April 11, 2011
Welcome to the latest instalment in my occasional series of interviews with people in the world of higher education and scholarly publishing.
This time around it's a bit different with the circumstances being a little unusual. Last week I did a back-of-the-envelope tweet about the Twitter habits…
April 10, 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 Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one.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…
April 8, 2011
Hey, it wasn't me that said that. It wasn't even another academic librarian.
It was Joshua Kim in his post from today's Inside Higher Ed, 5 Reasons Librarians Are the Future of Ed Tech.
It's a great post, talking from an outsider's perspective about what librarians bring to the educational process…
April 8, 2011
This seems to be the trajectory for absolutely everything now, from music, to film, to internet memes, everything.
That doesn't mean it's not funny, of course.
From The Onion, Time Between Thing Being Amusing, Extremely Irritating Down To 4 Minutes
PROVIDENCE, RI--According to a study released this…
April 6, 2011
...Or not?
Not surprisingly, one of my professional interests is the use of Twitter and other social networks/media in higher education. And not just for educational/classroom purposes but also for outreach.
In other words, people who work at a college or university using Twitter in an official…
April 5, 2011
Academia in the age of digital reproducibility
Gender Gaps (in academic librarianship)
Libraries' Digital Direction
The Physical Law of Extremes - The Digital Law of the Middle
Data on demand
"Selfless Audacity" Means Creating a Sustainable Not-a-Business Model
Canadians are also hostile to…
April 3, 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 Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one.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…
April 1, 2011
A fun one from the Scholarly Kitchen's Phil Davis to celebrate April 1st. I've seen quite a few amusing bits out there this year but nothing that really slays me. Any suggestions for good ones that you've seen this year?
Anyways: Librarian Caught in Bed with Book
Readers of the UK Guardian and…
March 31, 2011
This series of four posts by William M. Briggs is pretty interesting stuff.
The kind of thing where I'm torn: is it the most brilliant and perceptive thing I've ever read about higher education or is it a series of slightly early April 1st posts?
Dear Internet, I really need all you people out…
March 31, 2011
Grades and what they don't mean
Would I attend my own conference? Why conferences need more diversity
Thoughts on library Linked Data
'An Unwanted Consequence'
This Is How--And Where--Science Dies In Our Classrooms
When Content is Everywhere, Marketing is Queen
Facebook Testing Instant Ads Based…
March 30, 2011
Usually my Around the Web posts are full of pink fluffy bunny ain't-the-Internet-grand kind of links. Oh, sure, I do link to the occasional train wreck but that's rare. I really prefer that strategy because I tend to be an optiministic (if slightly cautious) person by nature.
But everyone loves…
March 28, 2011
It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd highlight some of my more recent musical discoveries.
Long Way Home by Kelley Hunt. So. A month or so ago I'm browsing on the second floor in a local used bookstore and some really cool bluesy music is on their sound system. I…
March 28, 2011
I read these five books over about the last year or so and they all represent something I really look for in books on complex subjects -- for the most part, they concentrate on things individual people can actually do to make a difference. In this case, a difference in the future of the planet.…
March 27, 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…
March 26, 2011
The Tim Hortons School of Probability
Innovation & Longevity in Digital Publishing: Surfing the S-Curve
Creating a Degree for 10K
Mock Rebecca Black All You Want, She's Laughing To The Bank
7 reasons people don't use twitter, and why 'It's a conversation' is the answer to all of them
Why Women…
March 25, 2011
The world sometimes seems like it's becoming a stranger and stranger place on an almost daily basis. Yep we're talking about Cloud Girlfriend.
From Christopher Mims at Technology Review Blogs: Facebook Virtual Girlfriend Violates Terms of Service:
Some startups don't make it past the phase where…
March 23, 2011
My Stealth Librarianship Manifesto post from last month continues to gather comments and page views, albeit at a slower rate than before. Of course, that's very gratifiying to see. If you haven't checked in on the post in a while, there are probably a couple of new comments with librarians'…
March 22, 2011
Anatomy of a Twitter Screw-up: My Own
What's the best way to not get invited back to dinner? (Talk about excessive corporate influence in American democracy.)
Smartphone users: Beware
Why Curation Is Just as Important as Creation
The Physics of the Imbecile: Chopra Interviews Kaku
iPads: Bane or…
March 21, 2011
In his incredibly wonderful new book, On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work, Scott Huler gives us three essential take-aways:
Thank God for engineers
Get out your wallet
Let's learn to love our infrastructure. (p. 217-225)In fact, not much…
March 20, 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…
March 18, 2011
Yeah, we've all had this kind of week.
Thanks to The Cronk for humourously saving my soul this week: University Performs Fastest Soulectomy on Record.
Doctors have finally verified claims that the College of Madison performed the fastest soulectomy in higher education history.
"We couldn't believe…
March 17, 2011
In all of our organizations fostering innovation is an important goal. But how do you turn the innovation fawcett on? Somehow it seems so much easier to turn it off.
Of course, it's all about institutional culture. The way problems and solutions are framed. The way management/leadership/peer…
March 17, 2011
For my own purposes I've been collecting various ebook-related posts for a while now and in particular the whole HarperCollins/library/ebook/Overdrive thing is a valuable source of lots of speculation and information. What I have below no doubt only represents a fairly small percentage of the…
March 16, 2011
David Weinberger of Everything Is Miscellaneous">Everything is Miscellaneous (review) fame is working on a new book.
It's going to be called Too Big to Know and over the last year or two he's blogged quite a bit of the thought processes that have gone into the writing of the book.
Here's a brief…
March 14, 2011
Here's a hint. Never, ever, ever put the following sentence in any non-fiction book you are writing:
This is dull stuff. (p. 165)
Testify!
An object lesson on non-success for popular science books to compare and contrast with an object lesson for success in popular science books.
But, to be fair,…
March 13, 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…
March 12, 2011
As usual, a bunch of great new articles from the most recent ISTL!
Five Years Later: Predicting Student Use of Journals in a New Water Resources Graduate Program by Andrea A. Wirth and Margaret Mellinger, Oregon State University
Seeing the Forest of Information for the Trees of Papers: An…
March 11, 2011
Please, can we just move on.
From The Onion, Responsible, Thoughtful Nation Decides To Ignore Ch**lie Sh**n Situation.
Calling the situation "none of our business" and "not worth a second of our time, quite frankly," a responsible and thoughtful U.S. populace uniformly decided this week to ignore…
March 10, 2011
If you're in the Greater Toronto Area next Tuesday, please drop by and see Michael talk. I'm thrilled that my library is co-sponsoring such a fantastic event!
Presented by:
Janusz A. Kozinski - Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering
The Division of Natural Science
The Steacie Science and…
March 10, 2011
A terrific new opportunity at my institution. I'm not in the reporting department or on the search committee, but I can answer general questions about York and the environment. My email is jdupuis at yorku dot ca.
Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream - Assistant LibrarianDiscipline/Field:…
