July 8, 2011
I chose this one more for the humourous title of the post since the content itself is very seriously intentioned.
I almost see this as a double sequel to both the social media evilness post and to some of my recent ramblings on thought leadership.
The post in question is We Don't Need No Steenkin'…
July 5, 2011
Yet another science blogging community. The more the merrier.
We've had another quiet period in the science blogging universe these last couple of months. It seems that the rapid evolution that kicked off with the founding of Scientopia in the wake of Pepsigate is continuing.
And this is the big…
July 2, 2011
Libraryland is sometimes plagued with a civility problem.
We disagree but we want to be nice about it. But sometimes, being nice isn't a great way to express disagreement. Life and the world is messy and unkind and difficult. And sometimes our commitment to our ideas and passionate disagreements…
July 2, 2011
You would think what with me being Canadian and all and this being the day after Canada Day, I'd somehow try and find the energy to hunt up a nice piece of Canadian humour to highlight in my weekly Friday Fun feature.
We Canadians are pretty funny, after all.
I guess it's even more Canadian not to…
June 30, 2011
Sometimes two posts just collide in my brain.
I thought I'd share a recent case of this phenomenon.
First up, marketing/PR/social media Rock Star Mitch Joel on taking the best advantage of the inherent evilness of social networks like Twitter in The New Media Pecking Order.
Newsflash: the world is…
June 25, 2011
As you read this, I'll be at TEDxLibrariansTO helping out with registration. And having a great time talking about librarians as thought leaders!
As I've done for the last few days, here is my answer for yesterday's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Question:
Question 1: What means should librarians…
June 24, 2011
This one's pretty funny, but in a painful way.
I'm sure this one rings true for a lot of people out there.
I like Number 8:
8.) Self-Entitled Social-Media HotShots
Who You Are: Your license plate reads "SCLEXPT". You spend all day teaching computer illiterate people how to create a facebook pages…
June 23, 2011
Following on from the last three days, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Questions:
Question 1: What are the similarities or characteristics of thought leaders that you know? Tell us about the attributes that your ideal thought leader would have.
I don't think any one…
June 23, 2011
The Library Chapter of the York University Faculty Association has released the following unanimously approved letter:
York University Faculty Association, Library Chapter
240 York Lanes, York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON
M3J 1P3
June 2, 2011
Dr. Patrick Deane, President and Vice-…
June 22, 2011
Following on from the last two days, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Coundown Questions:
Question 1: How can experience of failure contribute to making an effective thought leader?
Failure is useful for a thought leader in the same way that it's useful for everyone. We can learn a…
June 21, 2011
A couple of odd ones from last week's Inside Higher Ed, both related to the way scholarship, higher education and the intelligent design/creationism movement intersect.
First up, Blasphemy of a Different Kind, involving people possibly being fired for teaching evolution at an Adventist school.…
June 21, 2011
Following on from yesterday, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Coundown Questions:
Question 1: What should we expect/demand of our thought leaders?
I'm not sure I like the way this question is phrased, preferring something like, "What do thought leaders actually do?" We certainly…
June 20, 2011
The very fine TEDxLibrariansTO team is counting down to this Saturday's big event with some daily questions for us all to consider.
The topic, of course, is Librarians as Thought Leaders!
These are the questions for Day 5. I'll attempt to answer them and every day's questions very briefly. I…
June 19, 2011
I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll…
June 17, 2011
I like the subtitle of this Onion article too: "'Mature Adults Could Be Gone Within 50 Years,' Experts Say"
In the wake of this week's rioting in Vancouver over the loss of a game, it seems particularly appropriate: Nation Down To Last Hundred Grown-Ups.
Of all the many Onion articles I've linked…
June 14, 2011
Facebook's face recognition strategy may be just the ticket
Is e-learning the food-bank of education?
My "must have" apps after 1 academic year on the iPad
Teaching Them How to Think
The (Revised) Case Study
Why I Decided to Start a Blog
When Social Networks Become Tools of Oppression: Jillian C…
June 13, 2011
I'll be at the 2011 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries at the University of Ottawa for the next few days. I plan on doing a bit of tweeting while I'm there but probably no live blogging.
I hope to have a summary post up here sometime after the conference with my impressions. Taking…
June 13, 2011
Here's a list worth giving a listen to: 10 Scientist Rock Stars. Let's take a look, starting with by far the most famous:
Brian May. Brian May is the guitarist for a little band called Queen. He is consistently ranked as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. And he has a Ph.D. in…
June 10, 2011
I've watched a lot of bad science fiction movies over the years, but somehow have management to avoid 4 out of the 5 mentioned in Technology Review's list The Five Worst (Hard) Science Fiction Movies Ever!
2012 (2009)
Lawnmower Man (1992): Trying to capitalize on the then-current zeitgeist of…
June 10, 2011
From the BBC:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Eric Schmidt have warned governments worldwide not to over-regulate the internet.
Mr Zuckerberg said governments cannot cherry pick which aspects of the web to control and which not to.
*snip*
"People tell me on the one hand 'It's great…
June 9, 2011
Yes, the TEDx whirlwind is coming to libraryland!
Later this month on Saturday, June 25th, TEDxLibrariansTO is coming to Toronto.
About TEDxLibrariansTO
Who inspires you?
We live in a time that is in need of inspiration. The aspirations of both individuals and society have always had a home within…
June 9, 2011
The death of death?
Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries
Tinkering with the IEEE and ACM copyright policies
How can a university best use social media for internal communications?
Being a More Efficient, Productive Academic II: Thinking About References
Taiga by the…
June 8, 2011
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I did a short presentation on Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Case for Social Media as part of a panel for a York Faculty of Graduate Studies Scholarly Communications Series.
And yes, I was the Twitter guy, although some of the other presenters did talk about…
June 7, 2011
I'm doing a short presentation later today on using social media as a researcher. It's part of the York University Faculty of Graduate Studies' Scholarly Communications Series. This one is titled Scholarship in the Public Eye:
The Faculties of Graduate Studies and Liberal Arts and Professional…
June 6, 2011
Sometimes we Open Access advocates tend to assume everybody is already on our side. You know, all our librarian and scientist colleagues out there. Surely by now they've seen the light. They understand the main issues and flavours of OA, can ably summarize the major arguments for OA and refute…
June 5, 2011
I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll…
June 3, 2011
I contacted Twitter earlier this week but unfortunately they have been unable to activate the Academic Big Deal "Elitist" Verification Status on my Twitter account.
Something about me being a "delusional status seeking famewhore megalomaniac." They also mentioned something about Klout, but I'm not…
June 2, 2011
Yesterday York University Libraries was visited by a delegation of 39 academic librarians, mostly from The Netherlands but also a couple from Belgium. They are on a tour of many of the academic libraries of Southern Ontario, hoping to learn and share a bit about how libraries in different…
June 1, 2011
A Library for Human Capital
How I Talk About Searching, Discovery and Research in Courses
Why libraries still matter
The State of Higher Ed Social Media 2011
How To Blog a Conference
The secret is to bang the rocks together: Arduino is a building block for the world to come
Google's Blogger outage…
May 31, 2011
Twitterers of the world.
We've all heard the questions. The murmurs. The doubts and whispers.
"Twitter is a waste of time," they say.
"People are just talking about what they ate for breakfast, or what their dog is doing."
"No good can come of it, no way to spend work time, turning us all into…
