Friday, May 07, 2004

Another way to fill OA archives. Michael Leach started a good thread on the DSpace-General list by asking whether anyone had written an authoring module for DSpace that would let the author click a button in order to submit a finished preprint to given journal (whose submission specs were already coded into the system) --and click another button in order to deposit the preprint in the institutional or disciplinary repository. Leach works for the Harvard Science Libraries and suggests that if others have not already written the code, then Harvard might give it a try. [Open Access News] 8:22:28 AM      Google It!.

Intranets and Knowledge Sharing. KM Column: Intranets and Knowledge Sharing Nice article that summarizes some key points for organizations wanting to provide a suitable environment to facilitate knowledge capture and sharing. The article looks at a number of ways in which an organization's intranet can become a "dynamic and living environment for knowledge-based activities". "Five key approaches are covered: communities of practice and intranets staff directories and expertise finders collaborative environments intranet-based knowledge tools using the intranet to drive cultural change" via elearningpost [e-Learning Eclectic] 8:20:02 AM      Google It!.

How the Word Gets Around. How does a meme travel through the blogosphere? The Memespread Project seeded an idea and watched it grow, learning a lot about information transmission along the way. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] 8:12:21 AM      Google It!.

OCW's worldwide reach. OpenCourseWare spreading worldwide, MIT Tech Talk, May 5, 2004. MIT released a survey of their OpenCourseWare (OCW) system users. "Among those using OCW are an educational technology instructor in Bangalore, India, a home-schooling parent in rural Kentucky, a university professor in Lagos, Nigeria, and a student at the University of Mississippi." The survey revealed several other phenomena, including course material translations into Spanish and Portuguese; a Chinese initiative to translate all the MIT courses, China Open Resources for Education (CORE); modules in Vietnam; and increasing interest from American universities to adopt similar models to OCW. The article quotes one user in the UK: " "There can be no greater hope for humankind than the belief that wisdom generated through increased learning will ultimately lead to a better world. With OCW, MIT has taken an ethical stand against the belief that knowledge should only be accessible to those who can pay for it or are in proximity to it." (Source: The Kept-Up Academic Librarian) [Open Access News] 8:04:21 AM      Google It!.

Shinkuro, a Groove alternative ?. Another tool I've been testing recently is Shinkuro. It's a bit similar to Groove in it's approach of P2P Collaboration (shared folders and secure, contextual chat) but it's much more lightweight, it runs on all platforms and the current version... [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog] 8:03:30 AM      Google It!.

Work No Longer a Place but an Activity [Slashdot] 7:58:57 AM      Google It!.

CDs May be Less Immortal than We Thought [Slashdot] 7:49:13 AM      Google It!.