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acoustics is the content from academic journals. Frankly, in this regard it is exciting to see many excellent and well-exe- cuted resources already established. A great example of this is the Society’s Digital Library. Although the collection is not completely free (articles in ARLO, JASA Express Letters, POMA, and all meeting abstracts from 1929 to the present are open access) nor is it generally aimed toward the novice, electronic versions of journal articles make refereed informa- tion on acoustics accessible from anywhere in the world with relative ease.
Multimedia resources
Multimedia provides a unique way of sharing informa- tion that is difficult or impossible to reproduce using printed materials and it is particularly useful in the realm of teaching and educating. Historically, most multimedia has been locked into proprietary formats on physical media that have required specialized equipment for playback. For many years, this limited the distribution of materials. Now, however, many types of multimedia to be played back on a home com- puter and multimedia content can be directly shared via the internet.
The exponential growth of internet multimedia resources in recent years has been largely due to the advance- ment of commercial-grade graphics capabilities and digital media coupled with the ability and demand for large com- mercial servers to host content. Media sharing—particularly video sharing—is now a popular means of communication. Other types of sharing, such as podcasting, video teleconfer- encing and webinars (web-based seminars), are also com- monplace.
We believe that there is great potential for multimedia to be used to promote acoustics education to the rising genera- tion—animations can provide physical interpretation of an equation, audio content can allow acoustics to be actually be heard, and video clips can capture scientific demonstrations and real-life applications. It makes sense that the field of acoustics, by definition, would be a discipline that pushes the limits on multimedia in publications. The Society has long enabled multimedia in its publications including ARLO and more recently in JASA Express Letters and Acoustics Today’s use of AIP’s advanced multimedia server. This development allows for certain creative research to be published in ways
never before possible and illustrates the importance the soci- ety gives to multimedia and forging new ground in research. However, in 2009 only 8 out of 73 published Express Letters contained multimedia files. It would be exciting to see our community utilize this functionality better in the future.
There are many forums available for distributing acoustics multimedia online. Many individuals use their per- sonal or work websites to host acoustics content. Dan Russell’s Acoustics and Vibrations Animations page is one of the more visible sites since it has won several science awards
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and boasts over 1.7 million visitors since 2001 . Likewise,
media can also be shared via dedicated services, many of which may be used for free. Videos of lectures and/or teach- ing demonstrations can be shared on YouTube and iTunesU, audio content may be hosted through services like SoundCloud and Archive.org, and sites like Flickr and Picassa host images.
An additional path forward for promoting acoustics edu- cation could be to participate in the open course movement. Universities across the world have been making available audio and video recordings of their lectures and other course materials. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been at the forefront of this movement and estimate their courses have been viewed by 50 million individuals,14 with mathematics and physics courses being the most popular. However, there are only a very few open acoustics courses available. Archiving introductory-level courses in acoustics would be a great outreach method, particularly allowing non-traditional, underserved, and disabled students to learn about the field of acoustics. The content could also be uploaded to the Opencourse Consortium, which serves as a
central depository website for open course materials.
Social networking
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Perhaps the most astonishing revolution in communica- tion to emerge in recent years is the advent of online social networks. Social networks generally operate by a user con- necting to other users based on some form of commonality. On Facebook, one of the most popular social networks with over 500 million active users,16 members create profiles and add other users as “friends.” Social networks are also widely used in the professional and academic worlds for job net- working and collaborative work (e.g., LinkedIn and
The Formula 1 in Room Acoustics now handles array loudspeakers and clusters.
www.odeon.dk
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