John Wilbanks is brilliant - let's just get that down first.  He makes some great points in his most recent posts (1,2), but I also disagree with a few of the things he has said. In my abstract for the upcoming 4S conference, I echoed what Borgman and Bohlin both said, and one of his main points: the purpose of journals was, in Wilbanks' words, "registration, certification, dissemination, preservation." In today's world, dissemination is better done by other means besides journals, and maybe the other things are, too. But, he says the hyperlink is more powerful than the citation because look…
I've been fascinated by these projects, but I felt that I didn't have sufficient time to really do them justice here. Michael Nielsen has discussed them in several venues so it wasn't clear what I could add. Then I thought about it some more, and I realized that I probably do have different readers than Michael and my view is definitely different than his (plus he nudged me on friendfeed) so here's a discussion for you. After that rambling preface - you might ask, what's Polymath? It's the name of this project to do massively collaborative mathematics first suggested by Tim Gowers on his blog…
Some of these are better than others. Some don't have nice controlled vocabularies and are a bit wonky in the free version.  Nearly all of them you can get through another interface for a fee if you need more precision in searching or to export your results. (oh, as an aside - you've got the database producer who puts the whole thing together, and then you have options for interfaces. For example, for Inspec, you can pay for access via STN, DIALOG, Web of Knowledge, EbscoHost, Engineering Village - used to be FirstSearch and Ovid, too, but I don't remember if they're still offering it.…
Previously, I had a post about finding information in books using things like Google Book Search. This post talks about finding information on a topic, or more specifically, why you should start your search with a research database and more about what research databases are (like the real ones). In a post coming up, I'll give some information on some free to you research databases (the real ones). You should start your search with a research database to be more comprehensive, to cover multiple sources and publishers, to have real searching power/precision, and because of the vocabulary…
Ack. NO. ...Ok, well when you gonna finish? ARRRGHGH PhD students unite! Rebel against these questions! My answer - I don't know, and it will probably be a while. Like ask me in 3-4 years. Here are some ways my program differs from others you might know more about: very linear - we do coursework, then comps (or integrative paper), then dissertation proposal, then dissertation everything is new work - the comps (or integrative paper) is not like presenting a portfolio of work already completed but a new separate thing, the dissertation is a new piece of empirical research (no publishing…
Is this thing on? We're back from the upgrade.
This was the last day of comps - it's up to waiting for the results. The essays were emailed out to the readers immediately at 4pm when I finished. This day's questions were much more attractive. First exam was Information Retrieval - a minor area. I had to pick one of three: - something about a system to present science so that engineers can use it to make technology? - design and tell how to evaluate an information retrieval system that has both peer-reviewed scientific literature and blogs and wikis of interest to scientists - exploratory search, what is it, how to support it, etc I picked…
W00t! The newest libr* Scibling is none other than Dorothea Salo at The Book of Trogool.
Sigh. TGIF and TG I have 2 days free before the next 2.  I really felt like I was very, very familiar with these articles but I had a really hard time. I think when I look back on my response, I'll see it really wanders and doesn't make a good case. Here are the questions. Choose one of: - Olson and Olson (2000) Distance matters is a seminal [sic- for feminists, I know] paper. Describe why they said distance matters. There have been a lot of technological advancements since 2000, does distance still matter? or - Researchers argue Social network analysis is either a theory base or a…
So this was the dreaded STS. Crap. Good questions, but really, really not sure about my answers.  I did have the guts to shush people talking loudly outside the door and they gave me dirty looks. Oh well! Q 1 choice between: - relationship btwn science - technology - society. specifically, relationship btwn science and technology, science and society, technology and society... and how does all this influence sci-tech policy or - pick some major themes out of current sts research and describe them. say how you can use them in your research picked the first Q2 choice between - what is a…
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 what I was asking her. The proctor (the associate dean) came through with keys and asked if I had checked to see that everything was set up - I hadn't because I couldn't get in. She let me in - no computer, no printer. No IT person (she's on vacation this week). Trotted down a couple of flights of…
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, too, trotted out some of these ideas before some of this research was pointed out to me *). Myth 1: Scientists don't want to talk to the public They do. For example, in a decent sized (n=1354) international study of epidemiologists and stem-cell researchers, 60-70% have spoken with the media about…
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 articles on the cold fusion episode - but not really about the science but how communication happened, how events unfolded, and who knew what when.  But it had been a while, so I thought it was worth doubling back. This seems to be the primary article: Lewenstein, B. V. (1995). From fax to facts:…
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 house, the transformer and my dad's huge ham antenna. It did fall on this sycamore, but it was still standing By the end of the day it was cut into segments, but we left the splitting for my brother in law. He had to more them around with my Dad's tractor, which also gives you an idea of scale.…
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 with their digital library) Right now, AIP Publishing has a beta of their new journal pages that you can try out and then either e-mail them or fill out a survey with your feedback. Please do, they're some of the good guys. Similarly, Jonathan Rochkind is impressed by the feedback he got at a recent…
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 I did post already on ads in electronic journals - which seems kind of related... so this is just another random post to break up heavy posts.
(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?
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 the exam. (the gap in numbers you see are two essays that didn't go well). This particular question might be by my advisor with an ok from the two STS committee members. I didn't have any STS questions to practice with so he came up with this one - which I think is an excellent question. question:…
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 only use quantitative methods.  Other professors around me use some mixed methods, some rhetorical/critical methods, some large scale quantitative methods, (and then there's SNA)... All of these paradigms have related epistemologies*. The practitioners of naturalistic methods, in particular, are often…
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 quite a bit using data from the ADS.  You can review his publications using this search. As an aside, folks outside of astro and planetary sciences might not be familiar with ADS, but it's an excellent and incredibly powerful research database.  Sometimes librarians turn their nose up at it because…