Ann L. O’Neill reviews, "Interdisciplinarity and Academic Libraries." This book examines the definition of interdisciplinarity and the related terms of multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity and how these can, and have, affected the work in academic libraries. The ten essays range from definitions and history of interdisciplinarity to the work implications in specific areas of today’s academic libraries.
Megan Tomeo reviews the book, "Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data." Editor, Nichole Engard offers a compilation of successful mashups from a variety of libraries including Yale University, Temple University, and Manchester City Library as well as companies such as LibLime. Mashups are web applications that use free and/or fee data (images, citation information, maps, etc.)—perhaps even several sets of data—and combine them to create new content.
Jimena Sagàs reviews Joron Pihl's article, "Can Library Use Enhance Intercultural Education?" This paper places the library in the spotlight as a potential resource to address the challenging issue of providing a quality education for students regardless of social, linguistic and cultural background.
Ellen Mackey reviews Princeton history professor David Bell’s article “The Bookless Library” http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/david-bell-future-bookless-library#, July 12, 2002, accessed July 31, 2012. In this article, the question is asked, “What role will libraries have when patrons no longer need to go to them to consult or borrow books?”
Marie-Elise Wheatwind reviews the article, "Collaboration is Key: Librarians and Composition Instructors Analyze Student Research and Writing." This article, a collaboration between University of Georgia (UGA) composition instructors and librarians, Caroline Cason Barratt, Kristin Nielsen, Christy Desmet, and Ron Balthazor. The article presents an analysis of citation patterns from students in their First-year Composition Program (FYC).
Alison Hicks reviews the May 2009 issue of the journal "Library Technology Reports" (volume 45, issue 4). This special edition, “Collaboration 2.0” aims to inform library managers about potential tools in order to encourage collaborative work among staff in the library. To this end, it provides simple, easy to read introductions for several web 2.0 tools, including cloud computing and groupware, as well as the more traditional blogs, wikis, and social networking.
Wendy Austin reviews Biblios.net. This is a free, web-based, open source cataloging productivity suite hosted by LibLime with a focus on collaborative cataloging
Kaijsa Calkins reviews, "Common Ground at the Nexus of Information Literacy and Scholarly Communication" edited by Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Merinda Kaye Hensley. This book brings together an excellent collection of writing by librarians, disciplinary faculty, and others from a wide variety of higher education settings that address the intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy instruction initiatives.
This book, Studying Students: A Second Look, edited by Nancy Fried Foster is a follow-up to a 2007 publication, Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester that demonstrates once again the benefits of conducting ethnographic studies when designing academic library spaces and services.
Su Eckhard reviews John D. Volkman's book, "Collaborative Library Research Projects: Inquiry that Stimulates the Senses." Whether you are a fledgling or experienced teacher-librarian (school library media specialist) with or without teaching experience, this book might be helpful for you. Volkman has included everything you want to know and use to jump-start your school library program.
Beth Filar-Williams reviews the program Campus Collaborative Tools Strategy at UC Berkeley. Collaboration tools are becoming popular across campuses. Many institutions are struggling with how to provide support for the multitude of diverse, ever-changing, often open source programs that are frequently used “to fly under the radar”of campus IT protocols. The University of California Berkeley Information Services and Technology (IST) division began to address this issue a few years ago. UC Berkeley recognized the need to create and to support an easy, convenient environment for people on and off campus in which to collaborate on scholarship, teaching, learning, and administrative services.
Lia Vella reviews the book, "Embedded Librarians: Moving Beyond One-Shot Instruction." This book is edited by Cassandra Kvenild and Kaijsa Calkins. In her review, Vella shares, "For the first time last year, my library tried an “embedded” relationship with a required freshman class. As a Reference & Instruction Librarian, I attended the lectures, worked with each of the class sections, and created and staffed a “Help Station” with a rotating display of relevant books and articles. This book, Embedded Librarians: Moving Beyond One-Shot Instruction, was, therefore, of interest to me and helped me to formulate ideas about how I wanted to implement my own program."
Holly Lakotos reviews the book, "The Social Factor: Innovate, Ignite, and Win through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking." This book written by Maria Azua, IBM's vice president of Cloud Computing Enablement, seeks to demystify these tools and other social networking applications. Although the work purports to describe “how to choose and implement the right social networking solutions” in reality, it is an introduction to social networking concepts that may help librarians improve information literacy efforts across all patron groups.
Gabrielle Wiersma reviews Drupal. Libraries use content management systems in order to create, manage, edit, and publish content on the Web more efficiently. Drupal (drupal.org), one such Web-based content management system, is unique because it employs a bottom-up strategy for Web design that separates the content of the site from the formatting which means that “you can more easily change either without having to recode your entire Website.” Drupal appeals to many libraries both because it is free open source software, and because it allows individuals and communities to easily contribute content to the library’s Web site.
Alison Hicks reviews the website Mendeley. Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help organize research, collaborate online, and discover the latest research.
Carol Krismann reviews Morten T. Hansen's book, "Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results." The book focuses on collaborations within companies and organizations. However, some of the ideas can be used for collaborating with outside organizations. Based on the author’s fifteen years of research, it is a scholarly book with a practical orientation offering guidelines on collaboration that improves the organization and its goals.
Martha E. Hardy reviews "Connect, Collaborate, and Communicate : A Report from the Value of Academic Libraries Summits." This report prepared by Karen Brown and Kara J. Malenfant, highlights the crucial importance of demonstrating and communicating the value of academic libraries and their impact on student learning, plus recommendations for action.
Joel Shields reviews Laura Solomon's book, "Doing Social Media So It Matters: A Librarian’s Guide." Shields states, "One of the dangers of writing a topical book on the fast-moving trends of the Internet and in particular, social media is becoming irrelevant before reaching publication. A popular social network of today may become outdated in six months or a new way of communicating may change the paradigm of how we think about social interaction on digital devices. Laura Solomon’s Doing Social Media So It Matters: A Librarian’s Guide approaches this topic head-on and acts as an instructional guide through the perils of successfully implementing a social media strategy within a library setting."
Alison Hicks reviews the article, "Social Networking Tools for Academic Libraries." The authors of this paper, Samuel Kai-Wah Chu and Helen S. Du, investigate the use of social media in academic libraries across the globe.
John Dupuis reviews the document, "Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Chemists" by Matthew P. Long and Roger C. Schonfeld.
Christine Baker reviews the World Digital Library. The Library of Congress introduced the concept of “an Internet-based, easily-accessible collection of the world’s cultural riches that would tell the stories and highlight the achievements of all countries and cultures, thereby promoting cross-cultural awareness and understanding.” This was presented to the U.S. National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The end result is the freely-available World Digital Library (WDL) launched in April of 2009, a highly educational and culturally rich resource for “educators, scholars, and general audiences.”
Barbara Losoff reviews Shibboleth. Shibboleth, a Hebrew watchword once used to distinguish tribal affiliation, has reemerged as a brand name for a unique middleware authentication product. Developed by Internet2, a U.S. networking consortium, Shibboleth is a federated, open source authentication suite serving research federations and higher education. Shibboleth is a freely-available product, providing seamless access across multiple institutional platforms including: databases, data, internal documents, indexes, etc. Offering a single password sign-on, Shibboleth provides a secure gateway between users and proprietary resources.
In this article, Minna Sellers reviews Mary Somerville’s book, "Working Together: Collaborative Information Practices for Organizational Learning." Adaptability is a key indicator of an organization’s capacity to respond successfully to change. Library organizations are facing enormous pressures to adapt to societal changes in order to remain relevant. This book provides a useful framework for reconstructing library organizations addressing sustainable change through collaborative processes.
Dorothea Salo reviews "Managing Research Data" edited by Graham Pryor. This volume aims at providing a high-level snapshot of the current state of the art in research-data policy, planning, management, and preservation. While few readers will find occasion to read every piece included, almost everyone in research libraries will find one or more articles of considerable interest.
Megan Welsh reviews Voyant Tools. Voyant Tools (http://voyant-tools.org/), a text analysis tool through which the written word can be understood in new ways. Voyant Tools is a free, versatile suite of web-based, text analysis and visualization tools.
