Infobits is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.

Articles on E-Books in Academe
Tutorials on Using the Web for Scholarly Study
Models of Online Education
Financing Technology Infrastructure in Higher Education
Report on Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms
The Semantic Web
ERICnews Changes Format
Recommended Reading
Editor's Note

ARTICLES ON E-BOOKS IN ACADEME

"A University That Reveres Tradition Experiments With E-Books" (by Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 2001, p. A39) describes an experimental University of Virginia seminar in which students use hand-held computers loaded with all the course materials. The seminar is part of a pilot project to see if e-book technologies could allow entire courses to go "bookless." The article is available online at http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i36/36a03901.htm

Related articles from the same issue:

"Publishers Promote E-Textbooks, but Many Students and Professors Are Skeptical"
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i36/36a03502.htm

"Companies Find Academic Libraries a Key Target and a Tough Sell"
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i36/36a03701.htm

"Academic E-Publishing: Some Key Players"
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i36/36a03702.htm

"Author Says Libraries Shouldn't Abandon Paper"
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i36/36a04001.htm

The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA; tel: 202-466-1000; fax: 202-452-1033; Web: http://chronicle.com/
To subscribe contact Circulation Department, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1255 23rd Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20037 USA; tel: 800-728-2803 or 740-382-3322 (outside U.S.); email: circulation@chronicle.com; Web: http://chronicle.com/about-help.dir/subscrib.htm

For another perspective on the future of books, read "The Premature Obituary of the Book: Why Literature?" (The New Republic, May 14). Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist and professor of literature at Georgetown University, reviews the challenges facing literature and books. The article is available online at http://www.thenewrepublic.com/051401/llosa051401.html

The New Republic [ISSN 0028-6583] is published 48 times a year. For more information, contact The New Republic, 1220 19th St. NW Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-331-7494; fax: 202-331-0275; Web: http://www.tnr.com/index.html

TUTORIALS ON USING THE WEB FOR SCHOLARLY STUDY

The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) launched the Virtual Training Suite, a collaboration between 30 universities providing 40 tutorials to help people learn more about using the Internet as a source of scholarly information. Tutorial topics cover the categories of engineering and mathematics, humanities, social sciences, business and law, health and life sciences, and physical sciences. The tutorials offer self-directed learning with the help of an expert "tour guide" commissioned from universities, libraries, museums, and research institutes across the United Kingdom. The Virtual Training Suite is on the Web at http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/

The RDN is a national Internet service for academics and professionals funded by the Higher and Further Education Funding Bodies via the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and by Research Councils such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It is coordinated by the Resource Discovery Network Centre (RDNC), a center run jointly by staff from UKOLN (UK Office for Library and Information Networking at the University of Bath) and King's College London. For more information about the RDN, contact: RDNC, Kings College London, 3rd Floor, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 The Strand, London WC2R 1HH UK; email: info@rdn.ac.uk; Web: http://www.rdn.ac.uk/

MODELS OF ONLINE EDUCATION

In "The Work of Education in the Age of E-College" (First Monday, vol. 6, no. 5, May 2001) Chris Werry "outlines some of the main players and positions involved in debates about online education, and suggests some strategies that academic groups ought to explore." Werry argues for an "open source movement for academic resources . . . [that] would give teachers greater control of their resources, and better enable them to share materials with other teachers and with the public." The paper is available online at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_5/werry/

Chris Werry is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University and co-editor of Online Communities: Commerce, Community Action & the Virtual University (Prentice Hall, 2001). Contact Werry at Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, 230 Nasatir Hall, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-4452 USA; email: cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu; Web: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/drwswebb/werry.html

First Monday [ISSN: 1396-0466] is an online, peer-reviewed journal whose aim is to publish original articles about the Internet and the global information infrastructure. It is published in cooperation with the University Library, University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information, contact: First Monday, c/o Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor, PO Box 87636, Chicago IL 60680-0636 USA; email: ejv@uic.edu; Web: http://firstmonday.dk/

FINANCING TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The Lumina Foundation for Education, a private, independent foundation, addresses issues surrounding financial access, educational attainment, and opportunities for nontraditional learners. The foundation recently published "Funding the 'Infostructure': A Guide to Financing Technology Infrastructure in Higher Education" by Ronald A. Phipps and Jane V. Wellman. The report "makes recommendations that can help campus officials and state and federal policymakers develop regular funding policies for information technology . . . identifies a range of options for funding information technology, examining the advantages and drawbacks of each... [and] urges state and federal policy-makers to address the disparities in institutions' ability to pay for technology." The report is available online at http://www.luminafoundation.org/Publications/New%20Agenda%20Series/infostructofc+title.htm

For more information about the foundation and its other publications, contact: Lumina Foundation for Education, 30 South Meridian Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204-3503 USA; tel: 317-951-5704; fax: 317-951-5063; Web: http://www.luminafoundation.org/index.htm

REPORT ON INTERNET ACCESS IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND CLASSROOMS

Since 1994, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has conducted a survey of public schools' connectivity to the Internet. An annual report, "Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classroom," provides "trend analysis on the progress of public schools and classrooms in connecting to the Internet, the ratio of students to instructional computers and to instructional computers with Internet access, and the types of Internet connections used." The full text of the latest report, with data from 1994-2000, is available (in PDF format) on the Web at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001071

NCES is the primary U.S. agency for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States and other countries. For more information about NCES and their other reports, link to http://nces.ed.gov/

THE SEMANTIC WEB

The article "The Semantic Web" (by Tim Berners-Lee [inventor of the World Wide Web], James Hendler, and Ora Lassila, Scientific American, May 2001) describes how the World Wide Web will evolve into the Semantic Web which "will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for user. . . . The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The first steps in weaving the Semantic Web into the structure of the existing Web are already under way. In the near future, these developments will usher in significant new functionality as machines become much better able to process and 'understand' the data that they merely display at present." The entire article is available online at http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-lee.html

Scientific American [ISSN 0036-8733] is published monthly by Scientific American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017-1111 USA; tel: 212-754-0550; Web: http://www.sciam.com/

ERICNEWS CHANGES FORMAT

ERICNews, the U.S. Department of Education ERIC system's bimonthly electronic newsletter, will no longer be published in email format. Starting with the June 2001 issue, each month ERICNews will be published and archived on the ERIC website. Weekly ERIC announcements will continue to be published in the "New From ERIC" section at http://www.accesseric.org/

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is a national information system designed to provide ready access to an extensive body of education-related literature. Established in 1966, ERIC is supported by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement and is administered by the National Library of Education. The ERIC system is made up of sixteen subject-specific clearinghouses, associated adjunct clearinghouses, and support components which provide a variety of services and products on a broad range of education-related issues. ERIC also maintains a database of more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. For more information, contact ACCESS ERIC, 2277 Research Blvd., MS 4M, Rockville, MD 20850 USA; tel: 800-538-3742; email: accesseric@accesseric.org; Web: http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Information Technology Services at UNC-Chapel Hill

Teaching and Learning

CIT Infobits - May, 2001

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