Computer and Library Learning (Archived)

The British Library is running an interesting exhibit from now until July of next year. The exhibit, Growing Knowledge is meant to illustrate the changes computers, the Internet and the Web have brought about in how research is done, what tools are used and what challenges researchers face.

Many like myself probably won't make it across the pond in time to see the actual installations, for us the accompanying website offers quite a bit to look at. Original content is limited to a series of short videos featuring library staff and researchers talking about various aspect of modern research.

In addition to the videos, a "Tools" section is dedicated to linking to research related web applications, many of which I hope to look at in greater detail later. Even more interesting, the "Start Researching" section contains links to of a wide variety of sites offering access to repositories of both research and primary source information.

One of the more innovative of the sites is the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Jove is peer reviewed and is in essence a Youtube for scientific research. Each video, ranging from about 5 – 12 minutes in length, documents the various stages and processes involved in a given experiment. The video is supplemented with an abstract and an outline describing the process and materials involved. JoVE is extremely well done and just one of the more then 20 resources the British Library has collected as part of the exhibit.