Steven Pearlstein (of the Washington Post) wrote about a business founded on the idea that the academy should end its practice of having thousands of professors of varying skills teach the same course on every campus across the country. Instead, colleges and universities could use simple technology (i.e., a CD) to provide students with…

This paper discusses the present scenario of automation activities of university libraries in Kerala. The survey findings mainly cover various aspects of library automation such as information technology infrastructure, in-house activities, information services and their usage, manpower development, and budget. The paper briefly describes the role…

This paper discusses the reciprocal relationships among globalization, information and communication technologies (ICT), and the prospect of a "global village". The current metaphor of a "global village" (regardless of physical access to ICT) is problematic, and can be interpreted as a form of electronic colonization. However, through such…

This column is the first in a series exploring "new" expanded conceptions of literacy education. Examples of these new expanded conceptions include visual literacy, critical literacy, hypertext, media literacy, multimedia, drama, music and other less "traditional" forms of print and nonprint text. It is through discussions of these multiple…

Evidence is provided to illustrate that the current level of spending on books by English secondary schools is low with regard to maintaining existing book stocks and that parental expenditure is not making up the shortfall. An analysis of the inspection regime suggests a tendency to emphasise information and communications technology (ICT) to the…

Teacher workload has been a recurrent concern in education in England and Wales for a number of years. One possible solution that has been put forward is the greater use of information and communications technology (ICT). In the spring of 2002, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) launched a 1-year initiative called the Transforming…

The paper reports a study designed to inform the development of an information and communication technology strategy for the pre-school years of education. The main methods of collecting evidence were observations at seven pre-school settings and interviews with at least two practitioners and a number of children at each site. Practitioners…

Librarians are in the business of serving the public. Perhaps the public happens to be those who live in a particular city or county, or study at a college or university, or work at a certain organization. No matter where librarians work, they have clientele whose needs for information and entertainment need to be met. Some would think that…

The combination of wireless technology and mobile computing is resulting in escalating transformations of the educational world. The question is, how are the wireless, mobile technologies affecting the learning environment, pedagogy, and campus life? To answer this question, the current state of affairs was assessed and the surveying of…

Teachers in the author's graduate classes often say how much they would like to have a document camera in their classrooms. Since such a camera typically costs about $800, it is unlikely that many teachers will have their wish come true. In this column the author describes a simple solution: just make your own. He also looks at the issue of…

The cost of supporting information technology in colleges and universities is high and promises to rise substantially in the next few years. Technical expertise, especially among smaller institutions, is not only scarce but exceedingly vulnerable to upsurges in the IT job market. If ever there was a time to explore the benefits of…

Kansas librarians were delighted when Cindi Hickey came into their lives. Kansas is a really big state, sprawling over 82,000 square miles. For its small-town librarians, many of whom are without an MLS, professional development opportunities required hours spent driving--as well as hard-to-come-by travel money for overnight lodging. Hickey,…

As head of information technology at the Prior Health Sciences Library, Eric Schnell likes to improve products that don't fully meet his library's purposes. His first major software product, the award-winning Prospero Electronic Delivery Project, is a web-based document delivery system designed to complement Ariel[R] by converting documents to a…

Until recently, the models for conceptualizing activities in physical space and in Internet space have been limited by the thought that one or the other has to be chosen. An initial integration of these apparently disparate spaces emerged when participants in face-to-face meetings (e.g., annual professional society meetings) supplemented their…

This article offers a critique of knowledge management. The critique is empirically based on the case study of a Danish software production company's (A-Soft) knowledge management strategy of implementing an information technology (IT) tool known as 'knowledge centre' (KC). The article argues: (1) the discourses on knowledge and learning informing…