In fact, we’re going to be setting aside offline reading mornings as a part of the project calendar, so that I (and the project team) have the time to read through the considerable literature around MRD.

The reading list is stored in RefWorks for the moment, at: http://lncn.eu/hmx5

If you have any suggestions for books, articles, or papers that the project team ought to be reading, we’d be very grateful.

• Allamaraju, S. (2010) RESTful web services cookbook. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.
• Chacon, S. (2009) Pro Git. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.
• Chodorow, K. and Dirolf, M. (2010) MongoDB: the definitive guide. Farnham: O’Reilly.
• Cohn, M. (2010) Succeeding with agile software development using Scrum. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley.
• Flanagan, D. and Matsumoto, Y. (2008) The Ruby programming language. 1st edition. Beijing; Farnham: O’Reilly.
• Lawson, B. and Sharp, R. (2010) Introducing HTML5. Berkeley, CA; London: New Riders.
• Lutz, M. and Ascher, D. (2004) Learning Python. 2nd edition. Beijing; Cambridge: O’Reilly.
• Plugge, E., Membrey, P., and Hawkins, T. (2010) The definitive guide to MongoDB: the NoSQL database for cloud and desktop computing. New York, NY: Apress.
• Powers, S. (2003) Practical RDF. Beijing; Cambridge: O’Reilly.
• Richardson, L. and Ruby, S. (2007) RESTful web services. Beijing; Farnham: O’Reilly.
• Segaran, T., Evans, C., and Taylor, J. (2009) Programming the Semantic Web. Beijing; Farnham: O’Reilly.

There’s a live copy of the same booklist on RefShare, available to download/export:

• http://lncn.eu/568

This little collection of books is designed to support the work of the new cross-University technology-for-education group, the existence of which Joss Winn announced last month. Since then, the group has been given a name: LNCD (it’s a partial pun on “linked”, suggesting “Lincoln”, and also a recursive acronym: see below and at: http://lncd.org/)

LNCD

LNCD’s Not a Central Development group

LNCD is a progressive group that includes educational developers, technologists, teachers, researchers and students and was set up to support the objectives of Student as Producer through the research and development of technology for education. The work of LNCD is informed by the progressive pedagogy of Student as Producer so as to engender critical, digitally literate staff and students. Core principles of the group are that we recognise students and staff have much to learn from each other and that students can be agents of change in the use of technology in education.

A couple of things have reminded me recently that it might be useful to describe how I use libraries.

Historical interlude: my first experience of libraries would have been in visting Cullercoats/North Tyneside Central public libraries in the ’80s. After moving down to Lincolnshire, I borrowed books from Horncastle public library (more on which later), and used my secondary school’s Jobson Library (named after local benefactor George Jobson).

As an undergraduate, I didn’t use APU’s university library all that much. I remember, vaguely, a library induction talk in a large lecture theatre. I used to cycle in to campus early and read their newspapers before my first lecture. Over three years, I might have borrowed a handful of books (not really course-related) and a few music scores. And occasionally used the study carrels to work on maths assignments, when I really needed to concentrate.

Overall, looking back, it was a bit of a missed opportunity. I didn’t understand the value of the campus library: at the time I was much more excited by our course lab and studio facilities, and by the Sinclair computing centre, which gave me my first taste of the Internet, email, IM, Yahoo! and Lycos, web design and HTML, and which stayed open until 9pm (I remember being surprised and impressed by that; just as I was by the first 24-hour garage I found in Cambridge. Such things did not exist in rural Lincolnshire).

After having worked as a librarian at the University of Lincoln for a few years, I made a slightly better stab at using the services of the Robert Gordon University’s Georgina Scott Sutherland Library while I was studying there for my MSc. Because Aberdeen is a long way away, I never actually visited the library in person (I still haven’t), but I made heavy use of both their e-resources and their postal loans service.

Now, in 2010, I regularly use the services of four libraries:

1. Horncastle public library, which is ten minutes’ walk from my front door. My children go there every week for storytime and activities. From time to time, I check my LibraryThing wishlist against the Lincolnshire County Council ‘Virtual Library‘, and reserve books to read on the bus. (What would be really nice would be if I could point my LCC library account at an RSS feed of my LibraryThing wishlist, and be alerted when a new title becomes available). And I’ve recently been getting into researching my family history, for which the public library’s online access to Ancestry is invaluable. Horncastle library has also been a great place to work ‘from home’ when the roads have been bad this winter. I’ll be pleased when they upgrade from IE6, though.
2. I’ve also joined Essex public libraries. I was tipped off about them by a colleague: they don’t require that you be resident in Essex to join, and they have a very good collection of e-books (Lincolnshire public libraries don’t do e-books, yet). I think I might also still be a member of East Riding Libraries, from when I lived in Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
3. As I mentioned last week, I often base myself in the British Library when I’m in London: because it’s so close to King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations; because they offer decent, free wi-fi; because there’s always an exhibition to see; and because there’s plenty of coffee to hand.
4. Last but not least, the 5 libraries of the University of Lincoln – because that’s where I work.

Libraries I’d like to visit include the Ward Library, Henry Bloom Noble Library, and Castletown Library (all on the Isle of Man), the Lit & Phil in Newcastle, and Cambridge University Library.

It consists of:

• A short ‘Boolean bibliography’ of books, articles and webpages about George Boole, available as a RefShare database from: http://lncn.eu/efy;
• Links to some of Boole’s significant works, all of which are available as free e-book downloads from Google Books, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, or elsewhere;
• Posters describing some of the library databases available at the University of Lincoln which contain information about Boole;
• ‘Science in Boole’s time’: a display of about a dozen [paper] books from the University’s library collections, all relating to the history of scientific thought in the middle part of the 19th century – Boole’s lifetime.

“George Boole was born the son of a cobbler in the centre of the city of Lincoln almost 200 years ago, on November 2nd 1815.  Despite having no advanced formal education, he became an internationally acclaimed mathematics professor who developed the theory of binary logic which underpins all our modern technology; from medicine to music via communications and all points between.“

I’ve commented in the past that I don’t understand why more library people—even those who don’t ‘get’ general social networking—aren’t into LibraryThing in a big way.

“From a personal profile displaying your own book collections (complete with cover images, tagging, and full bibliographic detail), via recommendations based on the similarity of your collections with others’, to a range of APIs (including free book cover images) by way of group forums and a worldwide library directory… there’s a lot here that libraries can use to enhance their services.”

So, I’ve populated my profile; a bit po-faced it is:

“I’m the electronic resources librarian at the University of Lincoln, UK. I like to read books on popular science / history of science, technology & engineering, biology/ecology (especially aquatic biology and entomology), languages, local history, railways, and some science fiction. I live in Lincolnshire.”

…and I’ve started adding, tagging and rating my books. (I haven’t got into writing reviews yet, and I don’t expect I ever will: I haven’t got the patience or the attention span.) I’ve used it as an opportunity to weed my bookshelf quite severely, too; I don’t really fetishize books-as-objects and—with a few exceptions—I don’t really care about keeping books once I’ve read them, so a lot of stuff is now boxed up to go [back] to the charity shops.

I’ve organised my books into collections (a great improvement to LibraryThing it was when they came along):

• My library: books I’m keeping hold of for the time being;
• Reference [shared]: mainly wildlife and natural history books that belong to the whole family;
• Read but unowned: ultimately this will form the bulk of stuff, including what I’ve bought and disposed of, borrowed, or downloaded;
• My wishlist of books I’d like to read;
• Lastly, what I’m currently reading.

If you want to browse my books or connect with me, I’m “pstainthorp” on LibraryThing (as I am in most places).

mosaic.2008.level1.1265378452.0000001.xml

The University of Lincoln collected one academic year’s worth of its own library book circulation data (“user activity data”) for the JISC-funded MOSAIC project, which set out to investigate the technical feasibility, service value and issues around exploiting user activity data. Data was collected for the period 1 September 2008 – 31 August 2009. Lincoln’s data was processed according to a data schema common to all participants in the MOSAIC project; any data that might be used to identify an individual library user was removed or anonymised.

View this item on the University Repository: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/2164/

Taken from: Chapman, J. (2009) Issues in contemporary documentary (with additional research by Kate Allison). Cambridge: Polity Press [Google book preview]

And:

Taken from: Chapman, J. (2007) Documentary in practice: filmmakers and production choices. Cambridge: Polity Press [Google book preview]