Instructional Tech Workshops: Find a Champion, Tell a Story

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

Now that everyone is here; let's get started.

Now that everyone’s here; let’s get started!

Inside Higher Ed has a post by Matt Reed “Workshops Don’t Work” that treads the familiar territory of low faculty turnout for workshops. However, is it that workshops do not work or is there a gap between what librarians and instructional tech coordinators think faculty want or should know, and what faculty really want?

I’ll get back to Reed’s post in a moment, but for now I’m curious to hear how you plan your workshops? Do you conduct surveys? Speak to faculty members with whom you have a close relationship? Plan workshops around new or changing technology on your campus? Whatever your process, please share it. Especially as summer is the time when most of us are planning next year’s offerings.

To get back to Reed’s post though, he talks about finding an early adopter and letting that person spread the message virally, or in pre-Internet speak, by word of mouth. But, does it take more than that? Is word of mouth good enough or could one do more?

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Tagged with: Instructional Technology, Workshops
Education

Bringing Manuscripts to Life with 3D Imaging

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

Dr. Bill Endres explains the potential for 3D imaging in the study of manuscripts in regard to the St. Chad Gospels.

Tagged with: 3D Imaging, Manuscripts, Video
Digital Humanities

Archivists in France Fight a Privacy Initiative

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

Written by Eric Pfanner and published in the New York Times.

One of the European Union’s measures would grant Internet users a “right to be forgotten,” letting them delete damaging references to themselves in search engines, or drunken party photos from social networks. But a group of French archivists, the people whose job it is to keep society’s records, is asking: What about our collective right to keep a record even of some things that others might prefer to forget?

Tagged with: Links, New York Times
Libraries

Digital Initiatives Librarian at Baruch College

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

FACULTY VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

The William & Anita Newman Library of Baruch College seeks applicants for appointment to a tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor – Digital Initiatives Librarian. The successful candidate will lead the creation, maintenance, and stewardship of digital collections, including the digitization of special collections and other library materials and the implementation and maintenance of discovery tools related to these initiatives. The successful candidate will be responsible for recommending policies and best practices to assure access to the digital collections. Additionally s/he will work with the collection curators to select collections to be digitized; manage the content creation process and acquisition of born digital collections; in conjunction with IT staff, assure adequate storage for the digital collections and implementation of back-up strategies; identify potential third party services and work with the organization and the department in implementing vendor services; create and update project documentation; promote and market the digital collections program; and assist in evaluation of the program. S/he will hire, train, and manage digital collections staff including digital technicians. The position reports to the Head of Archives and Special Collections, but requires close collaboration with the Metadata Librarian, IT staff, and other units of the College. As a member of the library faculty the successful candidate is expected to provide reference and research assistance to library users, teach, and engage in active scholarship that leads to publication.

The Newman Library is a recipient of the Excellence in Academic Libraries Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries, as well as the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Excellence in Design, the Award of Excellence for Library Architecture, presented jointly by the American Library Association and the American Institute of Architects, and the Library Buildings Award, presented by the Library Administration and Management Section of the American Library Association. The Library has an active instruction program that includes credit courses leading to an undergraduate Minor in Information Studies.

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Tagged with: Baruch College, New York
Digital Library Jobs

Poll: Will President Clinton’s Support Cause Open Badges to Go Mainstream?

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

Tagged with: Clinton Global Initiative, Mozilla, Open Badges
EducationPosted in %s, Uncategorized

President Clinton Supports Open Badges for Learning

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

BETTER FUTURES FOR 2 MILLION AMERICANS THROUGH OPEN BADGES

President Clinton Announces Commitment to Create New Pathways to College and Career Success

CHICAGO, June 13, 2013 – President Bill Clinton today announced a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action to massively expand access to a new method of academic and technical skills assessment known as Open Badges – online representations of earned knowledge and skills – to improve the futures of two million students and U.S. workers.

Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) meeting, an annual event of the Clinton Global Initiative that seeks innovative solutions for economic recovery, Clinton said three partners – the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and HASTAC – have created the commitment to Open Badges. Outreach and technical assistance will be provided to help employers and universities across the country incorporate Open Badges in hiring, promotions, admissions, and credit over the next three years.

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Tagged with: Clinton Global Initiative, HASTAC, MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, Open Badges, President Bill Clinton
Announcements

Discussion: Should You List a MOOC on Your CV?

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — 3 Comments ↓

Search sites like the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Hack Education and one finds lots of talk about MOOCs, but it’s from the perspective of people enmeshed in the academy and speaking to their peers in the academy. While there is debate over what MOOCs mean for higher education, there is less written for those enrolled in MOOCs. MOOCs, their creators and the students who are taking them, are marching along at the speed of the Internet, while higher education finds itself continually playing catch up and trying to move faster than the plodding pace of committees. The fallout, such as UVA’s Board firing and rehiring its president or Duke’s faculty rejecting Semester Online, are just two examples of this tension.

For traditional students, job seekers, and professionals a question arises. Should or shouldn’t one list a MOOC on their CV or resume? If so, how should a MOOC be listed on a CV? The question is especially relevant for those in professionals like libraries, where tech skills are in demand, but money for continuing education is in short supply. What’s your perspective?

Tagged with: CV, MOOC
Job Market

MOOC: New Librarianship Master Class

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — 2 Comments ↓

R. David Lankes announced on his blog yesterday he will be teaching a free, online class in new librarianship along with Jill Hurst-Wahl, Megan Oakleaf and Jian Qin. The course description reads:

Libraries have existed for millennia, but today the library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented (and increasingly digital) information environment. What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings, and committees?

The vision for a new librarianship must go beyond finding library-related uses for information technology and the Internet; it must provide a durable foundation for the field. New Librarianship recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created through conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities.

Join iSchool faculty for this online course that provides a foundation for practicing librarians and library science students in new librarianship. It builds on The Atlas of New Librarianship, the 2012 ABC CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature and seeks to generate discussion about the future direction of the profession.

If you’re interested in signing up, you may do so on Syracuse University’s website.

Tagged with: MOOC, New Librarianship, Poll
Libraries

Is Your Library Using Schema.org?

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Timothy A. Lepczyk — No Comments ↓

When Schema.org came out, a conversation about using microdata in digital collections ended before it began, because Schema.org was the product of Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and was not an agreed upon standard developed by the W3C. Forget the fact that sitemaps, also a Google creation, were widely used. This was different. The big three were creating their own schema and sidestepping standards.

If you’re looking for an introductory article and some background on Schema.org, please read “HTML5 Microdata and Schema.org” by Jason Ronollo published in the Code4Lib Journal. Months after Ronollo’s article, the current opinion is to use RDFa Lite instead of Microdata.

Last year also saw OCLC adopt Schema.org as part of their linked data initiative, and this spring, at the Coalition for Networked Information, Will Sexton and Sean Aery from Duke University Libraries presented on “Using Schema.org and Google Site Search with Library Digital Collections.” Video of their presentation is below; the Schema.org section begins about halfway through.

Is your library using Schema.org to better display their collections and if they are, what have been the outcomes? Or, if your library is not using Schema.org, what was the context for that decision?