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

Introducing The Source

Digital Lives

From the British Library website

From diaries, letters, jottings and photo albums to blogging, emailing, tweeting and flickr-ing, the digital revolution has affected enormously the ways in which we record our personal lives. These largely born-digital collections will become invaluable in years to come for researchers - from biographers and historians to literary critics and scientists. Currently nobody knows for sure what is happening to this material and whether it can be made available in the future. Digital Lives (British Library) aims to begin to answer these questions.


Copyright protection and the new stakeholders in online distance education: The Play’s the Thing

From the First Monday website

This paper analyses the university as an Internet intermediary in the current climate of online distance education, classifies the stakeholders associated with the university in Web course management, and explores the need for an “Instructional Design Copyright Law”. The situation is likened to a theatrical production, with front-of-house preparations, backstage operations, and tragic characters.


2007 Canadian Internet Use

From the Statistics Canada website

Statistics Canada reveals new 2007 data from the Canadian Internet Use Survey. Interesting findings include:
* Almost three-quarters (73%), or 19.2 million Canadians aged 16 and older, went online for personal reasons during the 12 months prior to the survey
* Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week
* High-speed connections are becoming far more prevalent
* Over 9 in 10 urban home users reported using a high-speed connection, compared with just over 7 in 10 home users in rural areas
* High-speed connections are becoming far more popular
* The vast majority of Internet users aged 16 or older, 94%, reported personal Internet use from home during 2007, while 41% said they used it from work, 20% from schools and 15% from libraries
* More Canadians are participating in blogging, chatting and downloading
* Internet use rates are highest in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.


The Internet as a tool for democracy? A survey of non-profit Internet decision-makers and Web users

From the First Monday website

Although research has urged scholars and practitioners to develop the Internet as a democratic tool, little research has examined how users actually use the Internet and how the Internet is conceptualized by those who create its content — particularly in the non–profit sector where questions of democracy, interconnected communication and information gathering are often central to survival. This research surveys 688 people associated with non–profit organizations in the United States to better understand their perceptions and uses of the Internet as a tool for social change.


Home Broadband 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the Pew / Internet website

Adoption stalls for low-income Americans even as many broadband users opt for premium services that give them more speed.
Questionnaire (Note: PDF)


Reading the Future: Planning to meet Canada’s future literacy needs

From the Canadian Council on Learning website

“Reading the Future" is the first report of its kind in Canada. It provides:
* Canada's first projections of adult literacy levels, through to 2031
* an unprecedented look—more detailed than ever before—at the “face” of low literacy
* effective approaches to improve literacy among six identified groups


PDF now ISO standard

From the Government Computer News website

The International Organization for Standardization has approved the PDF as a standard format for electronic documents. ISO has christened Version 1.7 of PDF, the current working version, ISO 32000-1.
Developed by Adobe Systems, PDF is a digital document format designed to preserve the layout and appearance of an electronic document — or the scanned version of a paper document — on different platforms. Adobe submitted the format to ISO for standardization in February 2007. With Adobe relinquishing control of PDF, the ISO Document Management Applications Technical Committee will review any changes made to the format. The openly published standard provides the technical information required for writing software programs that can create and read PDF files, ensuring that organizations will always have some tools available to render PDFs, even if Adobe stops shipping its PDF viewer.