cpikas
Posts by this author
July 15, 2009
Communication, a major area, so 4 hours to write 2 essays, in a row, without a break. (sure I could get up and get water, etc., but I didn't want to waste time).
I got there pretty early, which was good. First thing, had to get someone to open the door. The student worker at the desk had no clue…
July 12, 2009
I'm not an expert on public understanding of science or science communication; however, I've certainly read enough to know that some of the statements constantly being rehashed are not only out of date, but have been repeatedly discredited through peer-reviewed empirical research.
(to be fair - I,…
July 8, 2009
NB: this blog post is not about cold fusion!
.... and is that a good or bad or both thing?
Upon reading something I'd written on scholarly communication in science and blogs, a reviewer suggested I read stuff by Lewenstein. My first reaction was, "huh?" He's an STS researcher who did a few…
July 5, 2009
This picture arrived in email last week. My parents lost an oak tree. M and I offered to come and help clear it out. When we got there around 10 this morning, my brother in law had already cut a bit up.
The tree was probably ~150 years old and was 32" across at the trunk.
Luckily it missed the…
July 2, 2009
In a recent post I mentioned giving real feedback to vendors and people designing systems and services for us. Sue left a comment that the vendor basically acts like she's alone in this - and they say that to me, too, but we soldier on. (oh, and AIAA says we're the only ones who have any problems…
July 1, 2009
seem to be for Bing, the re-branded "new" search engine from Microsoft. So that's ok (as is USAA - I've been a member since I was a midshipman or right after commissioning, I forget). (ew, ew, ew for some of the other ads!)
Which reminds me that I need to do some posts on web searching... oh and…
June 29, 2009
(this post talks about a recipe for granola)
edit: oh. not actually so funny, they use these terms in the post. but hey, did you know bloglines gave related searches?
June 29, 2009
This is the final in my practice essays before taking the real comps test in the end of July. I need to correct the record, though. Apparently although all of these questions came from my advisor, he didn't write them all. These were ones proposed by committee members and rejected for inclusion in…
June 28, 2009
I took classes on qualitative research and naturalistic research methods from researchers who follow the constructivist paradigm rather closely and who don't really believe in mixed methods research. I took statistics classes from professors who are friendly towards naturalistic methods, but who…
June 27, 2009
Michael J. Kurtz of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics came to speak at MPOW at a gathering of librarians from across the larger institution (MPOW is a research lab affiliated with a large private institution). He's an astronomer but more recently he's been publishing in bibliometrics…
June 23, 2009
It's that time again: the 2008 Journal Citation Reports are out from Thomson Reuters. It's started already, too, the e-mails to listservs and press releases. So I'm re-posting one of my posts from my old blog for those of you who might not have seen it.
Like prices and hemlines, why do impact…
June 22, 2009
One of the main reasons I go to SLA is to catch up on what all of the journals, databases, and research tool providers are up to. Sometimes they save the big announcements for ALA and sometimes they make them at SLA.
Other years I've spent a ton of time at the exhibits, but this year it was a bit…
June 22, 2009
No need to click through... just sayin' they're on their way.
June 19, 2009
I've talked about this a bit at sessions I taught at my library and also at Web Search University but it's still a favorite. Plus, you asked for posts on finding information. Oh, and one of the tools just released some updates so this is fairly timely.
This is not how to use the catalog to see if…
June 18, 2009
Bummer. Apparently Windows Live Writer doesn't automatically save drafts. So here are my foggy recollections of this session.
The session was a bit different this year. In previous years we've mostly discussed providing services (collection development and reference to computer science researchers…
June 16, 2009
(came in late because the speaker I initially chose to see failed to show up)
A speaker from Serials Solutionâs Summon reviewed various pieces of research done recently both by LIS researchers and by big libraries. Summed up pretty well by Tenopir (he copied her graph), increasing costs, decreasing…
June 13, 2009
If you've read my blog at all, you probably know I'm a Taylor (1962,
1968)
href="http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/650">groupie.
In fact, in a recent
href="http://scienceblogs.com/christinaslisrant/2009/06/librarian_basics_the_reference.php">post
I talked…
June 13, 2009
I have great post titles and topics in my head, but much less time to blog! (quick review: I work 40-50 hours/week, sometimes work 4 hours on Sunday afternoons, am a doctoral student preparing for comprehensive exams in mid-July, am married with a house, a old cat (in kidney failure - which creates…
June 10, 2009
This is the first in a series discussing things that librarians do.
Stephanie
Willen Brown pointed me to this hilarious video from UT Arlington.
Actually, the other librarian's reference interview isn't the model of
perfection, either, but we'll talk about that.
The purpose of a reference…
June 9, 2009
I'm so pleased that Walt Crawford has joined us as SciBlings!
I've read Cites & Insights (sometimes people tease him by calling it Sites & Incites, but I don't recommend you try that) and his old blog for years as well as a few of his books. I'm a real fan. Yay us!
June 7, 2009
(I can't find anything wrong on the back end for previous post so let's see if this one is broken, too) :(
update 1.2.3 3.2.1 test complete. error fixed, or so i believe.
June 7, 2009
SLA is the Special Libraries Association - it's really my home
professional organization.
I often go to basically 3 conferences in my profession: SLA,
ASIS&T, and Computers In Libraries. You come back
from SLA and you want to buy
something. You come back from ASIS&T and you want to…
June 6, 2009
This post serves a few purposes. First,
href="http://friendfeed.com/billhooker/ffbe5e1d/secret-science-again-drugmonkey">
Bill Hooker questioned
href="http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2009/06/secret_science_again.php#comment-1680220">Crotty's
assertion about the importance of patents to…
June 4, 2009
From via Caveat Lector.
Position Statement From University Press Directors on Free Access to Scholarly Journal Articles:
1. The undersigned university press directors support the dissemination of scholarly research as broadly as possible.
2. We support the free access to scientific, technical, and…
June 3, 2009
This is the 5th of the test essays in preparation for comps.
This question was posed by my advisor. I opened it
and went, "wow." It's sort of like the perfect storm of question.
When I first finished it, I thought I did really well, but
now it seems less than completely satisfying. So here's…
June 3, 2009
Please check out and comment on John's post on Looking for Ideas for the Information Science Channel.
So far:
Information policy including open access, intellectual property, and gov't openness
Information visualization
Information architecture
Publisher/publishing funding models: subscriptions,…
June 2, 2009
Is that all our vendors hear when they ask us to try out their new
interfaces? A couple of us were kvetching on friendfeed about
this.
Lemme tell you a little story. A little while ago a really
important society publisher in the geosciences re-did all of their web
pages and they were pretty -…
June 2, 2009
Last set of comps readings, I talked about sense of community:
belonging, having influence, fulfillment of needs, and emotional
support. Now, let's talk about the physics version of
"community" - cohesive subgroups. In a graph, these are
groups of nodes in a graph that are more connected to each…
May 31, 2009
Then I have the job for you. If you are a scientist, but you want to get out of the lab, want to have a little more variety in your life, like helping people and finding information, but still want to use your science degree and be part of the scientific enterprise, then you might want to consider…
May 31, 2009
Sunday morning I was all set to do another essay - just had to pick a
question source and question - when my mother in law called to say she
would be stopping by at about the same time I would be finishing up the
2 hour window, leaving no time for emergency house cleaning (no, I
haven't grown out…