Latest PIL report released

Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age was released today, Dec. 1.

As many of you know, Harvard has been involved in phase 1 (focus group) and phase 2 (online survey). We're also on board for phase 3 (content analysis of research assignments); Alison Head, the PI, is currently collecting this data from faculty in the College.

More info about the project, including past reports, videos, and supplementary information, is available at the PIL site.

2009 Horizon Report

. . . is on the horizon. Read it here.

ECAR Survey 2008

The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) has released its 2008 Study of Undergraduate Students and Technology.

In distilled form, these results and implications of the study are presented here.

Reading on Collaboration and Collaboration Tools

An August 2008 Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) paper.

Firefox Video Add-Ons

While we are learning the fine art of video-making and what it can do for us, and until we have Camtasia or Captivate on our machines to facilitate experimentation, you might want to take a look at CaptureFox. This is a Firefox add-on that you can install (much like Harvard LibX) on your computer here. CaptureFox is very recently launched but is generating enthusiasm.

A reading that puts our changes in context?

The Academic Library in a 2.0 World, Susan V. Wawrzaszek and David G. Wedaman, ECAR Bulletin, issue 19 (September 16, 2008).

Interesting article from First Monday

Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, "Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0." First Monday [online], 13.2 (June 2, 2008).  

Interesting Reading

According to an April 17, 2008 Wired Campus story (in the Chronicle of Higher Education), "Harvard Survey Shows Undergraduates -- but Not Graduate Students -- Like Video Lectures"

The actual technology report is linked from the story. Comments on the Chronicle site are also worth a look for some of the issues surrounding these technologies.

The Harvard report, in turn, links back to a Berkman initiative on Digital Natives.

2008 Horizon Report

The 36 page report is linked from here.

Because it forecasts trends in teaching, learning, and technologies, it makes interesting reading as we all think about a Lamont of the future.

Worth a look

JISC (the UK Joint Information Systems Committee) and the British Library have just published a report on "The Information Behaviour of the Google Generation."  It looks very critically at some of "myths" of the Google generation -- at long last!

Interesting Reading

Deep Web Research 2008

Two New Studies

From the Educause Center for Applied Research:

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2007

From the librarians at the University of Rochester:

Studying Students:The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester

Technology Showcase: a place to direct students

Earlier this week, a patron came to the desk with a question about where she might go to scan some slides. The Fine Arts Library was my first thought -- but when I checked the HCL equipment page, I could find no mention of slide-reproduction facilities. Mary Clare confirmed that Fine Arts does not offer this service.

The Technology Showcase does, however. The Showcase is actually a small multimedia facility, located on the 2nd floor of the Science Center (Room 209), overseen by FAS, and run by User Assistants for limited weekday hours. [Spring 2008 hours are M-Th 12-6 p.m. and F 12-5 p.m.] Walk-in use is possible; so is after-hours keycard access for users who have "sponsored" projects.

The room features 5 G5 Dual 2 gig processor Macs, 2 single processor Macs and 4 high end PCs running XP. A variety of special software is loaded on these machines in addition to the standard HASCS fare.

Among the common uses of the lab: scanning of photos, slides and negatives; burning of DVDs or CD-ROMs; editing of video; conversion of analog to digital formats; and scanning of documents with text recognition. Software for webpage design and editing of audio is also popular.

For appointments with UAs or for equipment demos, users should email showcase@fas.harvard.edu.

New Educause Report

ECAR [Educause Center for Applied Research] has just released its Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2007.

"This 2007 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study, which reports noticeable changes from previous years, is based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience."

If the entire 122 page report is too long to pore over (especially these days), there's a 15 page key findings that you can peruse. A 4 page "roadmap" for action is also provided.

Interesting Reading on the Next Big Thing(s)

Richard MacManus, who authors the Read/Write Web blog, provides a summary of the Top 10 Future Web Trends here. The experts suggest these developments will unfold over a ten year period.

More on the Web 2.0 / Authority Conundrum

A post on a site called "Academic Productivity" is circling parts of blogosphere at the moment. It's called Soft Peer Review? Social Software and Distributed Scientific Evaluation. Interesting stuff.

Two worth reading?

Beyond Google: How do students conduct academic research?. A summary of the findings (along with some interesting comments (including a U of Washington strategy) is also available via the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Recently published in the Journal of Library Administration, 46.2 (2007): 3-16 is an article by Fred Heath, Director and Vice Provost of the UT-Austin Library system. His topic: the rationale behind the closing of the undergraduate library there. Much for thought.

For thought

A post on the possibilities that Facebook presents us with.

ALA Preconference on Reinvented Reference

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of take-backs from my DC learning experience.

On Friday, June 22, I participated in a day-long session that explored the impact of emerging technologies on reference services.

Here's the program description, list of presenters, and their topics:

How can social networking, blogging, and podcasting be applied to reference and information services? How can you best use instant messaging and other available technologies to provide Everywhere Reference? Speakers from academic and public libraries will highlight selection, implementation and evaluation of new technologies for cutting edge reference services.

Keynote speaker:
Michael Stephens, “The Hyperlinked Library: Reference Services in the 2.0 Age.”

Speakers:
David Ward, “R U There? Implementing, training, and marketing for IM services in new user spaces.”
David Free, “The Wide World of Podcasting: Implications for Libraries.”
David King, “Videocasting for Public Outreach.”
Karen Coombs, “Blogs for Reference Services, Outreach and Marketing.”

Slides from the keynote will give you a sense of the overarching themes of the day.

In addition, one attendee very usefully (and extensively) blogged each presentation and audience questions. Her summaries are here.

From my perspective, David Ward's discussion of IM services offered at the UIUC undergraduate library was especially interesting. He notes that the average IM session at his institution lasts about 12 minutes (and the exchange is non-continuous, of course). When we have patrons who prefer to use library services this way and when we know that a single IM exchange may be our only point of contact in the entire span of the research and writing project, that knowledge has to change our sense of how the session should proceed.

12 minutes of face-to-face time at the desk is obviously not the same as 12 minutes of IM. I suspect we need different ways to measure success with these technologies. Best practices are probably already emerging at places like UIUC as well.

Let me know your thoughts (or questions) about the preconference summary materials above, especially as they might relate to undergraduate reference in the Lamont of the (near) future.

Recommended reading: "The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority"

This excellent article appeared in the June 15, 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education's Review section. Author Michael Jensen describes the changing nature of scholarly authority in our current web 2.0 environment and envisions what authority might mean in 10 or 15 years, when we are all immersed in web 3.0. Worth a look.