Results: Global Faculty eBook Study From ebrary; Don't Forget ebrary Discover (Free Full Text Content from More than 20,000 Books)
First, Christopher Warnock and company at ebrary have released the results of their Global Faculty eBook Study. Interesting reading for sure but remember this report was funded by ebrary.
“ebrary has personally learned a number of things from this survey, which we intend to apply to our business going forward,” said Kevin Sayar, President and Co-founder of ebrary. “For example, 57 percent of respondents indicated that students do not know how to use electronic resources provided by the library, and nearly 28 percent stated that there is not enough instruction in how to use electronic resources. Providing better and more comprehensive training is definitely one area in which ebrary can help librarians, faculty and students alike, and we will be rolling out a new global training program later this month.”
We're looking forward to seeing the training program. Of course, it's one thing to have a training program and something else for people to use it/study it. You first have to get people to use the program. We also will be looking to see if ebrary will market directly to students and faculty. In other words an ad might read, "did you know that your library offers x and x. It's available from your dorm room, office, etc. 24x.7."
• Approximately 50 percent of respondents indicated they prefer using online resources for research, class preparation, and instruction versus 18 percent who prefer print resources.
• Eighty-five percent of respondents viewed information literacy as very necessary, compared to 15 percent who stated it is somewhat necessary and less than 1 percent who find it unnecessary.
• Almost an equal number of faculty members require students to use electronic resources as print for course assignments.
• Fifty-three percent of respondents indicated that Google and other search engines are powerful tools for finding information. Twenty-nine percent indicated Google and other search engines are more useful tools than the print resources provided by the library, compared to 11 percent who indicated they are more useful than library-provided electronic resources.
FINALLY, don't forget that ebrary continues to provide the ebrary Discover service. It's completely free to search and also read more than 20,000 books online in many subject areas. Users only pay to copy or print a page. ebrary Discover is also an interesting pricing model.
1) Register for Service
2) Put a minimum of $5.00 on a credit card, this is ONLY used if you print/copy a page.
3) Download the ebrary reader.
4) Search, browse, read.
Of course, many libraries of all types also provide free access to other full text book services including:
+ Books24x7
+ Safari Tech Books
+ NetLibrary
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
