RFID, which stands for Radio Frequency Identification, is currently the leading edge in managing inventories  and supply chains of items in a variety of industries, as well as acting as a personal identification device.  It is used in many situations, from retail warehouses, to highway toll collections, and even in libraries.

Post-it notes are a particular brand of notepads that have a coating of adhesive along the edge of each sheet of paper, allowing the user to stick them to nearly anything.  Yes, even in libraries.

And now, some bright group of researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have combined the two to create a new way to use each of these technologies.

MIT Reinvents the Post-It note… with Post-It notes

I don’t see it doing much for libraries, but it is an interesting technology mashup!

found via LISNews

There is a great overview of the history and current status of the Open CourseWare (OCW) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Of interest is the discussion on why to spend millions of dollars to provide free access to that which is a core product of the university.  As with many things (news, music, information), the answer to this will be found in some sort of balance.  I suspect that MIT will profit (and not only financially) from this effort in the end, probably many times over.

from Open Access News

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