing a framework for managing mobility. On a related note here are some thoughts from the 2011 mLearn Mobile Learning Conference.