The ability to link to a segment within a digital audio or video file will be an important element in the future of digital scholarship. A project at the BBC explores a variation on this functionality through the use of a wikipedia-like interface that allows anyone to annotate a specific segment of audio. The BBC project is:

a demonstration of a functional working interface for the annotation of audio that’s designed to allow the collective creation of useful metadata and wikipedia-like content around radio programmes or speeches or podcasts or pieces of music.

A description, along with screencasts, is available at On the BBC Annotatable Audio project

A comment on that blog also refers to a similar project called Annodex, which looks interesting.

In this podcast at Educause Joan Lippincott talks about the future of academic librarianship. I agree with her perspective:

Academic librarians should re-orient themselves away from a library-centered view. She’s not talking about just becoming more user-centered, she’s talking about becoming more university-centered. “Most librarians think that they work for the library. I would like to see them think that they work in a university information environment.” The service of libraries is to provide an information infrastructure for their universities through which they address all aspects of information from print to digital. Librarians should work very closely with the curriculum, have an active presence in the course management system, and be active in developing both information and technology literacy programs that will aid the students who will live and work in an information society. Librarians should be more active in the management and stewardship of research data. Librarians should assist faculty with copyright and intellectual property issues. Librarians should work more closely with faculty and students in the creation of content.

Lippincott knows that many librarians are already doing these things but we all know that more is needed.

The July/August 2005 issue of Educause Review has several articles on learning spaces as well as podcast interviews with several people involved in developing learning spaces.

Also, from this month’s Educause conference is a podcasted interview with Joan Lippincott of CNI. In that interview Lippincott states that designing a learning space is not just putting a computer lab in the library and it’s not just about making technological access to information resources in the library. That’s not enough for today’s students. Today’s students create information products in digital media. Learning spaces bring technology together with the rich resources of libraries but they must do so in the context of the students’ academic work, in ways that help students create digital information projects.