INFOBITS 045 (March 1997) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/infobits/infobits-045.txt IAT INFOBITS March 1997 No. 45 ISSN 1071-5223 About INFOBITS INFOBITS is an electronic service of the Institute for Academic Technology's Information Resources Group. Each month we monitor and select from a number of information technology and instruction technology sources that come to our attention and provide brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators. ...................................................................... College Quarterly Online Internet-Accessible Scholarly Resources for Humanities and Social Sciences Is Publishing Perishing? Training the Internet Trainers Simulations in the Curriculum Librarian's Links ...................................................................... COLLEGE QUARTERLY ONLINE THE COLLEGE QUARTERLY, an academic journal devoted to the improvement of college education and the professional development of college educators, is now on the Web. Articles from 1993-96, organized by date, author, and subject, are available at http://www.collegequarterly.org/ The College Quarterly [ISSN 1195-4353] is published by Management Resources Planning, Box 362, Thornhill, Ontario Canada L3T 4A2; tel: 905-764-1246; fax: 905-764-1268; email: cq@globalserve.net Please note that the IAT Library maintains a list of journals that are in our collection. The list also includes links to titles that are available on the Web in some form (complete issues, selected articles, or tables of contents). You can view the list at http://www.iat.unc.edu/cybrary/journals.html ...................................................................... INTERNET-ACCESSIBLE SCHOLARLY RESOURCES FOR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES The February 1997 issue of the AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES NEWSLETTER (vol. 4, no. 4) summarizes the presentations of a program session on Internet-accessible scholarly resources that was held at the 1996 ACLS Annual Meeting. The panelists surveyed currently-available resources in the areas of electronic texts, images, and data collections, giving evidence of the maturation of the Internet as a tool for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. They also pointed to areas where the scholarly community should influence the future development of the Internet and the tools that scholars will need for locating and managing research materials. Presentations included "Electronic Texts: The Promise and the Reality" by Susan Hockey, Director of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities; "Images on the Internet: Issues and Opportunities" by Jennifer Trant, Principal Consultant for Archives & Museum Informatics; and "The World Wide Web as a Resource for Scholars and Students" by Richard C. Rockwell, Executive Director of the University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The entire newsletter issue is available on the Web at http://www.acls.org/n44toc.htm The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), founded in 1919, is a private, non-profit federation of 58 national scholarly organizations. Its purpose is "the advancement of humanistic studies and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national societies devoted to such studies." For more information, contact ACLS, 228 East 45th Street, New York, NY 10017-3398 USA; tel: 212-697-1505; fax: 212-949-8058; Web: http://www.acls.org/ ...................................................................... IS PUBLISHING PERISHING? The constant flow of publishers' catalogs into our offices and libraries and the explosion of book superstores with their shelves crowded with new publications gives the impression that avid readers and scholars seeking publication are truly living in a golden age. However, in "The Crushing Power of Big Publishing" (THE NATION, March 17, 1997 issue), Mark Crispin Miller, chairman of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, points out that book publishing is now controlled by fewer companies than ever before. And in many of these large corporations, book publishing is not their primary source of revenue. Miller contends that these publishers view books as just another commodity and, therefore, spend marketing money on titles that will sell fast in large quantities. He accuses them of setting low standards for the quality of what they do publish and passing over books that may be in conflict with the interests of the corporation. If this is the case, can we look to our university presses to maintain high quality and to provide a channel for scholarly works with limited audiences? Perhaps not. Miller says that academic "houses too are giving in to market pressure, dumping recondite monographs in favor of trendier academic fare or, better yet, whatever sells at Borders -- which, presumably, means few footnotes. Those publishers are so hard pressed there's talk in the academy of changing tenure rules, because it's next to impossible to get an arcane study published -- a dark development indeed." The entire article is available online at http://www.thenation.com/issue/970317/0317mill.htm A chart showing the increasing "conglomeratization" of the publishing world is available at http://www.thenation.com/extra/publish/map1.htm The Nation [ISSN 0027-8378] is published weekly by The Nation Company, L.P., 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 USA; tel: 212-242-8400; email: info@thenation.com; Web: http://www.thenation.com Subscriptions are available from The Nation, P. O. Box 37072, Boone, IA 50037 USA; tel: 800-333-8536, for $52/year (US); add $18 for surface mail postage outside USA. ...................................................................... TRAINING THE INTERNET TRAINERS In "Training the Internet Trainers" (COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES, vol. 17, no. 3, March 1997, pp. 43-45) Janet Balas contends that many librarians are designated as Internet trainers "simply on the basis of their knowing how to turn on the computer." To remedy this situation, she offers a selection of online training materials that beginning Internet trainers can use for self-instruction and in developing classes for others. One of the suggested resources is "BCK2SKOL [Back To School]: The Electronic Library Classroom 101," which originated as 30 lessons distributed by email to 200 South Carolina librarians in 1995. The revised lessons "include information on participating in mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups, and cover basic Internet tools including telnet, ftp, archie, gopher, veronica, and the World Wide Web. In addition, the class provides pointers to librarians on researching the Net in eight different academic subject areas." BCK2SKOL lessons are available at http://web.csd.sc.edu/bck2skol/bck2skol.html Janet Balas is library information systems specialist at the Monroeville Public Library in Pennsylvania. She can be reached by email at balasj@clpgh.org Computers in Libraries [ISSN 1041-7915] is published 10 times a year by Information Today, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055-8750 USA; tel: 609-654-6266; fax: 609-654-4309; email: custserv@infotoday.com; Web: http://www.infotoday.com Subscription prices per year are: $89.95 (US), $97.95 (Canada and Mexico), 68 Pounds (Europe), $105.95 (outside Europe). InterNIC's new "Academic Guide to the Internet" is another source of materials for Internet trainers. Check out this searchable database at http://ds.internic.net/aldea/attframes2.html (frames version) or http://ds.internic.net/aldea/iagitext.html (text version). ...................................................................... SIMULATIONS IN THE CURRICULUM "In the 1980s, the controversy in the world of computers and education was about whether computer literacy should be about programming.... Today, the debate about computers in education centers around the place of educational software and simulations in the curriculum." In "Seeing Through Computers: Education in a Culture of Simulation" (THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, no. 31, March/April 1997, pp. 76-82), Sherry Turkle poses some thought-provoking questions about where educational computing is taking students and teachers. Are we using computer technology not because it teaches best but because we have lost the political will to fund education adequately? Do simulations not only encourage detachment from one's work, but detachment from real life? Are students producing output from computer simulations that the computer understands, but the student doesn't? Turkle's research into these questions involved listening to the concerns voiced by computer teachers in Massachusetts public schools, talking with MIT physics and architecture faculty, and studying high school students playing SimCity, a popular simulation program. From her observations, she examines several possible responses to the "seduction of simulation": take the simulations on their own terms ("simulation resignation"), reject the use of simulations as a destructive force in education ("simulation denial"), or use the simulations while helping students learn to question the assumptions that underlie a simulation. Students can then progress from being "fluent users" to "fluent thinkers." The article, along with links to other articles in the journal's "The New Media and Learning" series, is available on the Web at http://epn.org/prospect/31/31turkfs.html Sherry Turkle's other writings on computers and society include LIFE ON THE SCREEN: IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET (1995) and THE SECOND SELF: COMPUTERS AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT (1984). The American Prospect [ISSN 1049-7285] is published bimonthly by New Prospect, Inc., P.O. Box 383080, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA; tel: 800-872-0162; fax: 617-547-3896; email: prospect@epn.org; Web: http://epn.org/prospect.html Special subscription rates are available to Internet readers: $19/year (US), $34/year (non-US). ...................................................................... LIBRARIAN'S LINKS The following IAT Information Resource Guides were checked for broken links and updated this month: Biology on the Internet: Selected Sites http://www.iat.unc.edu/guides/irg-14.html Foreign Languages on the Internet: Selected Sites http://www.iat.unc.edu/guides/irg-28.html French Language Resources on the Internet: Selected Sites http://www.iat.unc.edu/guides/irg-29.html K-12 on the Internet: How Wired Is K-12? http://www.iat.unc.edu/guides/irg-19.html A list of other documents in the IAT Information Resource Guides series is available at http://www.iat.unc.edu/guides/guides.html "Observations of a Webliographer" by the IAT librarian and Infobits editor was published in the "On the Net" column in the February 1997 issue of INFORMATION OUTLOOK (vol. 1, no. 2, p. 38). The article, located below a reprint of the January 1997 column, is available online at http://www.sla.org/pubs/serial/net.html Information Outlook [ISSN 1091-0808] is a new monthly publication of the Special Libraries Association, 1700 Eighteenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009-2514; tel: 202-234-4700, ext. 644; fax: 202-265-9317; email: sharise@sla.org; Web: http://www.sla.org/ Subscriptions are provided to SLA members. Annual non-member subscriptions are available for $65 (US); $75 (non-US). ...................................................................... Editor's Note I want to thank my former colleague Jon Pishney for reviewing and correcting my Infobits copy since the first issue in 1993. Although he is now no longer with the IAT, he continues to provide a much appreciated service, catching my typos, checking my grammar, and making sure my sentences say what I meant them to say. The quality of this newsletter owes a great deal to his assistance. Thank you, Jon! Jon publishes the ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY WEB REPORT, which is available on the Web at http://projects.iat.unc.edu/atwr/ ...................................................................... To Subscribe INFOBITS is published by the Institute for Academic Technology. The IAT is a national institute working to place higher education at the forefront of academic technology development and implementation. A partnership between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and IBM Corporation, the IAT strives to facilitate widespread use of effective and affordable technologies in higher education. To subscribe to INFOBITS, send email to listserv@unc.edu with the following message: SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS firstname lastname substituting your own first and last names. 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