cpikas | October 30, 2009Today was a little better. To be honest, itâs probably just that I was a bit more tolerant after I slept in a couple of hours before showing up in the middle of the second session.
I started out in: Scientific Practices in Research and in Learning: Cyberinfrastructure Meets Cyberlearning chaired by Christine Borgman from UCLA. I came in a little late, during Curtis Wongâs demo of Microsoftâs Worldwide Telescope â that thing is super cool. Seriously. It can display all sorts of data in layers and then link out to external information including stuff from ADS. After him, Alyssa Goodman of ADS…
cpikas | October 30, 2009It's always strange to go to a conference outside of your own primary research area. This conference had a lot of historians and philosophers as well as social scientists in every other category including media studies and information science. I was in a couple sessions in which the presenter read from a marked up paper, clutched in their hands in a bundle. I understand that's the norm in some fields, but there's no way I'm going to waste my time listening to someone read aloud when I could read the article for myself in half the time.
There were some real highlights of the day. A couple…
cpikas | October 28, 2009I hope to be blogging this meeting over the course of the next few days. Last STS meeting I attended computer note-taking was completely frowned upon but hopefully this one will be more modern. I'll be talking tomorrow in session 070. Scientific Communication, (4:00 to 6:00 pm, but I'm guessing my 20 minutes will be closer to 6). The conference has oodles of concurrent sessions from 8am to 6pm and then evening events. I'm staying at home - probably an hour and a half away with traffic (30-45 minutes without) - so I might miss half of the first session and will not stay for evening events.
I…
cpikas | October 26, 2009(I'm posting things from my old blog while I'm on a much-needed vacation)
This originally appeared December 21, 2007
Implications of newer models of popularization of science for science library collection development*
When we look at science communication - communication about science or by scientists - we normally divide that into communication among scientists (scholarly communication) and communication to non-scientists (variously: popular communication of science, popularization, or the French - vulgarization). Within scholarly communication we have formal scholarly communication (…
cpikas | October 24, 2009(I'm posting some classics from my old blog while I'm on a much needed vacation)
This originally appeared February 26, 2006
The reference interview in a scientific research setting: question pairs establish intellectual identity
(This is thinking out loud stuff not approved scientific paper stuff ;) )
In library school, we're told that we don't need to know the subject, we just need to know how to find it. Yet in real life reference situations, we see customers making quick decisions on whom to ask and what to ask based on some assumptions of common ground. Librarians try to establish common…
cpikas | October 21, 2009(while I'm on a much-needed vacation, I'm re-posting some things from my old blog)
This appeared January 5, 2007.
On Weeding...
Weeding, variously called "pruning", de-selection, de-accessioning, collection management, is a vital part of maintaining a healthy, vibrant, welcoming library collection. It is the careful, thoughtful removal of items from the collection. Reasons for weeding include:
No longer within the scope of the collection
Duplicate copies
Low circulation (therefore low interest)
Poor condition (replacement copies may be added)
No circulation within x time period
Information…
cpikas | October 20, 2009I think sometimes the widget on the left side doesn't work. Here's the direct link to support one of the projects I've picked. I think these are some great things that will help students in my state, but if you don't see anything here that floats your boat, please pick a project on one of the other ScienceBling's giving pages.
We've also just heard that the very generous folks at HP will be donating even more to the cause. This is what they've told us:
HP wants to make yet another contribution to your Giving Page. The more you raise by this Sunday, October 25, the more HP will contribute!…
cpikas | October 19, 2009A couple colleagues (Joe and Sara) wondered if support for the new name is divided between corporate and academic members.
Actually, I've heard from folks from research labs (gov't, private, and corporate) really who really hate the name, too. My take: it's business researchers vs. science researchers. I think there are more fingers in the pot and more competition for competitive intelligence and market research than honest to goodness science and engineering work like you'd have at a pharmaceutical or communications technology company. (these companies also have business researchers, but I'…
cpikas | October 17, 2009Here are some ways to define the format/genre/communication channel... etc.
I usually go back to Mortensen, Torill and Walker, Jill. (2002). Blogging thoughts: Personal publication as an online research tool. In A. Morrison ed. (Ed.), Researching ICTs in context (1 ed.) (pp. 249). Oslo, Norway: InterMedia University of Oslo, Norway. pdf online. That's where I got the "reverse chronologically arranged collection of discrete posts" idea that I use (actually, I can't check to make sure that quote is exact because M's computer can't open pdfs!)
Here are some others culled from articles i've…
cpikas | October 17, 2009Cross-language information retrieval is an important research area with lots of activity. There are all kinds of elaborate algorithms and ways of doing it. There's a lot of domain specificity and connotation kind of things that have been really improved in the past decade.
Most people searching won't really have the support of the fancy specialized tools. I've approximated some of this searching for years using various basic search engine language tools. Luckily, recently they've added a lot more Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Russian translation options in addition to the Western or…
cpikas | October 15, 2009My primary professional society, SLA, has been going through this big "align in 2009" business. They've decided we need a new name because CEOs of corporations don't understand what librarians do. So here it is:
Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionalswhich will go by ASKpro
rrrrright. So now people know exactly what we do. Oh I am *so* tired of people thinking that renaming their position or the place in which they work will make people love them. We are the most pathetic crowd.
Some of the comments from my colleagues on listservs, friendfeed, and on twitter are hilarious. I pointed…
cpikas | October 13, 2009This was in an earlier EOS (pdf, not available online for institutional subscribers so I found this by flipping through the print!) - number 32 of this year from 11 August. They're trying what Nature tried and dropped and what EGU has been fairly successful with in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics - although neither gathered/s many comments.
They're trying it for just a year and only for a few journals:
G-cubed
Global Biogeochemical Cycles (?)
JGR-Earth Surface
JGR-Planets
Radio Science
It's completely voluntary.Registration is required to comment. The formal reviews will be posted (may…
cpikas | October 12, 2009Is it possible or even desirable to have one search interface that serves every need?
I have about 10 minutes to write this placeholder of a post. Hopefully, I'll get the opportunity to revisit this topic near and dear to my heart later.
I've often railed against naive librarians and administrators who insist we need "google boxes" as our only interface for every system, for every need, regardless of what is behind the box. In fact, we just fought this battle had this discussion with our enterprise search consultants, but anyhoo.
This particular post was prompted by Martin Fenner's discussion…
cpikas | October 8, 2009While I'm trying to get back on my blogging feet, here are some quick takes on things happening in library land:
The kerfuffle about the institutional subscription price of Scientific American continues. For those of you joining the discussion late, Nature Publishing Group is now integrating it into the Nature journals web site, offering a back file, and perpetual access to what you've purchased. Nothing will be pulled from Ebsco but I guess at some point new stuff won't be added. Ok, that's sounds fine, right? The only thing is that the institutional subscription price will go from $40 to $…
cpikas | October 8, 2009I still am not online on my own computer at home so I'm not able to add posts as I'd like. Please bear with me!
cpikas | October 5, 2009So my faithful little laptop has now died. It's 4 years old and hasn't really been treated all that gently. (my father-in-law just poured his drink in it a couple of weeks ago). I'm faced with the choice of buying new or repairing. It was purchased through the University of Maryland's student program with 4 year on site repair, but .... sigh. I had a post in preparation about free online books, so I'll try to reconstruct that soonest.
cpikas | October 2, 2009As I've mentioned, science libraries are very much in financial trouble just as their parent institutions and other organizations are right now. There have been many calls for publishers to hold the line on price increases and some have done so. Some, like SPIE, have decreased prices -yay them! Others, like a chemistry database that was recently purchased by a large publisher, have given my parent institution a quote that raises our subscription price over 40% over the period of the contract. Nature Publishing Group has raised institutional subscriptions for Scientific American from about $…
cpikas | October 2, 2009No, not mis-giving. In fact, there will be no misgivings if you give to any of the projects Iâve selected or any of the other projects on Donorâs Choose.
A little background. DonorsChoose.org is a way that you can safely give a little or a lot of money to help teachers in the classroom. The teachers have to have very specific plans and then have to report back. Itâs all very carefully managed. Read about how it works. Science Blogs and other social media folks have a little contest going, but you should give because itâs the right thing to do. It would be nice if you did it so I got credit in…
cpikas | October 1, 2009Update2 (10/2/2009): and I'm back, and typing in the right box this time. yay! posts to come this weekend.
Sorry for the time off - technical issues and all sorts of excitement around the house. (b-day celebrations and a cousin returning from Iraq). This is being updated from my iPhone so please pardon any weirdness. (post updated)
cpikas | September 19, 2009It just hit me this morning that new communications journals are sort of less expected right now. In this post I'll briefly discuss the traditional place of letters or communications publications in scholarly communications (in science) and then weave in some thoughts about pressures on the system to change and where we're going.*
First, this piece out of the standard Garvey and Griffith model of scholarly communication (also very similar to part of the UNISIST model)(drawn on Gliffy, which rocks):
Technical reports and pre-prints also might happen between regional conferences and journal…