From blawlor at nfais.org Mon Aug 2 08:44:49 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:44:49 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Webinar registrations closing tomorrow Message-ID: <009a01cb3240$7f6851f0$7e38f5d0$@org> Registrations Close at Noon on August 3rd for the NFAIS Webinar: Google Wave - An Innovative Collaborative Workflow Tool Registrations for the NFAIS Webinar on Google Wave and its companion tool, Google Buzz will close tomorrow, August 3rd, at noon. This 90-minute session will provide an overview of these new collaborative workflow tools given by Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director of Planning & Communication. She will be followed by John Blossom, President, Shore Communications, Inc. (http://www.shore.com/) who will present the value proposition offered by Google Wave. He will talk about who has adopted it, where and how it is currently being used, and will provide real-life examples of its most practical applications. If you want to learn more about these innovative new tools register for the NFAIS webinar today. NFAIS members pay $75 and non-members pay $95. An unlimited number of staff from an NFAIS member organization can participate for a group fee of $225. The group fee for an unlimited number of staff from any non-member organization is $285. The registration form can be accessed at: http://info.nfais.org/info/2010_Aug_Web_RegForm.pdf. For more information contact: Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director, Communication and Planning, 215-893-1561 (phone); 215-893-1564 (fax); mailto:jilloneill at nfais.org or go to http://www.nfais.org/. NFAIS: Serving the Global Information Community -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Wed Aug 4 11:11:37 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:11:37 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] NISO Webinar, Aug 25th Message-ID: <9E1DBF2E46DF41D79B1ACB23F435620C@DDPXRT91> Joint NISO/DCMI Webinar: Dublin Core: The Road from Metadata Formats to Linked Data The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) are pleased to announce a new educational partnership, starting with a webinar on "Dublin Core: The Road from Metadata Formats to Linked Data," to be held Wednesday, August 25th, from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (eastern time). Created in 1995, the Dublin Core was a result of the early phase of the web revolution. While most saw the Dublin Core as a simple metadata format, or as a set of descriptive headers embedded in web pages, a few of its founders saw it as a cornerstone of a fundamentally new approach to metadata. In the shadow of search engines, a Semantic Web approach developed in the early 2000s, reaching maturity in 2006 with the Linked Data movement, which uses Dublin Core as one of its key vocabularies. This webinar will discuss the difference between traditional approaches based on record formats and the Linked Data approach, based on metadata "statements" designed to be merged across data silo boundaries. Focusing on the dual role of Dublin Core as a format and as a Semantic Web vocabulary, this webinar will discuss new technologies for bridging the gap between traditional and Linked Data approaches, highlighting how old ideas such as embedded metadata have been reinvented with new web technologies and tools to solve practical problems of resource discovery and navigation. Speakers and topics are: * Dublin Core in the Early Web Revolution Makx Dekkers, Managing Director and CEO, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Ltd. (DCMI) Makx will describe how the early history of the Dublin Core illustrates an emerging split between two quite different paradigms for metadata -- one based on closed systems and record formats and the other based on recombinational metadata with an "open-world" assumption. * What Makes the Linked Data Approach Different Thomas Baker, Chief Information Officer, DCMI Ltd. Tom will demonstrate how metadata can be designed for merging across the boundaries of repositories and data silos. * Designing Interoperable Metadata on Linked Data Principles Thomas Baker, Chief Information Officer, DCMI Ltd. Tom will show how good metadata design is rooted in well-articulated requirements and how the interoperability of metadata depends on shared underlying vocabularies in the context of a shared "grammar" for metadata. * Bridging the Gap to the Linked Data Cloud Makx Dekkers, Managing Director and CEO, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Ltd. (DCMI) Makx will describe how existing metadata applications can participate in the Linked Data cloud with emphasis on the role of simple, generic vocabularies such as the Dublin Core in providing a common denominator for interoperability. Registration is per site (defined as access for one computer). NISO and NASIG members may register at a discounted rate. A student discount is also available. Can't make it on the scheduled date or time? Registrants receive access to the recorded version for one year, which can be viewed at your convenience. For more information or to register, visit the event webpage: www.niso.org/news/events/2010/dublincore/. Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Thu Aug 5 10:26:21 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:26:21 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] Google Wave and Yesterday's Webinar Message-ID: <16C01D2454EC404E949DFE909C49C1B4@DDPXRT91> Never let it be said that social media doesn't get the message out! Less than three hours after we'd completed yesterday's NFAIS Webinar on the topic of Google Wave, Google announced that it would be ceasing support of the service as a stand-alone product. Personally, I learned of the tool's demise through a message on my Facebook wall (Jay ven Eman of Data Harmony), an email message (Margie Hlava of Access Innovations) and a re-tweeted item in my Twitter stream (Dave Kellogg of Mark Logic). See the formal announcement here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html. I have been monitoring follow-up discussions and reactions. For example, from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, quoted in a story on CNET: "His comments came at the start of Techonomy, a new conference devoted to looking at how technology is changing and can change. Schmidt said that society really isn't prepared for all of the changes being thrust upon it. "I think it's time for people to get ready for it." http://gigaom.com/2010/08/05/google-ceo-dishes-on-google-wave-verizon-social -strategy/ More from Schmidt, directly on the topic of Wave, quoted at GigaOM: What happened was we liked the UI and we liked a lot of the new features in it but it didn't get enough traction. So we're taking those technologies and applying them to new technologies that are not announced. So basically we'll get the benefits of Google Wave but not as a separate product. It's a very clever product and we liked it what it could do. We try things and remember we celebrate our failures. It's absolutely OK to try something very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning from that and then apply it to something new. In that sense Wave is a exact analog. Would I have loved version 1 to be hugely successful and have five gazillion users, absolutely. As a culture, we don't over-promote products that haven't been announced, we release it and see what happens. It works, you announce product, you ship it, initial adoption period, a fall-off, and then a second growth period. That second growth is a high predictor of what will happen. http://gigaom.com/2010/08/05/google-ceo-dishes-on-google-wave-verizon-social -strategy/ (Note: GigaOm links to a video of Schmidt's commentary. It's 40-minutes long, but may well be instructive.) >From the New York Times Bits Blog: Wave, which was introduced, to much hype at a conference for Google software developers in 2009, was conceived of as a collaboration tool housed in a Web browser. People could use the application to chat, edit documents, videos and photos, and play games together. But Wave had so many different features that it confused many users, who never figured out how it worked. Wave also has several competitors, ranging from Salesforce's Chatter to Jive. One of Wave's major ideas - that the browser is replacing the desktop computer as the center of people's computing lives - lives on at Google and is the central tenet of its Web-based Chrome operating system. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/google-kills-wave-its-collaboration -tool/ And my co-presenter from yesterday's Webinar, John Blossom made this statement with which I fully concur, "Reading the announcement, it's clear that Wave and Wave-like functionality will make its way into other platforms. There's a broader picture to look at, namely, how does effective collaboration in real-time mix with the broader commercial necessity to field a product that draws users away from competitive products. Wave doesn't compete with anything directly, expect perhaps wikis on a broad level. If you take what Buzz, Wave, Sidewiki, Voice and other platforms can do and put them in a more competitive framework, perhaps you come out ahead. So although this saddens me, perhaps there's another chapter to the story that has yet to be told." More commentary from John is on his Second Web blog: http://www.secondwebbook.com/2010/08/wipeout-google-kills-wave-to-build.html And, finally, an analysis from ReadWrite Web, Why Developers Did Not Adopt Wave http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/08/google-waves-demise-has-its-up.php Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Thu Aug 5 15:47:04 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:47:04 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] Discovery Services Message-ID: About mid-July, I sent out a note to the NFAIS membership about Barbara Quint's column on discovery services that appeared in Information Today. Specifically, I wrote "NFAIS members may be interested in Barbara Quint's column in this month's issue of Information Today (The Undiscovered Discovery, Information Today, pgs 7-8). Quoting the blurb in the IT table of contents, "bq details some pitfalls in evaluating discovery services." It's unfortunate that it's not available online but here's one quick line, ".I still think these services are a good idea, probably an essential one. Someone has to find a way to make library-licensed material more amenable to a Google world." Barbara Quint let me know this week that the column is now freely accessible at: http://www.infotoday.com/IT/jul10/Quint.shtml. If you hadn't had time before to seek it out, here is your opportunity to read her work. Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Wed Aug 11 16:03:58 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:03:58 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] Medical Information and Google Wave Message-ID: <2FACD3838283493AA0E6094DB96D9728@DDPXRT91> Lest you think Wave is entirely dead, I am told that yesterday in Washington DC at a health/info tech conference, two Google engineers discussed the use of Wave technology (not the consumer service) Here's the position paper. Using the Wave Protocol to Represent Individuals' Health Records Shirley Gaw and Umesh Shankar, Google Abstract: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36501.html Full Text: http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36501.pdf >From the title, how Wave might help with patient medical records. Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blawlor at nfais.org Tue Aug 17 13:39:31 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:39:31 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Request Message-ID: <011d01cb3e33$267076f0$735164d0$@org> Journal Article Supplemental Materials: Request for Samples and Guidelines for Handling As you may know, NFAIS and NISO are working on a joint initiative to develop recommended practices on the handling of supplemental material that is associated with journal articles. The practices will apply to authors, publishers, database producers, etc. As part of the process we are attempting to gather samples of existing guidelines as well as samples of the kinds of supplemental materials that are currently being processed. If your organization deals with supplemental materials, we would very much appreciate receiving any input that you can provide. You can send them to my attention (see contact information below) - ideally by September 3, 2010. My sincere thanks in advance for any assistance that you can provide. This is an exciting project from which all members of the information community will benefit. Bonnie Lawlor Executive Director National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) 1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1004 Philadelphia, PA 19102 1-215-893-1561 Phone 1-215-893-1564 Fax blawlor at nfais.org www.nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blawlor at nfais.org Wed Aug 18 08:01:06 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:01:06 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] Job Posting Message-ID: <008c01cb3ecd$0a3b3020$1eb19060$@org> Job Posting: Executive Director, The American Theological Library Association (ATLA The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) is now conducting a search for a new Executive Director. They are looking for a proven leader who has the ability to think strategically and to successfully direct the complex operations of a membership organization that produces a prestigious product line. Candidates should hold a post-baccalaureate degree; have a good, current working knowledge of academic libraries and publishing; possess solid business acumen; have excellent communication skills and the ability to develop effective strategies within a rapidly changing environment; and at least five years of senior management experience developing and managing people, plans and budgets in a medium to large organization. It is desirable that the candidate also have a knowledge of intellectual property issues and challenges and experience working with, or within , non profit associations. Salary and benefits are highly competitive. Send resume and letter of interest in confidence to Tuft & Associates, ATTN: Carole Badger, JD, CAE at czb at sprynet.com. For more information, go to: http://www.atla.com/member/job_openings.html#ATLA2 Bonnie Lawlor Executive Director National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) 1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1004 Philadelphia, PA 19102 1-215-893-1561 Phone 1-215-893-1564 Fax blawlor at nfais.org www.nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Mon Aug 30 09:03:57 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:03:57 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] Society for Scholarly Publishing IN Conference Message-ID: <7069F01DF3EB455189864CDA27F22939@DDPXRT91> Posted by Request: Join Us for SSP'sIN 2010 Conference: Imagining the "Dream E-Tool" for Education and Training Hurry - Register Today! Early Bird Registration for IN 2010 Ends on Sept. 1. The IN 2010 Conference will be held on September 21-23, 2010 at the luxurious Hotel Sofitel Philadelphia. Over three days, attendees will look at e-learning from a variety of perspectives by adopting multiple personas, participate in a lively forum of publishers and other industry stakeholders to grow knowledge of the latest teaching technologies, and collaborate with colleagues to develop cutting-edge strategies for creating the Dream E-Tool. A recognized leader with 35 years of experience in the education publishing industry, Kathy Hurley, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Pearson, will act as the keynote speaker for the IN 2010 Conference. This meeting is a must for anyone working in the scholarly publishing industry who wants to learn new ways to grow their organization's electronic initiatives and effectively leverage e-learning to enrich the educational experience and grow new business. To register and learn more about the conference, please visit: https://www.sspnet.org/Events/Meetings_and_Seminars/2010_SSP_IN_Meeting/spag e.aspx Registration Fee: $685 by Sept. 1; $785 after Sept. 1 Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Mon Aug 30 09:51:55 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:51:55 -0400 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Enotes, July 2010 Message-ID: NFAIS Enotes, July 2010 Written and Compiled by Jill O'Neill Books: Immersion, Assessment and Engagement In July 2010, Jakob Nielson published research findings that asserted maximum reading efficiency is still done using the print medium, although he also acknowledged that tablet reading experiences (such as with an iPad) are nearly equivalent in terms of user satisfaction. Specifically he found that digital devices slowed reading speed by anywhere from 6.2% to 10.7% when compared with reading speeds from printed texts (see: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad-kindle-reading.html). In his study, subjects were asked to read a short story by Ernest Hemingway on four different devices - the printed page, a desktop PC, an Apple iPad, and Amazon's Kindle device. "On average, the stories took 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read," according to the July 2nd Alertbox, a time sufficient to create an immersive experience. Neilson also noted that users said that reading from a printed page was more relaxing than the use of a screen for the same purpose. As it happens, a white paper from Elsevier, dated July 2010 and entitled A Study on the Usage, Application, and Value of Online Books on ScienceDirect in an Academic Environment, noted a similar length of time for perusing a chapter in a digital book. "Sessions where full-text from Online Books on Science Direct was accessed and downloaded lasted considerably longer than sessions involving full-text journal articles. More than half the sessions with full-text book chapter usage lasted longer than ten minutes." The Elsevier research attributes the greater length of time spent in book-related sessions not only to time devoted to examining a book's overall structure and content, but also to users' assessment of the relevance and value of specific chapters. (NOTE: In the wake of the soft launch of Elsevier's new integrated platform, SciVerse, and the related closing of the previous ScienceDirect Librarian Information Web site, the full text of the study is no longer available.) Michael Levine Clark of the University of Denver indicated in an interview with Sue Polanka of Wright State that their patron-driven model for rental or purchase of e-books allows for three five-minute sessions of user assessment (fifteen minutes in all) before invoking the cost of either rental or purchase of an e-book (see: http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?page_id=42). Assessment of relevance, the document triage referenced in the June 2010 issue of NFAIS E-Notes, may be so automatic to many of us that we are not even aware of the intellectual process as we pass judgment. However, graduate students are taught to look at the primary bibliographical elements (title, author, publisher, date) as well as to examine the front matter - table of contents, preface, introduction, etc. Further assessment (in the field of history, for example) occurs through looking at the critical reception of the work, the author's affiliations, agenda and awards, the scope of the text, its methodology or historiography, and only once all of that has been done, does the student investigate more of the book's actual thesis and supporting evidence. Playing around with the reading apps on a mobile device, you would quickly learn that any assessment of an e-book using the above criteria would have to take at least ten minutes, primarily because most of the interfaces are not set up to support that kind of close examination. In the past five years, the focus has been on determining how best to deliver book content in digital form, rather than on creating a better set of methods and tools for assessment of its value. John W. Warren of the Rand Corporation has been tracking the development of e-books in articles that have been appearing in the International Journal of the Book (http://www.book-journal.com ). He recognizes the concept of the book as the physical artifact, just one form of consolidating a body of knowledge, and notes examples of alternative forms of consolidation. His first article drew attention to the Codex Sinaiticus (http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/), a cooperative initiative involving the British Library among others in re-assembling scattered fragments of a Fourth Century Bible in manuscript form into a readable whole. "The electronic edition of Codex-Sinaiticus presents the manuscript in an interlinked interface, with high-quality images of each page in standard light and raking light; a transcription of the text on each page, including the numerous corrections; translations of selected passages; and detailed physical description of each page." The result is essentially a facsimile edition of the text as it was originally conceived, made accessible via the Web and equipped with a complete set of navigational and translation tools. In his second article, Warren used the example of the COMPARE site (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts) from the Rand Corporation, a "unique online resource providing objective, peer-reviewed information and statistics on the U.S. health care system" created in aid of the health care legislative reform initiative. In his view, the COMPARE site is a compendium of knowledge that deconstructs the scholarly monograph. Warren also references digital textbooks, another example of aggregated knowledge intended to introduce and explain a body of knowledge. Warren's work addresses the question of whether a book (as a representation of a corpus of knowledge) need necessarily be a book. Both articles may be found in PDF file formats at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/w/warren_john.html. * "The Progression of Digital Publishing: Innovation and the E-volution of E-books," The International Journal of the Book, Volume 7, Number 4 (2010) * "Innovation and the Future of E-books," The International Journal of the Book, Volume 6, Number 1 (2009). It's worth noting, however, as columnist David Brooks did in the New York Times, that the various forms of sharing of knowledge suit different learning styles more effectively. Brooks wrote that the literary (print) world was best at helping the reader master "significant things of lasting import," whereas the Internet was (as with Warren's COMPARE example) better suited to helping the reader become "knowledgeable about current events, the latest controversies and important trends." Brooks closed his column suggesting that what we really need to do is figure out how the "Internet counterculture could be used to better attract people to serious learning." (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09brooks.html?hp). Kevin Kelly in the Smithsonian wrote something similar - "In books we find a revealed truth; on the screen we assemble our own truth from pieces." (see: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Reading-in-a- Whole-New-Way.html). Whether we ever reach agreement as to whether an e-book is a monograph, a web-based resource of interlinked parts, or a stand-alone app on a mobile device, there are challenges for the researcher in assessing relevance. Long-established abstracting services, such as American Psychological Association's PsycInfo, have an edge in this regard when you look at the records created for book titles for the purposes of discovery via that resource. The structure of such a record does in fact supply the bulk of the criteria recommended for assessment (see the tab labeled "book" at http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/sample.aspx). One of the main rationales for abstracting services has been this type of assistance rendered to users in evaluating material. Scanning the various fields of the bibliographic record offers clues to whether the work is pertinent to the research. There is the abstract, there are the elements of the author's name and affiliation, even keywords appear to help the reader categorize the areas in which a work may be useful. But there is a long-standing question as to whether or not this particular function of traditional Abstracting & Indexing might be at risk, given the strengths of technology. For documents or for chapter length units, wouldn't it be just as easy and/or efficient to skim the document rather than study a bibliographic record? One 2008 research article looked at the use of document thumbnails as a mechanism for this type of triage ("Improving Skim Reading for Document Triage, Buchanan, Owen, ACM International Conference Proceedings at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1414714), and concluded that "semantic thumbnails provide a means for improving the effectiveness of users' interactions with new literature, through enhanced readability of headings and other content." In that instance the researchers were referring to the headings that appear in the body of an article, but it triggered a reminder for me of a book I had been reading, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books by H.J. Jackson (Yale University Press, 2001). Jackson notes that in earlier centuries, it was expected that marginalia would be read by others; it was perceived as a public contribution, one that increased the value of those costly volumes owned by the wealthy. Poet Samuel Coleridge gave books as gifts that he'd already read and for which he had already created marginalia, because the gift was as much the results of his engagement with the content as it was in offering the recipient an opportunity to do the same. Jackson wrote, in a different setting, of the use that President John Adams made of marginalia, creating headings for each paragraph of a text as he read. Jackson notes that Adams' did this as an aid to working out his own thoughts about a particular author's ideas, crafting his arguments as a statesman (see: http://adamsjefferson.com/papers/adams_marginalia_jackson.pdf). Modern educational experts refer to the value of this practice as the "generation" effect. Through active annotation, students retain more. By viewing the annotations of others, serious readers are more stimulated in considering multiple points of view and weighting the value of opposing ideas (see this practical individual example -- http://peterc.org/blog/2010/248-notetaking.html -- as well as this article drawn from a search of the U.S. Department of Education database, ERIC http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ851577). While modern information services have routinely used keywords to amplify understanding of what a particular text may be "about," the practice was primarily engineered in the interests of enhanced retrieval rather than as a support for the thinking process. Nor are those keywords found in an abstracting record assigned at the granular level of a paragraph as reader-generated marginalia historically have been. In the rage for user-generated tagging two or three years ago, this was likely examined, but not necessarily embraced by NFAIS member organizations on the grounds that user-generated tags lacked accuracy and consistency as descriptive terms and were not easily integrated into retrieval systems. And yet the value of a piece of content is demonstrated every time a user employs tagging, annotation, or highlighting to improve retention or mark a text's significance. Amazon has been testing that level of engagement with the Kindle. Back in May of 2010, it released a site spotlighting popular highlighted passages in Kindle digital books (see http://kindle.amazon.com ). Privacy experts denounced the idea as invasive, but since the highlighting is only made public if three or more people highlight the same passage, user outrage at the time seemed muted (see Bob Sullivan's nicely balanced coverage in May at MSNBC: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/05/as-the-battle-of-e-book-readers-heats-up-am azon-is-trying-to-beat-the-competition-by-continually-adding-new-features-to -its.html#posts). If you are unfamiliar with the way this works, there are two ways that Amazon permits viewing of annotations from Kindle editions. Visiting as a guest, one may view "Most highlighted passages" across all Kindle users; at the time of this writing, the top quote on the list was from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, noted by more than 2,000 readers. It is also possible to view a list of titles receiving the greatest amount of highlighting. The other option is to view the lists of titles and passages most recently highlighted. From a cursory monitoring however, the disciplines that predominate these lists are business and religion/spirituality. Whether by accident or design, there are few instances of group highlighting of either textbooks or scholarly monographs. Those students at institutions of higher education who were given Kindles to use in classroom settings consistently complained that annotation on the device was simply too inefficient. When questioned about this, students at Princeton specifically indicated that they either (a) wanted to use a stylus for marking up the text or (b) wanted a touch screen that would allow them to highlight a passage using their finger and in color (see page 5 at http://www.princeton.edu/ereaderpilot/eReaderFinalReportShort.pdf). At least that body of users wants the capability of adding in marginalia. Good thought requires stimuli. Readers find such stimuli through whatever traces previous students and scholars have left behind, ranging from the most highly organized annotated bibliographies and lists of citations down to anonymous highlighting or penciled marginalia. Those things are useful, representing a form of social collaboration. How useful and for what class or population of user are questions that are as yet unanswered (as I think is evidenced by Amazon's experience). Scholars and professional readers regularly interact with content; they annotate and highlight and engage with volumes of material, but always somewhat privately. For those who follow after, the fruits of researcher interaction with a text are still measured primarily through citations or bibliographies. Those are what graduate students pore over in assessing relevance of a given work to their own study. Those users observed in the Elsevier study spent time assessing book chapters for relevance before determining whether or not to download the full text. There must be ways in which NFAIS member organizations can help those users reduce the time spent in evaluation - from ten minutes down to seven or even five minutes. We haven't hit upon the right combination of technologies to make engagement with text viewable and intelligible, and yet it is in the moment of engagement that the user senses the greatest value in content. Modes of annotation and marginalia will assuredly undergo further change. In the meantime, NFAIS member organizations might do well to consider a question or two in the context of the communities that they serve: * What might an information provider do to improve the process of assessing relevance, particularly with regard to book content? And a harder one: * What combination of technologies (print or digital) will better support thought in the communities being served by NFAIS members? MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR THESE NFAIS EVENTS: October 13: Improving the User Search Experience Part II: Leveraging Content to Improve Discoverability and Use, Philadelphia, PA October 18: NFAIS Humanities Roundtable IX, New York, NY November 10: Assessing the Usage and Value of Scholarly and Scientific Output: An Overview of Traditional and Emerging Metrics, Philadelphia, PA November 18: Mobile Computing: Delivering Content to the Research Community, Washington, DC (joint with CENDI) December 8: Webinar on the Information Industry in China February 27- March 1: NFAIS 2011 Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA 2010 SPONSORS Accessible Archives, Inc. American Psychological Association/PsycINFO The British Library CAS Copyright Clearance Center CrossRef Data Conversion Laboratory Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Getty Research Institute H. W. Wilson Information Today, Inc. Office of Scientific & Technical Information, DOE Philosopher's Information Center ProQuest Really Strategies, Inc. Temis, Inc. Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science Thomson Reuters IP Solutions Unlimited Priorities Corporation *************************** Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: