Pull quote: “But think about Scholar as a latent social network. Each paper contains its own social network that Google already crawls. Every bibliography is filled with other social networks. And people searching Google Scholar are likely to be as interested in connecting with the researchers who created those papers as they are with the papers themselves. Why isn’t Google making it easy to connect the searchers with the searched? And sure, build a whole other set of social tools on top of that, which make it easy to share with networks of researchers. You want every college kid in America to start engaging deeply with your social network? Make it easy for them to get their papers written.”
Pull quote: “The unanimous vote of the faculty senate makes UCSF the largest scientific institution in the nation to adopt an open-access policy and among the first public universities to do so.”
Pull quote: “We wanted to create a webpage that really focused attention on all of our library services that patrons can use without having to come into the library. Good idea, right? We went round and round coming up with a name, but eventually settled on Library Anytime.”
The best designs speak without words.
Physically, intentionally, or otherwise.
Pull quote: “Image captioning: I use images a lot in my class, but I would like to do an activity each week where I show an image related to the week’s readings and then ask them to create a caption for it on an index card. This is a different skill from the usual and requires the ability to synthesize information. Plus I can use it as a mini-reading quiz.”
Pull quote: “Despite Mr. Marx’s assurances, the panel’s critics remained skeptical of the plan. ‘Having heard it so eloquently defended,’ Mr. Nasaw said, ‘I’m more than ever convinced that it has to be scrapped or changed.’”
Pull quote: “I suggest that we think of crowdsourcing not as extracting labor from a crowd, but of a way for us to invite the participation of amateurs (in the non-derogatory sense of the word) in the creation, development and further refinement of public goods.”
Pull quote: “To recap, our Library Concierge project is an ambitious initiative designed to promote exceptional public services across the Stanford Libraries, and to empower and equip all staff to provide that service. It refers to both a service perspective and a set of training experiences for all library staff. The training experiences are designed to increase staff familiarity with the full range of resources and services our organization offers, so that they can provide better public service, give more effective referrals, and can take advantage of opportunities to serve as fully informed ambassadors for the Stanford Libraries. Ultimately, our goal is to maximize Stanford scholars’ knowledge of and access to our resources and services; but we know we have to start by providing ways for our own staff to learn about the services offered by their colleagues throughout the organization.”
Pull quote: “Although many libraries are slow to change, the expectations of today’s children make that change a certainty.”
Pull quote: “We treat library users as if they are all-knowing; as if they know each author in our catalog, as if the title of the book and the number of pages is sufficient for them to decide if it is a good read or has the information they need. This is so obviously false that I am at a loss to explain how we continue to work under this illusion.”
Pull quote: “Now, faculty can choose to despair at the image of students at the end of the semester just figuring out the utility of the practice problems in the back of the textbook. Or, they can choose (as I do) to be struck by the tableau of students teaching students not just the course material, but techniques for success in class, techniques that they can then take out of the current class they are enrolled in and apply to future situations. Student engagement is happening in the library—they are engaged with their course materials, they are engaged with each other (and not just in a social way), they are engaged with the stuff of intellectual work, one of the most important reasons for them to come to university.”
Pull quote: “Making new contacts at SXSW is critical to this mission. Libraries may choose to outsource expertise to implement new technologies and programs, or bring in technologists and entrepreneurs to enhance library teams. ‘We’re looking to hire,’ says [Eric] Frierson. As more libraries include digital media centers, hacklabs, and maker spaces, so expands the need for inspired, diverse, creative, and technical professionals to be employed in our libraries and partners in our technology initiatives.”
Pull quote: “Instead, copyright law tries to balance exclusive rights with exceptions crafted to encourage certain uses of copyrighted materials that are considered particularly beneficial to society. Thus the rights become qualified and the exceptions are larded with rules and requirements that narrow their application. Balance is required for fairness, and fairness inevitably leads to complexity.”
Pull quote: “If users knew with certainty whether copyright owners would emerge and object to possible uses, there’d be no orphan works problem, because every search would lead either to genuine negotiations or to use without fear of suit. False negatives that expose users to the risk of being sued and copyright owners to mistaken uses; false positives chill use without benefitting copyright owners.”
