How do you select a journal for your LIS research?: Survey participants required

Photo: thefirebottle In many disciplines journal impact factors or tradition and prestige hold significant weight when authors are selecting a journal to submit their research to. However coverage of LIS journals in impact indices like the JCR is patchy, and many (including open access titles) are relatively new and have had little time to acquire...

Read More

Building e-learning solutions with PowerPoint

I guess that many of us are fairly alright with using PowerPoint; after all, it's still the leading and most widely used presentation software out there (as an aside, here's a quick MS PowerPoint vs. Open Office Impress comparison/discussion). But when it comes to creating more dynamic, interactive online learning, pushing the capabilities of standard...

Read More

Personalising Library Services in Higher Education: The Boutique Approach – Edited by Andy Priestner & Elizabeth Tilley (Review)

It may initially seem a little counter-intuitive in these days of increasing student numbers and reduced budgets to propose a more personalised, ‘boutique’ approach to library services in higher education. But as the role of libraries continues to become more about people rather than information, it makes perfect sense. Generic services are of little...

Read More

The Social Web: Transitioning from Reader to Writer

The latest issue of GLINT includes a great piece on a recent social media project undertaken at the Oireachtas Library & Research Services. Laura O’Broin's article can be read in full online, but one aspect of the study caught my attention in particular. The survey used as part of the project provides insight into how and why professionals...

Read More

Information Literacy and Continuing Professional Development - IFLA Satellite conference in Tampere, Finland - part 1

© IFLA Finland is this year's host country of the IFLA World Library and Information Congress with the main conference currently being held in Helsinki from 11th-17th August 2012. "The Road to Information Literacy: Librarians as Facilitators of Learning" was the title of a pre-conference satellite meeting run by IFLA's Continuing Professional...

Read More

Terms of Service; Didn't Read

I came across this excellent project via Helen Wybrants: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read. ToS;DR provides an at-a-glance overview of the conditions and permissions attached to some of the most popular TOS agreements (I am sure I am not the only one who clicks the ‘agree’ button without thinking most of the time :)) The class ratings, icons and colour-coding...

Read More

Libraries and Pinterest

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website where users can collect and share their photos on a visually pleasing virtual pinboard interface. Pinterest is somewhat similar to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious. Sites like Delicious allow users to save websites as bookmarks and add some notes and tags to organise them. Users can search bookmarks...

Read More

Open Educational Resources: Embracing the Remix

Nothing is original according to Kirby Ferguson, presenter of the Everything is a Remix TED Talk. Innovation and creativity is nearly always derived from and built on what has come before, and simply refines and repackages it to suit a new purpose or need. Society benefits from this kind of sharing and 'remixing' as it bypasses needlessly...

Read More

Distributed Connectivism in virtual learning environments

The infographic below represents a visual follow-up on Michelle's previous post about massive open online courses. Certainly, the question of financial viabilty of distributed, open online learning courses is one baffling aspect here. At the same time, it's also interesting to look at the benefits-versus-issues juxstaposition of MOOCS by bringing...

Read More

Altmetrics and the future of bibliometrics

Journal impact factors have become one of the most frequently used tools for post-publication filtering and evaluation. However, journal level metrics which are based primarily on traditional citation data largely ignore the new channels of dissemination that have emerged in recent times. Indeed, the routes through which new research is found and shared...

Read More