doug's blog

Copyright laws were first introduced with provision for fair use - a limited ability to copy for education, art and critique. The United States and Korea have released the draft text of their free trade agreement and it completely eliminates these fair use provisions. Erosion of copyright law in this way is a worrying trend that threatens educational resources. You can read more discussion here.

BBC's technology correspondent Bill Thompson shares some personal thoughts about how student assessment is changing. Are we really assessing a student's ability when we isolate them from everyday resources like the Internet? From the article:

"the way we currently do things has more to do with satisfying the needs of university admission officers and the administrators of the Victorian civil service than helping people show their talents and abilities to the best."

Controversial words indeed...

Scourge of students everywhere, the Californian company Turnitin has been accused of breaking copyright law by two Arizona high school kids. The anti-plagiarism service is used by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries and stores each student work submitted in its database. The pair claim that it violates their right to control their own copyrighted work.

The father of one of the plaintiffs thinks schools should teach students that cheating is wrong. "You can't take a person's work and run it through a computer and make an honest person out of them" he said.

Quite.

Following a problem with our server on Wednesday, we took the opportunity to bring forward our planned move to a new home. The library site is now on a new dedicated server with more bandwidth and more space. This should mean a faster response and greater reliability for you, our visitors.

You may have noticed we're now on a new address. This was unfortunately unavoidable, so we're sorry if we've caused you any inconvenience. However, your old bookmarks should still work.

If you experience any difficulties or would like to get in touch about any other aspect of the service, please use our contact us page.

Why should we make you click a link called 'Search catalog' only to be confronted with another page where you enter your details and click 'search catalog' again? Well, we shouldn't. And now you don't have to. You can just enter your search term and click 'Search' from the library home page

You'll also notice that we've added a feature to search this site's content. There are pros and cons for using a single search box, but for the moment they're separate. If you have any comments or other ideas for improving usability, please contact us.

Researchers at Nottingham University Business School in the UK have published results indicating that experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts. Maybe last year's controversy over Wikipedia's accuracy was unfounded? Thomas Chesney, a Lecturer in Information Systems at the school urges caution in extrapolating too generally from his study. For one thing, the sample size was small. For another, 13 percent of those in the "experts" group reported finding mistakes in their assigned articles. So that's all right then.

Google Books is probably the most famous source of online books, but this article in physorg.com lists a few more.

Are e-Book readers up to the job of replacing books yet? Find out from Russel Smith's comparison of the latest models with the Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device.

A new report from the UK, says that there's now "evidence" that video games deserve a place in schools. What's the evidence? Techdirt.com points out the need for better quality research. 

Wal-Mart are looking to take shopper observation to the next level. They intend to deploy infra-red based technology for tracking shoppers' progress through their stores. Previously this was the preserve of observers with clipboards as described in Paco Underhill's Why We Buy (copy available in the IUM library).

Technology can help primary researchers gather much more raw data much more efficiently, but is this going too far?

The online game Second Life is breeding a virtual world of fashion design. The Wall Street Journal reports the same complications as the real world of fashion: 'A continuing headache for many designers is the ease with which others can copy their creations, and several have discovered boutiques that sell knockoffs of their clothes.

A psychology professor has come up with a brilliant and practical plan to save Britain from the epidemic of technology-facilitated exam cheating which is jeopardising the economy and the moral fortitude of its youth.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on Wednesday.

The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

"I'm working at a major university in the US, and have been charged with posting pod-casts of class lectures on the internet. The problem is whether or not posting the videos would allow students to skip class and just download the lecture, instead. I guess the problem is trying to strike the right balance between allowing good students to take advantage of this resource, but discourage bad students from staying at home all the time and watching all the lectures right before the exam."

After several years of argument, Ross Anderson of Cambridge University has persuaded his publisher to let him put his book "Security Engineering" online for free download.

The publishers thought for years that it was too risky to let authors put books online but they are gradually learning that this isn't so. Putting a book online often increases its sales; more people read it and those who find it useful often go buy a copy.