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November 2002 LibraryNet Monthly TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. WOODSTOCK PUBLIC LIBRARY A PILOT LOCATION FOR WEB-4-ALL Web-4-All is assistive technology combining hardware and software that can quickly configure a public access computer to accommodate a user's special needs, and then switch back to a standard setting for the next user. This year, sixteen communities across Canada will pilot test the Web-4-All system. The Woodstock (Ontario) Public Library in Oxford County is one of the locations. The Library already owns 2 computer workstations with 21" monitors, purchased with funding from the CAP program, as part of its efforts to provide public Internet access for persons with disabilities. Web-4-All has been installed, and the Library is working with a visually-impaired local computer entrepreneur and with its computer support contractor to troubleshoot the package. Other members of the special needs community in Woodstock will be informed about Web-4-All and asked to test it as well. When the Library is satisfied that Web-4-All is working according to specifications, it will begin actively promoting the new service. The Library also hopes to develop a mentoring program, through which people familiar with Web-4-All's assistive technology can be paired with novice users for one-on-one instruction sessions. Each Web-4-All package includes HomePage Reader; a Visual Dynamic Keyboard; an E-Reader; the Opera Internet browser; a modified Kensington track ball; a Hitachi card reader and blank smart cards; a user training package and administrator's guide; a marketing tool kit; and the Web-4-All install CD. For more
information: 2. LANGUAGE LAB OPENS AT SURREY PUBLIC LIBRARY On November 13, the Surrey Public Library will celebrate the official opening of a new computer-based language learning lab at its Strawberry Hill branch. This unique facility gives patrons access to self-teaching software to help improve their English language grammar and pronunciation, and to help them develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. In addition to software on eight computer workstations, three CD players will offer language learning materials on audio CD. Users will be able to access ESL sites through the Internet as well as using software specially selected for self-instruction, with an emphasis on North American English. Beth Barlow, the Surrey Public Library Chief Librarian, is thrilled with the new facility. "We continue to strive to make the library at Strawberry Hill a centre of excellence, and this newest facility will help meet the needs of our diverse population." For more
information: 3. NEW LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES OF CANADA CREATED On October 2, Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps announced the creation of the new Library and Archives of Canada. This agency will be created by merging the rich collections, professional expertise, and over 1000 staff of the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada. A joint statement by National Archivist Ian Wilson and National Librarian Roch Carrier says that the new institution's priorities will be "to continue the high level of service to our clients and to work with our partners in government to find solutions to our accommodation requirements, in particular, the pressing housing needs of the National Library of Canada collections at risk." Consult the websites of both organizations for ongoing updates on the progress of the merger. For more
information: 4. THIRTY-SIX NEW FRANCOPHONE WEBSITES FUNDED On October 15, Minister of State Don Boudria announced the results of the 2002-2003 Francommunautés virtuelles program contest. 36 new projects that encourage the use of state-of-the-art Internet technologies and the creation of French content will be funded. This year, project themes include women, ethnocultural minorities, law, small and medium enterprises, artists, and students. For example, the Théâtre virtuel des Gros Becs will allow Internet surfers to learn the ins and outs of theatre for francophone youths. Accesjustice.ca will offer legal services in the French language. The Réseau des chercheures africaines will create a virtual resource centre for francophone women from racial and ethnocultural minorities. The Francommunautés virtuelles program, a partnership between Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage, supports innovative French-language Internet initiatives that respond to needs of the francophone and Acadian communities in Canada. Francommunautés virtuelles provides non-refundable financial contributions equal to 50 percent of eligible costs, to a maximum of $75,000 for regional projects or $250,000 for national projects. In March 2002, the federal government announced that a total of $4 million will be invested in francophone and Acadian communities through this program. For more
information: 5. GIRL GUIDES GET THEIR "INTERNET LITERACY" BADGES On October 17, Girl Guides of Canada and the Media Awareness Network launched the "You Go Girl in Technology" Internet literacy initiative, designed to help Canadian girls become wise Internet users. To equip girls to address both Internet opportunities and risks, there are several components of the "You Go Girl" initiative. A National Challenge to girls in all levels of Guiding will introduce key concepts of Internet literacy through a series of fun activities. Topics addressed include safety, protection of personal privacy, online ethics and accountability, online marketing to kids, and authentication of information. Upon completion of the Challenge, girls will receive a special You Go Girl in Technology crest. A Web Awareness workshop for Guide leaders will be developed and piloted in selected library systems. Public library branches in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia have already indicated their desire to participate. The official introduction of an Internet literacy badge will take place during fall 2003, and awarding of the first badges is expected to take place by the end of the Guiding year. For more
information: 6. BLIND CAN "SEE" DIGITAL PICTURES WITH NEW DEVICE The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently unveiled the prototype of a new device that could help blind people view digital images. The so-called "tactile graphic display" translates the images from a computer to a grid of 3600 pins, which rise from a level position into a 3-D copy of the image, so that users can "read" the pattern with their fingertips. At the heart of the prototype is an XY plotter, a printer-like appliance used to graph equations as ink on paper. The NIST team re-engineered the device, inspired by the "bed of nails" novelty toy, in which a flexible grid of steel pins takes on the shape of a hand or anything placed under it. The American advocacy group National Federation of the Blind will spend the next year user-testing the prototype. For more
information: 7. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SERVICE FOR THE BLIND GOING DIGITAL Over the next six years, the Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) plans to convert about 30,000 audio titles, mostly standard works and best sellers, into digital format. Digital reproduction of current titles will commence in 2004, while at the same time 20,000 retrospective titles will be converted. The total cost is estimated at about US$75 million. The Library also plans to have 50,000 digital talking book readers available by the end of 2008. Currently, the Library maintains an inventory of more than 23 million copies of audio books and magazines, and 730,000 analog talking-book playback machines. Advantages to storing audio recordings in the new technology include the ability to improve the audio quality, to use the same recording in a greater variety of ways, and to integrate recorded information into a wide range of computer and reader systems. The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) plans to digitize its entire collection of 60,000 audio books by the year 2006, as reported in the September 2002 LibraryNet Monthly. For more
information: 8. GATES FOUNDATION DONATES COMPUTERS TO OREGON LIBRARIES The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided public libraries in Oregon with more than $2.1 million to fund more than 500 public Internet access computers and technical training. This gift will increase the number of computers in Oregon public libraries by about 40 percent. A total of 174 of the state's public libraries will be receiving grants. Oregon public libraries and branches that serve communities at or above the 10 percent poverty level, as determined by the 1990 U.S. Census, were eligible to apply for grants to purchase hardware, telecommunications upgrades, training and technical assistance. The grants are part of the Foundation's U.S. Library Program, which has committed $250 million to giving all Americans access to digital information through public libraries. By the end of 2003, the Foundation will have provided 40,000 computers to nearly 10,000 libraries in the U.S., as well as to libraries in Canada and Chile. For more
information: 9. NEW DATA ON CHANGING USE OF LIBRARIES IN ACADEME Anecdotal evidence shows that academic users' expectations of libraries are changing as they find more information directly from the Internet. The Digital Library Federation (DLF) and the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) commissioned a professional survey firm to conduct a large-scale study in order to better understand how library usage patterns are hanging. The primary goal of the survey was to collect data on the relevance of existing and possible future services, as well as on student and faculty perceptions of the library's value. The CLIR online publication "Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment" collects the data in tables and includes some preliminary analytical observations. For example, respondents in liberal arts colleges, the biological sciences, arts and humanities, and law seem to rely on the library and its services more than their peers in other disciplines. The data was drawn from a survey of 3,234 faculty members and students in a range of disciplines from almost 400 public and private institutions, conducted in late 2001 and early 2002. To read
the full text of the report: 10. REPORT ON COLLEGE STUDENT INTERNET USE A recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicates that almost three-quarters of U.S. college students use the Internet for academic work more often than they use the campus library. 73% of college students said they use the Internet more than the library to look for information; just 9% said that they used the library more. According to the study, students have come to regard high-speed Internet access as a basic utility, like water or phone service. Today's college students are far more computer-literate than the general population; 86% of them use the Internet, compared to 59% of the overall U.S. population, and 85% own computers. In addition to research, students used the Internet for communication, both with peers and with professors. 56% believe that email has enhanced their relationship with professors, and 46% say it enables them to express ideas that they would not have expressed in class. The report was based on survey responses from 2,054 students at 27 American schools. A team of researchers also observed the behavior of students using the Internet at 10 institutions of higher education in the Chicago area. For the full
report: 11. MIT LAUNCHES PILOT COURSEWARE SITE With the launch of the pilot site of OpenCourseWare (OCW) on September 30, thirty-two courses from 16 MIT academic departments and the Sloan School of Management are now available online. Over the next ten years, OpenCourseWare will make the course materials used in most undergraduate and graduate subjects at MIT available on the Internet, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. OCW is intended to advance technology-enhanced education at MIT, and to serve as a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age. "Surface Waves and Their Interaction with Floating Bodies" is among the courses in the first sampling, as well as courses in architecture, algebra, computer science, and linguistics. The task of creating a website drawing together virtually all of MIT's course materials is considerable. The initiative is still in a pilot phase, and will be for at least another year. OCW Executive Director Anne H. Margulies emphasized that the technological infrastructure is still a work in progress. "We're committed to using open systems and will share our approach and experiences with those who may want to launch similar efforts," she said. To visit
the pilot site: 12. RIDING ALONG WITH THE INTERNET BOOK MOBILE Brewster Kahle, director of the Internet Archive and founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wants to use the Internet to make books available to everyone. To protest the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, he recently built an Internet Bookmobile and drove it across the U.S. The Internet Bookmobile is a mobile digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere. A van with a satellite dish mounted on top and laptops in the trunk, it is packed with a high speed printer, book cutter, and book binder, donated by Hewlett Packard and the Children's Science Museum. At every stop, using the laptops hooked up to the Internet via satellite, users could choose a public domain work, which was then downloaded, printed, cut, and bound into a good quality trade paperback. At the end of its tour, the Bookmobile was in Washington, D.C. on October 9 while U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments in the case of Eldred vs. Ashcroft, a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the 1998 Act. The Act extended American copyright terms for an additional 20 years. In 1776, American copyright existed for 14 years, renewable for another 14; today, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years for corporations. The U.S. Congress has extended the copyright term 11 times over the past 40 years. The Supreme Court's decision on the case is expected in the spring of 2003. For more
information: 13. DIGITAL ARCHIVE LOOKS AT TAPPING INTO THE GRID Library of Congress researchers are evaluating the use of grid technology to preserve and manage the library's digital collections. The Library's American Memory project is one of the world's largest digitized historical archives, with more than 7.5 million digital records from over 100 collections of manuscripts, books, maps, films, sound recordings, and photographs. Scientists have already harnessed the power of grid computing - a way to use hundreds or thousands of geographically-separated computers running in parallel - to map the human genome and search for alien life. In grid computing, data does not have to reside in the same physical location to be managed or shared. Grid technologies may help the Library preserve the integrity of its collections when technology changes, since data can be managed across old and new storage systems. However, the possibilities go beyond preservation. The Library will also explore how these technologies might add enough computing power to "repurpose" its collections through powerful searching capacity. For example, a researcher looking for information about Mars missions might be able to search the entire American Memory collection at once, finding both NASA materials on the Mars Rover and congressional material on budget debates. For more
information: 14. UK PROGRAM HELPS PARENTS LEARN NET SKILLS Schools and libraries across the United Kingdom hosted parent & child computer workshops during the first week of October, as part of a government initiative to make parents aware of the educational benefits of the Internet. The UK Department for Education and Skills sponsors a program and website, Parents Online, intended to help parents make the most of educational facilities on the net. It features a range of learning activities, as well as links to other educational sites and information about Internet safety. Parents Online has been active for the past three years, and nearly a thousand schools are members. The program is beginning to attract international attention; schools from other countries have signed up to make educational resources and activities available for parents and students over the Internet. Students and parent who don't have access to a computer at home can still participate in the program through public libraries and more than 6,000 UK Online centers. For more
information: 15. NEW SURVEY OF E-GOVERNANCE IN 15 COUNTRIES Information and communication technologies are helping governments become more transparent and accountable to citizens, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says, citing a joint study conducted with the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development (ComNet). However, the Global Survey of On-line Governance also found new technologies "posing a challenge to traditional decision-making structures." Islands and small states seem to constitute a special case, with unique challenges and opportunities. The traditional issues of economic and geographical isolation can be exacerbated in the digital era by lack of critical mass for service provision and sweeping globalization; yet these countries also have the greatest opportunities, in relative terms. The study includes national profiles of 15 countries chosen to represent different situations in each geographical region. Each profile details the current status and developments in the area of e-governance. The study cites several popular successes, including the Canada's HRDC Job Bank of employment opportunities from across the country. In Tanzania, according to the study, the government's computerizing of its payroll system has led to the unmasking of many "ghost workers." To read the
full text of the study (in RTF format): 16. NEW INTERNET RESEARCH CENTRE AT OXFORD On September 27, the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) held its launch conference. The Institute is a new research centre dedicated to studying the Internet and its effects on society. One of the first Internet research centers to have its own academic staff, dedicated specifically to studying the Internet and its social consequences, the OII will also be a partner in the World Internet Project, an initiative that co-ordinates Internet use studies around the globe. The Institute's multi-disciplinary staff will teach, carry out original research, and act as a clearinghouse for Internet research projects. The OII also plans to establish its own regular surveys of Internet use and trends. The director of the Institute, Professor Bill Dutton, said, "The fundamental implication of changes in information technology is that it reconfigures access. Not just in terms of the digital divide but also who you know, what you know and what you get access to and use." For more
information: Workshop
on Instruction in Library Use (WILU) The theme for WILU 2003 is "Bridging the Gap: Teaching Across Boundaries." The program committee seeks proposals for workshops, presentations, and panel discussions from presenters who will discuss and explore, in depth, the various gaps, bridges and shared boundaries surrounding information literacy initiatives in the 21st century. Examples of discussion areas include librarian collaborations with university administrators and/or faculty, issues surrounding the integration of information literacy skills into the curriculum, and the development of a teaching culture within the librarian community. Another related focus of discussion will be the relationship between the teaching of information literacy and social justice concerns. Submissions and presentations are welcomed in either English or French. The deadline for proposals is November 20, 2002. To submit
a proposal: 71e colloque
de l'ACFAS The "Science de l'information" conference stream, coordinated by the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information of the Université de Montréal, will be part of the annual conference of the Association Francophone pour le Savoir (ACFAS). ACFAS will be celebrating its eightieth anniversary in 2003. Participate in the largest francophone multidisciplinary scientific conference, share your discoveries, and widen your network of colleagues. The deadline for submissions is November 22, 2002. For more
information on how to submit proposals: 2003 LITA
National Forum: "Putting Technology Into Practice" Providing effective service in libraries today is all about putting information technology into practice, to serve remote and on-site library users, search and manage collections, and create digital collections. The Forum Committee is particularly interested in presentations that highlight specific technology implementations in any type of library. The deadline for submissions is December 21, 2002. For more
information on how to submit proposals: Online Library
Science Classes This ALA accredited program will offer the following graduate courses over the Internet for the Spring 2003 semester:
The fee is US$1,053 per course. For online
registration details: For course descriptions: http://www.sis.buffalo.edu/faculty/ellison/ellison.html Copyright
Demystified Recent amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act include, for the first time, significant exceptions for libraries, archives, and museums. These exceptions are complex, and subject to a host of conditions and limitations. This one-day course will take you through the main provisions of the Act and provide you with the tools to analyze a copyright problem and develop your institutional policy on this complex matter. The course fee is CDN$225. For more
information, or to register: Certificate
in Web Development This program teaches the skills necessary to design, build, and maintain a website. It focuses on understanding web systems, designing user-oriented websites, and teaching the latest tools and techniques in design, data retrieval and site support. To complete the certificate, students must select at least seven courses (a minimum of 155 hours of instruction) from the list of 25 available. All courses are held in the evenings or on weekends in the Faculty of Information Studies computer labs on the University of Toronto campus. For more
information, or to register: Digital Library of Information Science and Technology (DLIST) This repository of electronic resources in the domains of Library and Information Science (LIS) and Information Technology (IT) includes published papers, data sets, instructional and help materials, pathfinders, reports, and bibliographies. Authors are invited to participate by contributing their research papers, before or after publication. Easy-To-Read Health and Medical Sites Chosen by staff at the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, these links offer information on common illnesses and conditions, written for the layperson and in formats that are easy to reproduce. An excellent source of materials for people with limited reading skills. Education Index A guide to "the most useful education-related sites on the Web." Links can be browsed by academic subject or by educational level, from infant to college and continuing education. http://www.educationindex.com/ Electronic Books The Stockton-San Joaquin County (California) Public Library offers this directory of annotated links to free and commercial e-book sites. There are also links to dedicated e-book reader software, and tips for reading e-books online, searching for text in e-books, and saving e-books. http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/ebooks.htm Find a Grave At this site, visitors can query over 3.8 million burial records by typing in surnames. Users can also make contributions to the site's database and join discussion forums. Another database contains information on the resting places of famous individuals. Guidelines for Creating Accessible Learning Technologies This set of guidelines, solutions, and resources for the e-learning community on accessibility in online education for people with disabilities will be useful to both users and developers. Available in a screen-reader-friendly format as well as in PDF. Kidlink This international, non-commercial website offers 86 conferences on the Internet and a private "chat" network for participants only. Children and youth can collaborate with peers around the world individually or through their classrooms. Since 1990, children from over 100 countries have participated. http://www.kidlink.org/english/general/intro.html Language Sites on the Internet An annotated directory of language sites on the Internet, including online dictionaries and thesauri, etymology, grammar and usage links, glossaries of literary terms, and much more. http://pw1.netcom.com/~rlederer/rllink.htm Proposal Writing Although many of the sites in this annotated directory of links are U.S. based, it also offers useful links to Canadian and international granting organizations. The directory can be searched or browsed and also includes tips and checklists to help with writing grants and RFPs. http://proposalwriter.searchking.com/ Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT) This interactive library tutorial is designed to introduce first-year university students to online research sources and skills including effective searching, evaluating sources, and citing. There are two versions, one requiring no plug-ins and one with more interactive bells and whistles. Created by the University of Texas System Digital Library, which also offers version of the TILT tutorial for free under an Open Publication License. Individuals and institutions may download a copy of its text, graphics, and scripts to use and customize. Word Of Mouth The Thompson Nicola Regional Library in Kamloops, B.C. has collected Library Journal's "Word of Mouth" columns on their Reader's Advisory page and made them accessible through browsing or keyword-searching. These copyright-free, librarian-contributed booktalks for adults are loosely organized around themes. http://www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/sleepers.html If
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