More Open Access and Open Education resources

We've added a few resources to INFOMINE recently on the open access movement/debate and open education. This recent blog entry lists OpenCourseWare websites. Today we present a few items from the What's New page as well as several other resources from the INFOMINE database.

Open Access Webliography
Guide to online resources related to the open access movement. Includes "starting points," directories, organizations, blogs and more.

OpenCourseWare Finder
Search hundreds of OpenCourseWare offerings provided by universities or browse OCW courses by subject.

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
Registry of nearly 1,000 institutional repositories and open access ejournals.

Association of Research Libraries : Scholarly Communication
ARL page on scholarly communication. Topics include: new models of publishing, libraries in the marketplace, copyright and intellectual property, and licensing. Also features news on the open access movement and scholarly publishing companies.

Public Knowledge Project
Publications, research, software and other information on electronic scholarly publishing, the open access movement, knowledge management, archives harvesting and technical innovations in the information sciences.

ALA Scholarly Communication Toolkit
Articles, resources, and other tools for advocating changes in the process of scholarly communication. Site covers key areas of concern and strategies for change for academic administration, faculty, researchers, and librarians.

Of special note:

Open Access News
Peter Suber's blog is an essential reference to all the goings-on in OA.

Virtual worlds

Today we offer selected resources on virtual worlds and multiplayer gaming, including a scholarly bibliography on Second Life, research centers, and related websites exploring the many aspects of interaction in virtual and online spaces.

Second Life Annotated Bibliography
Annotated bibliography of articles, websites, and research on using the online game Second Life as an educational tool.

IBM Research : Innovation in Virtual Worlds
Information on IBM's work in virtual worlds, including Second Life. Noteworthy are the publication of IBM guidelines for employees who work in virtual worlds and other publications in the resource library section on leadership in online games and new business models.

The Psychology of Cyberspace
A constantly evolving set of texts on the psychology of online environments and the internet.

EDUCAUSE : 2007 Horizon Report
Report on the potential educational uses of social networking, mobile computing, virtual worlds, new forms of scholarly communication, user-created content, and massively multiplayer gaming.

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative : 7 Things You Should Know About...
A series from EDUCAUSE offering overviews of newer and emerging web and educational technologies. Some examples are: RSS, Wikipedia, Google Earth, social bookmarking, podcasting, virtual worlds, and blogs. Each topic is offered as a PDF.

MIT Media Lab : h2.0 Symposium Archive
Archived webcasts and presentations from an MIT symposium on the future of human adaptibility; how new technologies will change communication, ideas of self, and medicine.

Color photos from the 30s and 40s

Here is an example of libraries using popular web applications to share information and allow user interaction with the materials (tagging, comments and favorites); an amazing resource from the Library of Congress on Flickr.

Flickr : Photos from The Library of Congress

Two collections:
1930s and 1940s in color
Over 1,600 full-color images from the Great Depression and World War II eras
News in the 1910s
1,500 black-and-white images of events, news, sports, and life near the turn of the 20th century, primarily in New York City

See also: Bound for Glory : America in Color, 1939-1943 : A Library of Congress Exhibition

Election 2008, libraries, interviews, Africa, and reference

These highlights from the first two weeks of January include a very nice video resource for the 2008 presidential election, a library locator, interviews, and some reference resources. The INFOMINE What's New RSS feed will let you see all new or newly discovered resources as they are added.

C-SPAN's Campaign Network
Videos related to the 2008 presidential campaign and candidates: campaign ads, speeches, events, news coverage and a library of more than 1,000 videos searchable and organized by candidate and date.

Libraries411 : Public Library Directory, Locator, and Maps
Search by name, location, or zip code to find locations (and directions to) 20,000 public libraries in Canada and the United States.

AccessInterviews
Directory of interviews with celebrities, politicians, writers, scientists and more published by media sources online. Organized by topic and searchable.

Bloomsbury Research Centre
Searchable reference collection with 17,000 entries, from Bloomsbury Publishing. Includes quotations, dictionaries, guide to English literature, and other humanities reference materials.

Aluka : Digital Library of Scholarly Resources from and about Africa
Digital library offering more than 75 collections on Africa, containing more than 300,000 materials; books, images, documents and more.

A Student's Guide to the Medical Literature
Tutorial and resource guide to the medical literature, including search strategies, guide to critical evaluation, resource links and glossary.

And another resource on Africa, added today:
African Timelines
Created for a college course, this site has detailed timelines with copious external links on Africa from prehistory to the present.

Searching the invisible web

The idea of the invisible or deep web has often been the focus of web searching tutorials and information literacy courses. It's valuable to use a site such as INFOMINE to search for 'hidden' resources that don't usually appear in the top of your popular search engine queries. This Friday's guide offers some other resources for web searching and the deep web. With the growing numbers of institutional repositories, open access journals, and the like, it may be worthwhile to review some of these search strategies. A few tweaks allow you to use major search engines more effectively. The following resources provide more depth on these strategies and places to find what you're looking for.

Those Dark Hiding Places : The Invisible Web Revealed
The "invisible web" are those parts of the internet which, for various reasons, are inaccessible to the large search engines, or ranked so low in relevancy to the web search as to be overlooked. "Invisible" sites are often deeper layers of databases and directories, as well as dynamically-generated sites. This site points users in the direction of smaller directories with annotated information on websites in broad topic areas; databases; and search engines.

Intute : Virtual Training Suite
With segments geared toward internet users working in many different fields, these tutorials point users toward web resources specific to their fields, give information on how to judge the quality of resources found on the internet, and provide tips on web searching. The complete list of Intute tutorials is listed here by discipline.

Internet Detective : Wise up to the Web
Internet research skills tutorial for students on selecting, evaluating, and using Internet information sources for college and university work. From Intute.

Web Searching : Internet Public Library
The guide directs you to web search engines suitable for use by new searchers, experienced searchers, those looking for quality rather than quantity of resources, and those searching for specialized or arcane information. There are links to pages with search tips and to pages on evaluation of web sites.

Google Guide
Tips on effective searching with Google. Includes guides to features, search operators, understanding results, and the various tools available.

Search Engine Watch
"Search Engine Watch provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines."

Open education and course modules

Many colleges and universities are presenting their course offerings freely online, with the stipulations that no credit shall be granted and faculty are unavailable to comment on the coursework or assist learners. Examples of use: lifelong learning, comparing curricula, supporting concept-based learning or instructional design. Courses range from full academic term offerings, to learning modules, lectures, study guides, and notes. Starting with complete courses:

MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) makes freely available online course materials that are used in the teaching of more than 1,800 Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduate and graduate courses. Likely the model for many other institutions with open education materials.

As mentioned yesterday, Open Yale Courses
Free introductory undergraduate level courses from Yale University in astronomy, English, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, and religious studies. Courses include syllabi, lecture notes, exams, video and audio lectures.

Tufts OpenCourseWare
This OpenCourseWare site provided by Tufts University includes lecture notes, syllabi, extensive bibliographies, and various media presentations. Emphasis on courses in the life sciences.

OpenCourseWare at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Courses on medicine, public health, and life science.

Openlearn : The Open University
Free college-level online courses and educational materials in the arts, humanities, business, education, health, computing, math, language, science, study skills, and technology. Course level and estimated completion time are given for each unit. A feature called LabSpace offers the ability to download and "remix" course materials.

The following offer lectures, learning modules, and/or other course materials:

MIT Lecture Browser
Searchable database of MIT lectures. Keyword search or browse by category. There may be problems with the interface in some browsers.

UC Berkeley on Google Video
Course lectures, events and symposia from UC Berkeley. Topics include the sciences, arts and humanities, engineering, technology, government and public policy.

Connexions
"Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses."

OER Commons : Open Educational Resources
Database of free online educational resources for all levels. Includes complete courses, syllabi, demonstrations, tutorials, texts, lesson plans, lectures, and more. Free registration allows site users to save entries and add or share their own descriptive tags.

Also worth a look are the units available at Fathom, provided by Columbia University and iTunes U, a section of the Apple iTunes store with free educational content from many institutions.

Search for OCW
OpenCourseWare Finder
Search hundreds of OpenCourseWare offerings provided by universities or browse OCW courses by subject.

Metasearch, user-friendly government documents and free online education

Happy New Year!

As our editors return from holiday breaks, we're once again adding resources to INFOMINE.

LOUIS : The Library Of Unified Information Sources
Searchable government documents, including Congressional Reports, Congressional Record, Congressional Hearings, Federal Register, Presidential Documents, GAO Reports, Congressional Bills and Resolutions. Several search options, both within and across categories. Also see GovernmentDocs.org .

Executive Pay Finder
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers 500 filings of executive compensation disclosures and other financial data. Search by ticker symbol or company name, industry, or valuation. Datasets are also provided in the form of XBRL files.

Zuula Search
Web, image, video, news, blog, and job metasearch. View results by search engine source or customize preferences by choosing which primary search engine results to include. Link spotted on ResearchBuzz.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
"The ISFDB is a community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It links together various types of bibliographic data: author bibliographies, publication bibliographies, award listings, magazine content listings, anthology and collection content listings, and forthcoming books."

Tomorrow's entry will feature a selection of places for free college-level learning. Until then, have a look at what Yale is doing at Open Yale Courses, with free introductory undergraduate level courses from Yale University in astronomy, English, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, and religious studies. Courses include syllabi, lecture notes, exams, video and audio lectures.