Collaborative design of educational digital libraries for African higher education

This thesis will develop a model that can be used to guide collaborative design of educational digital libraries that are relevant to the learning objectives and are appropriate to African Higher Education. Factors affecting connections between educational digital library capabilities, learning processes and learners’ needs in higher education will be identified and used to develop the model. These factors will be identified through qualitative studies with the key players (i.e. academics, information professionals, digital library technical designers and students). The model will be iteratively developed and later evaluated for correctness by some of the key players. So far a preliminary literature review has been done to locate related work and identify knowledge gaps. In addition, a pilot study has been carried out and identified some temporal factors that will be pursued further in the proposed study

Virtual Digital Libraries for Professional Education

The article is devoted actual problems of support of the system of professional education on the basis of development corporate network and virtual libraries of colleges. Some important results of applied researches on creation of the corporate network of Uzbekistan libraries are given. The information about the basic information sources (databases, multimedia encyclopedias and characteristics of other resources) actively used in educational process and virtual libraries are included too

Computational sense: the role of technology in the education of digital librarians

The rapid progress of digital library technology from research to implementation has created a force for change in the curricula of library schools. The education of future librarians has always had to adapt to new technologies but the pace, complexity and implications of digital libraries pose considerable challenges. In this article we explore how we might successfully blend elements of computer science and library science to produce effective educational experiences for the digital librarians of tomorrow. We first outline the background to current digital librarian education and then propose the concept of computational sense as an appropriate meeting point for these two disciplines

A case study investigation of academic library support for open educational resources in Scottish universities

The aim of the research was to investigate why and how Scottish university libraries support open educational resources and to assess their ability to provide support services for their development and use within higher education institutions. There has been little research on the role of academic libraries in supporting open educational resources in Scotland and previous research found that there is a lack of awareness of them in Scottish higher education institutions and few have open educational resources policies. The case study methodology therefore involved two Scottish academic libraries providing open educational resources services. The libraries’ motivation includes supporting teaching and learning and the development of educator digital skills and copyright knowledge. However, there are a number of barriers limiting the services the libraries are able to provide, particularly lack of human resources. The research confirmed the findings of previous research on the importance of institutional commitment, incentives for educator engagement, and understanding of copyright and licensing issues by educators and library staff

How a Small Library Can Support Digital Scholarship... Without a DS Center or Anyone with DS in Their Job Title

Webinar Description: Digital scholarship is a growing trend across a range of higher education institutions, from research-intensive universities to small liberal arts colleges. Many academic libraries are responding to the trend by creating services and spaces to support digital scholarship. But how do smaller institutions with limited resources provide broad support, particularly when there\u27s little-to-no expectation of hiring multiple experts to provide services and support across a range of areas (e.g. data services, GIS, data visualization)? This webinar will explore approaches for mid-size and smaller libraries and library experts to support digital scholarship given staffing and other resource limitations

DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report

The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students

Public Libraries and Digital Games: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship?

This thesis discusses the possible problems and benefits of including digital games in public libraries, specifically, if digital games and public libraries can be beneficial to each other and how. Public libraries are including digital games more into their functions, and digital games are becoming an ever-larger facet of society, proved by the increasing number of players and cultural influence digital games have. Discussing the benefits and problems associated with this cooperation reveals important insight into how and why public libraries might choose to include digital games in their operation. The question is explored via a narrative literary review, using literature written on the topic of games in libraries and game culture, -literacy and -education. Most of the literature is written by librarians with very few contributions written from other perspectives. The main finding of this thesis is that the benefits of including digital games in public libraries outweigh the possible problems, making them a good option for libraries. However, the perspective when talking about digital games in relation to public libraries is very one-sided with no discussion on how digital game culture, -education and -literacy can benefit from being included in public libraries

Sometimes the Internet reads the question wrong: children’s search strategies & difficulties

When children search for information on a given topic, how do they go about searching for and retrieving information? What can their information seeking strategies tell us about the development of search interfaces for children's digital libraries, search engines and information repositories? We interviewed New Zealand (NZ) school children to seek insights into how they are conducting information searches during their education

Changing Light: a plethora of digital tools as slides gasp their last?

The title 'Changing Light' reflects the enormous changeover from analogue slides to digital images, both a cultural shift and a physical shift down to the change in light from the smoky beams of dual slide projectors piercing the dark of a classroom, to the bright white classrooms of the digital age. The evidence for the 'death of slides' has been mounting for a number of years and reported by visual resources curators in the US and the UK. In 2005 JISC funded AHDS Visual Arts to report on 'the effects of the digital image revolution on the UK arts education community'; the Association of Curators of Art and Design Images (ACADI), the Association of Art Historians (AAH), and the Art Libraries Society (ARLIS/UK & Ireland) contributed significantly to the Digital Picture initiative. However some of the issues highlighted by the final report are yet to be addressed such as provision of copyright-cleared digital images for use in education. This paper considers what arts education stands to lose from the 'death of slides' in the context of digital images and the plethora of digital presentation tools. As well as a change in light, there is a change from the physical tangible slide technology to the virtual digital image and computing in the cloud