New Location in the Alexandria Co-Working Network

An Arizona State University initiative called the Alexandria Co-Working Network aims to bring people together in collaboration spaces in public libraries across Arizona. The grand opening of their newest space in the Phoenix Public Library’s Burton Barr Central Library will take place on Friday, January 17th.

This initiative is led by ASU’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group, and was launched with the goal of creating a statewide network of places for people to connect, collaborate and find valuable resources.

Visit Digital Journal for more information on this collaboration.

Social media platforms, collaboration, and libraries

This paper was presented at the Charleston Conference last year:

“Social Research Collaboration: Libraries Need Not Apply?” by Jan Reichelt, Christopher Erdmann, and Jose Luis Andrade

Abstract

Social media was born an efficient method of personal networking. As more and more researchers took to social media platforms, we have witnessed an organic growth of collaboration among scholars, faculty, students, etc. This phenomenon has led us to a profound change in the way we conduct research through social media. Research through collaboration is now increasingly important in order to achieve a higher impact throughout the research community. But where does the library fit into this? The simple answer is that researchers are now bypassing the library.

This presentation will look at the new reality of social research collaboration and discuss what kinds of webbased tools can support the workflow and peer collaboration of researchers. The presenters will also discuss why it is essential for libraries to become part of the solution before they are left out in the cold.

Another good article from Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice

Here is another article from the same issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice.

“Using Social Media to Promote International Collaboration” by Hua Sun and Mark Douglas Puterbaugh

This paper explores the use of social media or Web 2.0 services for an international collaborative project. Participants in this collaboration used free and inexpensive social media tools to communicate and work together. This case study presents a model for using inexpensive social media tools to forge new partnerships among academic libraries. Academic libraries can now tap the expertise of fellow librarians in other countries and explore new cultures to improve and extend their services without the huge financial cost once attributed to international collaboration.

SLA Twitter sessions on May 14th – #SLAtalk concerning collaboration

#SLAtalk – Collaboration – Better…Stronger…Faster

2 choices on Tuesday, May 14th:

Session #1 at 17:30 UTC (1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Great Britain/United Kingdom is one hour ahead of UTC during summer.

Session #2 at 03:00 UTC (11:00 p.m. Eastern / 8:00 p.m. Pacific)
[Wednesday, 15 May – 13:00 Canberra / 11:00 Perth / 08:30 New Delhi]

Elsevier in talks to buy Mendeley

From Techcrunch this morning.

The world of ed-tech is ramping up another notch, and getting a lot more open in the process: educational publishing giant Elsevier is in advanced talks to buy Mendeley, a London/New York-based provider of a platform for academics to share research and collaborate with each other via a social network. TechCrunch understands from sources close to the companies that the deal is underway and should close this quarter, possibly by the end of February — all things being equal — and will be in the region of $100 million.

Book chapter on collaboration and social search

This chapter, “Recommendation, Collaboration and Social Search” (PDF) is written by David M. Nichols from the University of Waikato, New Zealand and Michael B. Twidale from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  It is published in the book Interactive Information-Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval, Facet Publishing, pages 205-220.

This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology.

Presentation on the Brain Science of Attention

If you are in the Boston area and are free on the evening of September 20th, then this looks like an interesting presentation at Harvard.  If not, they will tape the talk, and probably post it to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society YouTube channel once it is ready for public consumption.

“NOW YOU SEE IT: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn” by Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University and co-founder of HASTAC

Tuesday, September 20, 6:00 pm
Location TBA
Free and Open to the Public; RSVP required for those attending in person

When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics called it a waste of money. Yet when students found academic uses for the brand new music devices in virtually every discipline, the iPod experiment proved to be a classic example of the power of disruption – a way of refocusing attention to illuminate unseen possibilities. Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at the time of the iPod experiment, Cathy N. Davidson sees this kind of innovation as the heart of a new way of collaborative, interactive learning ideal for students facing a changing, global future. Using cutting-edge research on the brain and learning, she shows how the phenomenon of “attention blindness” shapes our lives, and how it has led to one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: Although we email, blog, tweet, and text as if by instinct, too many of us toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century, not the one in which we live.

SPLAT: Innovative Collaboration in Idaho’s Libraries

Journal of Library Innovation, Vol 2, No 1 (2011)

“Memo Cordova, Amy Vecchione

Abstract: Libraries face shrinking budgets, increased use, and user demand for trendy resources.  This makes it difficult for librarians to find the time to keep current with innovative library trends, such as technological tools and social media developments.  The Special Projects Library Action Team (SPLAT) offers a new model for enhancing library services. SPLAT is a group supported by the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICFL), the state agency responsible for assisting libraries.  The members of SPLAT are innovation representatives who search and experiment with social media trends and online tools, and share the best ways to integrate them into services at all types of libraries.  SPLAT members have developed SPLAT 101, an online class geared towards teaching library staff new Web technologies.

Presentation – Using Technology to Work Collboratively

One of the law librarians at Valparaiso University, Sarah Glassmeyer, did a presentation on software that provides collaboration functions and features.

The Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory

This is a project from Howard Rheingold. Learned about it in this video.

Welcome to the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory. It’s all free, as in both “freedom of speech” and “almost totally free beer.” We invite you to build on what we’ve started to create more free value. The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools.