Academic Library's Responses to the Emerging Trends in Higher Education
The New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report 2014 made certain predictions about the emerging technologies and trends in higher education worldwide. The article reviews academic library’s position with reference to the predictions made by the Report. The articles briefly refers to selected trends in higher education, mentioned in the Report and reviews and discusses academic library’s present and future responses. The review and discussions are based on literature review. The articles find that academic libraries are responding to the emerging trends in higher education through innovative practices and services. It concludes that in spite of their efforts, there is still scope for the academic libraries to improve their role in the changing higher education scenario and to prove their value. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.14429/djlit.34.6.6878
A Text Mining Analysis of Academic Libraries' Tweets
Abstract This study applies a text mining approach to a significant dataset of tweets by academic libraries. The dataset for this research was collected from the complete Twitter timelines of ten academic libraries. The total dataset comprised 23,707 tweets with 17,848 mentions, 7625 hashtags, and 5974 retweets. Academic libraries from the dataset have typically posted fewer than 50 tweets per month, though tweet volume grew rapidly in late-2013 through 2014. The results show variance between academic libraries in distribution of tweets over time. The most frequent word was “open,” which was used in a variety of contexts by the academic libraries. It was noted that the most frequent bi-gram (two-word sequence) in the aggregated tweets was “special collections”. The most frequent tri-gram (three-word sequence) was “save the date”. The most frequent word categories in the semantic analysis for most libraries were related to “knowledge, insight, and information concerning personal and cultural relations”. The most common category of the tweets was “Resources” among all the selected academic libraries. These findings highlight the importance of using data- and text-mining approaches in understanding the aggregate social data of academic libraries to aid in decision-making and strategic planning for patron outreach and marketing of services.
Historias de mi barrio: contemporary art in a community at high risk of social exclusion
Abstract Historias de mi barrio is a piece of pedagogic research aimed at highlighting the way art can articulate the relationship between the educational context and a neighbourhood at high risk of social exclusion. The starting point for this study was to ask whether this type of research, centred around the arts, was suitable in complex contexts and whether it might eventually lead to pedagogic improvement. The results gathered, and indeed the work carried out by the artists and university lecturers involved, together with pupils 6–12 years old and their instructors in a state school, provide evidence of a positive answer – and notably of the necessity of knowing about the socio-economic reality of the student cohort when planning learning projects and of the importance of the arts as a crucial element in education.