literASIAN - the Little Engine that Could in Canadian Literary Canon

I'm moving out of my usual technology focus for something quite different. As a librarian, my work and passion involves both fiction and non-fiction. I even dabble in creative writing to this endeavour.  Over the years, I've learned that the Canadian literary scene is a highly exclusive anomaly.  Whether written in its national English and French languages, our country's literary canon often reflects the Canadian perspective about nature, frontier life, as well as its insecurities dealing with the rest of the world. Despite the cultural diversity of the nation - over five million Canadians identified themselves as a member of a visible minority group in the 2006 Census, accounting for 16.2% of the total population - much of the Canadian literary landscape primarily tells the story of the garrison mentality of Anglo heritage.  Occasionally there is token acknowledgement of "multiculturalism" with a smattering of cultural diversity recognized on the margins of historical misfortunes and bygone days.

literASIAN 2013 was a very unique literary festival that took place in Vancouver, Canada that almost never happened.  Without a government grant and support of Asian Canadian community, it couldn't have gathered together some of most recognized names in Canadian writing - including Joy Kogawa, Madeleine Thien, Rita Wong, Rawi Hage, Denise Chong, David HT Wong, Terry Woo - for a celebration of some of the greatest contributions to Canadian literature, "or ethnic literature," unfortunately as it is still recognized by the establishment, relegated to ethnic studies courses or marginalized for only history courses about the mistreatment of Asians during the Exclusion Era.  My friend and well-known writer Madeleine Thien puts it best when she spoke at the closing gala dinner:

In reviewing and critiquing the work of Asian, South Asian, African and Arab-Canadian writers, our critics simply do not have a great depth of knowledge — whether that be historical context or literary precedents. . . It’s only now, after more than 10 years of seeing these patterns, that I feel confident in saying it is not an anomaly but a fixed pattern that is difficult to shift.   

. . . aside from Joseph Boyden, this year’s Giller long list was composed entirely of white writers. It is worth nothing that in the last 10 years of the Writer’s Trust fiction prize, only eight non-white writers been shortlisted (this number includes Rawi Hage three times). In fact, until Esi Edugyan was shortlisted in 2011, no woman of colour had ever even been nominated in the 14-year history of the prize. In 10 years of the Giller Prize, a total of 12 non-white writers have been shortlisted. Before you celebrate, this number includes Rawi Hage, M.G. Vassanji and Michael Ondaatje each twice.

 With my friends Jim Wong-Chu, Sid Tan, Todd Wong, and colleagues from UBC Learning Exchange, we put on a great show at literASIAN, and were able to highlight our small community of writers of Asian descent for a weekend of great readings, performances, and reunions.  It's Canadian literary festivals like the Jewish Book Festival, literASIAN, and World Poetry that need continued support and offer role models for those fledgling writers who need the support system to grow and develop their voices.

Smart Technology, Context-Awareness, and the Internet of Things

---

Popular media has focused much attention on context-awareness media technology. In the May 2013 issue of Wired Magazine, its feature article Welcome to the Programmable World discusses how context-awareness technologies can soon “choreograph” to respond to our needs, solve our problems, and even save our lives. In its August issue of Wired, it features another article about context-awareness in The Age of Invisible Design Has Arrived.  Technology bloggers Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s very recently authored Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy, a book that highlights what the future will look like and, in many ways, what today already does using context-awareness technologies.

Technologist Peter Semmelhack (http://www.gadgetocracy.com/) argues that by connecting a device to a network, the aim is to exchange and share information with other devices on that same netwok. Semmelhack proposes seven key attributes called the “social seven” which I believe is an excellent framework in examining how context-aware technologies can enable educational technology designers to better design their products and machines with the end user in mind.

The Globe and Mail article The Smartphone Knows What You're Thinking in 2012 featured context-aware computing when it predicted smartphones would have sensors that could detect a person’s location, the time of day and the presence of others to tell whether a person is in a meeting or listening to a presentation, or even dismissing incoming calls or revert to silent mode.

The technology-based company, Gartner, identifies context-aware computing as one of the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011. And by 2013, Gartner predicts that more than half of Fortune 500 companies will have context-aware computing initiatives and by 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based. Connected World Magazine is already the leading business and technology publication that provides the intelligence industry titans need and the guidance consumers crave.   Do I need to say more about our upcoming connected smart-ready world?

Technology columnist Brian Proffitt predicts three things for the Internet of Things for 2014 which is insightful and helps explain what are some critical technologies that need to be in place for the IoT to be realized.   If at least one of these predictions come true, we could see a very different world of technology in the upcoming year ahead.

Prediction #1:  More commercial deals like AllSeen that will get vendors working towards a common communications platform through which devices can readily pass information along to each other. Just take a look at AllSeen Alliance get formed.

Prediction #2: Consumers will start to see more examples of device-to-device communication as more hardware vendors incorporate smarter communication devices within their products.

Prediction #3: Payment systems, whether existing credit and debit cards, new systems like Coin or all-online systems like PayPal and Google Wallet, will become more integrated with the Internet of Things, smoothing the friction for transactions.

Context-Awareness in a "Smart" World

Having recently completed a self-directed studies research project on context-awareness media in education with Dr. David Vogt, have accumulated a substantial amoung of knowledge in the cutting edge development of "smart" technologies.  Smart technologies using context-awareness is really about how machines can "talk" to each other.

What do self-driving automated cars have to do with context-awareness technology? While California recently passed the self-driving car bill, the concept of the self-driving automated car has been the fascination of engineers since the early 1930's, as revealed in this 1934 Popular Science Magazine.

Simone Fuchs, Stefan Rass, Bernhard Lamprecht, and Kyandoghere Kyamakya from the University of Klagenfurt have done extensive research on context-awareness and driver assistance systems (DAS). In their 2006 paper, "Context-Awareness and Collaborative Driving for Intelligent Vehicles and Smart Roads," the authors assert that a context-aware system is one in which there is a constant exchange of information that is generated by and for other vehicles, or "inter-vehicle collaboration" (Fuchs, et al., 2006). http://youtu.be/b_m8DqTlOLE In a way, this is already happening on a small-scale with current "self-parking" cars.

 In 2006, when the Lexus LS 460 was unveiled at Detroit's North American International Auto Show, the vehicle and its ability to parallel park itself was very a novel concept and it generated instant media buzz. A number of car manufacturers have rolled out their own self-parking systems, which guide cars into parking spaces with little help from the driver. 

• A number of companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles, including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, and Google 

• Audi's self-parking system is called Piloted Parking. 

How Self-Parking works 
The self-parking system accesses the car park's management system in order to find and allocate a free parking space and transmit the route to the car. The system uses context-awareness technology in order for a "driver-less" car to function. 

• The Advanced Parking Guidance System (APGS) for Lexus models in the United States is the first production automatic parking system 
• Since most modern car parks have more than one level or are underground, GPS-based positioning is not really an option, so instead the management system uses Wi-Fi to transmit the route. 
• Computer processors which are tied to the vehicle's (sonar warning system) feature, backup camera, and two additional forward sensors on the front side fenders. 

Sonar park sensors include multiple sensors on the forward and rear bumpers which detect obstacles, allowing the vehicle to sound warnings and calculate optimum steering angles during regular parking
These sensors in addition to the two additional parking sensors are tied to a central computer processor, which in turn is integrated with the backup camera system to provide the driver parking information

The representative box on the screen correctly identifies the parking space; if the space is large enough to park, the box will be green in color; if the box is incorrectly placed, or lined in red, using the arrow buttons moves the box until it turns green

The Social Seven Criteria 
But how do we define what is context-awareness, as oppose to something like location-based media?   Using a framework to better understand context-awareness, I chose Peter Semmelheck’s “Social Seven” criteria to help us examine the multiple layers that construct a context-aware environment.  Like a taxonomy, the social seven helps us define the characteristics of "smartness."  
Level 1 - Identity - Each driver is unique and has his or her own mobile phone; each car is assigned a unique identifier.
 Level 2 - Discoverability - Each car that enters the parking lot has sensors that automatically connect it to the system.
Level 3 - Presence - Visual and audio cues coming from the mobile will alert users that they are connected to the system.
Level 4 - Activity - There is constant communication flowing between the mobile phone app, the sensors in the car, and also the parking lot's main processor. Level 5 - Status - As the car is shifting gears and into driving mode, the central computer dashboard indicates activity is happening during the sequence of events. Level 6 - Access - Drivers must first user their mobiles to log-in to the system in order for the car to access the system (and vice versa).

Level 7 - Privileges - There is a level of control that mobile transit users can set using their mobiles so that they can let the system know how much "context" about the traveler is necessary.

The Future? Google Car The self-driving car's autonomous mechanisms are for the large part developed for Google by Stanford's Sebastian Thrun. The Google Car's underlying technologies consist of the Doppler radar and the remote-sensing laser LIDAR used in conjunction with optical sensors and General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) processing to feed data into machine learning systems that are programmed to identify threats.

For example, if a live object leaps out into the road, the Google Car's ABS brakes are automatically applied to help the driver steer around danger – or at the very least, reduce the risk of harm to the driver and passengers by pre-arming airbags and other safety systems.

The autonomous self-driving car has much potential, and its early prototypes of self-parking is immensely exciting. Yet the self-parking car that finds its own space in a vacant parking stall is by no means a social machine. The context-awareness technology is employs, using sensors so that machines can communicate with each other so that navigation can happen is a transformative educational process where drivers will have the opportunity to rethink and "re-learn" how to communicate with other drivers socially while on the road.

The eminent cognitive scientist and HCI researcher Donald Norman has long argued that designers tend to focus on technology, attempting to automate whatever possible for safety and convenience (Norman, 2009, 5). However, such "intelligence" is limited as no machine can have sufficient knowledge of the factors that go into human decision-making - the "intelligence" is in the mind of the designer. As Norman puts forth, learning to "read" machines is in fact a critical part of creating smart machines. The "smart" is really at times a misnomer.

Augmented Reality in the Library

Although still in its embryonic stages of use in libraries, museums, and art galleries, augmented reality has really taken off in the entertainment industries. For example, the British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer Tesco is using mobile technology to enable customers to scan quick response codes and look through a virtual catalog to view some of the food range that it has to offer, in addition to their collection of decorations and gifts. All of the items that are available in that catalog and in the store are also available online at the store’s official website. 

It gives consumers the chance to click and purchase the items that they want so that they can pick them up without a shipping charge at their local Metro store by the next day. Of course, the Christmas window display isn’t just designed to be a shopping experience for mobile users. This type of use of QR codes and augmented reality technology is becoming increasingly popular and has drawn a great deal of attention to retailer displays in the U.K. and many other places around the world.

I've had an opportunity to test out Layar, an augmented reality (AR) app - and found it a useful tool for highlighting the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s eighty-eight year history as the Main Library using UBC Library’s digital collections.   Patrons using their smartphones or iPads can view the current Wall of Recognition and see the wall "come alive" with archival images and videos of students and alumni talking about their experiences in the building - past and present.

In 2010’s Horizon Report, AR is forecasted as an important technology in two to three years time. While the capability to deliver augmented reality experiences has been around for decades, it is only very recently that those experiences have become easy and portable. Advances in mobile devices as well as in the different technologies that combine the real world with virtual information have led to augmented reality applications that are as near to hand as any other application on a laptop or a smart phone.   This is an exciting development, but it's still taking its time in libraries - as of yet, it's still an "emerging" technology that has yet to meet the tipping point.

3D-Printing + The Internet Of Things = Future of Things

Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft Research may bring 3D printing and the Internet of Things together without the limitations of RFID or visual encoding. Using 3D printing, researchers are looking at building unique three-dimensional codes right inside the material of the object.

What could that mean?  The ability to directly embed readable codes directly within objects that any object created in such a fashion could immediately be a part of the Internet of Things (I've discussed the IoT in the past, too). The example used by Carnegie Mellon's Karl D.D. Willis for the InfraStruct project was a robot equipped with a terahertz scanner that could seek out and find an encoded object.

That might be a vacuum cleaner trying to avoid some toys on the floor, or a factory robot seeking the exact part it needs to deliver to the assembly line. For all kinds of robotics applications, that kind of functionality would be phenomenal.

Brian Proffitt from Read Write Web believes envisions this kind of scanning technology could be used for the printed-on-demand medical devices.  Can you imagine a day when an object can be manufactured within minutes right at the healthcare facility, instead of waiting for days to get the device delivered from a factory?  I can - but first let's look at how the IoT can think.

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace - Ron Deibert at The Citizen Lab

Ron Deibert conducts some of the most provoking and controversial research around today in academica. His area of study extends beyond the international relations diplomacy to digital cyberspace all around us.  And it is all around us: we depend on it for everything we do.  Business, governance, and social relations around a planetary network rely heavily on the Internet. Ron Deibert, one of Canada's leading expert on digital technology, security, and human rights, reaches far into the dark corners of the hidden Web, and examines how seemingly powerful but mostly invisible agents are scrambling for control.

Deibert's Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has been an innovative hub of excavating cyber criminal activities at the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), human rights, and global security.  "Cybergangs" such as Koobface have made social media their stalking ground, and that is where the Citizen Lab comes in.  Deibert's work at the Munk School of Global Affairs has completed some amazing findings, and its results form the foundation in the recent publication of Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace.  

Drawing on the first-hand experiences of one of the most important protagonists in the battle — the Citizen Lab and its global network of frontline researchers have spent more than a decade cracking cyber espionage rings and uncovering attacks on citizens and NGOs worldwide — Black Code takes readers on a fascinating journey into the battle for cyberspace.   It reveals how governments limit as much as possible how much is revealed about its surveillance and digital espionage wars with cyber criminals.  We only know partially the inner workings of Koobface, one of the deadliest computer worms out there that targets social networks, even though much of it has been researched thanks to government interference.  

Ron Deibert's background is equally fascinating as the work he conducts as an academic researcher.  Born and raised in the blue-collar Eastside Vancouver in 1964, Deibert was an occasional delinquent and mildly struggling student whose application to study journalism at community college was rejected. 

Interestingly, graduate studies in international relations at Queen’s University followed along with a fortunate encounter with a sympathetic professor who helped him secure a place in the doctoral program at the UBC Political Science department after being rejected on his first try.  A fledgling student with a fuzzy focus on what to write his dissertation on, Deibert eventually realized that information technology, particularly the nascent Internet, would revolutionize world politics and change his life.  The rest is history, of course.

Recommended Reading:
Koobface: Inside a Crimeware Network by Nart Villeneuve, with a foreword by Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski. [Link]

The Vancouver Police Museum and Immersive Programming

The Vancouver Police Museum, the oldest police museum in North America, is one of my favourite visits in the city of Vancouver, BC.   Long considered one of the best police museums in the world by the International Police Association, is looking for a Foreign Language Programmer.  It's a wonderfully creative position and certainly one which I haven't seen before in public programming.  The Vancouver Police Museum's public programs are ranked among the best in the city by Yelp.com, and canoe.ca rated the museum's Sins of the City program one of the World's Ten Best City Walks.

Through its expansion of programs, museum is striving attract more foreign visitors, primarily from Europe (hence the German language requirement).  It is seeking an organized, motivated and creative individual to join its team, and will take the lead in transforming current English-based programs and literature, initially into French and German, and later into other European languages.  The Foreign Language Programmer will play a leading role in marketing the museum and its programs to European visitors, and have a clear voice on the museum's vision of public programs.   It's worth taking a look.

From Open Stacks to Open Access - the Long History of University Libraries

Image courtesy: University of Idaho Library

Though difficult to imagine, the concept of the modern library with open stacks fully flushed with mass collections for faculty and students to browse through.  For much of the twentieth century, most academic research libraries functioned with "closed stacks", meaning staff had to retrieve materials as users requested them, so the loans and periodicals desks were busy as you can see from the image above.

It really wasn't until the 1970s that research libraries began to alter its relationship with its users. Shill's 1980 report in the College and Research Libraries is one of the earliest and foremost studies done on the impacts of open stacks.  Although the utility of open stack systems has been widely debated up to that time (there were some that still held back on "opening" up their collections), not much empirical research relevant to the so-called controversy was available until Shill's work.

Using circulation, book availability, and search and library-use statistics of the main library at West Virginia University, major elements of the direct access debate were tested in a six-year study of the library that has recently undergone the transition from closed to open stacks in 1976.   The thinking at the time was that closed stack arrangements conserved shelf space and made detailed subject classification unnecessary.

Shill's findings disproved the conventional assumption at the time of a zero-sum game in which open stack systems would increase circulation to the detriment of book availability.  West Virginia University Library's three-year period revealed that was simply not the case; rather, a sharp increase in building occurred.  In fact, as the data reveals in Table 1, patrons actually used the library more with the novel idea of allowing them to physically access the books all by themselves.

This flashback is an example of how far the library has come in a relatively short amount of time.  Now the library world has moved beyond the physic collections, and is grappling with the notion of open access.  Academic librarians push hard for faculty and student research to be widely accessible for the online world.  I'm especially looking forward to this year's Open Access Week because we've finally reached the sixth year.  (It's felt longer!)

For more reading:

Shill, Harold B. "Open Stacks Library Performance." College and Research Libraries 41.3 (1980): 220-26. [Link]

Rovelstad, Mathilde V. "Open Shelves/Closed Shelves in Research Libraries."College and Research Libraries 37.5 (1976): 457-67.

What Are Innovative Early Adopters Doing with 3D Printing in Libraries?

3D Printing at Rodgers Library 

Like a computer printer, a 3D printer processes directions from your computer and “prints out” those instructions. However, instead of ink on paper it prints in plastic and silicon – for those curious, even chocolate and frosting. Libraries have a central role to play in this emergent technology. In its position as a nexus for research on university campuses, academic libraries should function as universal access points for these technologies.

By offering 3D scanning technology,  libraries can use this technology internally for archival purposes whie also opportunities for self-education and lifelong learning for its students and faculty. For instance, Engineering and architecture students can create and manipulate 3-D designs in programs like AutoCAD in order to print inexpensive prototype versions of their designs, which they can review and rework as they see fit.  Can you imagine the possibilities of this technology?  What libraries are innovative in the area of 3D printing? Here are some early adopters:

Dalhousie Libraries - NextEngine 3D scanner and a MakerBot Replicator 3D

Dalhousie Libraries combines the NextEngine 3D scanner and MakerBot Replicator 3D printer. Since a higher end 3D scanner was already available in the engineering department, the NextEngine 3D scanner was a good starting point for other Faculties interested in experimenting with the technology. The NextEngine 3D scanner also allowed the various museums, archives, and the art gallery on campus to digitize various items from their physical collections.

Fayetteville Free Library - the Fab Lab

The Fayetteville Free Library, in Fayetteville New York, has opened the FFL Fab Lab where they offer diverse DIY (do-it-yourself) programming ranging from creative writing, book making, 3D printing and have free access to 3D printing technology.

3D Printing Studio at The University of Alabama Libraries

UA Libraries uses a Bits from Bytes (BFB) 3D Touch double head printer for its 3D Printing Studio. In its workshops, workshops, users have came from various departments such as Art, Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and English. Studio location, implementation of a two-step training process, and independent user operation have all contributed to making the UA Libraries 3D Printing Studio

a successful pilot project.

Recommended Reading and Resources:

Groenendyk, Michael. "A Further Investigation into 3D Printing and 3D Scanning at the Dalhousie University Libraries: a Year Long Case Study." (2013). [Link]

Heater, Brian. “The shape of things to come: A consumer's guide to 3D printers.” Endgadget. Jan 29th, 2013. [Link]

Ratto, Matt, and Robert Ree. "Materializing information: 3D printing and social change." First Monday 17.7 (2012). [Link]

Scalfani, Vincent F., and Josh Sahib. "A Model for Managing 3D Printing Services in Academic Libraries." Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship (2013). [Link]

Tweney, Dylan. "DIY freaks flock to hackerspaces worldwide." Wired, March, available at: www. wired. com/gadgetlab/2009/03/hackerspaces/(accessed September 24, 2012) (2009). [Link]

Gesture-Based Computing Technology Comes in Leaps and Bounds

---

The Horizon Report 2012 had accurately forecast that gesture-based computing would be an important technology to watch out for.   Although gamers are already familiar with Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect system extend  that to hand and arm motions, or body movement, these first-generation technologies were often clunky and had limited movement and mobility.  Gesture-based technology (also known as motion control) is much more than just gaming as it promises to revolutionize the way we interact with computing technology.

One of the earliest companies coming out of the gate is Leap Motion, which has designed and will be launching a device that allows users to bring “motion control” to their computers.  How will it look?  Perhaps similar to how Captain John Anderton managed multiple computer screens using motion control in Minority Report.  Imagine that we could be seeing the end of the keyboard and mouse.

As Leap Motion becomes reality using a small box the size of a matchbox to handle motion control technology, users can navigate on their screens by waving their hands in the air, and launch and play games on PCs without ever touching the keyboard or mouse.  A sensor is placed on his desk in front of the screen and connects via USB. Once connected, gesture-based computing allows users to engage in virtual activities  with motions and movements similar to what they would use in the real world, manipulating content intuitively.

What type of learning applications can gesture-based computing be useful for?  In medicine, for example, gesture-based motion control enables virtual autopsy using a multi-touch table. Detailed CT scans can be created from a living (or deceased person) and transferred to the table where they are manipulated with gestures, allowing forensic scientists to examine a body, make virtual cross-sections, and view layers including skin, muscle, blood vessels, and bone.  Can you imagine what libraries and museum collections can do by adopting gesture-based computing?

More Resources:

Neßelrath, R., Lu, C., Schulz, C. H., Frey, J., & Alexandersson, J. (2011). A Gesture Based System for Context–Sensitive Interaction with Smart Homes. In Ambient Assisted Living (pp. 209-219). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. [Link]

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., & Ludgate, H. (2013). NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition. [Link]

Maiti, A. (2013, February). Interactive remote laboratories with gesture based interface through microsoft kinect. In Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation (REV), 2013 10th International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE. [Link]

Mistry, P., & Maes, P. (2009, December). SixthSense: a wearable gestural interface. In ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2009 Sketches (p. 11). ACM. [Link]

Winnipeg Public Library's Millennium Library

I recently had a chance to catch a tour of the magnificent Millennium Library, which is the main branch of the Winnipeg Public Library during the Canadian Library Association 2013 Conference.   Quite impressed with the size of the collection as well as architecture of this library, I decided to do research on this main branch of the library system after having attended the presentation of Kimberly Parry, now the Outreach Services Librarian at the Winnipeg Public Library, on "Getting Graphic in Consumer Health" and her previous experience of building and promoting a consumer health graphic novel collection.   Upon entering the Millennium Library, I was astounded at the diversity and public-friendly spaces and signage of the library's space.   Here are some facts about this library:

• Redevelopment of this main branch involved the addition of 40,000 square feet of new space, construction of a new fourth floor and renovations throughout the existing 110,000-square-foot library

• Aboriginal Reading-in-the-Round with welcoming spaces for the city's large Aboriginal population 

• Art exhibition space along the Carol Shields Auditorium, Buchwald Room, Anhang Room space

• Millennium Library Park - Finished only in 2012, the park is a rebuilt plaza on an artificial wetland aerated by a pair of windmills, a wooden walkway built out of sustainably farmed wood, birch trees planted in deep pots, two new pieces of public art, and low fences and a raised floor

---

Being Decisive in 4 Steps

As librarians, decision-making is an ubiquitous part of our profession.  Whether it is systematic review searching on databases, collection purchases, staff hiring, or building renovations, we are constantly synthesizing information to derive at making a decision.  The Heath Brothers (Chip and Dan) have done it again in Decisive with another immaculately written book that is both practical and entertaining to readers.  In this book, the authors reveal that much of human decision-making is hindered by biases and irrationalities.  Not only are we often overconfident, we trust self-fulfilling instincts while getting distracted by short-term emotions.  I certainly enjoyed learning more about how to re-focus my lens when making decisions myself.  So I thought I'd share with you all the Heath's four-step plan to making better decisions:

Widen Your Options - Often we have a narrow frame and do not widen our options which are more plentiful than we think.  When we take out the binary "yes/no" options, we realize we actually have more options than we think.  In fact, find someone who's already solved your problem for an answer.

Reality-Test Your Assumptions - Because we naturally choose self-confirming information, we should discipline ourselves to consider the opposite of our instincts.  While we trust customer reviews on products and services, we usually don't do the same with our personal lives.  We often trust our "insider" view rather than the objective "outside" view enough.  To gather the best information, we should "zoom out and zoom in" (outside view + close up).  Rather than jumping in head-first, we need to make small steps to test-run our theories and instincts.  

Attain Distance Before Deciding - Because we often make decisions based on emotion, we should distance ourselves which could come from an observer's perspective such as asking "What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?"  Another strategy is the 10/10/10 which focuses us to consider future emotions in 10 hours/10 months/ 10 year intervals so that we can detach ourselves from the short-term while looking at the bigger picture in the long run.  

Prepare To Be Wrong - Because the future is not a single scenario or finish-line, we need to bookend our future and prepare for multiple results -- both good and bad.  By preventing the autopilot syndrome which often happens when leaving past decisions unquestioned.  By setting "tripwires," we automatically have triggers that tell us when to be alert even without our consciously knowing it.

Higher Education: Blended Learning, Flipped Classroom, and MOOCs

Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) has been dominating discourse in academia the past year, and is only going to continue to heat up.  The major question for MOOC providers and universities alike in the coming years will be whether or not these courses will be recognized for transfer credit in higher education.  While there has only been discussion on this topic with no on-campus university publicly acknowledging that they will begin accepting these courses in the near future, some academic administrators have proposed a role for MOOCs within traditional higher education.   What that role is depends on whom you ask.  For example, one Stanford University Vice Provost for Online Learning John Mitchell envisions substituting traditional lectures with MOOCs so that on-campus time is spent collaborating and discussing rather than lecturing.  Commonly referred to as the "flipped classroom," this is already happening with some university classes that integrate webcast lectures.  Another possibility is integrating MOOCs into the university admissions process, namely using them in high schools.  As MOOCs gradually integrate into university curriculum, changes will be aplenty.   Currently, there are three major institutions looking to re-envision how MOOCs will be used in universities.  Although still quite early in experimentation, they do pose questions for faculty and academic libraries: what role will they play in this transition?

EdX:  A non-profit company created by Harvard and MIT, it hosts nine online courses mirroring on-campus courses taught by these universities.  Although its courses concentrate in the "hard" sciences of computer programming, artificial intelligence, and quantitative methods, plans are underway to add social science and humanities courses to the platform in the coming months. While courses differ in their exact approach, generally students view prerecorded lectures, complete embedded exercises, and submit assignments for grades within a designated timeframe for course completion. Certificates of completion from EdX are awarded to students, but they do not receive transcript credit from the university offering the course.

Udacity: A for-profit company founded by former Stanford Professor Sebastien Thurn, this institution has offered nineteen courses that have been developed by a team of four scholars, focusing on the hard sciences of computer science, physics, and statistics among others.  Once completed, students receive a certificate of completion from Udacity, as well as designations of "Accomplishment," "Accomplishment with Distinction," and "Accomplishment with Highest Distinction" based on their performance and involvement in the course. One of the most unique elements of completing a MOOC from Udacity is that students can elect to have their resume distributed to Silicon Valley companies looking for candidates with programming and quantitative skills.

Coursera: Currently offering more than 200 courses covering a range of subjects, this for-profit company hires faculty representing over thirty universities, including Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, and the University of Virginia, to create its courses.  While certificates of completion are awarded, transcript credit is not recognized by any university.

Recommended Reading

The Professors' Big Stage by Thomas Friedman [Link]

What do Librarians Need to Know About MOOCs? [Link]

Are You MOOC-ing Yet? A Review for Academic Libraries [Link]

For Making the Most of College, It's Still Location, Location, Location [Link]

Assignment #1 - MARC Records

010 - 2013012755 (Library of Congress Control Number)
020 - 9780393082876 -(International Standard Book Number, ISBN - softcover)
020 - 0393082873 (International Standard Book Number, ISBN - hardcover)
100 - Townsend, Anthony M., | d 1973
245 - Smart cities: big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia (Title Statement)
250 - First Edition (Edition statement)
260 - New York | Chelsea House | 1986. (Publication, distribution, etc.)
300 - 384 pages; | c 24 cm (Physical description)
520 - Urbanist and technology expert Anthony Townsend takes a broad historical look at the forces that have shaped the planning and design of cities and information technologies from the rise of the great industrial cities of the nineteenth century to the present. A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people. (Summary, etc. note)
650 - City planning | Technological innovations (Subject added entry -- Topical term)
700 - Townsend, Anthony Miller (Added entry -- Personal name)

Possible Personal Reflection Questions:

• 
  

What's a FRBR Model? Just an illustration