To comment on the dicussion paper, or on any aspect of the Library’s involvement in the University community, simply click in the box below and start typing.

Please remember that we do have a blogging/commenting policy for this blog.

There have been significant changes in the world, and within the University, since the original Growing Esteem 10-year strategy was adopted in late 2005. The “Refining Our Strategy” consultation process is an opportunity to review progress thus far, and to fine-tune the University’s priorities for the next 3-5 years.

The University Library will make a written submission to the review, and we need your help to do it.

Library staff are invited to attend an introductory forum today, 2.00 pm to 3.00 pm, in the tutorial room, ground floor, Baillieu Library. At this session we will identify which aspects of the discussion paper the Library ought to address in its response.

• View the presentation slides from the 11 June forum (Microsoft Powerpoint 1.2 Mb)

Over the next few weeks there will be other opportunities for you to contribute to the Library response.

To stay in touch with what’s happening, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or keep an eye on the Information Futures home page.

The University Library has a leading role in establishing standards, procedures and services to help researchers preserve their original data. We were therefore delighted to meet Robin Rice, who visited this month.

In a meeting with our Discipline Librarians in February, Robin shared some of her expertise in data sharing, data libraries and roles for librarians in providing data management services for researchers.

As the Data Librarian at the University of Edinburgh, Robin is the service manager for that university’s Data Library, a collection of information produced by Edinburgh scholars in the course of their research activities. Robin is also project manager of DISC-UK DataShare, a JISC-funded project to establish institutional data repositories at three UK universities.

Conducting university research often involves creating new data, processing it, analysing it and perhaps transforming it through visualisation or other methods. Modern technologies allow us to create enormous quantities of data and analysis . Once the research is completed and an article or other ‘finished’ output has been published, the original data needs to be preserved and possibly made available to other researchers in the future. Some data can be destroyed after just a few years; other information will be preserved indefinitely, just like other historical documents.

Whilst in Melbourne, Robin Rice spent most of her time at Monash University. Her presentation to the Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI) group is available as an MP3 (streaming or download) and presentation slides (PDF 1 Mb).

Developed in partnership with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and with funding from the Victorian state government, the OptiPortal is a large, multi-screen video conferencing facility. It uses an ultra-high bandwidth network connection to provide high-resolution imaging and almost instant transmission of sound and movement.

The OptiPortal is particularly suitable for teams of researchers who want to examine, manipulate and discuss large sets of data or images during a video-conferencing session.

The development grant is open to all research staff and postgraduate students at the University of Melbourne. Entries must be received by  Tuesday 23 December 2008 (more details).

This week’s topic is blogging, and this post is my demonstration that I know how to blog ;-)

It’s also the debut appearance of my new avatar:

The “23 things” program is based on a concept developed Helene Blowers in the US. The program became the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s “Learning 2.0″ project and inspired the activity-based concept of ‘23 things’ which has been successfully implemented in  libraries worldwide.

The Melbourne University Library program will run over a 6 week period in which participants will use free web and LMS-based applications in order to complete the 23 activities. Weeks 1-3 will run from 24 November until the Christmas closedown, and then weeks 4-6 will run from late January for completion by early February 2009.

Wesch gave an hour-long illustrated talk at the US Library of Congress in June, an anthropological introduction to YouTube. It’s packed with challenging ideas about identity, authenticity, social cohesion — and joy, lots of joy. Two examples of the joy: Blimvisible’s “Us“  and Gary Brolsma’s “New Numa” dance. (Wesch video found via Laurel Papworth’s silkcharm blog)

There’s yet more Wesch goodness from the University of Manitoba, which has streaming video of his lecture about using social media for teaching. If anybody could make Twitter, Google Apps or Facebook into a useful part of the learning process, you’d think it would be Wesch and his students. In fact, some social media work well and some don’t work at all (in an educational context).

In particular, the project aims to:

“Envision, identify, and promote integrated online environments for higher education that: simplify knowledge creation, storage, organisation, publishing, collaboration, outreach, and access, beyond the classroom, and across media and devices.”

The IKE project site is hosted on Google Sites. They are using a blog, del.icio.us tag, wiki and other ‘social software’ to invite input from anyone who shows an interest — hey, it could be you!

Videos are now available on the Information Futures web site — follow the links below. Each presentation is 20-30 minutes long.

Blackboard’s Regional Manager, Tony Macguire, talked about the changing expectations and behaviors of our students, particularly younger people who are part of the Net Generation. Blackboard is a major component of our online learning management system, LMS+ (pronounced “Ell Em Ess Plus”).

Simon Phipps is the Chief Open Source Officer for Sun Microsystems, and we were lucky that he happened to be visiting Australia at the right moment. As Sun is a major supplier of computer hardware, you might expect Simon to talk mainly about data storage and servers. No, indeedy — Simon talked about changes in society, in politics, in business practices, in how people interact with each other in everyday life. (For background about these ideas, try reading The Cluetrain Manifesto and Small Pieces Loosely Joined.)

Richard Siegersma, Executive Chair of DA Books, spoke enthusiastically about the exciting possibilities of new technologies for accessing books, both in print and digitally. Imagine being able to download your entire reading list onto an ebook reader at the start of semester, including textbooks, articles and extracts. And if you want a printed copy of a book or reading pack, simply place an order at the campus bookshop and pick up your nicely-bound printed-on-demand book less than an hour later. These technologies aren’t quite fully developed yet — but they’re just around the corner…

Michelle Selinger is the Director of Education in Cisco’s Asia-Pacific division. Again, you might be surprised by the content of Michelle’s presentation. Cisco is known as an IT network specialist — cables, routers and so on — but they also take an interest in what their university clients are doing. Michelle explored questions about who owns knowledge, how it is shared and acquired, the nature of authority, learning through games and rich media environments, and the meaning of “academic rigor” in this new world.

Blackwell Ltd is a global supplier of books and other library materials. Area Sales Manager Carolyne Cohn’s presentation started with some observations about the challenges facing academic libraries: currency exchange rates, declining funding, competition for space on campus, different copyright laws in different countries, the changing expectations and preferences of academics and students — I’m sure this struck a chord with many of our own library staff! Publishers of monographs and other scholarly works are responding to these challenges in different ways, and Carolyne gave several examples of new ways to provide access to scholarly information.

Crispin Blackall, Telstra’s Director of Future Technology Solutions, gave an overview of the IT industry’s growth to date. Mobile computing — via your phone, ebook reader or other portable device — is predicted to be the major change in digital communications in the next few years. The future is fast, portable and flexible. (Oh, and don’t get too attached to that keyboard — in the next 10 years you will probably learn several other ways to interact with digital devices and information environments.)

Huge thanks to Kylie Nickels, Reuchlin Teo and James Beckford Saunders for organising the Vendors’ Day.

Given the Information Futures Commission’s focus on teaching and learning in the Digital Age, I would like to propose that the Project Team include the paper entitled “Web 2.0 authorship: Issues of referencing and citation for academic integrity” as a recommended resource for academic staff.

This paper has recently been published by Dr Kathleen Gray, Dr Celia Thompson (University of Melbourne), Dr Rosemary Clerehan and Dr Judithe Sheard (Monash University) and Dr Margaret Hamilton (RMIT University),in the Internet and Higher Education journal (2008).

It raises questions concerning academic integrity in relation to current referencing and citation style guides and argues that these guides are inadequate to the task. We suggest that traditional concepts of authorship need to be reformed in order to accommodate the collaborative and multi-voiced dimensions of authorship afforded by Web 2.0 authoring tools such as wikis, blogs and social bookmarking.

Please see below for the abstract. The full paper is available.

Abstract:

Web 2.0 authoring forms such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, and audio and video podcasting pose a challenge to academic authorship traditions. This paper reviews the provisions made in major academic referencing and citation style guides for acknowledging content and ideas that may be published using these new web authoring forms. It offers an overview of features of web 2.0 authoring forms and explores concepts of authoring that can help academics to understand the challenges of working with these forms. It provides examples of referencing and citation in scholarly and scientific communication, and concludes that the conceptual basis of referencing and citation as expressed in current systems and standards needs reform in order to bring academic integrity to the use of these new forms of authorship.

Thanks, Celia :-)

“Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.”

The report is based on a national phone survey of 700 Americans aged 12-17 and their parents. It was conducted by Pew and the National Commission on Writing.

Co-author Amanda Lenhart comments in a media release that “There is a raging national debate about the state of writing and how high-tech communication by teens might be affecting their ability to think and write… Those on both sides of the issue will see supporting data here.”

Richard Sterling, executive director emeritus of the National Writing Project, said “We think these findings point to a critical strategy question for all educators: How can we connect the enthusiasm of young people for informal, technology-based writing with classroom experiences that illuminate the power of well-organized, well-reasoned writing?”

Full text of the Writing, Technology and Teens report is available online.