The future of big data

The Pew Foundation's Internet and American Life Project has just released a report on the future of big data. They asked digital stakeholders to weigh two scenarios for 2020 - one sketched out a relatively positive future where Big Data are drawn together in ways that will improve social, political, and economic intelligence and one expressed the view that Big Data could cause more problems than it solves between now and 2020. 53% opted for scenario 1 and 39% for scenario 2. It’s a very interesting report.

http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Future-of-Big-Data.aspx

AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Did you know that in 2010-11

Over 182 million items were lent to more than 10 million members of Australia’s public libraries.

Over 114 million customer visits annually, or more than 9 million per month

See the full report at http://www.nsla.org.au/sites/default/files/publications/Aust_Pub_Lib_Stats_2010-11.pdf 

Changing world of print and e-books

The latest survey by Book Industry Study Group and the Association of American Publishers finds “Publishers’ net revenue from sales of e-books more than doubled last year, reaching $2.07 billion, up from $869 million in 2010. E-books accounted for 15.5 percent of publishers’ revenues.” Print sales are, however, down “print sales suffered, dropping to $11.1 billion in 2011 from $12.1 billion in 2010”.


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Behavioural habits of the “Generation Y” PhD students

Study funded by JISC and the British Library finds “Research students need more face-to-face and informal support tailored to their own subject area to help them embrace open web technologies and social media fully”.

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What's Next for Campus Cyberinfrastructure?

EDUCAUSE ACTI Campus Cyberinfrastructure Working Group has published a paper, What's Next for Campus Cyberinfrastructure? This white paper is a broad-based response to the findings of the This white paper is a broad-based response to the findings of the ACCI Task Forces from the campus perspective. Task Forces from the campus perspective. The chapters are:

• Grand Challenges

• Campus Bridging

• Cyberlearning and Workforce Development

• Data and Visualization

• High Performance Computing

• Software for Science and Engineering

» read more

Ingrid Parent. Ingrid Parent, President of IFLA gave a very stimulating address on Thursday night to a packed audience of over 80 librarians, students and ACT community members. She emphasized that libraries play many roles that benefit individuals, communities and society in general. As an advocate in her role at IFLA,  she urges us that to realize our full potential, libraries must provide inclusive and transformative services, innovate and forge new collaborative alliances.  Her four themes are inclusion, transformation, innovation and convergence. A recording of her talk will shortly be available on ANU news http://news.anu.edu.au/

Copyright or Copywrong

Never underestimate the insanity of copyright.

The US Olympic Committee (USOC) is on to all of those who they believe are infringing their rights – be they knitters, bakers or florists. The recent insanity (see story here) involved "Ravelympics," a knitting competition for users with events like an "afghan marathon," and "scarf hockey." The article reports that Knitters were supposed to compete in their events while watching the actual Games on TV. The General Counsel for the USOC wrote “We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.” As the students would say OMG.