The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances 20, no. 1 (2007): Includes "Online Communities" and other articles.

CLIR Issues, no. 56 (2007): Includes "A CLIR Perspective on the Future," "DLF Aquifer Receives Mellon Grant to Make Scholarly Collections Interoperable," and other articles.

Computers in Libraries 27, no. 4 (2207): Includes "A Dozen Primers on Important Information Standards," "SUSHI: What It Is and Why You Should Care," and other articles.

Cyberinfrastructure Council. Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 2007.

Fitzgerald, Brian F., Jessica M. Coates, and Suzanne M. Lewis, ed. Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2007.

FreePint, no. 227 (2007): Includes "EThOS: A New Start for Doctoral Theses in the UK" and other articles.

Harnad, Stevan. "Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise." (2007).

Information Services and Use 26, no. 4 (2006): Includes "An Improved Universal Virtual Computer Approach for Long-Term Preservation of Digital Objects," "The Split between Availability and Selection Business Models for Scientific Information, and the Scientific Process?," and other articles.

Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 9 (2006): Includes "The Academic Open Access E-Journal: Platform and Portal" and other articles.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12, no. 2 (2007): Includes "Intellectual Property in the Context of e-Science" and other articles.

Learned Publishing 20, no. 2 (2007): Includes "Academic Authors, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Access in Australia"; "Author’s Version vs. Publisher’s Version: an Analysis of the Copy-Editing Function"; "An Innovation-Oriented Publication System"; "Open Access—Clear Benefits, Hidden Costs"; "Copyright: Past, Present and Future"; "The Cost of Journal Publishing: A Literature Review and Commentary"; and other articles.

ONLINE 31, no. 2 (2007): Includes "Trade Agreements as the New Copyright Law" and other articles.

Searcher 15, no. 4 (2007): Includes "Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies" and other articles.

Suber, Peter. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, no. 108 (2007): Includes "Paying for Green Open Access" and other articles.

Vine 37, no. 1 (2007): Includes "Knowledge Sharing: Developing the Digital Repository of SIPS" and other articles.

One project I'm looking to develop a little further over the next few months centres around the idea of mobile learning. I'm not entirely sure what this is exactly but a posting from Clive Shepherd pointed me in the direction of David Metcalf's book 'mLearning'. Clive has posted his thoughts on this subject and they're worth repeating here. 

"Inspired by my read, I summarised for myself how I thought m-learning would really be used in the short to medium term:

1. Performance support, i.e. reference, not learning, starting with the simplest media - text, recorded voice, live voice - and graduating, with 3G connectivity to include richer media in the form of still images, animations and video. I'd say mobile performance support will be just like its desktop equivalent, just smaller and simpler. It could be highly interactive, in the form of troubleshooting guides and expert systems, although most will probably be quite straightforward.
2. Delivery of passive learning materials, e.g. podcasts, videos, PDFs, Flash movies, web pages. Essentially these would be the same as you get on PCs, but ideally smaller/shorter.
3. Some form of interaction with content, in the form of assessments, cases, scanarios or simple games, using keypads, touch screens or voice recognition. These won't be much different to their desktop equivalents, but most likely in much smaller chunks and adapted, of course, to smaller screens and different interfaces.
4. Access to LMS functionality.
5. Participating in online collaborative activities using email, instant messaging, forums, blogs, teleconferencing, texting.

None of the above are peculiar to mobile learning. They are 'business as usual', allowing continuity across desktops, laptops and handhelds. I don't find this particularly disappointing, in fact quite the opposite - mobile learning provides access to performance support and learning activities for more people, more of the time.

David's book does suggest some exciting new possibilities, unique to the mobile world, including proximity detection, which allows you to connect with others who have similar interests who happen to be nearby - great for conferences. It's also possible that information related to objects that you are currently close to - say exhibits at museums - could be beamed to your palmtop. I'm sure there are many more possibilities that even David hasn't thought of - I just can't see them happening all that soon. In the meantime there are plenty of more routine applications that will be able to estabish a more clear-cut return on investment."

 

A short rant to kick off with. Once again I crafted a really great posting regarding this one day conference at Rueters HQ, London. And again I was foiled by GNERs WiFi!! Lost my connection just I clicked 'post'. Great - lost the lot. Thanks GNER!

On the other hand, perhaps that's not so bad. The interval has given me some time to reflect on yesterday's event. I enjoyed it enormously. The speakers were interesting and all had something to say; Jay Cross and Fabrizio Cardinalli were stand outs for me.Predictably the technology demonstrations didn't go too smoothly (when do they ever?), but congratulations for attempting to do something so daring in the first place. I do hope they continue to try new things at these events.

But - and here's the rub, it's all so unsatisfactory - not the event or the speakers of course. I mean I have the nagging feeling I have that we've been here before.

Many of the cases we were presented with yesterday were undoubtably of the Sales Support/Training, H&S Compliance, Procedural/Induction variety. All very onnovative and interesting, Giuntti LearnPills in particular. And the move from Text based WAP to richer, colourful flashcards and basic interaction is clearly a step forward; but isn't this trend the sames as the evolution from basic HTML and those grey pages to the Flash/Rich media Web based training we see everywhere?

This all feels very 1998 to me.

For me, eLearning is only now starting to deliver on it's early promise. For the first time US and UK corporations are seeing real and significant performance improvements and returns on investment from their eLearning developments. However the major development for eLearning is not the power or the richness of the media, nor even the complexity of the instructional design. It's the simple fact that relatively recent technologies - wikis, blogs, rss, podcasts and so on - are the tools and technologies that have encouraged mass engagement and participation on the web, bringing people together like never before really is powering the promise of eLearning. I have learned more in the last 12 months from the Personal blogs, wikis and RSS feeds I subscribe to than I any course, courseware or training event I've taken part in. The point was made time and again yesterday that people learn from people. 

I think I made an ass of myself for asking a couple of the speakers what the difference was between mobile training and mobile learning - repeatedly. The thing is no-one really answered the question. And conversations I had with other delegates suggested to me that they really wanted to hear how these technologies could support the levels of engagements we now see through Wikis, RSS, Blogs and so on but no-one, apparentl, had anything to say on the subject.

Another question I meant to ask, but didn't (busy dashing for the train!), goes something like this:

"I'm designing a new web platform for the business and in the High Level Architecture I've included an abstraction layer that will deliver the content from the site optimised to any device - smartphone, PDA, desktop. Given the advances on the hardware side of mobile technology, and it's going to take 12 months to realise this project, is it worth the expense and the complexity of design? Should I let the market introduce new, more powerful devices capable of handling my site contents as if it were a desktop?" .

This may sounds like I'm down on the day; I'm not at all! Not agreeing with what is said at conference doesn't make it a bad conference!

But some important points have been, for now glossed over. A short debate from the floor suggested that questions of identity would become, quite soon, require addressing. I guess OpenID is one response to that, but there's another interesting question in there too. If Identity is important in establishing whether or not the information coming from said individual can be trusted, shouldn't we also attempt to confer identity on content too? Authenticity, quality, relevance, provinance? Aren't these important properties to be addressed in delivering content/information/learning to an audience?

I asked that question in an admittedly round about way but I don't think I was understood. Jay makes the point that we're all freerange learners in the uniquitous chicken yard but how do you tell the good grain from the bad grain lying around on the floor?

So, a great event and to pick up on a closing remark from Nigel Paine, no-one is arranging events quite like this right now and Ron is to be congratulated for a great day. I'd really like to see how things develop in the next 12 months  though and be here next year.

It was the Publishing 2.0 yesterday. At Bletchley Park. Those of a nerdy disposition will understand the significance of the the place, and for me it was a real thrill to be there to look over the Colossus and teh Bombes and to walk in the footsteps of Alan Turing.

Bletchley Park mathematician Alan Turing realised that 'cribs' offered a way of cracking Enigma. A 'crib' is a piece of encrypted text whose true meaning is known or can be guessed. German messages were formulaic in places and the first line often contained standard information, for example weather conditions. Once a crib was known, it was still necessary to check thousands of potential Enigma settings to read a message, and to do this quickly Turing designed a electro-mechanical codebreaking machine called a Bombe. Each Bombe simulated the actions of 10 Enigma machines and was able to check all potential settings at high speed.

Cracking the 'impenetrable' Enigma code enabled Britain to foil Luftwaffe bombing raids, minimise U-Boat attacks and secure sea-based supply routes

Further codebreaking success enabled Bletchley Park to exploit Lorenz, a highly sophisticated cipher used personally by Hitler and his High Command. But many of the messages still took several weeks to decipher - a computing machine was needed. The result was Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, designed by Max Newman.

Colossus was the size of a living room and weighed about one tonne. Its 2,400 valves replicated the pattern of an encrypted Lorenz message as electrical signals. This breakthrough in computing remained a secret for many years, to the extent that two Americans took the credit for inventing the computer in 1945. But the creation of Colossus proved to be a key contributor to the success on D-Day.

The Conference was OK.

Actually the Conference was more than OK. Organised by XML UK the day was about determining whether or not there was such a thing as Publishing 2.0 and if it did exist, what would it look like? what characterises Publishing 2.0?

Some key Drivers for Change were suggested; these would alter the online publishing environment. 

Funding     - Changing profiles for revenue generation including Open Access, Software as Service (SaS), Content on Demand - all are capable of disrupting existing models of funding

Technology - Innovations in delivering semantically rich content will raise user expectations for content delivery, search and browse.

The first trick is to define '2.0'. This was suggested:

• User Generated Content - Blogs, Wikis, RSS. User as Author
• Architecture of Participation - Friends, peers, wikis and collaborative working
• Group Dynamics/Network effects - The more people on the netowrk site, the richer more valuable and attractive it becomes
• Edge Based Innovation - allowing users to 'mash-up' content and create new services and content based on yours
  

I don't have any arguments with this list; it's simple enough and it gets across the main principles, such as they are. With respect to 'Publishing 2.0' I don't believe the first three points are particularly contentious, I'm just not sure about Edge-based Innovation/Mashups. For some publishers perhaps this is not a problem; it might even be desirable. One example is the Dublin Dart. they publish information about where a train is at any particular point in time. Some clever bugger then piped this information into Google Maps to produce a real-time map of a train's progress. Great stuff, but when it comes to copyrighted content and research materials or any content that suffers and loses part of it's meaning when taken out of context surely this is not desirable?

An interesting trends that has been noted was the move toward Online office applications. For me, this has the potential to re-engineer the content creation chain altogether as more and more people (researchers, students, managers) use blogs, wikis, Google Docs etc, to create content Online and allow others to view the raw material almost straight away.

Another interesting development/future trend or opportunity for publishers is the ability to offer Services, as well as content. Examples cited in the day ranged from Online Communities(which are, apparently very popular with researchers and authors of reference works) through to Publisher Search/Browse functions embedded within an Organisations' intranet. This leads neatly into the development of Software as Service (SaS) in which the subscription model is replaced by Software Metering

Personally I don't like SaS and Software Metering. It removes stability from the budgeting function and prevents both Publisher and Subscriber in developing a proper forecast for their business/organisation. It might be applicable in other publishing circles.

The Royal Society of Chemistry demonstrated their Project Prospect. This is an example of an RSC Enriched Journal. Because the RSC have adopted a highly structured XML approach to content development, If I understand this correctly, they are now able to add some significant value to their article content. The rich ontology development that has taken place allows for a toolbox feature on their articles that offers different views of the document - all of the compounds mentioned in the article, key Chemical terminology, important references - all can be highlighted immediately with the toolbar. I thought this was tremendous. It got me thinking too. Is there such an ontology for business and management education? If not, why not? is it too dificult, too contentious a thing to bring together? Perhaps Emerald, as the world's leading publisher of Management Journals is in a position to rally other's to the flag and start work on developing a global(?) ontology for business and management education? One for follow up at a later date I think?

I can't really sign of without mention of Leigh Dodds (Ingenta) work with developing an RDF database for content management and semantic search/retrieval. Leigh gave us the how and the why of RDF as a technology and proceeded to describe how he and his team have converted the metadata of over almost 30,000 articles into over 200 million RDF triples. Using some emerging tools and XML vocabularies Leigh demonstrated how a semantically rich content management system could be developed. Until this presentation I had relegated OWL, RDF, SPARQL to items of academic interest but with no real world applications. For developing a data neutral means of accessing content and inferring relations between things and people this was a revelation. I can't wait to start developing something small scale here at Emerald.

So, a good and useful day with much to follow up and think about. I'm not sure we decided what Publishing 2.0 was, or even if it existed, but I got to see the Colossus and so everything's all right. 

 

 

Well, just download Qumana in response to Glenn's suggestion that InTouch wasn't compatible with the toolkit. Well, I'm pleased to demonstrate that it is!

Actually it's not bad this Qumana. Still, I prefer the Flock browser for my non-logged in postings.

Cheers Glenn!

Powered by Qumana

A List of 80 open access publishing initiatives. Each item is accompanied with a short description. They're not all publishing tools, but the majority are. This list is probably not complete, but it's a great start.

 

 

 

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group has made its award-winning health information available via mobile phones. From acne to warts, the latest on more than 80 common medical conditions can now be accessed from a mobile phone, allowing people to view trusted health information wherever and whenever they need it, in complete privacy.

BMJ BestTreatments is produced by the BMJ Group, and is designed to give the public access to information on which treatments work and which don’t, based on the best and most up-to-date research. The BMJ says the site, produced by Jar Developments, will answer common questions such as:
‘Is there anything I can do to recover quickly from jet lag when I go on holiday?’
‘I’ve had unprotected sex and think I may have caught something, but I’m embarrassed to talk about it. Where can I get reliable, down-to-earth information before I visit my doctor?’
‘My child takes ages to get to sleep and wakes up two or three times in the night. Is there anything I can do which will help?’
“This is a unique service,” says Editor Cherrill Hicks. “Although people are increasingly using their mobile phone to receive information, this is the first time people will be able to view high quality, trustworthy health content at their own convenience and where they feel most comfortable. Evidence shows that more and more people are using their mobile phone to access the internet, so this service may also help to address health inequalities – a key government commitment - by providing equal access to those who don’t have the internet but who may have a mobile phone.”
To access BMJ BestTreatments on a WAP-enabled mobile, UK users text ‘BMJMYHEALTH’ to 60300 at a cost of £3, and are sent a link to the BestTreatments WAP site. Alternatively users can key ‘bmj.myhealth.com’ into their phone’s browser.
The BMJ Group's flagship journal is the weekly British Medical Journal (BMJ). The BMJ is rated as one of the world's top five general medical journals. About 1.2 million people download 6.5 million pages a month from bmj.com and more than 100,000 doctors in the UK and 14,800 internationally receive the weekly print BMJ.

Tracey Caldwell, Information World Review, Monday 7 May 2007 at 00:00:00
Web 2.0 promises to be a mentoring den rather than a Dragons Den
Young entrepreneurs can tap into Web 2.0 social networking and mentoring with a free trial membership to Ecademy. The three month membership allows students and young entrepreneurs to find advice,...
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