The 2013 environmental scan by the ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee explores the current atmosphere in the world of academic and research libraries along with trends that will define the future of academic and research librarianship and the research environment. The document builds on earlier ACRL reports, identifying several emerging issues.
News Archive
Friday, July 26, 2013
Twenty-three colleges and universities collaborated with Internet2, EDUCAUSE, the publisher McGraw-Hill, and the e-textbook platform provider Courseload to deliver free digital versions of textbooks to over 5,000 students and faculty in 393 undergraduate and graduate courses with a median class size of 28. The pilot shed light not just on the usabilityof McGraw-Hill textbooks in Courseload but more broadly on the value of digital materials in higher education at this time.
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Friday, July 26, 2013
The SCONUL Summer Conference took place in Dublin on 20 and 21 June, with the theme of "Adapt and Thrive: Regional and national innovation in response to change in higher education".
Highlights of the conference included Professor Malcolm Gillies discussing outsourcing in higher education; Roly Keating on links between The British Library and universities and Li Yuan on whether MOOCs will transform higher education in the UK.
Delegates had the opportunity of attending a series of workshops highlighting innovation in member libriares, plus a series of "fringe" meetings from SCONUL Groups and partner organisations.
Go to source: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/news/conference-presentations
Friday, July 26, 2013
In the last decade we have had access to data that opens up a new world of potential evidence ranging from indicating how children might learn their first word to the use of millions of mathematical models to predict outbreaks of flu. We explore the potential impact of learning analytics and big data for the future of learning and teaching. Essentially, it is in our hands to make constructive and effective use of the data around us to provide useful and significant insights into learning and teaching.
Go to source: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue71/charlton-et-al
Friday, July 26, 2013
The rapid growth of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education has raised the question of what services libraries on campus can, and should, provide for these courses. One area in which librarians are frequently the source of advice and assistance is in providing copyright education and obtaining permissions to use copyrighted material, and there is now a pressing need to address those areas for MOOCs. This article describes the creation of a copyright and permissions service for MOOC instructors within the Duke University Libraries. Although the service has not been free of difficulties, and its success in actually obtaining permission for desired uses has been uneven, overall the response from faculty has been positive, and the libraries believe that this service is a fruitful and sensible way for them to support the MOOC phenomenon.
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Friday, July 26, 2013
Facilitating access to free online resources: challenges and opportunities for the library community
“While we understand that the questions we posed encompassed a world of free-to-view material beyond the traditional book and journal content that is normally associated with the offerings of major scientific, scholarly and professional publishers, we nevertheless are acutely aware that there are key roles that we need to perform and a whole range of new services and products that we should look to develop. All key stakeholders in the information and research communication worlds are aware that ‘free’ does not mean cost-free. However, free-to-access and free-to-view, with free content availability in models such as ‘freemium offerings’, are among the paths towards global access that we are all now embracing and experimenting with.”
Dr David Green, Global Journals Publishing Director
Dr David Green, Global Journals Publishing Director
Librarians have found themselves in an environment where information is coming from everywhere: SNS, blogs, wikis, OA books and monographs, forums and discussion groups, videos, mobile apps. Potentially these free resources could be of great value for education purposes: teaching, learning and research but how do librarians...
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