History

Have a look at this transcript which refer to E. Morris Miller and his apparent opposition to the DDC!


Two quotes:

“one of Henry Laurie's star pupils, Edmund Morris Miller”

And further on:
“Several of Laurie's pupils, in terms of outreach into the community, were active in the cultural life of the city. One form of this activity was in the area of libraries. Both Morris Miller and another philosophy graduate, Amos Brazier, worked at the Victorian Public Library, and Miller published the first Australian monograph in librarianship called 'Libraries and Education', as well as being influential in founding the Library Association of Victoria in 1912. Miller and Brazier were involved in lengthy, internal disputes with the Chief Librarian, a man called La Touche Armstrong, over many things, including the building of the famous Reading Room dome, and the introduction of the Dewey decimal system. The philosophy graduates were hotly opposed to the Dewey system. Much of their opposition seems to have sprung from the fact that philosophers were long regarded as the ideal people to classify and categories books and were employed all over the place to do so. And the Dewey system would put most of them out of an enjoyable job, of reading and classifying endless numbers of books. Miller's opposition was so strong that when he became Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Tasmania in 1928, and later Vice Chancellor of that university, he used his influence to keep the Dewey system out of the university library, until the 1950s”

Creativity in Education -Sir Ken Robinson

Creativity is the new sought-after attribute of graduates. Noel Meyers sent through the link to this interesting (and funny) conference talk on how our education system messes up our natural creativity. Well worth viewing.

Open Access publishing

BiomedCentral has launched a YouTube presence with clips of scientists discussing their research . There is a good clip on open access publishing and its benefits. Many of the arguments for OAP are the same as those we are using to promote Eprints.

Shift happens

Shift Happens is a new movement aimed at getting policymakers /legislators/educationist etc to rethink how education is approached, based on current statistical population and technology trends. This pretty impressive 8minute presentation is worth watching and will get you thinking about the importance of generic skills and our efforts at embedding etc.

Sharing, Privacy and Trust in our networked world

OCLC have just published a report on social networks and their potential for libraries. People from Germany, France, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US were interviewed to study practices of social networking and privacy issues from both the client and librarian's point of view. The report is very long at 280 (!) pages and I've only just started flicking (or scrolling) through it so I can't really comment on its contents yet.

For anyone who is interested it can be found at:

http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/

Library Arcade Games

The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries in Pittsburgh have produces two Library arcade games. Go to:

http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/index.html

See how fast you can reshelve book using LoC or how you can answer a multitude of reference questions as well as keep the people waiting happy.

article on scopus/RQF

http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/50416/

Iraq Librarian's Diary

The British Library hosts the diary of Dr Saad Eskander who is the Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive (INLA). Over a 9 month period to the end of July 2007 Dr Eskander describes what it is like to run a library during wartime. For anyone who may be interested in reading the diary it can be found at:

http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html

Thanks

Katrina

Measuring Impact and Quality.

An article that might be useful:

Title: Measuring Impact and Quality.

Authors: Tenopir, Carol

Source: Library Journal; 01/09/2007, Vol. 132 Issue 14, p30-30, 1p, 1c

Document Type: Article

Full Text Word Count: 667

ISSN: 0363-0277

Accession Number: 26520777

Database: Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre

Another one - the way of the future?

Journey into use of free software, open formats, open access, and open licensing in academia