Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the December 18, 2008 issue of the New York Times in which he gave advice to the car companies. Friedman was saying that the car companies were giving the public what they wanted, but that was their problem.

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Source: T.H.E. Journal

Educational digital libraries are sources of innovative teaching resources in schools. All too often, digital library developers create collections of resources in the absence of rigorous examinations of educator and learner needs. The literature surrounding teacher development suggests that teachers have very specific information needs relating to mastering the curriculum content and the behavioral structure of their classrooms for a diverse range of learners. An investigation of search string logs from 2004-2006 from Michigan Teacher Network confirmed the findings reported in the literature and also resulted in directives for digital library developers, professional support staff, and school library media specialists.

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Many colleges are experimenting with e-textbooks these days. But at Northwest Missouri State University, President Dean L. Hubbard hopes they’ll be an e-book only campus (or close to it) soon — as soon as the market will allow it. “We’ll move as fast as the industry moves and they’re moving very rapidly,” Hubbard says.

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Officials at Northwest Missouri State University are looking to save students' backs and wallets as they begin replacing traditional textbooks with electronic versions, reports the Jefferson City News Tribune.

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Amazon has become a major player in cloud computing in recent years. Many Web startups have come to rely on its pay-as-you-go hosting and computing services rather than investing in costly and complex infrastructure of their own. The newest offering from Amazon Web Services, called Cloudfront, may provide insight into Amazon's long-term business model.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites, the company said Monday.

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STAMFORD, CT, Aug 21, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Although new and used textbooks dominate the higher education instructional materials scene, the rising trend is in multimedia tools -- particularly for homework assistance and assessment, according to "College Publishing Market Forecast 2008-2009," the latest report from media industry forecast and analysis firm Simba Information. Publishers are finding that the appeal of digital tools is sparking interest in e-textbooks, the report says.

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Microsoft’s announcement last Friday that it would discontinue its book- and journal-scanning initiatives left its partners at university research libraries pondering the future of efforts to digitize materials in their archives. Analysts said the software giant was refocusing on its strengths, in effect conceding the digitization arena to Google, the company that in 2004 first started working with universities on book scanning — to some fanfare as well as controversy.

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In this account, we describe a pilot program that our team has been working on since August 2006. We are developing model Sakai course sites for the Writing Program that highlight the integration between writing assignments and library research. Currently, we are testing several options for incorporating access to library materials directly within the course sites, and here we briefly outline our rationale and progress so far.

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E-text readers designed for use in higher education will reduce textbook pricing and address environmental concerns

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