Thinking about an e-reader?

From paidContent.org: Comparing E-Readers - And Tablets

Helpful chart comparing the features of various e-readers.

New business database - Gale Business Insights: Global

RRU Library has a new business database - Gale Business Insights: Global.  It's great for case studies and economic and industry information.  All our specialized databases can be accessed via the Article Databases tab on our webpage.

Aboriginal identity population projections to 2031 just released

From Statistics Canada: Population Projections by Aboriginal Identity in Canada, 2006 to 2031

"The Aboriginal identity population in Canada, estimated at 1.3 million in 2006, could reach between 1.7 million and 2.2 million in 2031 according to the scenarios developed in these population projections. Aboriginal peoples would then represent between 4.0% and 5.3% of the Canadian population, compared to 3.9% in 2006."

Canadian productivity

From the Insitute for Research on Public Policy: Cracking Canada's Productivity Conundrum

"...labour productivity growth in Canada has slowed to an average of just 0.7 percent per year in the 2000s, less than half the rate in the 1990s and far below the 2.7 percent annual growth in the United States. The productivity slowdown in manufacturing industries is even larger. This has ominous implications for income growth as well as international competitiveness."

Online textbooks?

From The New York Times: Textbooks Finally Take a Big Leap to Digital

"The potential for digital growth is leading publishers to experiment with products that stretch the boundaries of traditional textbooks, slowly turning away from static text and images toward a multimedia, intuitive approach, publishers say"

Google search algorithm revised

From The New York Times: Google Changes Search Algorithm, Trying to Make Results More Timely
"...Google revised its methods on Thursday to make the answers timelier. It is one of the biggest tweaks to Google’s search algorithm, affecting about 35 percent of all searches."

Canadians are delaying retirement

From Statistics Canada: Delayed retirement: A new trend?

"The percentage of workers 55 and over declined slowly until the mid-1990s and then rose sharply in the early 2000s. In 2010, more than 1 in 6 workers was 55 or over.' (p. 6)

Social justice in the OECD

From Bertelsmann Stiftung: Social Justice in the OECD – How Do Member States Compare?

"A cross-national comparison of social justice in the OECD shows considerable variation in the extent to which this principle is developed in these market-based democracies. According to the methodology applied in this study, Iceland and Norway are the most socially just countries... Canada (9) is the top performer among the non-European OECD states. Its high ranking can be attributed to strong results in the areas of education, labor market justice and social cohesion."

Canadian Internet use and e-commerce

Statistics Canada has recently released data on Internet use and online commerce.  Please contact us if you would like assistance accessing related CAMSIM tables.

Refworks/Write-N-Cite compatibility issues!!

Write-N-Cite is not compatible with the IE 9.0 browser. If you want to use Write-N-Cite, you will need to use a compatible browser.  A list of them is here.

Write-N-Cite is also not compatible with the MAC OS X 10.7 ("Lion") operating system. If you are using Lion, you can use the One line/Cite view as an alternative.Information on using the One line/Cite view is found on our Refworks page.

New copyright legislation

The Copyright Modernization Act  was reintroduced in the House of Commons on September 29, 2011.  A backgrounder on the legislation is found here.

How do you feel about e-books? Win a Free iPad! Take ebrary’s Student E-book Survey

Ebrary’s Student E-book Survey is here and should take less than 20 minutes to complete.

Mapping the topography of scholarship

From: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Citation by Citation, New Maps Chart Hot Research and Scholarship's Hidden Terrain

"Trapped in disciplinary valleys, surrounded by dense forests of information, researchers have a hard time seeing a lot of scholarship that might be relevant to their work, especially if it's not published in the places they already know to look."

Can disasters be prevented?

From United Nations University: WorldRiskReport 2011

"The WorldRiskReport 2011 helps to evaluate the vulnerability of societies to natural hazards. Using world maps to visualize, it shows on the one hand where the probability of a natural hazard to occur is particularly high; on the other hand it is shown in which countries the population can cope with these events especially good or bad."

New study from Statistics Canada on commuting

From Statistics Canada: Commuting to work
"Canadian commuters took an average of 26 minutes to travel to work on a typical day in 2010... Roughly 82% of commuters travelled to work by car in 2010, while 12% took public transit and 6% walked or bicycled."

More on our mobile site

If you have a mobile device (especially an iPad) and would rather use the desktop version of the RRU Library site just click on the link at the bottom of the mobile page.

Are you a super greenie?

From Docuticker: All About the Super Greenies (source: Scarborough Research)

"...five percent of the adult population are “Super Greenies” - those adults who engage in 10 or more green activities, such as recycling, using rechargeable batteries or re-using grocery store bags."

Librarian help now available on Sundays at RRU Library

Librarian help now available on Sundays, 10am – 6pm. Call (250) 391-2600, ext. 4324 or email reflib@royalroads.ca

Google and memory

From Search Engine Watch: How Google Impacts Our Memory

"...we've changed from memorizing facts to memorizing methods... it just makes more sense to conserve our brain power for tasks by using the memory-finding medium instead."

New demographic statistics available for Canada

From Statistics Canada's The Daily: Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada

Includes a review of population growth, mortality, migration and other recent demographic trends.

RRU Library has a mobile site

Mobile users coming to the RRU Library website are now automatically routed to our mobile site. It is live!

The url is m.library.royalroads.ca

New version of Refworks!

The classic RefWorks interface will be replaced by the RefWorks 2.0 interface later this year.  We strongly recommend becoming familiar with the RefWorks 2.0 interface as the classic interface will no longer exist in 2012.  Please refer to the RefWorks 2.0 tutorials and help guide and for assistance contact us.

To access Refworks 2.0 log on to your Refworks account and then select the Refworks 2.0 link in the top right corner of the page.

New Statistics Canada study: Life-path outcomes associated with reading ability

From Statistics Canada: Life-path outcomes associated with reading ability
"Young people who had low scores in reading were more likely to have ended their education with high school completion or less. Over one-half of youth (54%) who had proficiency levels below Level 3 at age 15 had not completed any education beyond high school by age 25."

Do we really read online text differently than "print"?

From First Monday, Volume 16, Number 6, June 2011
Reading revolutions: Online digital text and implications for reading in academe
by Barry W. Cull

"Over the millennia, reading has changed alongside us, and it has also changed us. Reading is a cultural activity that has changed over time, but that has also physiologically changed the brain."

GMID (Global Market Information Database) has a new name

GMID is now Passport GMID.  To access it begin at the RRU Library webpage and select the Article Databases tab, then the letter "P" and the link to Passport GMID (Global Market Information Database). 

Please contact us if you need assistance.

Interactive digital books?

From TED: Mike Matas demonstrates the next generation interactive book.

New Juristat article: Violent victimization of Aboriginal women

From Juristat (May 2011):
Violent victimization of Aboriginal women in the Canadian provinces, 2009
by Shannon Brennan

New database: IBISWorld

Our latest database is IBISWorld.

IBISWorld’s Industry Research Reports provide strategic insight and analysis on over 700 global industries.

To find IBISWorld just select the Article Databases tab on the RRU Library webpage, then the letter I.  From there you can select IBISWorld.

Strategies to avoid presentation overload

From The Chronicle of Higher Education - ProfHacker: Challenging the Presentation Paradigm with the 1/1/5 Rule

Is the 1/1/5 rule for you?

Books are dead and other myths of the 'information age'

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: 5 Myths About the 'Information Age'
"Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong..."

New paper from the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute

Can Canada Have a Grand Strategy?
By J.L. Granatstein
""...leaders of every smaller nation know from hard experience that at base their interests may be sacrificed or overridden by superpowers following their own Grand Strategy or, sometimes, selfishly or in a fit of absence of mind advancing their own national interests."

We have J.L. Granatstein's new book in the Library.

Canada's army : waging war and keeping the peace (call #: UA600 .G6597 2011)

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review is all "mobile"

EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, issue 2 (March/April 2011)
Getting a Handle on Mobile: Perspectives
Contents include:

• Mobile literacy
• E-Reading: The Transition in Higher Education
• Mobile Matters: Communication Trumps Technology
  

New Envirostats - Temperature trends in Canada

From Statistics Canada: Temperature trends in Canada (1949 - 2009)
"Analysis of seasonal national mean temperature departures from normal shows that mean winter and spring temperatures got milder over the study period with these trends showing increases of 2.4°C and 1.8°C over the past 62 years."

Foiled by copyright - Google settlement is rejected

From the NY Times: Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books
"...citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a 'de facto monopoly' and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners."

"Birds of a feather" and social media

The New York Times has reported that happy people follow the tweets of other happy people, according to a new social media and mood study.

The number of international students attending Canadian universities has doubled, says Statistics Canada

From Statistics Canada: A Changing Portrait of International Students in Canadian Universities
"In 1992, international students accounted for about 4% of all students enrolled in Canadian universities... By 2008, the share of international students had doubled compared to 1992, reaching 8% of all university students in Canada."

Latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review is available

EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 46, no. 1, 2011
Why IT Matters to Higher Education

• The Changing Landscape of Higher Education
• Open Governance in Higher Education: Extending the Past to the Future
• The Need for Student Social Media Policies
• National-Scale Solutions

NY Times article on Google search optimization

The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, by David Segal (Feb. 12, 2011)
"...the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating."

Our new website!

We've upgraded our website to help you find the information you are looking for faster, and more easily.

The exciting new addition is Summon, a single search box through which you can search most of our online tools at once. In one search you can explore EBSCO, Proquest, Sage, Emerald Journals, our book collection and more. Results are ranked by relevance and you can filter your results using menus on the left side of the page.

The Books tab allows for a quick and simple search of the RRU Library catalogue. For more advanced searching, you can click on the Advanced Search link.

The Journals by Title tab is our new label for Search RRU Journal List.

The Article Databases tab is our new label for Search for Articles. This is where you directly access EBSCO, or any of our other databases.

In addition to the new multipurpose central search box, we have also made our Resources by Program much more prominent.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments by contacting us. We look forward to hearing from you!

Emerging Technologies for Higher Education in 2011

The 2011 Horizon Report has named these emerging technologies as key trends for higher education:

• electronic books

• mobile technologies

• augmented reality

• game-based learning

• gesture-based computing

• learning analytics.
  

Find the full report here.