Alan S. Inouye, “The Revolution Isn’t Just Digital”, American Libraries Magazine
PEOPLE.
Jon Horvath uses GPS to replicate Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, exploring “the (dis)connection between Kerouac’s era and my present day as it pertains to spontaneous acts and the sensation of freedom.” More imaginative Kerouac visualizations. (via)
I really do not think this is accurate and makes light of a prevalent and serious problem. Cyber bullying is a serious issue - not just for kids but for bloggers from all walks of life. There are some seriously scary groups of harassers out there, from kids who say “dick-ish things” to other kids (and then said victims committing suicide & bullies receive no punishment) to websites offering bounty for names, addresses, and information of women feminists (and acknowledge that the information could potentially be used for harm).
Guys, this IS AN ISSUE. Instead of poking fun at it, let’s think of ways we can help.
Major Medical Library Closing Its Doors and Becoming Digital
A bit old but interesting nonetheless:
The William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, will close its doors to patrons on January 1, 2012. But the library as an information resource is not closing; it is just moving completely online.
The transition, 10 years in the making, is an inevitable acknowledgment of the dwindling use of the 81-year-old library’s 45,000-square-foot building and its 400,000 physical volumes, according to Nancy K. Roderer, the library’s director.
[…]
Those wanting assistance from a librarian can still contact the library via email or phone. But the library also has “embedded” librarians since 2005 within different departments at the university, so a patron needing assistance can call upon these “informationists,” who have office hours around the campus.
There are also numerous spaces around the campus where people can study instead of the physical library building, Roderer said.
Dickens SoundClouds
In order to celebrate the opening of the Dickens and London exhibition (will be up from December 9, 2011, to June 10, 2012), the Museum of London has requested Dickens fans to record their lines and passages from his work. You can submit the soundclouds via dropbox at the link. They have also designed an iphone/ipad app designed to take users on a journey through the darker side of London.
Pretty neat stuff. Check out details of the exhibition here.
![thelifeguardlibrarian:
appsandstacks:
Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search - Wired.com
High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
[…]
Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.
In my experience, there is a MAJOR problem with the assumption that teenagers are ‘digital natives.’ Hardly any of the youth I work with are competent with a keyboard. They are uncertain how to navigate to websites, they continually ask Google questions rather than searching by keyword, and they have no visual literacy skills in recognizing legitimate websites. We assume too much about kids’ experience with computers rather than creating information/tech literacy curricula that supports our students through primary and secondary school.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lud25uzgHy1r5wtflo1_400.jpg)
Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search - Wired.com
High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
[…]
Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.
In my experience, there is a MAJOR problem with the assumption that teenagers are ‘digital natives.’ Hardly any of the youth I work with are competent with a keyboard. They are uncertain how to navigate to websites, they continually ask Google questions rather than searching by keyword, and they have no visual literacy skills in recognizing legitimate websites. We assume too much about kids’ experience with computers rather than creating information/tech literacy curricula that supports our students through primary and secondary school.
Bullet-Stopping Books: Can Literature Literally Save Your Life?
Literary magazine Electric Literature embraces publishing in the digital age, making short fiction available on all available platforms. It’s fitting, then, that this promotional video for the magazine explores the Internet-friendly theme of shooting stuff with guns. Can any of the year’s fattest novels stop a bullet? What about that wild card, the Kindle?
CNET's comparison of nook Tablet with Kindle Fire
The Nook Tablet will offer more than twice the storage and twice the RAM of the Fire; it’s got an SD expansion slot for even more storage capacity (which the Fire lacks), up to 32GB; and Barnes & Noble is already touting Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora apps which will come included on the device from the start (Amazon’s list of third-party Fire apps remains undisclosed). Those features are in addition to the existing assortment of apps and features already available on the Nook Color (and on deck for the Kindle Fire)—e-mail and a Flash-enabled Web browser, in addition to a fully stocked e-book store and magazine and newspaper newsstand.
Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/barnes-noble-nook-tablet/4505-3126_7-35059751.html#ixzz1d5Yb4pyH
Click through for a spec by spec play.
