The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Bridging the digital divide: marginalised young people's use of information communication technology (Note: PDF)

From the Inspire Foundation website

The internet and mobile phones play a much greater role than expected in the lives of young people who are socially, culturally or economically marginalised, challenging the concept of the 'digital divide' which suggests that marginalised young people's use of technology is limited.


The Horizon Report (Note: PDF)

From the New Media Consortium website

The annual Horizon Report seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organisations. The main sections of the report describe six emerging technologies or practices that will likely enter mainstream use in learning-focused organisations within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. Also highlighted are a set of challenges and trends that will influence our choices in the same time frames.
Key emerging Technologies:
* Grassroots Video
* Collaboration webs
* Mobile broadband
* Data Mashups
* Collective intelligence
* Social operating systems


Courier: A Collaborative Phone-Based File Exchange System (Note: PDF)

From the Microsoft Research website

While people often carry mobile phones for communication purposes, they are generally underutilized as productivity tools, especially in the workplace. In this paper we present Courier, a system that leverages the storage capacity and communication capabilities of the mobile phone to facilitate the viewing and exchange of PC-based documents when users are away from their desks. We describe a formative evaluation of Courier’s use in a collaborative meeting setting and report on the results. While participants were enthusiastic about Courier overall, our study also highlighted usability issues that will require further refinement, such as users’ concerns with privacy, reliability and speed.


The Netherlands in Open Connection: an action plan for the use of Open Standards and Open Source Software in the public and semi-public sector

From the Free Knowledge Institute website

The Dutch government has recently launched an action plan to adopt open standards and OpenDocument Format by April 2008 in the national government. Open Standards will become mandatory and Free Software will be preferred. As the Minister of State, Frank Heemskerk, argued, this plan is not to exclude any company, but to stimulate information exchange, vendor independence and choice for various software products that implement open standards.