Information Literacy: Developing Partnerships Across Library Types

This article describes a grant-funded project with the final goal of creating information literacy collaborative partnerships among academic, school, and public libraries. The objectives of the grant as well as an overall description of the project are stated. The emphasis of the article is on the process followed to create the collaborative partnerships and the partnerships created as a result of the grant

A framework for Thinking about Distributed Cognition

As is often the case when scientific or engineering fields emerge, new concepts are forged or old ones are adapted. When this happens, various arguments rage over what ultimately turns out to be conceptual misunderstandings. At that critical time, there is a need for an explicit reflection on the meaning of the concepts that define the field. In this position paper, we aim to provide a reasoned framework in which to think about various issues in the field of distributed cognition. We argue that both relevant concepts, distribution and cognition, must be understood as continuous. As it is used in the context of distributed cognition, the concept of distribution is essentially fuzzy, and we will link it to the notion of emergence of system-level properties. The concept of cognition must also be seen as fuzzy, but for different a reason: due its origin as an anthropocentric concept, no one has a clear handle on its meaning in a distributed setting. As the proposed framework forms a space, we then explore its geography and (re)visit famous landmarks

Jam To-morrow and Jam Yesterday, but Never Jam To-day: The of Theology Libraries Planning the Twenty-first Century

The future of theology libraries is far from clear. Since the nineteenth century, theology libraries have evolved to support the work of theological education. This article briefly reviews the development of theology libraries in North America and examines the contextual changes impacting theology libraries today. Three significant factors that will shape theology libraries in the coming decade are collaborative models of pedagogy and scholarship, globalization and rapid changes in information technology, and changes in the nature of scholarly publishing including the digitization of information. A large body of research is available to assist those responsible for guiding the direction of theology libraries in the next decade, but there are significant gaps in what we know about the impact of technology on how people use information that must be filled in order to provide a solid foundation for planning

Our door is always open : Aligning Literacy LearningPractices in Writing Programs and Residential LearningCommunities

Writing studies has considered college students\u27 literacy development as a chronological progression and as influenced by their off-campus connections to various cultural and professional communities. This project considers students\u27 literacy development across disciplines and university activity systems in which they\u27re simultaneously involved to look at the (missed) opportunities for fostering transfer across writing courses and residential learning communities as parallel—but rarely coordinated—high-impact practices. Rather than calling for the development of additional programs, I argue for building/strengthening connections between these existing programs by highlighting shared learning outcomes focused on literacy skills development and learning how to learn

Merge Everything It Makes Sense to Merge: The History and Philosophy of the Merged Reference Collection at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California is a unique dual-use library serving the students of San Jose State University and the community of San Jose, California. The reference collections of the two libraries are merged and interfiled to promote ease of access for both populations served. Economies of scale were realized through collaborative collection development activities for major reference purchases between the two institutions. This article describes the planning and creation of the King Library\u27s merged reference collection and reviews the literature of collaborative collection development and merged or interfiled collections

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or

Digital Scotland, the relevance of library research and the Glasgow Digital Library Project

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co-ordinated 'virtual Scotland' and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co-operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini-Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co-operation