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Lullabot Podcast 80: Top 40 Drupal Modules Revisited - mita

A Chapman University student group wanted to find a way to relieve stress during finals week, so it came up with an innovative approach: puppies. On Wednesday, in the middle of "cram week," a bunch of puppies will be stationed outside the university library for students to pet and play with. The event, called "Furry Friends for Finals," is being organized by the university's Active Minds club, which promotes mental awareness. Read more at: http://www.latimes.com/news... - mita

I’ve long argued that librarianship on top of digital information is about the authority/authenticity/appropriateness of the information provided to the user, as opposed to the overwhelming amounts of information available via other search tools that don’t provide that differentiation. In order to meet those tests, one thing that is clear is that libraries and librarians should never cede control to other organizations over the content they offer to their end-users. It doesn’t matter if that happens because the content providers fail to provide access via federated search, or whether the library has allowed third party organizations to determine what content they can access via a local index discovery tool. Ceding this control cripples the ability of a library to build unique and precise informational offerings that target the needs of their end-users. - mita

Kids have lasting impact on society and get the gift of their dreams when you ECHOage any birthday party. Instead of bringing wrapped and packaged presents, guests make secure online contributions that are pooled for the purchase of ONE memorable group gift and to support ONE meaningful cause. Select an eco-friendly birthday party invitation, choose a charity and invite your friends. It's that simple! - mita

The linking technologist's most important tool is a Firefox plugin called LiveHTTPHeaders. It lets you see how your browser is communicating with web servers. - mita

but, as we think about that high bounce rate, we want to help people hop around the catalog instead of coming and going so quickly. To borrow a phrase from Tom Coates, we are constructing a new view to the catalog to represent is as a web of data instead of discrete records. The more connections we can create between records, the richer that browsing experience can be. - mita

It’s a big season for books about cheese. The coming months will see the publication of books on making cheese at home, building and running a small dairy, and cooking with cheese. There are books about people who’ve devoted their lives to cheese, and even a memoir by one of them. And, of course, there are reference books (which are necessary, since there are some 700 kinds of cheese in existence). Here's a summary of what's coming up. - mita

This site is for users and publishers of open access data in the Toronto region (toronto.ca/open). It is a very early alpha release, so if you experience issues report them here. Today you can publish a request for data to the community, where members can comment and rate the request. In future iterations of this site, publishers and others will be able to post details of known and existing data sources so that community members can rate them for prioritization. Users will then be able to find data sources that have been published. - mita

Big Thinkers: James Paul Gee on Grading with Games An Arizona State University professor sees a bright future for video games in the learning process -- in and out of school. - mita

To begin with, students don’t start the research process with Google. They start with course readings — a very pragmatic choice, if you think about it. Which means that faculty members are the very first information-connection for students. - mita

"They now call cheese white gold," he said. "It's very, very expensive. I saw it today. A 500 gram brick at an [Ottawa] grocery store was on sale — $2 off. It was $6 for 500 grams, so it was $12 a kilogram. A top sirloin steak was on sale for $9 a kilogram," said Whyte in an interview with CBC News Monday. - mita

As for the embargo, that’s not new to the Google deal. UMI allows students to embargo their work for, I believe, up to 5 years. The reason is that there are great differences in what a dissertation is and how it works in different fields. In some science programs you complete your dissertation requirement by publishing a certain number of articles. The work is already published before you graduate so there’s no need to keep it under wraps. It works differently in humanity programs. In that case the dissertation is often a kind of first draft for the foundation for the first book you write after you graduate. And that book is an important piece of the portfolio that you’ll need for promotion as a faculty member. It will likely take you years to finish it and you don’t want people taking your ideas before you’d had a chance to publish your own version. - mita