It's Academic

The New Era of e-Books

March 12, 2013

by gregory258

CRD Spring Program: The New Era of e-Books

Monday, May 20, 2013 ~ Penn State Hazleton Campus, Graham Building

Keynote presenters:

David A. Bell Ph.D., Professor of History, Princeton University
Nancy Magnuson, College Librarian, Goucher College

Breakout session presenters:

Becky Albitz, Acquisition Librarian, Bates College
Michelle Foreman Ph.D., Associate Dean & Director of the Library, Shippensburg University
Beth Transue, Collection Development Coordinator, Messiah College

Find full details in the flyer below. Online registration is available here and will be open from March 15-May 10.

Does your division, roundtable, or committee have a great project idea but needs a group of motivated leaders to help get the ball rolling? The PaLA Academy of Leadership Studies (PALS) is now accepting project proposals for the 2013 program!

Please visit to following link to find out more information, including project proposal guidelines, and the project proposal form.

Questions? Contact the PALS Leadership Committee co-chairs Sandy Longo (slongo*at*albright*dot*org) or Angela Buckley (acbuckley*at*gmail*dot*com)

ACRL/DVC Student Essay Stipend

March 6, 2013

tags: essay, stipend

by serendipiTina

The Delaware Valley Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL/DVC) announces the availability of a stipend of up to $1,000, for a future academic librarian. Library and information science students living or working in the chapter’s service area (eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware) and who are currently enrolled in an ALA-accredited program, including distance education programs, are invited to apply.

To apply, please submit the following:

Resume
Cover letter that includes:
- Name, mailing address, telephone number, email address;
- List of courses completed & in progress, including special projects towards the degree;
- Description of any employment experience related to academic librarianship.
A one to two page (300-500 words), double-spaced essay:

Describe how you envision the role of the academic librarian in higher education.
How is your Library/Information Science Program helping students fulfill that role?

The stipend will be awarded during the ACRL/DVC spring program at Temple University on April 19th and the winning essay may be published in the Fall 2013 ACRL/DVC newsletter.

Criteria for the award are:

Applicant must be a FT/PT student at the Master’s level in an ALA-accredited program;
Applicant must demonstrate an interest in academic librarianship through employment, course of study, or research interests; and
Applicant must attend school or live in eastern Pennsylvania or Delaware.

Applications must be submitted as a PDF, MS Word or Google document by 5:00 p.m. on March 13, 2013 by email to:
Tina Hertel, Vice President, ACRL/DVC: DVCMentoring@gmail.com.

Emerging Technologies

March 1, 2013

tags: Information Literacy, innovation

by Bonnie Oldham

The NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition recognizes six new technologies that will have an impact on colleges and universities in the near future. This report is a product of the partnership of NMC (New Media Corporation, “an international community of experts in educational technology”) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). It outlines the results of the NMC Horizon Project, which has been collecting data since 2002.

Emerging technologies were chosen by an Advisory Board comprised of fifty-one members from across the globe. This group selected six emerging technologies, which they then subdivided into three categories by time. The experts see the escalation of massively open online courses (MOOCs) and tablet computing within the next year. They note, “…the competition in the tablet computing market is a significant driver of innovation.” In the 2-3 year time frame, higher education will see an increase in games and gamification and learning analytics. Analytics software is being used in the advising process by some schools. And, 4-5 years from now 3D printing and wearable technology will become much more prevalent. Six key trends were noted: openness, massively open online courses, informal learning experiences, personalizing the learning experience and measuring performance, the changing role of educators, and shifting education paradigms. Six challenges to adopting new technology were also identified, the number one challenge being digital media literacy. How will librarians respond to this challenge?

For more information or to download the report, go to the NMC website.

E-books & Academic Libraries

February 20, 2013

tags: collection development, e-books

by treinsfelder

by Amy Deuink, Tom Reinsfelder, & Christina Steffy

image: jasoneppink at flickr

In case you haven’t heard, libraries are changing. Electronic books currently represent one of the most significant changes facing librarians. This change presents both opportunities and challenges. Additionally, e-books raise several important questions for librarians to consider as we build and maintain our collections both for today’s users as well as the researchers of the future.

What do we like about E-books?

As with online journals, e-books can be acquired in large packages allowing access to a greater volume of material at a more affordable price than if purchased individually. E-books also offer:

Minimal delays for delivery and processing after library’s initial purchase.
Immediate access to an expanded collection of materials, regardless of patron location.
No need to wait for ILL.
Multiple readers may use the same text concurrently.
The ability to read on e-readers (iPad, Android, Kindle Fire). Some even allow unrestricted downloading, saving, and printing.
The ability to bookmark pages and make electronic notes within a text.

What don’t we like about E-books?

While e-books have many pros that make them attractive to schools, libraries, and students, there are also many cons both for e-book users and for those institutions that wish to implement widespread e-book adoption.

Users still prefer “real” books: Not all users want or even enjoy using e-books; some may prefer “real” books that they can touch, highlight, and page through. Although e-book technology is improving the ability to “page through” books and annotate them, these features are still developing.
Technology infrastructure: You need a robust wireless network for everyone to be plugged into it constantly. While you can access e-books without a wireless connection once the books are downloaded, there may be value added features such as searches, linking to web content, etc., that you cannot use without wireless connectivity.
Price: E-books are not cheap; sure they may be cheap in comparison to print books, but ultimately you have to buy a reader and may still pay a hefty price for a book that you as the user or you as the library are only licensing rather than purchasing.
No book sales: Users and libraries cannot sell used e-books, so they may pay money for a book and have no chance of being able to sell it to anyone.
Licensing/DRM restrictions: Not all e-books are available to patrons who are not matriculated or on staff at your school. Also, you may not be able to lend an e-book like you can lend a print book. Finally, e-books provided by library databases may have other restrictions such as the number of users who can view a book at one time.
E-reader displays and compatibility: Graphics are not always rendered clearly. Not all e-books display page numbers and those that do may have different page numbers than other e-books and print books. Not all e-books are compatible with different e-readers.

What do patrons want? Online vs. Offline Use

All libraries are missioned to serve the needs of our users. Academic libraries primarily collect literature and scholarly works complimenting the fields of study at their university, while public libraries more often serve the needs of users through popular works for education and entertainment. Given this, one might expect how our populations use e-books would vary—more cover-to-cover reading or skimming of popular titles versus careful and selective study of scholarly works. But is this really the case?

Some users are looking for the convenience of digital loans of coveted titles for download to a personal device, while others harness the power of search and discovery in vast libraries of digital texts. Many public libraries use Overdrive to deliver popular titles, while academic libraries are contracting with services like Ebrary, EBL, EBSCO, Springer, or Project MUSE that concentrate on scholarly works. Each publisher or provider offers different content, features, search interfaces, and access methods—and therein lies the rub. Different rules for use varying from database to database (or even from one title to the next in the same database) and a host of interfaces to untangle are making it difficult for libraries to effectively promote the e-books they do have.

Compelling reasons for figuring this all out are the rapid rises in e-book reading and tablet/e-book reader ownership, as reported in a December 2012 Pew Internet report, “E-Book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines.” According the to the Pew report, e-book reading is quickly on the rise among high school students (16-17 years old) (p. 4) and tablet/e-book reader ownership among all ages rose from 18% to 33% between 2011 and 2012 (p. 2).