Table of contents: issue69

Book Review: Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 17:07:52 +0000

Wajeehah Aayeshah reviews a comprehensive book on educational games that highlights the attributes of effective games usage but which also identifies the potential problems when using them in a pedagogical context.

Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching: A Beginner’s Guide is exactly what the title maintains: a beginner’s guide. The editors and primary authors, Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley, have provided an extensive overview of using games as a pedagogical resource. While this title highlights the benefits of effective games usage, it nonetheless also identifies the potential problems when employing games in a pedagogical context.

Book Review: Mob Rule Learning

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 12:15:59 +0000

Fiona MacLellan reviews a book which discusses the current unconference phenomenon and highlights the learning opportunities that these environments offer.

The unconference phenomenon is something that I have heard lots about and have previously tried to read information about; however what this basic research has never been able to do is convince me of the necessity for the unconference or camp environment. Michelle Boule in this concise and easy-to-read book has managed to go at least part way to achieving this. Through use of case study, interview and example, the book provides an overview of the history of the unconference alongside the benefits it may represent to individuals and organisations. Boule illustrates the bene

Book Review: Implementing Technology in Libraries

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:49:35 +0000

Elizabeth McHugh reviews a first published work that she feels is a straightforward, jargon-free guide on how to implement technology solutions in libraries.

At some point in our careers there may, indeed in these fast moving technological times, will be a period or periods when we will be required to be part of, lead or manage a project implementing technology solutions in libraries. At 173 pages long, with 13 chapters and 5 appendices, the author seeks to provide the reader with a clear, practitioner-written, jargon-free guide to doing so.

Book Review: Managing Research Data

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:51:34 +0000

Sally Rumsey reviews a book which describes and explains the topics of interest central to practitioners involved with research data management.

Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are planning and implementing infrastructure and services to manage research data more urgently than they did for research publications. One policy framework sent to UK vice-chancellors from a major UK funding body (EPSRC), which set out clear expectations of responsibilities for data management at institutions within a given timetable, appears to have been the spark that prompted research data management (RDM) to be taken up by the upper echelons of management, and concrete activities set in place to start addressing the problem.

Book Review: I, Digital – A History Devoid of the Personal?

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:17:27 +0000

Chris Rusbridge reviews an edited volume that aims to fill a gap in ‘literature designed specifically to guide archivists’ thinking about personal digital materials’.

We are all too familiar with the dire predictions of coming Digital Dark Ages, when All Shall be Lost because of the fragility of our digital files and the transience of the formats. We forget, of course, that loss was always the norm. The wonderful documents in papyrus, parchment and paper that we so admire and wonder at, are the few lucky survivors of their times. Sometimes they have been carefully nurtured, sometimes they have been accidentally preserved. But almost all were lost!

Book Review: Information Need - A Theory Connecting Information Search to Knowledge Formation

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Brian Whalley reviews a book about a new theory of ‘information need’ that builds upon the ideas of Allen and Taylor from the 1960s to provide a basis for information searching.

The front cover tells you succinctly what this book is about; 'A theory Connecting - Information Search – to – Knowledge Formation.' Equally bluntly, I shall set out my credentials for this review. I am not a library/informational professional but I have an interest in delivering digital and information skills to students. I have read and reviewed this book to further my own knowledge of the subject, as well as to see what (new?) ways there are for students to use search tools and methods as well as enhance both their digital and information literacies.

Book Review: Getting Started with Cloud Computing

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:42:54 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on cloud computing that attempts to clarify the technology and its applications for librarians and information professionals.

I will admit to having read very little in the way of fiction writing over the last half-century though perhaps as a chemist by training I do enjoy science fiction from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle. All were distinguished scientists, none more so than Fred Hoyle, who was Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.