NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition

What is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries? Which trends and technology developments will drive transformation? What are the critical challenges and how can we strategize solutions? These questions regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the discussions of 77 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition, in partnership with the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in technology profiled in this report are poised to impact library strategies, operations, and services with regards to learning, creative inquiry, research, and information management. The three sections of this report constitute a reference and technology planning guide for librarians, library leaders, library staff, policymakers, and technologists

Introduction to This Special Issue on Open Design at the Intersection of Making and Manufacturing

What is ‘open design’ and who gets to say what it is? In the emerging body of literature on open design, there is a clear alignment to the values and practices of free culture and open source software and hardware. Yet this same literature includes multiple, sometimes even contradictory strands of technology practice and research. These different perspectives can be traced back to free culture advocates from the 1970s to the 1990s who formulated the ideal of the internet as inherently empowering, democratizing, and countercultural. However, more recent approaches include feminist and critical interventions into hacking and making as well as corporate strategies of “open innovation” that bring end-users and consumers into the design process. What remains today seems to fall into two schools of thought. On one hand, we have the celebratory endorsements of ‘openness’ as applied to technology and design. On the other hand, we have a continuous and expanding critique of these very ideals and questions, where that critique identifies persisting forms of racial, gender, age, and class-based exclusions, and questions about the relationship between open design, labor and power remain largely unanswered

Wear and Care Feminisms at a Long Maker Table

Although there is a deep history of feminist engagement with technology, the FemTechNet initiative (a feminist collective of which we are both a part) argues that such history is often hidden and that feminist thinkers are frequently siloed. At the same time, initiatives to promote critical making, acts of “shared construction” in which makers work to understand both the technologies and their social environments, often exclude women and girls from hacker/makerspaces that require both explicit permissions and access to implicit reserves of tacit knowledge. Even attempts to provide superficial hospitality can inflict microagressions on those who feel excluded from the sites of technology. When these bastions for tinkering under the hood promote “pinkification” with hyper-feminized projects and materials empha - sizing servility, consumerism, or beauty culture, the results are often counterproductive. Take, for example, Google’s recent “Made with Code” effort, which emphasized accessories and selfies as projects appropriate for girls. Even the otherwise admirable “Girls Who Code” site tends to rely on the default design schemes of stereotypical gender typing, including a curling cursive script for section heads, a color palette dominated by a rose-pink, and the iconography of sisterhood and empowerment in the graphics and scrolling images.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/1004/thumbnail.jp

Disruptive Innovative Library Services @ international Nalanda University: Present and Future Roadmaps

This paper discusses innovative technologies that have implemented at international Nalanda University, Rajgir, Bihar, India and also planning to implement some other advanced tools and technologies in future. The Nalanda University is an avant-garde International University, a truly “sui generis” supported by 17 partner countries of the East Asia Summit. The Government of India designates it as an “Institution of National Importance” under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Nalanda University envisions its library to be the central fulcrum of its master plan, both in terms of its design and bearing. This paper explains in details the services which are categorized into five different areas such as (1) Infrastructure (2) Collection Development (3) Emerging Tools and Technologies (4) Research Support Service (5) Other Social Responsible Activities. Under the “Infrastructure” this paper enumerates in details about the good ambience for best study environment for the users to attract towards the library; illustrates various types of resources, setting up a Common Archival Resource Centre (CARC) and Digitization of Nalanda’s Discovery under “Collection Development”; and also explains various types of “Emerging Tools and Technologies” to reach out the to the users such as Integrated Library Management System (ILMS), Customized Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), Web-scale Discovery Service (WSDS), Library Portal, Remote Access and Single Sign-on, Institutional Repository, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), A to Z Link and Open URL Link Resolver, Cloud Computing, Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS), Course Reserve, M Library, Content Management System (CMS), Google’s Custom Search Engine (GCS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR), Gesture-based Computing, Crowdsourcing, QR Code, Internet of Thing (IoT), Popular Aisles, Library Utensils, 3D Printer, Library Wearable, Learning Management Systems, Web 2.0, and MakerSpace. This paper also explains in details Information and Reference Services, Reference Management Tool, Citation database, Thesis and Dissertation, Scholarly Archive, Anti-plagiarism Tool, Academic Writing, Personalized Research ID, Data and Visualization Service, Copyright and IPR issues, Information Alerts on Core and Allied Subjects under “Research Support Service”. It also elucidates in details about “Other Social Responsibilities Activities” such as Mobile Library Service, Workshops for local communities, Libraries in Jails, Competitive Examinations Centr

JRC Thinkers ‘N’ Tinkers Makerspace - Concept Note

In this concept note, we make the case for creating an in-house makerspace oriented towards the engagement of citizens in technoscientific innovations: the JRC Thinkers ‘N’ Tinkers Makerspace. The idea behind the makerspace is to have a space located in the premises of the JRC that promotes critical thinking and tinkering about technoscientific issues relevant for policy files focusing on their societal implications. We view it as a safe space where we can promote dialogues with civil society through engagements that move beyond discursive methods.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Mapping Participatory Sensing and Community-led Environmental Monitoring Initiatives: Making Sense H2020 CAPS Project

This report presents a summary of the state of the art in urban participatory sensing and community-led environmental monitoring, the types of engagement approaches typically followed, contextual examples of current developments in this field, and current challenges and opportunities for successful interventions. The goal is to better understand the field and possible options for reflection and action around it, in order to better inform future conceptual and practical developments inside and outside the Making Sense project.JRC.I.2-Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Polic

Designing the Digital Economy: Embedding Growth Through Design, Innovation and Technology

The Design Commission's newest report warns the UK digital economy will not reach its full economic and social potential without the strategic application of design to ensure people, and not technologies, are at the centre of the ‘digital revolution’. The report is the result of an eight-month inquiry chaired by Lord Inglewood of Hutton in the Forest and co-chaired by Gillian Youngs, Professor of Digital Economy at Brighton University, and makes 17 recommendations to spark policy and culture change across government and the design and technology sector

Innovation Openness and Business Models of Shared Machine Shops in Budapest

Shared machine shops are designed for providing space for education, learning practices, however it is also being questioned if they are accessible and for whom, depending on their location, communication practices and the entry-point in knowledge. Nonetheless the narrative of innovation and creativeness being attached to these spaces, the shades, openness or even absence of innovation is of a scholarly quest. Moreover, their function of enabling designers-entrepreneurs with infrastructure, collaborative practices and expertise is at the forefront. This paper looks at the composition of hybrid business models behind the activity of a set of shared machine shops: a fablab, a makerspace, a hackerspace, and printer-vendor company and how it may be linked to the education and innovation practices performed by the members and visitors. In search for if and how they represent dots of change on the landscape of design, this paper examines the facilities and opportunities for young designers, students, and makers to engage with digital technologies in Budapest, in a context where public schools and universities lack the access to fablabs and maker laboratories

ChangeMakers: exploring social consciousness through making and the Internet of Things

Since the advent of the computer, digital technologies have transformed our engagement with society. Not only are technological competencies required for economic participation, they also facilitate creativity, self-expression, and personal fulfillment. Technology has also broadened citizenship beyond our local communities, necessitating the development of social consciousness and skills to navigate global challenges. Given the need for tools that facilitate digital competencies and social action in schools, this study investigated how passion-based making with the Internet of Things (IoT) could facilitate students??? involvement with citizenship and social justice. Over the course of a five-day makerspace camp, this study employed a qualitative multiple case study design to explore the IoT learning and social participation of ten elementary school students. The findings revealed meaningful development in participants??? understanding of concepts and concerns related to IoT, as well as thoughtful engagement with societal challenges through the construction of socially oriented IoT artifacts