The largest LMS companies in the United States in terms of numbers of institutions served are (in ranking order) Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, BrightSpace (D2L), and Sakai, as reported in an October 22, 2014, post in the e-Literate blog. Blackboard currently is the market leader in the US, even without including installations of ANGEL Learning, a … Continue reading Learning Management
Data licensing. The common practices that LAM communities have created to develop open source tools and support of open access are now influencing how we publish open data. Even though institutions are choosing different open-use licenses, open data is supporting new and broader uses of data. The Getty Museum, University of Pennsylvania, and University of … Continue reading A Linked Data Landscape
Char Booth’s 2009 report, Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, cautions against experimenting with too many programs at once. She argues that decisions should be grounded in insight into local library, information, and technology cultures—a policy that we call “intentional integration.” A 2014 Pew Research survey indicates that 64% … Continue reading Embracing the Future
For practical purposes, the best-known definition of altmetrics, “the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing and informing scholarship,” comes from altmetrics.org, a website set up by Priem and three of his colleagues. Since then, others have questioned the definition and the methods of calculating altmetrics in various scholarly … Continue reading Altmetrics, Bibliometrics
OA journals—categorized as “gold OA” to distinguish them from content placed in an institutional or subject repository (“green OA”)—make all of their peer-reviewed articles freely available online, in the final version and layout, as soon as they are published. DOAJ is the key directory for OA journals, with increasingly robust standards as to what can … Continue reading Idealism and Opportunism
For my Library Technology Report, I reached out to the LITA-L, Code4Lib, and LibTechWomen discussion lists, as well as my own network, to survey librarians on how they use code in their jobs. I looked for people who are not primarily developers and who could share examples of short scripts. I also asked for recommendations … Continue reading Learning to Code
If we can experience game aesthetics in real life, as well as in front of a video console or a computer screen, why wouldn’t we? If everyday drudgery, dull learning experience, and stressful tasks can be ameliorated with the application of game dynamics and mechanics, wouldn’t that be a great thing? In discussing Chore Wars … Continue reading Gamification as a Tool
Often when you are deciding whether to purchase an app, you’ll see a number of reviews for it in the app store. Have you noticed how uninformed many of these reviews are? Anyone who has purchased an app can contribute reviews. Often people will dash off something without understanding what the app was meant to … Continue reading Writing App Reviews
Where in a library can families share their stories? Where can teens create music videos and upload them online? Where can a veteran revisit his Army buddies? The answer is in the library’s own digital media lab (DML). A DML consists of equipment for either creating original digital content or converting older media to digital … Continue reading Digital Media Labs
When I talk to librarians about 3D printing, the most common question I hear—after the question about printing a gun—is “Why provide this service?” Of the many answers, the most straightforward is “We’ve always done this sort of thing.” The library is, at its core, an engine for the democratization of knowledge and information. Conceptually, … Continue reading The Case for 3D Printing
Music is the best market for forecasting potential trends. We can confidently assume that the last physical format for music, the CD, is in its twilight stage—soon to be replaced entirely by digital formats and niche markets like LPs. Starting in the late 1990s, the music industry experienced a downward sales curve that continued until … Continue reading E-Content and First Sale
Media is a complicated format for librarians: Issues involving fair use limitations and allowances, individual versus institutional rights, closed-circuit rights, public-performance rights, streaming rights, licensing details, and copyright and access questions are ever-present. Finding titles in a required format can also be problematic. The payoff comes in the many video resources available, both for free … Continue reading Media in the Classroom
