The iPad and other tablet computers aren’t laptops and they aren’t smartphones, so many people are wondering why they’d ever need a new device that sits awkwardly in the middle. You can’t put it in your pocket but it doesn’t have the full capabilities of a “real” computer. But Apple sold over 15 million iPads […]
Blog | Information Literacy, Research, Dayton History
An Investigation into the Indexing Practices of Four Databases: Part One
After reading a paper by Gloria Leckie titled “Desperately Seeking Citations,” I assigned it three keyword terms I thought were representative of the subject matter. These terms were “information seeking behavior-undergraduates,” “scholarly research” and “academic libraries-role.” [1] After comparing these to four databases, LISTA, LISA, Library Lit and ERIC, results showed five very different systems […]
Differences Between Library Catalogs and Amazon.com
Introduction: Users may begin their search for information on a topic with a known item, but be interested in expanding their search to locate related material. In a physical collection, they can do this by locating an item on the shelf and then browsing the titles in proximity to that item to look for other […]
An Analysis of Two Very Different Online Collections: Use, Users and More
The two collections discussed here are the Japanese Woodblock Print collection at the University of California-San Francisco, representing a digitized version of physical holdings, and Arts Journal, a gateway to third-party public domain sources on the internet. While the collections share a few surface similarities, their intended user groups and organizational schemes have little in […]
What Are Apple’s Textbook and Educational Publishing Goals for the iPad?
For many, print textbooks are a vital and unchanging part of education. Writers and editors craft the books under the direction of a publisher. Teachers (or states) pick from the top titles on the market to be used in their classrooms. College students buy from their university bookstore, lug large volumes around in backpacks, and […]
Media Consolidation and Conglomeration: The Library Consequences
Over recent decades, consolidation has been a consistent theme in mass media and other types of information providers, with the emergence of large information empires which continuously acquire new subsidiaries. This conglomeration is a challenge to LIS because the values of these companies are directly contrary to many of the core values of librarianship. First, […]