The Fierce Urgency of Now

The Fierce Urgency of Now: A Proactive, Pervasive Content Awareness Tool

A new searching tool - Information awareness is distinct from explicit information seeking, such as searching. The authors discuss an information awareness tool that supports text composition by providing awareness of relevant content and references proactively and non-intrusively. As a user composes text, the tool automatically searches multiple sources, retrieves results, and displays links to the results. A working prototype of the tool has been implemented using Web 2.0 and Digital Library 2.0 technologies, and is flexible and highly configurable for both Web search engines and deep web targets. Interesting...

Five Esential Reads

1. The Power of One, thePower of Many by Jo Bibby, Helen Bevan, Elizabeth Carter, Paul Bate, Glenn Robert, with a foreword by Helen Bevan - Chief of Service Transformation, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement Evidence from social sciences suggest that other perspectives may compliment improvement thinking and practice in order to drive and sustain change through engaging with the individuals’ core values and mobilising their own internal energies and drivers for change. This guide aims to provide knowledge and demonstrate how ‘social movement’ approaches have been used to deliver improvement at previously unseen levels of depth and scale - which can be utilised and adapted in order to unleash the energy in your organisation.
2. Informing Innovation Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies - Char Booth “Informing Innovation” examines one institution’s efforts to move away from “technolust” and toward a culture of assessment in developing and implementing technology initiatives. Booth presents findings from a study conducted at Ohio University investigating the convergence of students and libraries with emerging information, communication and academic tools. The study uses survey data to test generational and demographic assumptions that often guide technology development in academic libraries.
3. The Edgeless University Peter Bradwell DEMOS Technology is changing universities as they become just one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. But online tools and open access also offer the means for their survival. Their expertise and value is needed more than ever to validate and support learning and research. Through their institutional capital, universities can use technology to offer more flexible provision and open more equal routes to higher education and learning.
4. Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World - The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience By the time they reach university more than 75 per cent of students have a profile on at least one social networking site and typically spend four hours a day online, according to a new report by an independent committee of inquiry examining how students’ widespread use of social networking impacts on higher education (HE). The report finds that universities and colleges are generally falling behind their students in the use of these technologies and challenges them, and the major educational agencies, to take account of, and capitalise on, these trends.
5. The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online WIRED MAGAZINE: 17.06 The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

Universities and Social Networking

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Universities and Social Networking

View more presentations from Chris Sparshott.

A Workshop Talents wordle from our librarians, IT Staff, technicians and Web Staff

TED Blog: Erin McKean launches Wordnik -- the revolutionary online dictionary

Wordnik - a very interesting dictionary

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more OpenOffice presentations from Jane Hart.

General Mot(ion control) - BBC NEWS | Technology | Sony joins new 'controller wars'

Great potential for classroom and lab applications. Picking up a book, using technology in libraries etc.

Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride - YouTube - Electric Works, Sheffield - Look North 25/02/2009

Information and Learning Commons are looking a little bit identikit - the business incubator at the Electric Works might show what a library could look like in a few years - helter skelter

YouTube - Syracuse University Library - Learning Commons

Bing Sings and Wolfram Disnae

Two new search engines Wolfram Alpha and Bing. Wolfram is a knowledge based, computational search engine - which is 'learning'and 'growing' - its not the place to find anything and everything yet but is interesting - its not Google and isn't trying to be. Bing is Microsoft's new search and is trying to be Google, nice interface and images, no adverts and related searches suggestions are useful.