Open Access Week 2010 talk available — The full audio of Mason’s October 20, 2010 Open Access Week panel discussion is now available via our library’s institutional repository. Cliff Lynch of CNI kicks it off at about 4:55. My talk starts at about 31:30 with a shout out to Paul Fyfe’s Open Access Week talk from the day before.
JSTOR Mobile — In case you missed it, JSTOR has released a mobile site. It will be hard to view full page images on the small screen, but the handy “email reference” and “save reference” buttons should make it useful for work in archives and on the go (via ResourceShelf).
Facebook to integrate MS Office Web Apps — The big buzz today is about Facebook’s new messaging service, but what could matter more to teaching, learning, research, and campus life in general is the announcement that documents, spreadsheets, and presentations created in Microsoft Office Web Apps can now be shared and viewed directly within Facebook. Many campuses are considering or have already chosen to sign on to Google Apps. Combined with fact that most campuses IT outfits already know, trust, and use Microsoft products and most students and faculty are already using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Facebook integration should make Microsoft’s Live services just that much more attractive and give Google a real run for its money.
Integration of MS apps with Facebook should not be welcomed uncritically, should it? Apart from the questionable stability of integrating MS applications with anything at all even today, don’t we have urgent issues of control and privacy, given the record of Facebook to date? One would like to be reassured on both counts.