Library For All has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an ebook platform that would enable the distribution of ebooks in the developing world. The organization is seeking $100,000 in pledges to roll out a pilot program at the Respire School in Gressier, Haiti this fall.
via Library For All Builds Ebook Platform for Developing World – The Digital Shift.
16 Free Live Webinars for Librarians in June – OEDB.org.
I particularly intrigued by Public Libraries: Become a Community Publishing Portal (PLA) and Support Patron Learning in Small Spaces with Small Budgets.
“After two and a half years of planning, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the U.S.’s first public online-only library, opened its doors today — or at least was made publicly available on the Internet.
The DPLA is a free, open-source resource that makes a number of digital collections and archives across the country available in one place. It launched as a series of partnerships with the Smithsonian, the National Archives, New York Public Library, the University of Virginia, Harvard, Digital Library of Georgia, Minnesota Digital Library, Mountain West Digital Library and others. All of the text, photos, videos and audio contained in the DPLA can be searched, or browsed by place or time on the DPLA website” via Digital Public Library Of America (DPLA) Launches To Public | Mashable.
Vision of the DPLA Website:
The vision of a national digital library has been circulating among librarians, scholars, educators, and private industry representatives since the early 1990s. Efforts led by a range of organizations, including the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive, have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access. Many universities, public libraries, and other public-spirited organizations have digitized materials, but these digital collections often exist in silos. The DPLA brings these different viewpoints, experiences, and collections together in a single platform and portal, providing open and coherent access to our society’s digitized cultural heritage.
You may also like:
What is the DPLA? by John Palfrey | The Digital Shift
Quotable: “There are two key points about what the DPLA “is,” at least as of April 2013. First, the DPLA will be what we, the people, decide to make of it, as a shared, public-spirited resource. Second, the DPLA is the community of people who have devoted themselves (ourselves, in fact) to pursuing an ambitious, public-spirited vision of what the future might hold. On day one, we will present a radically open platform that will make a lot of exciting material available more broadly, as well as a lot of code and services with which technologists can do interesting things.”
Got MOOC?: Massive open online courses are poised to change the face of education | The Digital Shift
Although it’s clear that there’s a flurry of interest in MOOCs among universities, higher-ed students, the tech industry, and pundits, these free online courses are also likely to have a significant impact on K–12 librarians and other educators.
From the EDUCAUSE Library on MOOCs, the report What Campus Leaders Need to Know About MOOCs and many more additional resources.
California Universities Aggressively Expand Online Courses, Finds Failure Rates Drop | TechCrunch
The largest university system in America is aggressively expanding its experimental foray into Massive Online Open Learning (MOOCs), based on an unusually promising pilot course.
The iSchool’s First MOOC: Lessons Learned | Information Space
There is much that still needs to be figured out about MOOCs.
For Libraries, MOOCs Bring Uncertainty and Opportunity | Wired Campus
A lot of the discussion about massive open online courses has revolved around students and professors. What role can academic librarians play in the phenomenon, and what extra responsibilities do MOOCs create for them?
What Do Librarians Need to Know About MOOCs? | Stephen’s Lighthouse
“The following article appears in the March/April 2013 issue of D-Lib Magazine.”
Chronicle of Higher Education Blog Highlights Key Points from MOOCs and Libraries Event | Stephen’s Lighthouse
“The “MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?” event, hosted by OCLC Research and the University of Pennsylvania on 18-19 March, featured thoughtful and provocative presentations about ways libraries are getting involved with massive open online courses (MOOCs), including the challenges and strategic opportunities they are facing.”
MOOCs and Libraries Event | The OCLC Research Channel (YouTube)
Playlist includes videos of the sessions from the “MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?” event that took place 18-19 March 2013 in which OCLC Research and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries presented thoughtful and provocative presentations about how libraries are already getting involved with MOOCs. Also see this SlideShare presentation from OCLC: MOOCs & Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge.
10,000 Free Courses Listed in a Massive Open Courses Directory | iLibrarian
The OEDb has just launched a massive Free Online Open Courses Directory organizing nearly 10,000 free courses in the liberal arts and sciences. The courses are available in a variety of formats including full courses, video lectures, audio lectures, text articles, and mixed media.
10 Incredibly Interesting Free Online Courses I’d Like to Take for Fun | iLibrarian
It’s amazing just how many colleges and universities are offering free open education courses that people can take from the convenience of their own computers. I’ve been investigating the offerings at many of these including MIT, University of Notre Dame, UC San Diego and others, and there are many classes that I’d enjoy taking just for fun. Here are ten of my choices, but click into the programs for listings of hundreds more!
Dewey-It-Yourself: How to supplement your library school education | Hack Library School
No matter how great a MLS/MLIS program is there just isn’t enough time and courses to learn everything.
Lynda.com, NYPL Explore New Library-wide Access Model | The Digital Shift
Patrons visiting the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) now have free access to the entire catalog of more than 1,500 instructional online training videos offered by Lynda.com.
Emerging Student Patterns in MOOCs: A (Revised) Graphical View | e-Literate
Describes four student patterns emerging from Coursera-style MOOCs.
Massive Open Online Courses: Legal and Policy Issues for Research Libraries | ARL [Brief]
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) raise significant legal and policy questions for research libraries, which are often asked to support the development of MOOC courses.
“The City of New York and Brookfield Properties has agreed to pay more than $233,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Occupy Wall Street over the destruction of the People’s Library during the eviction of Zuccotti Park by the New York Police Department last fall. During the raid to clear the park in the early morning hours of November 15th 2011, the majority of the collection of more than 4,000 books donated by the public and organized by the Library Working Group was destroyed or damaged, an act roundly condemned by the American Library Association, as did the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild.” via City of New York settles with Occupy over destruction of the People’s Library » MobyLives.
For book lovers dismayed at the disintegration of a reading culture, however, there is no going gently into that dark night. All it takes to start a library, people are discovering, is a few books, shelves, and a belief that reading and sharing books is a profoundly powerful experience for many people.
One of those new spaces is Ourshelves, a San Francisco lending library open to everyone, no matter how little they can pay, or where they live, says Kristina Kearns, its bibliophile founder. “I wanted to create a space where everyone was welcome, and there was no one who would not be able to afford it,” she says about Ourshelves, housed in a tiny room at the back of an antiques shop, Viracocha, in the San Francisco’s Mission district. “Anyone can engage with books, however they would like.” via Citizen Libraries Are The New Home For The Printed Word | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation.
Quotable: “Libraries, as we know, do not exist for free. They cost their communities—whether composed of taxpayers, tuition-payers, donors, or a combination—a substantial amount of money. It’s well-intentioned to emphasize that libraries provide materials and services without exacting immediate payment from users for each transaction. But today it is at best a mistake and at worst self-destructive to underrepresent the considerable ongoing investment that the members of a community make to have library collections, technology, personnel, and facilities available to them.”
via There Are No Free Libraries | American Libraries Magazine.
“Scanning the recent news articles about the LFL movement reveals something else, too. More often than not, those interviewed acknowledge the sense of community and collegiality that grow up around the little libraries.” via Little Free Libraries | Office Hours.
Little Free Library Revolution Takes Root in Calgary from openfile.ca March 20, 2012
Harvard, MIT to Offer Free Online Classes | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
Quotable: “EdX courses will be available to anyone with an Internet connection…The first set of courses will be announced this summer, and begin in the fall of 2012.”
infophile 