November 10, 2009, 01:07 PM ET
Improving Mobile-Device Security
As mobile phones begin functioning more like minicomputers, they also take on more security risks.
That's why the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to work toward developing safer mobile devices and telecommunication networks that serve such devices. The project's researchers hope to protect mobile devices from viruses and malware that can steal personal information.
“Since mobile phones typically lack security features found on desktop computers, such as antivirus software, we need to accept that the mobile devices will ultimately be successfully attacked," said Jonathon Giffin, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science, in a news release. "Therefore our research focus is to develop effective attack-recovery strategies.”
First,...
Read MoreOctober 26, 2009, 12:00 PM ET
Archive Watch: Cantors and Klezmer Go Digital
Between the early 1990s and 2002, Florida Atlantic University's
Wimberly Library acquired about a thousand recordings of Jewish
music. In 2002 that collection became the foundation for the
Judaica Music Rescue Project, founded by Nathan Tinanoff, with the
goal of creating a central repository for Judaic sound recordings.
In 2005 the project was renamed the Judaica Sound
Archives, with Mr. Tinanoff as director. It now contains about
58,000 recordings. In the last half-decade, the project has been
receiving material at the rate of more than 10,000 recordings a
year. Mr. Tinanoff and the archives' assistant director, Maxine
Schackman, jointly answered questions about about it via
e-mail.
Q. What kinds of recordings do you seek out?
A. The JSA accepts any recording of Jewish...
Read MoreOctober 20, 2009, 11:45 AM ET
New Site Indexes Information on Digital Books
The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group, has created a system for helping people find digital books on the Internet. The service, called BookServer, collects information on digital books that are available online, either free or for a fee. Those in charge of the project say they hope it will make it easier for people to use digital material online.
Authors, publishers, libraries, and book sellers -- in other words, anyone who offers free or paid books online -- can index their materials so they appear when people conduct a search on BookServer.
"This is a mechanism by which we can expose the books that are available for lending," said Peter Brantley, director of the BookServer project at the Internet Archive. "We're trying to get books into the hands of readers as many different ways as...
Read MoreOctober 15, 2009, 02:45 PM ET
Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told
WASHINGTON, D.C. Public access to research is "inevitable," but it will be a slog to get to it. That was the takeaway message of a panel on the role libraries can play in supporting current and future public-access moves. The panel was part of the program at the membership meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, held here yesterday and today.
"I now believe that having public access to most scholarly communications is inevitable," said David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. "Faculty are coming to understand, finally, that this has to happen if they're going to have the most scholarly opportunities to get things done."
Still, many scholars need the hard sell from colleagues and librarians about the benefits of open access. Lorraine J. Haricombe, dean of the University of Kansas...
Read MoreOctober 08, 2009, 04:30 PM ET
New Guide Describes Models for Open-Access Journals
Want to take your scholarly journal open access but confused about how to pay for it? The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or Sparc, has just posted a guide to "Income Models for Supporting Open Access."
Written by publishing consultant Raym Crow, the guide looks at both supply-side and demand-side income models that include article processing fees, internal and external subsidies, and "contextual e-commerce" approaches. It gives examples of journals that fall into each category, and allows users to share their experiences with open-access journal publishing.
"These resources will be a useful tool both for publishers
exploring new potential sources of income and for libraries
weighing where to direct meager library funds," Sparc
says.
October 01, 2009, 12:00 PM ET
The Library-Catalog Wars: 'Chronicle' Readers Weigh In
Catalogs are the problem!
Librarians are the problem!
Students are the problem!
A new
Chronicle article on trends in library catalog
software has touched off an online reader debate about who's to
blame for patrons' search frustrations and how to fix the
situation. The article discussed how libraries are trying to
out-Google Google with easy-to-use, online catalog-search software,
while “pockets of resistance” in library circles feel the new
products dumb down the research process.
That resistance was on display in reader gripes like this:
“Unfortunately, instead of teaching students how to conduct a
precise search with few relevant results, faculty and librarians
have found an easy way out -- googlize everything.”
August 25, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
Labeling Library Archives Is a Game at Dartmouth College
Professor Mary Flanagan wants students to go online and label library archives – for free.
Ms. Flanagan, a digital-humanities professor at Dartmouth College, is creating an Internet-based game in which users create descriptive tags for library images to improve searching through the library's database. Although the program will be tested at the college’s library, Ms. Flanagan says the game will be open source and available for others to download and build upon.
She says the program could save libraries time and money. “It’s
costly and time consuming to go in and add keywords,” she says. “If
you create a game where people actually are actually getting points
for generating metadata, you create a system of motivation and a
fun way of doing this kind of stuff that people, it turns out, will
do for free.”
The...
August 13, 2009, 09:57 AM ET
U. of California Press and JSTOR Announce New Platform for Scholarship
The University of California Press and JSTOR announced today that they have joined forces to create "a single, integrated platform" for new scholarship. The venture, called the Current Scholarship Program, will debut in 2011. It aims to provide a more cost-effective way for libraries and end users to have "seamless access" to all current content from the scholarly journals published by the California press, including those from scholarly associations. Back issues and primary-source material from libraries will also be included, the announcement said. Other publishers are invited to participate if they embrace an "articulated set of principles" behind the partnership. Those principles include "fair and transparent pricing" as well as long-term access and preservation.
July 23, 2009, 01:00 PM ET
California Digital Library Offers Web Archiving Service
Faculty, students, researchers, and librarians can now create archived collections of Web sites through the California Digital Library’s Web Archiving Service -- a way to preserve information on the Web that could otherwise be removed or deleted.
The frequency with which Web pages disappear is an "inherent vulnerability" for faculty and students presenting papers and research, said Tracy Seneca, the library's Web archiving service manager. It's difficult to validate online sources, she said, because cited links die, on average, three or four years after they were created.
"Government information is disappearing at the federal level and at the local level," Ms. Seneca said. "All it takes is taking that document off of one server...
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