Friday Frags

I've been sidelined a bit this week viewing ALA's Virtual Conference, Mapping Transformation and preparing a presentation on DDA.  So this morning I've been playing catch-up with my blog reading and there are just too many interesting things to focus on one item of interest.  So here are my Friday Frags (tip o'the hat to our library's staff blog):

• Two items on Wikipedia:
• A study of how the copyright laws "impoverish" the transfer of knowledge, specifically through Wikipedia.  This is interesting because the economist uses a control group, so there is a little more validity than just descriptive stats.
• Conversely, there are much fewer contributors to Wikipedia, and more concerning is the drop of new administrators.  The article implicates the increased scrutiny that applicants are put under, with requirements of tests of copyright knowledge, essays, and reviews of past contributions and discussions regarding their input.  While this hasn't yet impacted overall stewardship, there is concern for the future of this community.  This would be a good microcosm of human behavior to study development and maturity of societies.
• The ALCTS awarded its Microgrants (sadly, I'm not a recipient), both of which were awarded different libraries of the University of Maryland.  The Health Sciences & Human Services Library will digitize early books and journals of medicine (prior to 1800), while the UM Baltimore County Library will collect, host and archive articles by faculty from open access journals that are endangered or no longer accessible.  
• The UK has been the source of several studies on the behavior of students and their interactions with libraries.  This study from JISC focused on doctoral students, most of whom could be considered within the "Generation Y".  Interesting findings include:
• Students are not participating in the scientific conversation as much as we would think.  Only 23% regularly review blogs, and only 13% actively participate, and only 9% maintain their own blogs.
• These students do not understand open access, believing that there is no positive and possibly negative value to making their own work available.
• Students predominantly rely on secondary sources, even those in the humanities.
• There is more, but it will take me a while to read through it all.
• Reports of other studies include:
• SAGE & LISU report on demonstrating library value
• Kno's report on usage patterns of e-textbooks by different student groups (lumped together by field of study).  It would be very interesting if this data could be replicated in the print world (but it would be very time-consuming and would lack the numbers for statistical analysis).
• Innovative digitization projects are cropping up, including:
• Digitizing the AIDS Quilt - not just for posterity, but also for research
• Interesting presentations & ideas related to the ALA Virtual Conference:
• Librarian by Day's post on the Needham & Williams' mantra of "Don't do more with less..." to libraries.
• Stephen Abrams' post on 3D printing - the idea of "making things" figured prominently at the Mapping Transformation conference.
• Also, Stephen Abrams' slide show: Mirages, Maps, Menus, Flowcharts & Dreams - I need to review this 'cuz I was attempting to multitask during the conference (a distinct problem of virtual conferences).

Unfortunately, that is all the time I have to write this post.  There is much more out there...