Weekly Reader

Entitled Students are Ruining Higher Education
"How do you define an entitled student? Let me try. I started out in academic librarianship as a reference librarian at the Lippincott Library at the University of Pennsylvania. That just happens to be the library that serves the students at the Wharton School of Business. The typical Wharton MBA student comes from Wall Street or the corporate office, and is paying a considerable sum for the degree - as they are quick to remind you." -- Steven Bell, Library Journal, 6/29/11

Prepare to Repel Researchers
"An interesting question came up the other day on COLLIB-L, a discussion list for college librarians. A librarian reported that a student who was abroad discovered he couldn't access videos in a library database. An error message appeared saying access would constitute a "copyright violation." Though the library had licensed the material for its patrons, including that student, he was unable to view it because he happened to have traveled to another region. He wondered whether he might have the same problem with articles in databases." -- Barbara Fister, Library Babel Fish, 6/29/11

107 Best Websites on the Web
Here at MakeUseOf, we love websites. It’s our very reason for existing and when new sites pop up, we’re one of the first to get all hot and bothered about it. With an estimated 350 million websites out there on the World Wide Web (and tens of thousands more starting up new every day), how do you know which ones are the best for your individual needs? If this is a problem you frequently encounter then worry no more, as MakeUseOf once again has you covered with the 107 Best Websites On The Web. -- Mark O'Niell, Make Use Of, 6/30/11

Twitter Shows Off the Worldwide Flow of Tweets with Visualizations
"Twitter has posted a couple of very cool visualizations that show off the ‘global pulse’ of Tweets being sent around the world, especially when major events, like the earthquake in Japan, happen." -- Matthew Panzarino, The Next Web, 6/29/11

Penn Students Leave School to Launch CourseKit with Million Dollar Seed Round
"Coursekit is like Facebook or Yammer for courses. Like many other students frustrated with Blackboard, the current online course management standard, the Coursekit founders think they can do a better job. “It is really a Blackboard replacement with a heavy emphasis on social networking,” says CEO Cohen." -- Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, 6/27/11

Networking for People Who Hate Networking
"Networking is important for at least two critical reasons: [a] the research suggests that the majority of the jobs in our field are not posted but become known through networking; [b] the research suggests that an emerging competence for leaders is their ability to develop their network, through special projects, temporary assignments and community involvement, among others." -- Ken Haycock, Library Leadership, 6/21/11

The Value of Copying
"Everything is a Remix is a wonderful, wonderful video series, and the third episode is my favorite. It’s all about ideas: Where ideas come from, what’s right about copying them, how improvement comes from blatant copying, and why Hunter S. Thompson re-typed The Great Gatsby. Well worth the 11-minute watch." -- Jason Kottke, Digitizd, 6/21/11