CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia presentation on Summon

Many of the presentations from the recent CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia Sydney conference are now on the Conference program website.

The full list of presentations, posters and so forth is here

We gave a presentation on the usability studies conducted during 2010 and 2011 of the Serials Solutions Web scale discovery product, Summon. One key finding was that although students found the product easy to use, their skills at sifting through the results screens were not so good.

There is no full paper of the Summon presentation, however an article will be published this month's New Library World. More of that soon.

Discovering Scholarly Resources

View more presentations from Julia Gross

Anzac Day post

It's Anzac Day here so I was reminded of the photos I have and that I must get around to contacting the Australian War Memorial to see if they are interested in seeing them.

Here's a photo from the family archives of two unknown Aussie soldiers taken around the time of the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. All I know about them is they were part of the Australian Ninth Division which I wrote about previously. Here they were obviously enjoying a day off.

Early birds for CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia conference 2011

CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia conference is on again in Sydney this year: 3-6 April 2011 at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour. CCA-EDUCAUSE conference is organised by CAUDIT, CAUL and ACODE and the focus is on information technology in higher education.

This conference is attended by a range of professionals working in the higher education sector:

• IT practitioners and managers
• Teaching and learning technology practitioners and managers
• Librarians and knowledge managers
• Developers of information technologies and services for higher education

Theme for 2011 is: The game has changed

"The game has changed for information technology in higher education. Fundamental shifts in learning and teaching, research, resources, and technology mean we’re not using the same rules or playing fields anymore. According to some leading thinkers, the very survival of the university is on the line if we're not able to adapt.

What game changers do you see in your organisation? What are the new rules and who are the players? What do we need to do to adapt? And what things remain constant, no matter what the external appearances of transformation?"


Early Bird registrations close on 3 March.

Keynote speakers include:

Bryan Alexander – Director of Research at NITLE. Emerging technologies, mobile and wireless computing, digital gaming, social media.

Shirley Alexander – Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Teaching, Learning and Equity) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Professor of Learning Technologies.

Richard Katz – Consults on strategy, technology, and assessment issues with universities, governments, and corporations worldwide.

Diana Oblinger – President and CEO of EDUCAUSE. Co-author of What Business Wants from Higher Education. Co-editor of The Learning Revolution.

McKenzie Wark – Author of Gamer Theory and A Hacker Manifesto. Chair of Culture and Media, Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York.

Brad Wheeler – CIO, Indiana University. Co-founder of the Sakai Project and Kuali. Transformative software and service collaborations.

Follow @ccaeducause on Twitter for news and updates

Perth Library Unconference goes national

The Perth Library Unconference is going national for 2011.

The annual Perth Library Camp or Library UnConference has been going for a number of years, due to the enthusiasm of the "unorganisers" and the support of some local institutions.

This year it will be held to coincide with a number of national conferences happening in Perth:

The ALIA 5th New Librarians Symposium (2011) Friday 16 – Sunday 18 September 2011 and the ALIA National Library & Information Technicians Conference (Libtech) 12 - Friday 16 September 2011.

Library Camp Australia will be held in Perth on 19 September 2011, 9am to 4pm at the State Library of Western Australia:

"This will be an unconference for anyone who works in, researches, uses or is interested in libraries, following the principles that session topics are set on the day and that everyone contributes in some way. It is being organised by volunteers and so far is being supported by our generous sponsors the State Library of Western Australia and Public Libraries Western Australia.

There's also a competition to design a logo for Library Camp Australia. Check out this librariesinteract blog post.

The Twitter hashtag for Library Camp Australia is #libcampoz

coming up 2011 Teaching and Learning Forum in Perth

The 2011 Teaching and Learning Forum is coming up in Perth on 1-2 February, 2011.

This year it is being hosted at Edith Cowan University, at the Joondalup Campus.

This year's conference title and theme is: Developing student skills for the next decade

all about...

"English language proficiency, written English language proficiency, numeracy, oral communication, employability, diversity, internationalisation, information literacy, IT, interpersonal skills, critical thinking and students with disabilities."

You can register on the website: http://www.ecu.edu.au/CLT/tlf/

The details of the campus location are:

Edith Cowan University
270 Joondalup Drive
JOONDALUP WA 6027

Sharing biodiversity data on Atlas of Living Australia

Australia's biodiversity data is being shared on the wonderful new site, The Atlas of Living Australia (http://www.ala.org.au/) which was launched in November 2010 . This is an example of shared data on a huge scale and presented in a visual way that people can relate to.

The Atlas of Living Australia is a "collaborative, national project focused on making biodiversity information more accessible and useable online". The site includes sections where you:

Get started including how-to tutorials
Explore information on species, maps, collections and regions
Share sightings, photos and information

The atlas is a result collaboration between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian museums, the Australian Government and other partners.

Media release states that the site "already holds over 23 million records on the distribution of Australia’s fauna and flora, in addition to maps, images and literature. Members of the public can help to build the database by contributing local photographs and information."

Go and check it out.

Books I read in 2010

I’ve been inspired by Ruminations list of books read in 2010 to come up with my own list of what I read in 2010. I hadn’t actually kept track, apart from the bookgroup readings, but here’s an approximate list of those read in the year. New Year's Resolution read more in 2011...

B indicates the bookgroup ones and A the Australian ones.

1. A year of wonders : a novel of the plague by Geraldine Brooks
2. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
3. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The spare room by Helen Garner (A)
5. Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (A)
6. Lovesong by Alex Miller (A)
7. Purple hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
8. Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
9. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd (B)
10. The Other Side of You by Sally Vickers (B)
11. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (B)
12. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (A) (B)
13. Wanting by Richard Flanagan (A) (B)
14. The Black Englishman by Carolyn Slaughter (B)
15. The Red Highway by Nicholas Rothwell (A) (B)
16. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
17. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
18. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson
19. A Journey Tony Blair

Highlights

The Spare Room by Helen Garner would be my highlight. It's about a friend dying of cancer who comes to stay in the spare room. Don’t be put off by the subject matter as the clear writing and honesty make it shine. What a wonderful writer Helen Garner is, and she is not afraid of tackling difficult subjects. Joe Cinque's Consolation is another amazing book by HG.

Ordinary Thunderstorms is a rollicking good whodunit story about a guy who loses all his ID and survives on the streets of London while trying to get back his life and find the criminals. It would make a great movie. I’ve read another by William Boyd (Armadillo), also excellent and they did make a movie of that.

And I finally read War and Peace which, according to Elaine in Seinfeld was really meant to be called “War what is it good for” ;). Once you get your head around all the characters (hint: make a list) and the fact that they all have many different names you can get an entree into the story.

Two of these I read as ebooks on my Kindle: A Journey Tony Blair and Lovesong by Alex Miller

Six of those, the (A) ones are Australian literature. Geraldine Brooks is Australian too, but I don’t think of her as writing about Australia, especially.