Friday, August 24, 2012

No current full text for ERIC-UPDATE

UPDATE from ERIC (8/20/12)
ED has approved for all full-text peer reviewed journals and IES publications to become available again. Our contractor is working to release these documents and we expect to have them on the site by the end of the week or early next week.

These will be the only documents available at this time due to privacy concerns about information contained in some of the collection. Although the documents in ERIC had been publicly available in ERIC microfiche for many years, the advent of the Internet has amplified the possibility that someone could make improper use of information in these ERIC documents.

We are seeking to restore access to the rest of the collection as soon as possible. Our number one concern is to ensure that any full-text documents we provide do not violate any individual's privacy. We believe that if any of us were to have our privacy compromised by an ERIC document, we would want the same consideration.

UPDATE 8/23/12
We have made all peer reviewed articles publicly available again—this is approximately 20,000 full-text articles. We are also in the process of creating a request process for individual records to be given priority in being returned to the site. ore information on that process will be provided in the next week.

UPDATE 9/6/12 (http://eric.ed.gov/pdf_availability.html)
We are seeking to restore access to documents as soon as possible. In order to restore access to ERIC, we have to check every document to see if it contains personally identifiable information. Due to the quality of many of the documents, a large portion of the search has to be done by hand. This is a large undertaking and we are in the process of hiring a team to help restore access in a fast and responsive manner. We hope to get this team in place by late September and releasing large numbers of ERIC documents by the end of October. We will continue to release documents after that point on a rolling basis.


To minimize the burden on our users, we will prioritize searching the documents that users request. If you would like to request a PDF to be returned online, please email ERICRequests@ed.gov with the record number (such as ED263102). Documents will be returned on a rolling basis and may take several weeks, but we are working as fast as possible.

Update 9/17/12 (excerpt)
We are seeking to restore access to documents as soon as possible. In order to restore access to ERIC, we have to check every document to see if it contains personally identifiable information. Due to the quality of many of the documents, a large portion of the search has to be done by hand. This is a large undertaking and we are in the process of hiring a team to help restore access in a fast and responsive manner. We hope to get this team in place by late September and releasing large numbers of ERIC documents by the end of October. We will continue to release documents after that point on a rolling basis.
http://eric.ed.gov/pdf_availability.html

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

No current full text for ERIC

ERIC Documents are no longer available in full text format since last week. This includes access through databases such as EBSCO.

The following message was sent out on April 15, 2012:
The full text documents for ERIC have been temporarily disabled due to a privacy concern. We apologize for the inconvenience and are currently working to isolate the affected documents and return full text access to users as quickly as possible. Please stay tuned to eric.ed.gov for an update on when they will become available again.

The reason for the unavailability is due to privacy concerns connected with some of the older documents. These issues were not suitably addressed when the documents were digitized.

According to messages, alternate sources of resolution of this issue are being sought.

The result is that there is no access to full text ERIC documents other than microfiche. The total lack of online digital access may hamper students and other researchers, especially as we are only a few short weeks from the beginning of the fall term. Some libraries have weeded their ERIC microfiche as these have been digitized, so this may be a burden  for researchers needing older documents.



Monday, August 13, 2012

12/12/12 is Museum of Mathematics Opening Day

On 12/12/12 the Museum of Mathematics will hold its opening ceremony. The museum is located in Manhattan at 11 East 26th Street, NY, NY. The event is by ticket only.

The museum opens to the public on December 15, 2012.

At the museum's website at http://momath.org/ , you can find links for  many different activities and events, including :

Math Encounters, http://www.youtube.com/museumofmathematics, videos of programs that were previously held:
• July 31-August 1, 2012 – The Topology of Twisted Toroids
• July 11, 2012 – Intuition Gone Awry: Puzzles that S-T-R-E-T-C-H Your Mind
• June 6, 2012 – Blown Away: What Knot to Do When Sailing
• May 2, 2012 – Shape Transformers: Forms That Fold Two Ways
• April 4, 2012 – Proofs from The BOOK: Putting Pieces Together
• March 7, 2012 – ABC Easy as 123
• February 1, 2012 – The Shape of Space
• January 4, 2012 – Revolution and Evolution in Math and Design
• December 7, 2011 – Five Balls, Two Hands: The Patterns of Juggling
• November 2, 2011 – Creating the Illusion of Life with Math & Programming
• October 5, 2011 – Mathematical Morsels from The Simpsons and Futurama
• September 6-7, 2011 – Fibonacci & the Golden Ratio Exposed
• July 6, 2011 – Points to Paints
• June 8, 2011 – Soap Bubbles and Mathematics
• May 4, 2011 – The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
• April 7, 2011 – Symmetry, Art, & Illusion
• March 3-4, 2011 – The Geometry of Origami

Math Mondays http://momath.org/home/math-monday/ ,a weekly column discussing fun, experiential, and puzzling topics in mathematics

Activities http://momath.org/home/activities/

Math Midway, http://mathmidway.org/, which looked like a lot of fun. You can see if it will be coming to a location near you!

(The Museum of Mathematics began in response to the closing of a small museum of mathematics on Long Island, the Goudreau Museum. A group of interested parties (the “Working Group”) met in August 2008 to explore the creation of a new museum of mathematics — one that would go well beyond the Goudreau in both its scope and methodology.)

Visit the sites and see what you think.


Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Jersey City Author Walter Dean Myers shares feelings about reading

Author and Jersey City resident, Walter Dean Myers recently was featured on PBS Newshour and shared his feelings about reading. The program shows him visiting his old school in Harlem and sharing some of his story and his love of reading with the students.Myers is the Library of Congress' national ambassador for young people's literature. ( Thanks to Fred Smith for sharing this with me!)