Delivering courses using streaming media has been an effective vehicle for online education in recent years. At San Francisco State University (SFSU), several courses are offered fully online using streaming media, and each semester over five thousand students take advantage of them. Students can view or listen to live or archived lectures online…

Data-driven learning (DDL), or corpus-based language learning, involves the learner in an exploratory task to discover appropriate expressions or collocates regarding his writing. However, the problematic units of meaning in each learner's writing are so diverse that conventional corpora often prove futile. The search engine Google with the…

Despite lower attendance than in the past and blustery, cold weather, the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Denver in January offered lots of news from industry vendors and lots of opportunities to discuss important issues and trends. In this report, the author highlights some of the most important product announcements with a…

Without a doubt, the term "wiki" has leaked into almost every discussion concerning Web 2.0. The real question becomes: Is there a place for a wiki on every library Web site? The answer should be an emphatic "yes." People often praise the wiki because it offers simple page creation and provides instant gratification for amateur Web developers.…

Google has been the search engine of choice for most Web surfers for the past half decade. More recently, the creative founders of the popular search engine have been busily creating and testing a variety of useful products that will appeal to gifted learners of varying ages. The purpose of this paper is to share information about three of these…

There is no doubt that Google is great for finding images. Simply head to its home page, click the "Images" link, enter criteria in the search box, and--voila! In this article, the authors share some of their other favorite search engines for finding images. To make sure the desired images are available for educational use, consider searching for…

The impact of the internet on the English, and global, lexicon is nothing new. It has become habitual to send e-mails or text messages in lieu of using snail-mail or calling on the phone. Many other forms of computer-mediated communication have similarly found themselves both publicly and officially recognized. In 2004, "blog" was named "Merriam…

Over the last few years, there has been a wealth of materials written and presented on next-generation library catalogs. These next-generation interfaces strive to turn "standard" integrated library systems (ILSs) into more nimble and robust search platforms that offer more user-friendly 2.0 enhancements for users. Rather than abandoning…

Personalization of user interfaces for browsing content is a key concept to ensure content accessibility. In this direction, we introduce concepts that result in the generation of personalized multimodal user interfaces for browsing XML content. User requirements concerning the browsing of a specific content type can be specified by means of…

Using the material of others without permission or attribution has always tempted students, but the internet has fed the flames by making an unlimited amount of content easily available for copying. While there are various approaches that instructors can take to combat illegal copying, studies show that when students are aware that…

Accessibility of online scientific literature continues to expand due to the advent of scholarly databases and search engines. Studies have shown that undergraduates favor using online scientific literature to address research questions, but they often do not have the skills to assess the validity of research articles. Undergraduates generally are…

The information industry continues to consolidate, just as agribusiness has consolidated and now dominates farming. Both the family farm and the small information company still exist but are becoming rarer in an age of mergers, acquisitions, and increased economies of scale. Small companies distinguish themselves by high quality, special themes,…

This article presents a Technology Forum that focuses on online archives and their role in academe. The forum brought together Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost for scholarly information and university librarian at the California Digital Library of the University of California; Adam Smith, group business-product manager for the Google Book…

Social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies led the social whirl of the information industry. Publishers and librarians tried to keep their products and services relevant by mixing authoritative content with user involvement, but that was not enough. Enhancing interfaces, adding new forms of content, and making strategic acquisitions--all are…

While the traditional uses of InterLibrary Loan (ILL) can be cumbersome, much of the work is now done electronically. Google and WorldCat can tell patrons which libraries in their areas owns the the titles they want, but they cannot always tell patrons whether there is a copy on the shelf available for loan. Several ILS vendors and OCLC are…