Libraries Unleashed

The Guardian, in the U.K., has published a special supplement, “Libraries Unleashed,” available online at http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed.
Wendy Wallace, in “Information Alert,” reports on the work of Dr Ian Rowlands and his colleagues at the Centre for Information Behavior and the Evaluation of Research (Ciber), indicating that “schools are failing to equip students for independent online study. Academics and librarians are debating nationally and internationally whether students should be taught information literacy as a separate, accredited, skill - as occurs in some American institutions. Or whether it would be better to teach them to navigate virtual libraries within their main subject based studies - an approach favored by many information specialists.” There are a number of other essays including Simon Midgley in “Quiet Revolution,” looking at the influence of Web 2.0 technologies, Martin Whitaker considering how research is being made available for free online, and various other explorations of digitization projects, digital preservation, and how the work of librarians is changing.