Berkman Buzz: January 24, 2013

"Copyright for Librarians" (CFL) is an online open curriculum on copyright law that was developed jointly with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Re-designed as a brand new textbook, "Copyright for Librarians: the essential handbook" can be used as a stand-alone resource or as an adjunct to the online version which contains additional links and references for students who wish to pursue any topic in greater depth.

Microsoft’s Social Computing Symposium is one of my favorite conferences of the year. It’s small, invitation only, curated by some of the smartest people in my field, and attracts a wonderful combination of smart folks I hadn’t previously known about and friends I’ve known long enough that they are becoming family.

Because it’s a small conference of people who know each other well, it can get pretty silly. People are encouraged to give talks not just on their current research, but on anything they’re interested in. When we introduced ourselves at the beginning of Thursday, I proposed a talk on sumo and globalization, which was one of the dozen chosen as the pre-dinner entertainment.

Honor Aaron Swartz by making your own work OA. Do it lawfully. Here's how. #pdftribute #oa… http://t.co/tBQAbImi
—Peter Suber (@petersuber)

Clive Thompson is talking about the quest to build a new Net without its flaws.

Problems: Governments can shut down the Net. Corporations have a lot of control over copyright, causing the corporations that deliver the Net to throttle it. And Mother Nature can shut it down, e.g. Sandy. Is it possible to build another Internet? He’s been talking with people about this, mainly with people building mesh networks.

John Sununu has a terrific, apolitical column in the Boston Globe today entitled A Crisis of Values at MIT, about the Aaron Swartz case and what it says about changes in the "campus culture" at MIT. His observations about culture apply much more broadly. Colleges have become, much more than they once were, captives of rule systems, their own and those that governments push on them. Professionalism in higher education administration now means sticking to the rules, even when they make no sense in the context of the presenting situation and do not serve the interests of the individuals most affected by them. If you respond to something one way, you had better respond to similar situations in the same way, without thinking too hard about whether the new situations may actually differ in important respects.

Google Earth Is Key To Revealing North Korea's Prison Camp System, Activists Say http://t.co/2wzZ7N7Y via @HuffPostTech
—Jeffrey Schnapp (@jaytiesse)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you likely already know that there is a growing body of research that examines how college students use Facebook and the outcomes of such use. For instance, researchers have examined how Facebook use is related to various aspects of the college student experience including learning, student engagement, multitasking, political activity, life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation, development of identity and peer relationships, and relationship building and maintenance.

All of the previous research has relied on self-reported measures of Facebook use (that is, survey questions). We know from research in other areas of human behavior that there are significant differences between actual and self reported behaviors.

What's that you ask? Describe my feelings about the potential of education technology in classrooms in less than 90 seconds? OK, here goes:

Watch video

How online analytics are changing the college admissions process, from @peteyMIT: http://t.co/QF48joUf
—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz)

Roughly 90% of Russian gas production originates in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, located in the northwestern corner of Siberia. In recent months, bloggers and Russian netizens have reacted to the latest in a series of changes to internal migration laws inside YaNAO that make it difficult for non-residents even to pass through the region.