Undergraduate Education Abroad in Community Settings: Pedagogical Opportunities for Librarians

As undergraduate possibilities for study and service abroad increase and develop strategically to address local community needs in settings in the Global South, there is greater opportunity for academic librarians to contribute expertise in supporting and facilitating student learning and engagement with research and information concepts and processes. Education abroad experiences are considered high-impact educational practices and, as such, provide excellent vantage points from which to consider contextualizing engagement with the expanded construct of information literacy as described in ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Utilizing a case study of a pilot project, this chapter focuses on initial work to incorporate critical information literacy concepts into international applied learning settings. The setting for this case study is the Monteverde Institute (MVI) in Costa Rica, a Costa Rican non-profit organization that provides a teaching and learning setting and essential infrastructure for North American education abroad programs

Supporting Research in Area Studies: a guide for academic libraries

The study of other countries or regions of the world often crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences. Supporting Research in Area Studies is a comprehensive guide for academic libraries supporting these communities of researchers. This book explores the specialist requirements of these researchers in information resources, resource discovery tools, and information skills, and the challenges of working with materials in multiple languages. It makes the case that by adapting their systems and procedures to meet these needs, academic libraries find themselves better placed to support their institution's�� international agenda more widely. The first four chapters cover the academic landscape and its history, area studies librarianship and acquisitions. Subsequent chapters discuss collections management, digital products, and the digital humanities, and their role in academic projects. The final chapter explores information skills and the various disciplinary skills that facilitate the needs of researchers during their careers

Bibliography on open access in Latin America and the Caribbean

Bibliography on open access in Latin America and the Caribbean. Selection mainly based on open access publications describing open access initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean. Prepared for UNESCO-Latin America and the Caribbean Section of the UNESCO-GOAP Global Open Access Portal

Participation in the global knowledge commons : challenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries

Due to improving Internet connectivity and a growing number of international initiatives, knowledge workers in developing countries are now getting access to scholarly and scientific publications and electronic resources at a level that is unmatched historically. This is highly significant, particularly in areas of medicine, agricultural and environmental sciences, and development literature that are much needed if developing countries are to meet the Millennium Development Goals. At the same time, the Open Access movement and the growing number of Open Archive Initiative (OAI) compliant institutional repositories promise to provide even greater access to resources and scientific publications that were previously inaccessible. These low cost technology and interoperability standards are also providing great opportunities for libraries and publishers in developing countries to disseminate local research and knowledge and to bridge the South-North knowledge gap. This article reviews these recent trends, discusses their significance for information access in developing countries, and provides recommendations for knowledge workers on how to actively participate in and contribute to the global knowledge commons

Cutting out the middle man?: disintermediation and the academic library

Big Deals, open access, and digitisation increasingly mean that selection decisions are being removed from librarians and transferred to the end user. David Ball looks at the forces pushing towards this ‘disintermediation’ and considers the future role of the academic library

Open source repositories: Implications for libraries

Software that is accepted as “Open source” should comply with 10 conditions which are itinerated in the paper. The paper subsequently describes the application of open source initiatives in the digital library context. Three open source digital library initiatives developed by the Digital Library Research Group at the Faculty of Computer Science and information Technology, University of Malaya are highlighted. These are; (a) MyManuskrip: digital library of Malay manuscripts; (b) MyAIS : Digital library of Malaysian scholarly journals and conference proceedings; and (d) DSpace@Um: a digital library of dissertations, theses and final year project reports. Other “free” systems such as EJUM: electronic journal of university of Malaya is also described to highlight the slight difference between open source and being free. The paper also describes the libraries involved in the initiatives and the changing eco-system which libraries must accept to embrace the open source culture

Big Data, Digitization, and Social Change (Ubiquity Symposium)

The term “big data” is something of a misnomer. Every generation of computers since the 1950s has been confronted with problems where data was way too large for the memory and processing power available. This seemed like an inconvenience of the technology that would someday be resolved when the next generation of computers came along. So what is different about big data today? The revolution is happening at the convergence of two trends: the expansion of the internet into billions of computing devices, and the digitization of almost everything. The internet gives us access to vast amounts of data. Digitization creates digital representations for many things once thought to be beyond the reach of computing technology. The result is an explosion of innovation of network-based big data applications and the automation of cognitive tasks. This revolution is introducing what Brynjolfsson and McAfee call the “Second Machine Age.” This symposium will examine this revolution from a number of angles

An International Prospectus for Library & Information Professionals: Development, Leadership and Resources for Evolving Patron Needs

The roles of library and information professionals must change and evolve to: 1. accommodate needs of tech-savvy patrons; 2. thrive in the Commons & Library 2.0; 3. provide integrated, just-in-time services; 4. constantly update and enhance technology; 5. design appropriate library spaces for research and productivity; 6.adapt to new models of scholarly communication and publication, especially: the Open Archives Initiative and digital repositories; 7. remain abreast of national and interanational academic and legislative initiatives affecting the provision of information services and resources. Professionals will need to collaborate in: 1. Formal & informal networks – regional, national, and international; and; 2. Library staff development initiatives – regional, national, international Professionals will need to use libraries as laboratories for ongoing, lifelong training and education of patrons and of all library staff ( internal patrons ): the library is the framework in which Information Research Literacy is the curriculum . Professionals will need to remain aware of trends and challenges in their regions, the EU, the US and North America, of models which might provide inspiration and support: 1. Top Technology Trends; 2. New paradigms of professionalism; 3. Knowledge-creation and knowledge consumption; 4. The shifting balance of the physical library with the virtual-digital librar