Tower and Cloud

I usually look to Educause for good summaries of where we’ve been rather than for information on what’s coming up. Here’s one that may prove to be an exception. Just published:

The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing, Richard N. Katz, ed.
The first article I read, as might be expected given his connections to the TEI, is by John Unsworth titled “University 2.0.” Don’t let the rather pedestrian title fool you. Unsworth always has something of interest to offer and this article is no exception. In it he describes, among other things, a system that mashes bibliographic information with LDAP (personal and departmental information) to generate a system that tracks faculty and subject publications. Who’s doing what at the university? Who, in different departments, is working on similar topics and might want to collaborate?
His main interest in the projects mentioned in the article is in reducing the “information friction” that impedes the sharing of institutional information, or, as he says “What we need more than big science or big servers are good ideas about interesting things that faculty, staff, and students could do with the information produced in, by, and about universities.” That is, not university-wide “content management” but smart content sharing and distribution.
I hope the other articles are as timely and though-provoking. Here’s the bulk of the TOC:
The Gathering Cloud: Is This the End of the Middle
by Richard N. Katz
A Matter of Mission: Information Technology and the Future of Higher Education
by Clifford A. Lynch
The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities
by Yochai Benkler
Growing in Esteem: Positioning the University of Melbourne in the Global Knowledge Economy
by Glyn Davis, Linda O’Brien, and Pat McLean
Higher Education and the Future of U.S. Competitiveness
by David Attis
The Social Compact of Higher Education and Its Public
by Larry Faulkner
Accountability, Demands for Information, and the Role of the Campus IT Organization
by Brian L. Hawkins
E-Research Is a Fad: Scholarship 2.0, Cyberinfrastructure, and IT Governance
by Brad Wheeler
Beyond the False Dichotomy of Centralized and Decentralized IT Deployment
by Jim Davis
From Users to Choosers: The Cloud and the Changing Shape of Enterprise Authority
by Ronald Yanosky
Cultural and Organizational Drivers of Open Educational Content
by Malcolm Read
Challenges and Opportunities of Open Source in Higher Education
by Ira H. Fuchs
Who Puts the Education into Open Educational Content?
by Andy Lane
The Tower, the Cloud, and Posterity
by Richard N. Katz and Paul B. Gandel
From the Library to the Laboratory: A New Future for the Science Librarian
by Mary Marlino and Tamara Sumner
Social Networking in Higher Education
by Bryan Alexander
Scholarship: The Wave of the Future in the Digital Age
by Paul N. Courant
Where Is the New Learning?
by Kristina Woolsey
Teaching and Learning Unleashed with Web 2.0 and Open Educational Resources
by Christine Geith
University 2.0
by John Unsworth
The Tower, the Cloud, and the IT Leader and Workforce
by Philip Goldstein