New Librarianship Master Class

I’ve signed up to do this MOOC, the New Librarianship Master Class. It looks good:

New Librarianship recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created though conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities.

The course is based on the R.David Lankes book, The Atlas of New Librarianship. I only have a paper copy. When I bought it, back in 2011, the ebook version was not available. It’s an extremely large and bulky book, and I have to admit I have not made all that much headway in reading it. The picture shows the book in comparison with my old 7-inch Sony PRS950 ereader.

The ebook is available now, through its publisher MIT Books, and while it would be super convenient to have an ebook version to read during my commute, at this stage I am not going to buy a copy.

Two reasons:

1. the ebook version costs $38.95, which is not very much cheaper than the print version, which I bought from Amazon for a total of $50.11 (includes postage).
2. the DRM for the ebook version looks funky (I can’t believe I’m actually wishing they just used Adobe Digital Editions). The publisher says you need to download an app just to read it on an iPad, and no you can’t read it on a Kindle.

I’ve just tried to enrol using the learning management system only to hit numerous snags (e.g. if I select “Australia” as my location, Syracuse University, where the course is based, does not appear as an option.) Hopefully it’s just because we are a full twelve hours ahead of the US, and the administrators haven’t switched things on yet. Although I can’t help thinking they really ought to have it up and running now, because if we all try and log it at once, it isn’t going to be pretty…