When you are searching in a database, sometimes there is a checkbox you can use to limit your results to peer-reviewed journal articles. There is also sometimes an indication next to each article whether or not it came from a peer-reviewed journal. As a librarian, I’d like to say that these databases are entirely to be trusted in helping you filter out just those articles that came from peer-reviewed journals, but in truth I can’t say you can trust the databases 100% of the time.
Whenever I am trying to know for sure whether a publication is a peer-reviewed one, here’s how I figure it out: I go to the website of the publication itself and see if I can tell whether it’s a peer-reviewed scholarly journal or a magazine based on the info I can see on the publication’s own website. While I may not be able to read the articles on the website of the publication, I can probably find enough clues on the site to tell.
Here’s how I proceed:
Google the name of the journal to see if I can find its home page on the web. Here are some for example:
Sometimes right on the home page, it says that it is a magazine or a peer-reviewed journal. In other cases, it doesn’t, and you have to do some digging on the website to learn more.
I look for a page on the site that is labelled something like “about” or “about us” to see if they tell me magazine or journal. For example, on the “About Us” page for KMWorld, they refer to it as a magazine.
If there is no “about us” or “about page” I look for pages that are written to let prospective authors know about submission guidelines. These pages tend to be labeled with words like “instructions for authors” or “editorial guidelines” or “submission guidelines.” If the journal is peer-reviewed the guidelines for authors page will explicitly mention peer-review as part of the submission process. For example, on the website for Knowledge Management Research & Practice is an “Instructions for Authors” page that describes how peer review works at that journal.
Sometimes a quick glance at the table of contents for a recent issue tells me all I need to know. If most of the articles in an issue have long page counts (5-6 pages at a minimum), then it is also likely a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. If all the articles are 1-2 pages, then it’s likely a magazine. If you look at the table of contents for the current issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice you can see that many of the articles are very long, a indicator that this is likely a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
You can also search for the name of the publication in a special database the library subscribes to called Ulrichsweb. When you find a listing for the publication in the database, you can see whether or not it is “refereed,” as you can see in this example:
The due date for this assignment has been moved back to Tuesday, May 13, at the start of class.
It seems like some of you are having a hard time finding a book review from a magazine or newspaper that has much in the way of criticism of Shirky’s book. It’s often the case that book reviews in publications aimed for a mass audience tend to just give an overview of the book and not much in the way of criticism. But if you dig enough, you should find one eventually.
Regarding book reviews in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, keep in mind that book reviews there are not usually peer-reviewed (and that’s find for this assignment). The main articles in a scholarly journal are peer reviewed because they are trying to present the findings of some original research conducted by the article’s author. It makes sense that you’d want a community of experts to review articles like that. In a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, though, there are usually other kinds of articles that are only looked at by the editor of the journal (and probably a copyeditor who is checking grammar and spelling). These kinds of articles tend to be short–from a single paragraph in length to several pages at most–and typically are things like:
editorials
news announcements about a conference of scholars & researchers
book reviews
The reasons why I want you to find a book review in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal are:
so I know that you are able to identify a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
so that you can find a review of Shirky that was written by someone who is more likely to be an expert on the topic than someone who wrote a review for a newspaper or magazine
so that you can find a book review that will take more of an academic approach to Shirky’s book (a magazine or newspaper is written for a mass audience and may offer a more superficial reading or review)
As you look for two book reviews about Clay Shirky’s book, it is essential that the book reviews meet the following criteria:
one review is from a magazine or newspaper
the other review is from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
each review is more than a single paragraph long (if it is too short of a review, it is unlikely to have anything in it that you can respond to in the essay that you will be writing)
each review must contain some criticism of Shirky or the book itself (if the book is just an overview of the ideas in the book, then it’s useless for this assignment)
The point of this assignment is not for you to summarize book reviews or to show me that you can find book reviews. Instead, the point is to find some criticisms that people have made of Shirky and his book and, in our own words, respond to those criticisms. Book reviews are a likely source for finding these kinds of criticisms of Shirky.
Here’s the lowdown on the quiz for next Tuesday, May 6:
At the start of class, I will give each of you the same news article
You read it and look for points of connection with the ideas in Clay Shirky’s book
You write an essay (paragraphs, please, no random sentences or bulleted lists) for the rest of the class session in which you tell me about how the book connects up with the ideas in Clay Shirky’s book (if it helps, pretend that you are Clay Shirky when you read it and think about how he’d interpret the story)
Your grade will be determined the quantity of ideas in Clay Shirky’s book that you can intelligently apply to your reading of the news article and the quality of your writing
This is an open book exam. You may use Shirky’s book, your notes, our wiki, the web, anything you want with the obvious exception what your classmates are writing for this quiz.
The final exam on May 20 (3:30-5:30) will be run the same way.
The CUNY libraries have worked together to find funding for all CUNY students, faculty, and staff, to access the New York Times at nytimes.com for a full year. All you need to do is to go to this page and in the section for “Browse/Read NYTimes.com with an Academic Pass” follow the directions to start the registration process (you must use your cuny.edu email address when registering).
Please note that once registered you will be able to:
read the New York Times at the nytimes.com site on any browser for 52 weeks from the date of your registration
install and set up the New York Times smartphone app (this service won’t work on the tablet apps, though)
Tomorrow, in our first day of class back from spring break, we’ll have our first group presentation: team 1 will present on chapter 7. Next Tuesday, we’ll hear from teams 2 and 3, and the Thursday after that from teams 4,5, and 6.
I’ve clarified some details about the presentation on the course website. Specifically, when you add a page to the wiki for your chapter that details the sources that Shirky refers to, please make sure you are creating your own version of the source notes at the back of the book. Do not copy and paste Shirky’s notes but instead make your own citations in MLA style and make sure that you organize the list into categories: books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, non-peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, blog posts, web pages, etc.
If you are uncertain about any part of this assignment, please contact me ASAP.
A post of mine from earlier in the week suggested that the library would be open it’s usual hours. I just learned yesterday that we’ll be closed a bit and not open our regular hours:
The Newman Library will be closed for periods of time during spring break to allow for repairs due to damage from last year’s water main break. The schedule below is based on estimates from the contractors. We may have to make adjustments if the work schedule requires. Please check the #Alert message at the top of the Library’s home page or the Twitter feed from CIOBARUCH for the latest status.
Monday 4/14: CLOSED
Tuesday 4/15: Open from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM ONLY
Wednesday 4/16: Open ONLY from 4:00 PM to 12:00 AM
Thursday 4/17: Open normal hours (7:00 AM to 12:00 AM)
Friday 4/18: Open normal hours (7:00 AM to 12:00 AM)
Please note that currently enrolled Baruch College students have access to the other CUNY libraries.
I’ll be around during spring break (although I make take a day or two off). If you’d like to email me or stop by my office, I’ll be here. The library will be open its regular 7 am to 12 midnight hours every day.
I’ve updated the assignments page on the course website with the new due date for homework #4 (by the start of class on May 8). I’ve also added all the details for the assignment.
We won’t be meeting for class on April 10 (next Thursday). By the end of the day (April 10), I’d like you to have posted your thoughts about the Generation Like video that we watched part of in class today. For this assignment, you will need to watch the rest of the video on your own time.
I’d like to get from each of you a blog post of 2-3 paragraphs with your reactions to the trends and ideas expressed in the video. Here are some questions to consider as you compose your response:
who are the winners in all of this? who are the losers?
is anyone being exploited?
how aware do you think the teens are of what’s going on?
Please note that you don’t need to answer these specific questions. There are provided here to get you to think a bit more deeply about the video and engage your imagination.
As a followup to the activity we did in class this past week, I thought you might be interested in seeing some numbers that show circulation data for the print and digital editions. According to a May 2013 report from the Alliance for Audited Media, circulation looks like this:
print: 731,395
digital: 1,133.923
Clearly the digital edition is more popular than the print one. If you go the New York Times website and look for the Media Kit section that offers info to potential advertisers, you can dig up some interesting details about how the readership differs. I took screenshots of the two pages–one for the print and one for the digital–that offer insights into who prefers one format over the other:
Among women there is a slight preference for the online edition over the print, although this difference probably isn’t statistically significant. There is clear evidence here, though, that the the household incomes (HHI) of print subscribers is higher than online, something that was theorized in class by some of you. It’s always good to have data to back up assertions like that.
Today, you should check your Baruch email account to look for an invite from PBworks to join a wiki that I set up for our class. PBworks is a website that lets you make your own wikis. We’ve got one now that will be all about the book we’re reading for class:
We’ll use this wiki for in-class activities from time to time as well as for a homework assignment and your group presentation. Details to come in class today.
On the Mental Floss blog this week, there’s a charming video of cute kids being asked to figure out how a rotary phone works.
The blog post also links to an earlier post that gives you a chance to hear 11 sounds of lost or or outmoded technology. And if you want to take a peek at my family’s first home computer, you can see what we had back in 1978-1983: an Apple II.
Have any of you ever used a rotary phone to make a call? If yes, is there anything that you miss about it?
In reviewing the homework as it came in, I was a bit troubled with some of the work that was submitted. Because I want to make sure that everyone can master the basic skill of distinguishing between types of publications, I’m going to make a deal with you. Anyone who wants to revise what they submitted has until the beginning of class next Tuesday to do so. After class begins next Tuesday, I’ll grade what has been submitted. For those of you who submitted your work late for today (Thursday by 2:30 pm), I’ll be taking points off for being late and then grade what you have done by Tuesday.
I noticed that almost everyone made at least one mistake on the assignment by incorrectly identifying the type of source. Other people didn’t follow the instructions to have one of each kind:
magazine article
newspaper article
peer-reviewed article from a scholarly journal
book
Some folks didn’t include a sentence for an item telling me what kind of source it was or how it was connected to the ideas in Clay Shirky’s book.
Other folks had trouble with MLA-style citations. Here is advice you’ll want to look over and then keep in mind as you examine your citations:
you don’t need to put the URL for where the article was if you found it in a database
every initial letter in the title of a book or article should be in capitals (except for prepositions and conjunctions)
Incorrect
Doyle, William R. “The politics of public college tuition and state financial aid.” Journal Of Higher Education 83.5 (2012): 617-647. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Shirky, Clay. Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.
All words in the article title should be capitalized except for the prepositions (e.g., of) and conjunctions (e.g., and)
Doyle, William R. “The Politics Of Public College Tuition And State Financial Aid.” Journal Of Higher Education 83.5 (2012): 617-647. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin Press, 2008
Prepositions (e.g., of) and conjunctions (e.g., and) should never be capitalized
Correct
Doyle, William R. “The Politics of Public College Tuition and State Financial Aid.” Journal Of Higher Education 83.5 (2012): 617-647. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. Print.
if you found the text of an article in a database, then the name of that database must be mentioned in your citation (as is the case with the citation above for an article found in Academic Search Complete)
book titles should always be in italics (this is true for your citations as well as for any sentences where you mention the title of a book) and never in quote marks
Here are some tips that may help with distinguishing between source types:
Peer-reviewed journal articles in scholarly journals
they are long; if you’ve have found something that is under 5 pages, it is probably not a peer-reviewed article
some articles in journals are longer than 5 pages (not by much) but aren’t peer-reviewed journal articles but instead write ups of conferences that people attended or are multi-authored articles where each author is engaged in a conversation with the others; a peer-reviewed article offers results on original research, not news
a book review in a scholarly journal is not a peer-reviewed journal article
Magazine articles
magazines are published on a weekly or monthly basis
they usually have one-word names or names that are just a few words
magazine articles can be anywhere from 1-20 pages, though they tend to average 2-3 pages
some magazines that publish really long articles are scholarly in nature but the articles are not peer-reviewed (that’s something that only scholarly journals do)
Newspaper articles
newspapers are usually published every day (so you browse of a list of issues for a newspaper, you’ll see a new issue for each day and if you browse a list of issues for a magazine you’ll see list of issues for each week or month)
newspapers are connected to a city or town in some way (if you don’t see the name of a town or city in the newspaper, go to the website of the source you found to see if it really looks like a newspaper)
If you are uncertain about the source type you are dealing with, you can always go to the website for it, as that will offer details about the publication (look for an “about” or “about us” section). Once you see what other kinds of articles are published there, you can usually get a sense if what you are looking at is a magazine (because all the articles look like magazine articles) or a scholarly journal (because the website mentions how articles are peer-reviewed) or a newspaper (because the rest of the articles look like news articles).
On some recent posts, I’ve seen comments that equate net neutrality with censorship of speech on the web. That’s not quite what the debate is about. Net neutrality is about whether the companies that offer internet access (cable providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable and wireless companies like AT&T and Verizon) have the right slow down internet traffic on their networks to favor some sites and services over others. Should Comcast be able to charge Netflix fees because so many Comcast customers are using their internet connections to stream Netflix content (if it did, Netflix would surely pass along those costs to its subscribers). Or consider this example taken from a recent interview on NPR with law professor Susan Crawford:
Under a recent court decision, Internet service providers, primarily cable companies, aren’t required to treat all websites equally. They can make deals to provide faster service to some, or slow down sites that refuse to pay them extra fees. Law professor Susan Crawford says you may be experiencing the effects of this — without realizing it.
Why, for example, do you have to wait for YouTube videos to buffer? Crawford explains: “You may think it’s the YouTube application. You may think there is something wrong with your computer. It’s probably the network provider making life unpleasant for YouTube because YouTube has refused to pay in order to cross its wires to reach you. And we’ll be seeing much more of that kind of activity in the future.”
This interview with Susan Crawford is great for clearly laying out the issues and for pointing out just how the lack of competition in the United States has lead us to have miserably slow and overpriced broadband internet access as compared to other developed nations.
There have been a number of great posts and comments on the blog so far. I’d like offer some suggestions and sources of inspiration if you haven’t done as much yet as you’re required to.
As you are writing your post, make sure you click the “Homework” category in the blog post if you want to get full credit for your work. Here are the posts where that “Homework” category has been clicked. If you already published a post but forgot to do this, you can always edit/update the blog post (make sure you unclick the “Uncategorized” category, which is the one that is selected by default for all new posts).
When you are writing a new post, try to point us to something(s) online rather than just offering thoughts and opinions.
If you are short on ideas for blog posts, here are some places to get ideas about interesting topics:
TechDirt. This group blog offers insights and news on topics related to the intersection of technology, information, policy, and law.
As of the morning of February 18, this is where we stand with participation on the homework assignment of writing blog posts and comments:
Number of people who haven’t written any blog posts for homework: 13
Number of people who haven’t written any comments on blog posts for homework: 16
Number of people who haven’t done blog posts or comments: 11
By next Tuesday, I need to have everyone who hasn’t participated yet to have written a few blog posts and a few comments. Please remember that nearly a third of your final grade is based on your effort on the blog with these posts and comments.
"Don’t be confused by the fact that the name of the publication you are investigating has the word “Journal" in it. Lots of publications that aren’t peer-reviewed scholarly journals have that word in the publication name, such as:
Wall Street Journal (newspaper)
Ladies Home Journal (magazine)
ABA Journal (magazine published by the American Bar Association)
The Journal of Commerce (magazine)
" posted on May 8, 2014, on the post Verifying Whether a Journal Is Peer-Reviewed
"I did a search in WorldCat, a website that aggregates the catalogs of tens of thousands of libraries worldwide--if a book has been published, you can find it listed in WorldCat--and found quite a few books on chinchillas as pets that were published before 2005. Pet stories, bookstores, and libraries were the place to go to get guides like these." posted on Mar 6, 2014, on the post The Rise of the Chinchilla
"I'm not so concerned by the need to delete content so the good stuff is more easily discoverable. In a famous presentation he gave at a conference in 2009, Clay Shirky wrote that these days we reframe the common complaint of "information overload" by seeing the situation as one of "filter failure." If we only had better systems for filtering content in ways that are customized to our interests and situation, then we might not feel so overwhelmed.
But what if we have our filters so customized that we are no longer exposed to surprising things, to things we didn't mean to run across but are glad we did?" posted on Feb 25, 2014, on the post Private: Has the YouTube business reached its peak?
"At my home, we have a rule of no screens at the dinner table. Sadly, the rest of the day is tons of screen time. I'm afraid I may be the worst offender, as I'm always carrying around my phone or tablet.
Some classes here have an assignment where the students are asked to go 24 hours with no screens. Would anyone here be interested in that? It's quite a fascinating experience to undergo if you've become permanently tethered to some gadget." posted on Feb 25, 2014, on the post Technology Dependency – Isn’t It A Choice?
"I'm not sure I see the connection between the topic of this blog post and the course. If you can make a reasonable connection, then this can count for your homework. If not, you might want to try another post on a topic directly related to the intersection of technology, society, and information." posted on Feb 25, 2014, on the post Donating to a Good Cause
"I'm not sure I see the connection between the topic of this blog post and the course. If you can make a reasonable connection, then this can count for your homework. If not, you might want to try another post on a topic directly related to the intersection of technology, society, and information." posted on Feb 25, 2014, on the post Brooklyn Nets sign Jason Collins
"The news website, The Daily Beast, published a nice set of definitions for each of these terms now available in Facebook, many of which I was pretty fuzzy on before reading the article. I'd recommend taking a look at the definitions. One thing that is helpful about this article is that it shows that the terms themselves are not settled and that debate over what terms should be the overarching ones and which ones should be examples of those overarching ones is ongoing.
In thinking about this new set of options on Facebook, we need to distinguish between sex and gender. Your sex refers to your biological components at birth, which as you know can be more complicated that a simple male/female binary. Gender refers to the social norms about behavior, personality, etc. that we may or may not embrace; it speaks more about identity issues than mere biological ones. I can indeed imagine my kids in their primary schools learning about the complexities of gender and hope that they engage with it instead of dismissing it. I agree that there is much murkiness but see that as a necessary part of what it means to critically evaluate and rethink one of the fundamental ways we group humanity into smaller segments. Just as the strict definitions of racial categories and class categories need to be examined critically, so too should issues of gender, as categories for all three of those--race, class, and gender--have been used in various ways to oppress people by papering over their differences. Labels can sometimes be empowering and sometimes the opposite; we need to think about these issues carefully and be willing to live with some ambiguities, I think." posted on Feb 20, 2014, on the post Facebook Expands Gender Choice Options
"On the PBS Idea Channel on YouTube, there is a new video this week, "Why Do We Hate Selfies?" that you may want to watch." posted on Feb 10, 2014, on the post The ‘Selfie’
"I figured out why we couldn't find your professor when we were searching for him: we had the name misspelled. It's "Merritt," not "Merit." I figured this out by going to the HCC website and using the faculty search. When "merit" failed, I tried the more common spelling of that last name, "merritt." That yielded a search result that gave his full name, what location he was at, and what department: Richard G. Merritt, Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, Northwest College. So then I went to the website for Northwest College and found this profile page about him. That page offers a link to his curriculum vitae, which you can download as a Word document and read all about his publications." posted on Feb 7, 2014, on the post Credibility
"I'm sorry to hear that's what comes to mind first. We hope to make more seating available in the library. I noticed that you mentioned the 6th floor and I was wondering if you were aware that actually that floor isn't part of the library. The library itself is just the 2nd-5th floors. The 6th floor is the main computing lab on campus (there are many others on campus, including one on the 2nd floor of the library). One really popular option for students is to borrow a laptop computer from the library and then take it someplace where there is more room. You can learn more about the laptops (and iPads) you can borrow from the Technology Loan Service page on the library website.
I see that you didn't include a title to your blog post. After you get this comment, you'll want to log back in again to the blog and edit your blog post. After you've added a title to it, click the blue update button on the right of where you were typing and the post will be published with your changes." posted on Feb 4, 2014, on the post My idea of the library
"Doug, that's interesting! As it turns out, most questions we get asked are asked at the reference desk itself. The next most popular service is probably the chat service (it's available around the clock every day of the year). After that is probably the phone, then email, then texting. I'm not quite sure why texting isn't more popular (I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have about that).
As for Twitter, we do actually have two Twitter accounts. One, @ciobaruch, is done by Arthur Downing, who is not only the Chief Librarian but also the CIO for the college. His tweets tend to be newsy kinds of announcements about new services. The other account, @baruchlibrary, is one that my supervisor and I wrote for. Our tweets are usually about new resources in the library or reminders about services that we think students might be unaware of. If you look at the library home page, on the lower left corner is a box labeled "BREAKING NEWS VIA TWITTER" that republishes the tweets from the two accounts (the box only shows the last 4 tweets). Since it sounds like you might be a Twitter user, what suggestions might you have about how the library is using Twitter so far?" posted on Jan 31, 2014, on the post My Library
"Elaine, thanks for your suggestions! If you get a chance, take a look at the new outlet we're testing at one of the tables in back of the 2nd floor (that's the side of the building that faces 26th Street). Depending on how it holds up to use and what students tell us that they like/don't like about it, that will be one of the solutions we may implement to help address the issue of the limited number of outlets.
FWIW, here are some other spots to find outlets: along the wall between the bathrooms on floors 3-5; along the walls the face into the atrium (about every 10-20 feet, you'll find one); inside the study carrels (there's a little hinged door at the back of the flat desk portion that sometimes hides a power outlet); and on the high counters right by the elevators on floors 3-5.
The library building opened in 1994, which was a few years before laptops were just starting to become affordable and lightweight. The design of the building goes back even a few more years before that, when the vision of computing was limited to desktops (and cellphone ubiquity was but science fiction dream). Over the years, we've tried to retrofit as much as possible to a more mobile computing environment: first we started lending laptops out (there are hundreds of them now), then we offered wifi, and lately, we've been loaning out iPads (regular and mini). The library is soon going to being a strategic planning process, which means in everyday language, that we're going to start a new plan for the future that will include redesigns of the interiors and an evaluation of the future viability and value of current services and resources." posted on Jan 31, 2014, on the post seats, scanners and bedbugs
"I hope we're able to offer you all the silence and books you need for your studying." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post The Library
"As long as nobody snores, right?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post People sleeping
"And when I leave the library, I sleep on the subway home. Seems like none of us are getting enough shut eye." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post The Library
"We do have a busy library, don't we! Do you like a crowd sometimes or would you prefer more solitude?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Library Thought
"I've been a librarian at Baruch for 15 years. The bedbug story is a myth (thankfully, as I wouldn't want to have to go to work there 5 days a week if it was true).
I'm kind of curious about something. If you could buy all new furniture for the library, what would want to get? Someday we will be getting new furniture, and I'd love to pass on the information you share with the person who'll be doing the purchasing." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post seats, scanners and bedbugs
"Damla, that's great! The branch libraries in NYC are so important and so underfunded. I wish they got a lot more attention." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post the library!
"Vincent, I hope you're not thinking of the times you've seen me at the reference desk. LOL!" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Thoughts about a Library
"Do you have a favorite spot in the library?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Library Post
"It's funny about the 5th floor, as that's where my office is located. There's spot in the back between the elevators and the spiral staircase that often gets noisy. A few years ago, that wasn't the case, but lately, there's been a changing bunch of folks there who sometimes get a little louder than they probably realize. I'm curious what your response is when you find someone making too much noise on one of the floors that are typically quieter than others." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Private: Library
"Cindy and Miree: what parts of the library do you think are the quietest? Do you think there are any spaces in the library where everyone seems to agree that a little noise is OK?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post The library.
"You captured a lot of the services and resources we offer in the library. I was wondering if you've ever had a question you needed to ask one of the librarians? We staff a reference desk right in the middle of the main floor and answer questions sent to us via text messages, chat messages, email, and over the phone. We often debate what to make of shifting patterns of usage of these help services. Are these services you've ever used before?
Check out the range of options on this Help page of the library website." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post My Library
"Samsunnahar, do ever check out books for leisure reading or is it always tied to schoolwork?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post How I benefit from the library
"In academic libraries across the US, the percentage of the materials budget spent on print books has declined dramatically over the last two decades for a number of reasons. The main reason, though, is that the annual subscription costs for journals has gone up at levels way past the inflation rate, eating up more and more of our budget. But as you note, Zhen, technology has also played a part, too, as new forms of information have been essential parts of any college library's collections: databases filled with numerical data, computers, networking equipment, scanners, printers, gadgets for loan, etc.
Zhen, I like your idea about the role of self-teaching in libraries. From the earliest beginnings of public libraries in the United States, one of the main goals of those who launched the institutions and managed them was to offer a place where one could learn on one's own. In past eras, librarians have spoken at length about thinking of public libraries as the people's university." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post The New Perception of Libraries
"Do you have a favorite spot to study when you're in the library?" posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post How i start to study in USA
"I pretty much do too, but for other reasons..." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Library
"Here's a secret about the library. There are two rooms--one on the 3rd floor and one on the 5th floor--where there are individual study carrels that underutilized. If you want to get one of those carrels, you'll need to stop by the circulation desk on the main floor and see if there is any space available (if there is, they'll check out a key to the room to you). The two rooms where the carrels are located are as quiet as monasteries and often half-empty." posted on Jan 30, 2014, on the post Library motivation
