Swinburne Library Blog

The OECD regularly conducts research with 15 year olds to see where they expect to be professionally when they reach 30 years of age. The answers are always fascinating. Despite great strides in education for girls, the latest findings from the OECD suggest that girls still decide to pursue particular careers based on 'factors not necessarily related to their actual skills' (see PISA in Focus, 2012/03, PDF).

Girls in many countries equal or surpass boys in science proficiency. Yet if girls achieve high grades in science or mathematics, most still aren't choosing to pursue careers in engineering and computing. Instead, in every OECD country, more girls than boys reported that they wanted to work in health services, a science profession with a caring component. So girls who are high achievers in science aren't looking to become engineers or computer scientists, but instead are aiming for top positions in other science-related professions, such as medicine.

Are you interested in finding out more about this and other OECD studies? The Library subscribes to OECD iLibrary, a database of OECD data and analysis. You can find statistics going back to the 1960s, as well as all OECD books and papers published since 1998. The content covers 80 countries and a range of themes such as agriculture, economics, employment, and social issues.

Image credit: Flickr/studiobeerhorst 

Thanks to the super-sleuth skills of Chris Goetze and Justin Kelly, we have now identified the historic building in this photo. For years we believed it to be an early photograph of the Hawthorn Town Hall. Instead, we can confidently say that it's an early photo of the Maryborough Post Office.

How this photo ended up in our archives however, remains a mystery as we don't know of any connections between Swinburne and this building. Do you?

If you're interested in other old photographs, or want to know more about Swinburne's early history, you might like to check out Swinburne Image Bank. It's a collection of over 5,000 historical images relating to Swinburne in its various manifestations from its early years to now. 

 

Then: Maryborough Post Office 

 

Now: Maryborough Post Office (in background)

Close-up: Maryborough Post Office by changyang1230

This photo has sat in the library archives for decades. We have always thought the building to be the Hawthorn Town Hall, however on closer examination we believe this not to be the case.

See a larger version of the photo here.

The library archives contains thousands of Swinburne-related images and most have captions explaining what the historic images are. But occasionally there are photos that don't include a caption.

This is one of them.

This building may not exist now however we'd be surprised if records of such an extravagantly styled building do not exist.

Can anyone help? if so, please leave a comment or email us.

---

See the follow-up post: Historic building identified!

In March, the Queensland Police started the War Driving Project to highlight the urgent need for secure wireless internet connections. Police are driving the streets of Queensland, searching for unsecured WiFi coming from houses and businesses. Wireless internet signals can have a range of up to 100 metres, so a household connection can be accessible from well outside the home. When an open or poorly secured WiFi access point is found, it is logged by Queensland Police, who will later send a letter with information on how to secure WiFi access points (such as routers).

'Unsecured' WiFi connections have no password: open access to the WiFi access point is available to anyone with a compatible device. WiFi access points considered 'poorly secured' are those that were set up using older security measures, such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). WEP is an encryption system that utilises a security technique developed in 1999 and was outdated and replaced in 2003 by WiFi Protected Access (WPA). As Detective Superintendent Brian Hay said in a statement for the Queensland Police Service News:

'Having WEP encryption is like using a closed screen door as your sole means of security at home. The WPA or WPA2 security encryption is certainly what we would recommend as it offers a high degree of protection.'

The consequences of leaving your network poorly or not at all secure can be devastating. Unsecured networks can be easy to hack, which means unscrupulous people can steal your online identity and download illegal content on your connection. You could even be landed with responsibility for these actions as it's difficult to prove that the person using your wireless internet wasn't you!

The results from Queensland Police's war driving efforts are yet to be seen but previous studies across Australia indicate an alarming number of unsecured connections from homes and businesses. So make sure your WiFi is being used by you ... and only you! Here's how.

This post has been adapted from an article by Mark Gregory originally published at The Conversation.
Image credit: Flickr/frans16611 

We are delighted to announce that renovations at Hawthorn Library are complete and all areas are now open.

To everyone who uses Hawthorn Library, be you old friend or newcomer, we thank you for your patience. Welcome to our new spaces - with a thousand square metres more floor space, two silent study floors, more open study space, over three hundred and fifty new seats and over one hundred new bookable computers - there's a lot to enjoy!

Level 1: 24 hour LateLab and Hub
Level 2: Entrance, service desk, reserve room
Level 3: Group study areas, DVD collection
Level 4: Silent study space, books 001-544
Level 5: Silent study space, books 545-999

April is Global Astronomy Month. An initiative of Astronomers without Borders, Global Astronomy Month aims to raise awareness of our night skies.

2012 has been a big year for astronomy at Swinburne. In March, Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing held a workshop to highlight the latest science from the world's largest optical telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Access to the Keck facility has enabled landmark discoveries by Swinburne astronomers, including:

• Observations that helped characterise the diamond planet, discovered by an international research team led by Professor Matthew Bailes;
• The discovery by Dr George Hau and Professor Duncan Forbes of a 'galactic freak', an extremely rare ultra-compact dwarf galaxy that could furnish the missing link in understanding how galaxies and their clusters evolve; and
• Another discovery by Professor Duncan Forbes that giant galaxies that contain billions of stars are born in much the same way as delicate snowflakes.

Even more amazing new discoveries by Swinburne astrophysicists have made the news over the last few months. Dr Lee Spitler, Professor Karl Glazebrook, Dr Glenn Kacprzak and their team found the most distant example of a galaxy cluster lying in the middle of one of the most well-studied regions in the sky; and Associate Professor Alister Graham, Dr Lee Spitler, Professor Duncan Forbes and their team discovered a rare rectangular-shaped galaxy with a striking resemblance to an emerald cut diamond.

Global Astronomy Month is an opportunity to celebrate these great research discoveries, and to engage a new generation of would-be astronomers in appreciating the night skies. See what's happening in your area or follow Global Astronomy Month on Facebook or Twitter.

Image credit: LEDA 074886, a rectangular-shaped galaxy, by AW Graham et al. 2012.

You are invited to participate in a PhD research project investigating the search behaviour of 1st year undergraduate students.

Complete this 15 minute questionnaire for a chance to win one of two $50 iTunes gift cards.

An option to participate in further parts of the project is available at the end of the questionnaire. Participants in all parts of the project (questionnaire and search task/interview) will receive either a $50 iTunes voucher or $50 Coles Myer gift card. Up to 8 places are available. See the factsheet for more information (PDF).

This research project has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the School of Information Studies, Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University, Ethics Protocol no. 306/2011/06.

Complete the questionnaire


 

The first issue of Swinburne Library News for 2012 is now available.

Read about activities and events at Swinburne campus libraries, including Croydon Library photography competition, adaptive technologies at Prahran, Swinburne Image Bank, Hawthorn Library renovations and more.

Read it now

Next time you grab a coffee and watch a video on the superfast Swinburne wireless network, spare a thought for the hardworking researchers at CSIRO.

WiFi is everywhere. Consumers worldwide have bought more than 3 billion products that use the technology, including smartphones, laptop computers, games consoles, digital cameras and printers. You might even be using it to read this post.

But what very few people acknowledge is that WiFi was invented by Australian researchers at CSIRO way back in the 1990s. A team led by John O'Sullivan and including Terry Percival, Diet Ostry, Graham Daniels and John Deane created the technology at the agency's Marsfield office in Sydney in what was then called the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics.

And it's worth a packet (pardon the pun). CSIRO has just settled litigation against three US companies who have been using their wireless local area network (WLAN) technology without a licence. The national science body will receive $220m from AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA---the biggest mobile operators in the US. They've previously successfully sued for $205m from 14 other companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Total revenue from the technology has already surpassed $430m.

Just goes to show the importance of patenting your inventions. 

Read more on the CSIRO wireless LANs website.

Image credit: flickr/woodleywonderworks

Bookboon, a UK-based ebook publisher, is providing over 400 business related titles at no cost. The ebooks are promoted as "designed for business professionals and provide effective introductions to many different personal development topics".

The catch is that users wishing to access the content have to register for a "newsletter" and the publications include advertising material.

As an experiment the Library has loaded  Bookboon titles into Library Search.  A search on "Bookboon"  http://goo.gl/7doUq  will retrieve all of them.

We would be very interested to hear what you think about the model. Is this an appropriate model for us? Are the advertisements or the sign up requirement an issue for you?

Please let us know what you think at library@swin.edu.au