For reasons I cannot easily explain, I found myself browsing the archive of poll results on Library Journal’s site this week. I also found myself fighting the irritating pop-up ads for AARP which cover the data and cannot be easily dismissed but that’s another matter. If there is a more negative set of responses out [...]
Am just back from a very interesting workshop at CLIR where a group of about 20 people discussed the future of academic libraries, launching the discussion with a set of prepared essays from eight of us. Too much was discussed across the day to cover here, and there will be a summary of the event [...]
The Council for Library and Information Resources is organizing a one day workshop on this topic next month in DC. I was asked to prepare a white paper of no more than 3000 words dealing with how education for LIS professionals might be impacted. You can now read a draft: Accelerating Learning & Discovery, comments [...]
I am working on a paper for CLIR that speculates (briefly) on the future of academic libraries. It will form one part of a six-paper presentation for them that aims to stimulate discussion. This has me examining many of the assumptions we make about these libraries and it is obvious many people are thinking similarly. [...]
A competitor to Wikipedia has been officially launched this week (though it’s been around for a while): Citizendium, a somewhat rough looking ‘citizens compendium of everything’ promises to be loosely controlled and edited, and to offer ‘gentle oversight’ that improves on Wikipedia. You can check it out at www.citizendium.org/ but will need to sign up [...]
Wall St. Journal Online edition presented an interesting exchange this week between wikipedia founder Jummy Wales and Britannica’s editor in chief, Dale Hoiberg (tinyurl.com/jxe33). Since Nature published a study indicating that the accuracy of entries on Wikipedia was comparable to Britannica, traditionalists have been quick to find fault with the study or point to clear [...]
I attended a closed-shop symposium at UT this week on the future of the academic library (www.utexas.edu/president/symposium/index.html). The two opening addresses, by James Duderstadt, former President of the University of Michigan) and Clifford Lynch (of CNI) were models of insightful, powerpoint-free talks that took us through a range of future scenarios (definitely plural!) suggesting major [...]