Half of 2011 papers now free to read. Search the Internet for any research article published in 2011, and you have a 50–50 chance of downloading it for free.
This claim — made in a report1 produced for the European Commission — suggests that many more research papers are openly available online than was previously thought. The finding, released on 21 August, is heartening news for advocates of open access. But some experts are raising their eyebrows at the high numbers. There has been a steady move over the past few years towards getting research papers that are funded by government money into the public domain, and the best estimates2, 3 for the proportion of papers free online run at around 30%. But these are underestimates, argues Éric Archambault, the founder and president of Science-Metrix, a consultancy in Montreal, Canada, that conducted the analysis for the European Commission.
SOURCE: Science-Metrix But the number of peer-reviewed manuscripts made free by other means has also increased, the report says. Policy Notes, New Infographic: Good News in Fair Use for Libraries. Bexar set to turn the page on idea of books in libraries. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff is an unabashed book lover with 1,000 first editions in his private collection, but even he sees the writing on the wall.
Paper books have lost their allure, and future generations may have little use for them, Wolff contends. So when he embarked on a mission to create a countywide library system, he decided it should be bookless from the start. Today, after months of planning, Wolff and other county leaders will announce plans to launch the nation's first bookless public library system, BiblioTech, with a prototype location on the South Side opening in the fall. “If you want to get an idea what it looks like, go into an Apple store,” Wolff said. Inspired while reading Apple founder Steve Jobs' biography, Wolff said he envisions several bookless libraries around the county, including in far-flung suburbs.
“It's not a replacement for the (city) library system, it's an enhancement,” Wolff said. Not that it hasn't been contemplated. “The students love it. 10 Important Skills Students need for the Future. The future.
What do our students really need to know and be able to do to succeed in future education and careers? Content is a part of what they need to know. Standardized tests test content knowledge and some skills. There are huge debates raging over standardized testing, curriculum, and the like. But what it is that students really need to know for the future. Content is important to a point. I learned many of these skills in college because even 20 years ago, my school, WPI, understood these ideas. Research by the Institute for the Future released in a report entitled “Future Work Skills 2020″ shows that preparing for a specific career area based on content is difficult and, instead, people should be developing certain broad skills.
Here are the skills: Sense-making. Social intelligence. Novel and adaptive thinking. Cross-cultural competency. Computational thinking. Internet Catalogue. Motivating. Hisdlibrarians [licensed for non-commercial use only] / FrontPage. Libsnet.wikispaces.