The State of Ohio has launched an iTunes site that is designed “to share educational resources, professional development materials, and student videos which have been produced by members of higher education, the K-12 community, and community partners free of charge with unlimited access.”

There is a wide range of material available, and it is great to see them open to everyone, with the only requirement being the iTunes software.

Launch the site within your installed iTunes, and see a model for what other states, educational institutions, and libraries can do with their media content.

discovered via the OhioLINK Digital Resources Management Committee (Drmc) list

Free Online Courses from Great Universities is a collection of lecture podcasts organized by topic; organized by Open Culture.

found via Open Access News

Zotero is a fantastic example of how open source can transform not only software development, but organization of information as well.  The potential of this citation management web-browser add-on to transform learning and research is tremendous.  If you haven’t tried it out yet, I highly suggest doing so.

OPAL is offering a program on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 (list is organized by date) from the South Carolina State Library on using Zotero, presented by Chris Strauber, Reference and Web Services Librarian at Wofford College.  Mark your calendar!

encountered on the Web4Lib list

I have run into two essays by Eric Lease Morgan this week that paint an excellent picture of today’s challenges for library technology and possible future solutions within our reach:

Catalog Collectivism : XC and the Future of Library Search (Pdf from E-LIS) ["Collections without services are useless, and services without collections are empty."]

Today’s Digital Information Landscape from Infomotions, Inc. ["It is not so much about the what we are doing. It is more about the how."]

Watch for Eric’s name on library writings… he often offers well-phrased and insightful comments on whatever issue he addresses.

found via LISNews and ResourceShelf, respectively

BookTour is a new web site devoted to author readings, signings, etc.  It is very flexible, allowing you to search by author, area, and book.  It allows you to browse by genre, and even provides a link on the authors page to initiate a request for a visit from that author.

The site also allows you to post your own events, which can add to the visibility of an author event at your library.

found on Catalogablog

The open coursework offered by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been translated into Chinese and made available for study in China.

The effort was headed by Lucifer Chu (perhaps best known for translating The Lord of the Rings into Chinese) using a program called Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS).  This signals an internationalization of open access, with many potential benefits for teaching and learning.

An excellent article about the work done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including how they worked with their libraries on the project, can be found here.

from Open Access News

The University of Missouri – Columbia is hosting a plethora of webcasts of interest to library-type people under the banner of LiS Radio.

These range from interviews to classes, from conversations to meetings.  Browse their site and see what there is to hear (but use the MP3 versions for now… they are having trouble with their QuickTime streams!)

from Resource Shelf

Interested in a one-hour Princeton lecture by Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics?  Here you go!  (you may want to save the .asx file to your desktop, then play it from there).

from ResourceShelf