Spoken Thesaurus: Sorrow

The Hindi Thesaurus addresses such questions in a series of lively, unscripted Hindi-medium conversations about groups of words of related meaning. Concentrating on selected mainstream words and phrases, we help you to broaden your active vocabulary by encountering styles of language appropriate for everyday speech. The conversations are between Rupert Snell (Hindi teacher and perpetual Hindi learner) and Neha Ladha (mother-tongue speaker of Hindi). Glossaries for each podcast can be read online or downloaded in PDF format. (Length: 7:49)Asian Studie

Quid agendum ? "Net generation" e competenze digitali

It is a long time that a large discussion is open about the net generation and the need to update teaching methods. A large number of papers are published about this topic; the most relevant reviews point out that, in general, the use of social networks by the net generation does not mean that young people has natural digital skills/competencies they apply in the learning activities. The present short review discusses the literature about this subject; different definitions of “digital literacies are considered”. In particular a JISC study “Thriving in the 21st century. Learning Literacies for the Digital Age” (LLiDA Project) is cited, because its approach to a very detailed definition of learning literacies. Moreover, recent papers show that the search and reading approach of the net generation – though making use of the most recently available sources like Wikipedia – is lacking of selection criteria and quality evaluation skills. In the conclusions the Author asks some questions about the best e-learning methods to teach digital literacies, in a context where the change is so fast, and the traditional LMS approach may be a waste of time and money (and, very difficult to put in practice in a time of retrenchment for Italian Universities)

Rapporto sul Workshop on Peer Review. Sissa, Miramare (Trieste) 23-24 Maggio 2003

This report has been written after the Workshop, in order to inform the information professionals community about the important contributions about the topic. Many preminent speakers convened to Miramare: among them Stevan Harnad, Jean-Claude Guédon, Gerry McKiernan, Travis Brooks, Rudiger Voss and Daniele Amati. It is very important to note that speakers perceive a change in the Authors perception of "what is published" since the improving success of the Open Archives. On the other hand, technology is helping publishers to speed up peer review with many new differents softwares. Original presentations will be posted in the Workshop site: http://www.sissa.it/~marco/ws.htm

Rapporto sul Workshop on Peer Review Sissa

Presso la Sissa (Miramare, Trieste) si è svolto un seminario sulle problematiche relative alla peer review nel nuovo contesto dell'e-publishing e degli Open Archives. Il rapporto, basato sia sugli appunti dell'autore che sulle presentazioni powerpoint pubblicate nel sito http://www.sissa.it/~marco/ws.html, da' conto dei contenuti del seminario, che ha visto la partecipazione di Stevan Harnad,Jean-Claude Guédon, Gerry McKiernan e altri relatori

Trends in digital libraries and scholarly communication among European Academic Research Libraries.

This presentation is about main trends in digital library and scholarly communication in Europe. We are taking part in many changes, which occurred especially in the last year. The roots of change date back to the end of the last millennium, and required hard work, passion and good cooperation: and, from the beginning, the evolution of digital libraries, the innovation in e-publishing and the success of the OAI would not have been possible without a strong global cooperation without any distinction between American and European contribution

The Living Forest: Personifications of the Plant World in Native North America

For the peoples of the North-West Coast of America the forest was regarded as the domain of the non-human, where plants and animals lived and prospered. This distinction is not to be understood, as was customary in anthropology, as an opposition between Nature and Culture. The animals were not regarded as deprived of culture: they were assumed to live in villages, having ceremonies and a social organization of their own. When at home they took off their skins and appeared as human beings. However, it is undeniable that the world of animals and plants was a realm different from the world of humans, it was in some sense an “other world”, where things that were uncommon or unthinkable in the human domain could occur at ease.   The forest was also the place where some beings lived, who were intermediate forms between the human and the animal, inhabitants of the borders that separate the human from the animal world.   On the other side of the continent, East of the Great Lakes, in what is now the state of New York, the Iroquois celebrated, in January or February, the Midwinter Ceremony, a sort of New Year’s celebration, during which appeared the False Faces masks, among a variety of other Medicine societies, who provided curing and cleansing rituals for the people. The wooden masks of the False Faces depict beings seen in the forest or in dreams. When wearing these masks, members of the society have special powers and can handle hot coals without being burned. During the Winter ceremonial and also once or twice a year the members went through the houses of the community performing rituals to clean them of diseases.   Analogously, in many Carnival festivals all through Europe the figure of the Wild Man makes his appearance, a character that has a long literary and iconographic heritage since the Middle Ages, and which is not always easily distinguishable from a wide array of other figures, all of them showing certain significant analogies. In the Carnival parades are frequently encountered figures with long hair and beard and wearing clothes made from leafs or animal skins. They could be confused with human-animal masquerades, where the most common elements are the sheep-skin clothes, the blackened faces and the shaggy hair, which we have already described for the Amerindian masks, while at other times they have vegetal connotations, like costumes with leaves or branches, holding boughs or sticks in their hands, giving the impression to be personifications of the trees or of the woods