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

Introducing The Source

Our Rights Our Information: Empowering people to demand rights through knowledge (Note: PDF)

From the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) website

The right to information has long been recognised as a ‘Fundamental Right’ of a free citizenry. It is from this right that other basic human rights can flow. No society can claim to be truly free unless it has both the instruments and the practice of providing its people with access to information. No government that claims to be democratic can deny its people the ability to participate in governance or itself refuse to be transparent to its people. Whether called the ‘freedom of information’ as it is in most countries or the ‘right to information’ as more recent access laws are referred to, it is the duty of governments to guarantee this right by implementing access to information laws.


NSF (National Science Foundation) and the Birth of the Internet (Macromedia Flash Player)

From the National Science Foundation website

The birth of the Internet is the subject of this engaging and well-thought out special report created by the National Science Foundation. After a brief introduction, visitors can browse through a multimedia site that includes video clips of early pioneers talking about their work on this endeavor, along with maps of Internet growth from the 1960s to the 1990s and documents such as the Lax Report. Interestingly enough the Lax Report, issued in 1982, was influential in the creation of the National Science Foundation's supercomputing centers. The materials are divided up by decade (1960s through the 2000s) and visitors can click on each section to learn about the advances and challenges faced by persons working in this field. Along the way, a small section in the bottom right-hand corner of the site keeps a running total of the baud rate and the Internet users in each decade. Of course, visitors will not want to miss the section dedicated to Mosaic, which was the browser developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the early 1990s.


Future-Proof Your Library

From the Library Journal website

Library Journal's movers & shakers strategise about how to secure a vital future.


The bipolar Pacific (Note: PDF)

From the The Centre for Independent Studies website

The Pacific is bipolar; on almost every available indicator, the Pacific’s development path is split in two. One group of Pacific islands, including Samoa, Tonga, New Caledonia, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia, is growing at a speed similar to the economies in East Asia. These countries have good education systems and useful healthcare facilities, and consequently provide better social and economic outcomes for their people. A second group of islands, including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Kiribati, are stagnant and some are even becoming poorer. Their governments fail to provide electricity, running water, sanitation, and healthcare.
The Pacific’s two groups of islands display different demographic characteristics, and different outcomes in employment, education, and other social indicators. Whereas one group of islands has moderate population growth and good education systems, the other experiences widespread illiteracy and some of the highest population growth rates in the world.


Social Media Tools Report and Tool Kit

SAMPLE of the report: (Note: PDF)
Purchase price ranges from £39.00 to £215.00, depending on license chosen.

From the FreePint website

To blog or not to blog… that’s the question that many organisations have asked themselves. They recognise that it’s time to embrace social media tools (SMTs) such as wikis, shared bookmarks, blogs-with-comments and peer-to-peer communication. At the same time, they may feel unsure about choosing which SMT best fits their situation, how to launch a successful project, or how to measure the success of their efforts. This report provides businesses with a framework for understanding the value of SMTs to their objectives, case studies of organisations that have achieved success, and a series of practical, hands-on worksheets to put project teams on the path towards success.
The report covers the following:
* How are enterprises using social media tools today?
* Assessing enterprise need
* Building the business case
* Choosing the right application
* The project team
* Vision and action statements
* Social media policies
* Encouraging adoption
* Monitoring use