Posted on February 21, 2013 by Stephanie L. Gross, Librarian, Electronic Reserves & Scholarly Communication | Leave a comment

My previous post about the MOOC disaster at Coursera with the Fundamentals of Online Education [FOE] course generated constructive and worthy discussions among readers that focused on the value and purpose of the MOOC, the role of the instructor and student, and how learning happens within this type of course.

In this post I explore how collaborative learning works in two types of online courses—one in the all-familiar massive, open and online course, MOOCs, and the other a closed, fee-based course, COLC, which is the acronym I’m using to label aclosed, online, for-credit learning, course. There are hundreds of COLCs available from virtually all higher education institutions within the U.S. Visit any higher education institution’s website (Ivy schools excluded) and search for online learning. Following are just a few examples of schools and the availability of COLCs—University of Central Florida, Arizona State University,Michigan State…

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Apply Yourself : Hack Library School Blog

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Stephanie L. Gross, Librarian, Electronic Reserves & Scholarly Communication | Leave a comment

HLS

When I tell people what I am doing in Florence, Italy for a year, I am invariably asked one question: “How did you land such a position?!” To which I smile broadly, often chuckle a little and answer simply and honestly: “I applied.” This, my LIS, MLIS and MSIT friends is one of my best hacks for library school and life.

“80% of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen

You have to show up. For most positions and roles that you want to land, that means tossing your hat in the ring with an application.

If you have been following HLS’s new series “So What Do You Do?” you have heard about a number of great internships and programs to round out your LIS education. In none of them (at least so far) does the hacker say: well I was just standing around on a street corner and someone…

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Are We In The DIY Era? Helping patrons help themselves – The Ubiquitous Librarian – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

October 13, 2011, 5:20 pm

By Brian Mathews

UCSB’s Ole checking out some books

A core theme I see in LibQUAL+ data is that most libraries do pretty well in the service dimension, but when it comes to enabling users to help themselves their perceptions are typically much lower.

When you put all the numbers together the narrative goes something like this:

You’re pretty good at helping me, thanks, but I’d really prefer to do more things by myself—and by the way, you don’t make that very easy for me.

But is this changing? Over the past several months (years?) a common theme seems to popping up everywhere: self-service. A few examples:

Unmediated Holds (and eventually ILL)

Free Tax Help at NYPL!

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Stephanie L. Gross, Librarian, Electronic Reserves & Scholarly Communication | Leave a comment

Free Tax Help at NYPL!.

NYPL News!

Photo: agrilifetoday via Flickr

It’s tax time and the Library is a great place to get help. Find the most popular tax forms, e-file your taxes, or meet an IRS-trained volunteer who can assist you with your basic income tax return free of charge.

Learn more and find a tax assistance center

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Tax forms subject to availability. Some branches may not offer this service because of space limitations or because the forms have not been made available by the IRS or NYS Department of Taxation and Finance.