MOOCs and information Calvinism
The Loon surmised somewhat earlier that access to toll-gated material would become a topic of conversation in MOOCland. Watching today’s librarians-in-MOOCs tweetstream (hashtag #mooclib for those who...
View ArticleOn the defensive
The Loon composed herself for sleep in her nest last night musing about how the Journal of Library Administration near-unanimous editorial-board revolt meant more pressure—of all sorts: rhetorical,...
View ArticleState open-access legislation
When the august state of Illinois bruited about open-access legislation meant to apply to publicly-funded institutions, the Loon honestly believed it no more than a strange, though encouraging, fluke....
View Article“Traditional library” as euphemism
This adventure in rhetoric is a brave and useful piece that set the Loon to introspecting about her own sense of the term “traditional library.” Curiously, she finds she has never used the phrase here...
View ArticlePyrrhus lives!
Today’s announcement of an open-access policy for the entire University of California system begs the question whether all these cats could have been herded without Nature Publishing Group’s tone-deaf,...
View ArticleHurry up and wait
The Loon is in sympathy with the call (from ARL and others) for the feds to disclose agency responses to the OSTP Memo, but she suggests that the callers not hold their breath. The feds will disclose...
View ArticleWhich is it?
Either John Bohannon did not know that standard investigative methods such as he used in this jawdroppingly embarrassing article in Science Magazine require some sort of control group (or if no proper...
View ArticleAlternate interpretations
A random thought struck the Loon in the back of the head, causing a modicum of pain as well as a desire to share. Pew Internet came out with a research report a few days ago that, like essentially...
View ArticleRetrospective half credit on carve-outs
In 2012, the Loon predicted that in 2013 “pro-toll-access arguments will be nibbled to death by Loons carve-outs.” She gave herself no credit for that prediction. She may merely have been slightly...
View ArticleA hopeful sign
Something the Loon has learned about the library literature is that it is often used as a cover-one’s-cloaca device for those working on new things. If an innovation is important enough to publish...
View ArticleElectronic textbooks and iBooks
The Loon ventured a prediction a while ago that “the entire e-textbook-platform sector isn’t terribly long for this world.” A print-textbook incumbent just bought one of the more aggressive e-textbook...
View ArticleThe Library & Information Science Syllabi project
The Loon was pleased to happen across the Library & Information Science Syllabi project, and outright charmed to discover its originator’s highly laudable purpose for the site: “to continue...
View ArticleAs OSTP Memo responses trickle out…
The Loon is cautiously encouraged by the NASA and AHRQ responses to the OSTP Memo. As she said on Twitter, if everything else from federal agencies turns out to be this sensible, her prediction record...
View ArticleOn second-stringing, briefly
Though the Loon speaks several times each year, and makes a not-inconsiderable fraction of her income therefrom, she is not a marquee speaker. Pin down the first librarian you see in the street to say...
View ArticleOn so-called “inclusive access”
The Digital Reader has a rather good takedown of so-called “inclusive access” deals for electronic textbooks. They were a bad idea the last time they came around, half a decade ago or thereabouts. They...
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