Reading Is Fundamental (and in trouble)

February 17th, 2008 Stewart

President Bush is planning to eliminate RIF from the federal budget.

From the press release sent out on 2/7/08:
The following is a statement from Carol H. Rasco, president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental:

“President Bush’s proposed budget calling for the elimination of Reading Is Fundamental’s (RIF) Inexpensive Book Distribution program would be devastating to the 4.6 million children and their families who receive free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 20,000 locations throughout the U.S.

“Unless Congress reinstates $25.5 million in funding for this program, RIF would not be able to distribute 16 million books annually to the nation’s youngest and most at-risk children. RIF programs in schools, childcare centers, migrant program, military bases, and other locations serve children from low-income families, children with disabilities, foster and homeless children, and children without access to libraries. The Inexpensive Book Distribution program is authorized under the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (SEC.5451 Inexpensive Book Distribution Program for Reading Motivation) and is not funded through earmarks. It has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975.”

If you are concerned about the elimination of RIF, please consider writing an email to your congresspeople.

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Listening to: Tom Petty - The Last DJ
via FoxyTunes    

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Zotero plus 1.5 years

February 13th, 2008 Stewart

I first posted about Zotero back in September 2006, and the jury is still out. The post still gets fresh comments, though, so I thought I’d mention a few things:

• Zotero has gone from having three citation styles to having 10 built-in, with another 40 or so available for download. This in comparison with over 2,600 styles available for EndNote. Zotero includes NLM style, but still lacks ICMJE and Vancouver, both of which are vital for anyone publishing in medicine or pharmacy.
• Zotero is not available for Internet Explorer, and there are no plans to make an IE version. Love it or hate it, IE still dominates the market with about 80 percent of the overall usage. A lot of these users are our faculty and students.
• Zotero lacks the web sharing capabilities of CiteULike, and I have yet to have a good experience trying to move Zotero-collected files to any other app, particularly EndNote.

Little has changed in the last year and a half. I can see the utility of something like Zotero. An open source alternative to EndNote and RefWorks would be a welcome addition to any researcher’s arsenal. As I’ve mentioned before, embedding a reference utility directly into the web browser is a very smart idea too. I wish this product could become the “killer app” of reference managers.

Unfortunately, most of our users will not use it because it doesn’t work with their browser of choice. If they did use it, they would find it difficult to collaborate with other users who aren’t also using Zotero. And in the end, they would find their options for publishing somewhat limited by the number of citation styles available. Zotero’s developers have their work cut out for them.

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Listening to: The Call - I Still Believe (Great Design) (Live)
via FoxyTunes

Posted in citation managers, software, zotero | 8 Comments »

Growing Pains, Part II

February 11th, 2008 Stewart

The latest issue of Communications in Information Literacy was published this morning. I couldn’t be happier with the final product — We’ve got some really good articles and I think everyone involved should be really proud of their work.

We have other CIL projects waiting in the wings. One item we hope to wrap up this week or next is the print-on-demand volume (via Lulu.com). Proceeds from sales of the printed volume will help defray our publication costs, so if you are a librarian and you want to support our work, please talk with your collection managers about purchasing a volume for your stacks. Over 180 libraries have already cataloged the journal; if even half of them were to buy a copy for their print collections, that would (most likely) pay for our next six months of web hosting. We may also ask for donations in exchange for coffee mugs and other PBS-style gifts.

Also we’re about to announce the inclusion of our journal in a major library literature database. More to come about that soon.

Hopefully, other IL librarians will find what we’re doing of value. We need a primary journal for information literacy, and I think CIL is well poised to be that journal. If you have any suggestions or ideas that you would like to share, either with myself or co-editor Chris Hollister, just drop us a line at editors@comminfolit.org. Thanks!

Posted in CIL, information literacy, writing | No Comments »