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Ebooks tracking readers' behaviour

From The Wall Street Journal: Your E-Book Is Reading You

"Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them."

Google tips and tricks from a Google scientist

How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques
"...advice directly from someone at Google who offers you his favorite search tools, methods and perspectives to help you find the impossible."

This is a good tip:

Use the intext command to force Google to find a keyword in the body of a webpage.

intext:[keyword]

Saving endangered languages

Endangered Languages Project

"is an online resource to record, access, and share samples of and research on endangered languages..."

No more longitudinal data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics

From Economics for Public Policy: Statistics Canada cuts long data short: another longitudinal survey is cancelled

As of the release of 2011 data next year cross-sectional estimates will be available.

Come back long form census

From University Affairs: Long-form census remains hot topic for Canadian researchers

"More than 98 percent of Canadian households responded to the 2011 short-form census, a larger percentage than in 2006. But the response rate to the 2011 voluntary National Household Survey, which replaced the mandatory long-form census, was just 69.3 percent."

Where is the Google Scholar advanced search?

The Google Scholar advanced search option has been moved!  To access it click on the down arrow on the right side of the search box.

New EDUCAUSE ebook: Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies

Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies, edited by, Diana G. Oblinger

Contents include a chapter by Mary Burgess, Royal Roads University: Using Synchronous Web Conferencing to Maintain Community at a Distance
"Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education’s mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations."

Libraries and data management

From Public Library of Science Biology (via) DocuTicker: Dealing with Data: A Case Study on Information and Data Management Literacy

"Libraries have traditionally been the place to acquire information; now they have become the place to learn how to manage it. The eagle-i Consortium, a collaborative resource sharing network, is designed to address both the researcher's data-sharing needs and the modern library's new mandate to facilitate and accelerate the discovery of new knowledge."

New Census data released

From Statistics Canada's The Daily: 2011 Census: Age and sex

"...seniors accounted for 14.8% of the population in 2011, up from 13.7% in 2006"

Cross border cloud computing - some policy considerations

From Journal of International Commerce and Economics: Policy Challenges of Cross-Border Cloud Computing
by Renee Berry and Matthew Reisman
"...the shared nature of cloud services may provide a way for a business to access applications or computing power that would otherwise be unaffordable...The potential benefits of cloud computing need to be weighed taking into account the organization’s needs in terms of privacy, security, regulatory compliance, existing hardware/infrastructure, and many other factors."

When is the best time to tweet?

From Search Engine Watch: When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr for Maximum Effect

"The best time to post content with a link on Twitter is 1 to 3 p.m. EST Monday to Thursday. Over on Facebook, between 1 and 4 p.m. mid-week is the sweet spot..."

Battle for the Internet

From The Guardian: Battle for the Internet

A series on the future of the Internet.  Highlights include:

• Big Data age puts privacy in question as information becomes currency
• Me and my data: how much do the internet giants really know?
• The online copyright war

Student services are a challenge in an online environment

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Distance-Learning Survey Shows Growing Concern for Student Services

"...student services, like library services, student orientation, tutoring, and counseling are needed to provide a well-rounded education.”

Indicators of financial inclusion

From The World Bank: Measuring Financial Inclusion

 by Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Leora Klapper

"... presents the first round of the Global Findex database, a new set of
indicators that measure how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments,
and manage risk."

New Survey of Household Spending

From Statistics Canada: Survey of Household Spending, 2010
"Provincially, the highest average spending on goods and services was by households in Alberta ($61,134), followed by households in British Columbia ($56,812)."

Students are tasked with finding information that ISN'T online

From The Note on my Door: Counterintuitive digital media assignments

"students are asked to turn their digital expertise and expectations upside-down: to use online search tools specifically for the purpose of figuring out what's not available to them with the click of a mouse... most students turned to human assistance for this assignment, or what one student referred to as the old fashioned technique, or search engine, if you will, of asking a librarian."

Latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review Magazine available

EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 47, Number 2, March/April 2012

Contents include:

• Connecting Two Worlds: Collaboration between Higher Education and Corporate Learning
• Harnessing the Power of Information Technology: Open Business Models in Higher Education

Snow cover trends in Canada

New from Statistics Canada: Study: Snow cover trends in Canada, 1972 to 2010

 
Highlights:

• mean annual area of snow cover in Canada has declined by 5.1% from 1972 to 2010
• lowest average snow cover occurred in 1998

Where is Google's Advanced Search?

From Online (March/April 2012): Advanced Search in Retreat, by Greg R. Notess

"Google has been making many interface changes over the past few months, and advanced search has been bounced around to various locations. For years, the advanced search link had been near the main search box. With design changes in 2011, the direct link to the advanced search was moved to be a drop-down choice when clicking the gear icon for options in the upper right-hand corner. Many of Google’s databases have separate advanced searches. Not all are linked in the same way."