Academic Libraries and their place in Higher Education.

The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) a major source of news and information about American colleges and universities has dedicated several articles during the last months of 2005 to matters related to libraries and information technology. This is an indication of the interest created on campuses by current issues related to information systems and institutions (like scitech libraries) and it is in accord with the last two previews topics presented in this forum.

The December 16 edition of CHE has a special report on Information Technology by Andrea L. Foster: "Wikipedia, the Free Online Encyclopedia, Ponders a New Entity: Wikiversity?"

In the December 12 edition the topic is Google with and article by Siva Vaidhyanathan
"A Risky Gamble With Google".

The Information Technology supplement of December 9 features the topic The Library of the Future with two main articles. The first one by James G. Neal, "Anxious Times," and the second by Deanna Marcus, "Different Bytes for different Likes".

Early in the Fall (September 30) Open Source was another hot topic in information technology that was presented. The following articles appeared in this issue:
"5 Challenges for Open Source" by Jeffrey R. Young; "Is Open-Source Software a Solution to Spam?" by Vincent Kiernan; "Sakai Project Offers an Alternative to Commercial Course-Management Programs" by Jeffrey R. Young; and
"Technology Used to Trade Pirated Music Could Help Faculty Members Share Teaching Tools" by Dan Carnevale.

CHE is available by paid subscription, but some articles are freely available. Also, the articles mentioned in this report can be found in full-text databases such as the EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier.