23 Things have been around for a while, in fact I think I looked at it the first time I investigated Chartership a couple of years ago. However it cropped up recently on another Blog I was reading and I thought I would have another look at it.
Although I've started using Twitter I'm struggling to really get going with it and I'm well aware that I'm not as up to date with new web technologies as I might be. I thought working my way through 23 Things might give me some direction and give me something to Tweet.
Here's hoping....
http://cpd23.blogspot.com/2011/05/cpd23-things.html
Monday, 27 February 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Interactive E-Book Content - From Future Book Blog
A song of ice and fire: Enhanced Editions
I'm a massive fan of the genre that Ice and Fire falls into and I've always enjoyed those little maps you get at the beginning of books that introduce you to the fantasy world you are about to enter- it always makes it seem a little bit more real.
The enhance Song of Ice and Fire is one of a series of enhanced editions from Harper Collins and this version is from iBook. While the character glossary and audio snippets are interesting its the embedded maps showing where each charater is at the start of the chapter that fascinates me. Simple idea but really useful in a type of book that could be sprawled over a whole world with alien sounding place and person names.
It's just a pity I don't have an ipad to read it on as I really want to see how good it is myself.
I'm a massive fan of the genre that Ice and Fire falls into and I've always enjoyed those little maps you get at the beginning of books that introduce you to the fantasy world you are about to enter- it always makes it seem a little bit more real.
The enhance Song of Ice and Fire is one of a series of enhanced editions from Harper Collins and this version is from iBook. While the character glossary and audio snippets are interesting its the embedded maps showing where each charater is at the start of the chapter that fascinates me. Simple idea but really useful in a type of book that could be sprawled over a whole world with alien sounding place and person names.
It's just a pity I don't have an ipad to read it on as I really want to see how good it is myself.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Kindles in Libraries
On Monday a member of our E-Learning team bounced into the library workroom and enthusiasticaly announced that the college had purchased a number of Kindles for use in the college. I was out at the time so it wouldn't be fair of me to recount second hand the reception he got off my boss. Sceptical might be a fair summary.
A couple of days later I bumped into him in the corridor and raised the subject of what the plan was. It turns out there isn't one but staff will be invited to put forward innovations. As is often a case we're adopting the 'lets have a go and see what happens approach', something which isn't necesserily a bad idea, certainly the itunes U work the college has done previously proved it successful.
I'm not saying buying Kindles isn't a good idea. I'm not even that worried about the licensing issue raised by loaning out a Kindle to multiple students. It does seem, at least for the time being, that publishers are turning a blind eye to this activity.
The problem for me is more specific. Kindles are tied to Amazon and a single format in a way that no other ereader is. They're not compatable with either our existing Ebrary or Dawson Era ebooks (except in a very limited way which involves creating image PDFs from single chapters of books) and there is no expectation that they will be. The college could have brought any other ereader on the market and we could have used them with both Dawson Era and Ebrary. It's just no one asked us first.
I'm waiting to see waits going to happen and follow it on here. In other college Kindles have been a great success, espeically when used to deliver fiction or services to VIP students. Maybe I'll even put an innovation idea in.
A couple of days later I bumped into him in the corridor and raised the subject of what the plan was. It turns out there isn't one but staff will be invited to put forward innovations. As is often a case we're adopting the 'lets have a go and see what happens approach', something which isn't necesserily a bad idea, certainly the itunes U work the college has done previously proved it successful.
I'm not saying buying Kindles isn't a good idea. I'm not even that worried about the licensing issue raised by loaning out a Kindle to multiple students. It does seem, at least for the time being, that publishers are turning a blind eye to this activity.
The problem for me is more specific. Kindles are tied to Amazon and a single format in a way that no other ereader is. They're not compatable with either our existing Ebrary or Dawson Era ebooks (except in a very limited way which involves creating image PDFs from single chapters of books) and there is no expectation that they will be. The college could have brought any other ereader on the market and we could have used them with both Dawson Era and Ebrary. It's just no one asked us first.
I'm waiting to see waits going to happen and follow it on here. In other college Kindles have been a great success, espeically when used to deliver fiction or services to VIP students. Maybe I'll even put an innovation idea in.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Will they, won't they? Another strand to the e-book argument.
There's no doubt e-books and e-readers will have been big sellers over Christmas but this take on e-book lending from publishers does raise a lot of questions for public libraries in England. If libraries are going to be blocked from lending best sellers is there much point in spending large sums on systems such as Overdrive?
It's a similar situation to the reluctance of education publishers to make certain text books available as e-books - they don't won't to lose out on the sales. In an average college popular textbooks have relatively short lives, they either get stolen or lost or fall apart because of the frequency of issue. An indestructible e-book would save college libraries a small fortune but could potentially seriously impact on the publishers profit margins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/for-libraries-and-publishers-an-e-book-tug-of-war.html?_r=2
It's a similar situation to the reluctance of education publishers to make certain text books available as e-books - they don't won't to lose out on the sales. In an average college popular textbooks have relatively short lives, they either get stolen or lost or fall apart because of the frequency of issue. An indestructible e-book would save college libraries a small fortune but could potentially seriously impact on the publishers profit margins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/for-libraries-and-publishers-an-e-book-tug-of-war.html?_r=2
Visions from the New Year (via JISC)
http://blox.posterous.com/visions-of-the-future-for-the-new-year
The students would never pick up a book again.
The students would never pick up a book again.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
A sample from JISC's recent research on Activity Datat - SALT
SALT – Surfacing the Academic Long Tail
Taken from the SALT blog at the address above:
"SALT will test the hypothesis that Library circulation activity data can be used to support humanities research by surfacing underused ‘long tail’ library materials through search. We will investigate how issues of relevance and frequency of borrowing might shift within the particular use case of humanities research. An API onto ten years of circulation data from The John Rylands University Library (JRUL) at The University of Manchester will be made available to the HEFE community, and the project will pay specific attention to the sustainability of an API service as a national shared service for HE/FE that both supports users and drives institutional efficiencies (e.g. collections management)"
I suppose I interpret this as a more complex version of the catalogue functions that suggest alternative books if you search for another. I'd be interested to see it in practice and whether it could be made to run 'real tim' in the future.
Taken from the SALT blog at the address above:
"SALT will test the hypothesis that Library circulation activity data can be used to support humanities research by surfacing underused ‘long tail’ library materials through search. We will investigate how issues of relevance and frequency of borrowing might shift within the particular use case of humanities research. An API onto ten years of circulation data from The John Rylands University Library (JRUL) at The University of Manchester will be made available to the HEFE community, and the project will pay specific attention to the sustainability of an API service as a national shared service for HE/FE that both supports users and drives institutional efficiencies (e.g. collections management)"
I suppose I interpret this as a more complex version of the catalogue functions that suggest alternative books if you search for another. I'd be interested to see it in practice and whether it could be made to run 'real tim' in the future.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Measuring Impact for FE Libraries
The topic of Measuring Impact was recently raised on one of the email lists. It's always been a tricky subject but one which is becoming more and more important when we are often having to justify our existence and resources. Below are some of the ideas already being used and which I wanted to make note of for future use:
- Correlating book issues and InfoSkills sessions against grades (although this as been questioned as there are so many factors that contribute to academic success)
- David Patterns work at Huddersfield University (http://www.slideshare.net/gregynog/bw-dave-pattern-lidp)
- Tresham College report on linking Heritage data to College databases in order to measure how individual learners benefit from using the college library. (http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=281975)
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