International and Comparative Librarianship

DEDICATED TO PIONEERS   INCLUDING:
S. R. Ranganathan, P. N. Kaula, R. N. Sharma, J. F. Harvey, D. J. Foskett, J. P. Danton, M. M. Jackson, etc.
This Blogosphere has a slant towards India [a.k.a Indica, Indo, South-Asian, Oriental, Bharat, Hindustan, Asian-Indian (not American Indian)].

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Global ebook survey reveals encouraging results


"New findings from a study on e-book usage landed in my inbox earlier this week. Conducted by e-content providers, ebrary the study has been attempting to measure the changing perceptions and patterns of e-book usage among students. It is now in its third run through.
Working with 150 Higher Education librarians throughout the world to design the survey, nearly 6,500 students took part. Such a cross section of academic respondents is certainly respectable. While there is an obvious North American slant to the findings, generally half of the participants were based elsewhere in the world. Around 400 academic institutions took part say ebrary and admittedly the patterns between the US and elsewhere show similar results. So even if there is little in the way of UK eBook habits, the results are revealing all the same." Continue reading the summary by Daniel Griffin @ IWR Blog: June 2008

From the same shelf:

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

Who Has The Largest Individual Vocabulary?


Guess: Native speakers or non-native speakers?

Whatever may happen in the future, regardless of species, who has the largest English vocabulary right now? This is not a straightforward question. Michael Quinion explains why:

“What we mean by word sounds obvious, but it’s not. Take a verb like climb. The rules of English allow you to generate the forms climbs, climbed, climbable, and climbing, the nouns climb and climber (and their plurals climbs and climbers), compounds such as climb-down and climbing frame, and phrasal verbs like climb on, climb over, and climb down. Now, here’s the question you’ve got to answer: are all these distinct words, or do you lump them all together under climb? ...

"Of all the people I know, my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy definitely has the largest vocabulary, however it’s measured. Growing up in East Bengal, English was not his first language, but I regularly come across English words in his writings which I have never seen before. Take my favourite example: sesquipedalian (meaning a very long word)." continue reading English as a Fecund Language @ Sumangali.org: In the Spirit of Serendipity

Much more about Sri Chinmoy from his fans: My Life with Sri Chinmoy / Photos of Sri Chinmoy / Sri Chinmoy on DVD

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