jdupuis | January 2, 20142012 was a year of Open Access advocacy for me. I published a ton of posts that year generally around the loose theme of making the scholarly communications ecosystem fairer and more open. In 2013 I did a little of that too, for sure.
But with a lot of the effects of the Conservative government's 2012 omnibus Bill C-38 coming home to roost with numerous cuts and closures and yet more policy changes, the thing that really motivated me to blog in an otherwise very slow blogging year was Canadian science policy.
More precisely, advocating for a fairer, more just system of government funded…
jdupuis | January 1, 2014Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Booklist Online Editors’ Choice: Adult Books, 2013.
Catching Cancer: The Quest for Its Viral & Bacterial Causes by Claudia Cornwall
In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America by Laurie Edwards
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by…
jdupuis | December 31, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Washington Post Notable nonfiction of 2013.
Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare by Stephen Budiansky
Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding…
jdupuis | December 31, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's io9 Holiday Gift Books for Lovers of Science and Science Fiction.
Southern Light: Images from Antarctica by David Neilson
Out of the Wild: Zoo Portraits by Boza Ivanovic, Barbara Stauss
Earth from Space by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Beautiful Whale by Bryant Austin, Sylvia A. Earle…
jdupuis | December 30, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Brian Pickings: The 13 Best Science and Technology Books of 2013, The 13 Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2013, The 13 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2013, The Best Photography Books of 2013, Cats, Dogs, and the Human Condition: The Year’s Best Books…
jdupuis | December 28, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Science for the People Science Up Your Holidays.
Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas by Jim Ottaviani, illustrated by Maris Wicks
Mountainfit by Meera Lee Seth
Speaking to My Madness: How I Searched for Myself in Schizophrenia by…
jdupuis | December 27, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Financial Times Books of the Year.
The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, by William Nordhaus
The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present, by Paul Seabright
Writing on the Wall…
jdupuis | December 26, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Bookish Best Business Books, History and Politics.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and…
jdupuis | December 24, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Goodreads Choice Awards 2013: Memoir & Autobiography, History & Biography, NonFiction.
The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett
Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff…
jdupuis | December 20, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Scientific American/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux Our Favorite Science Books of 2013. This list seems a bit self-serving but it's interesting enough to include.
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by…
jdupuis | December 20, 2013Happy holidays everyone!
This will probably be the last Friday Fun of the year (and yes, I promise to try and get closer to my old weekly schedule next year...) so I thought I'd feature something with a year end theme.
And really, haven't we all thought at times that the tech industry is really just making all this stuff up as they go along, with really no more aim in mind than taking our money and wasting our time?
5 Signs the Tech Industry Finally Ran Out of Ideas in 2013
Apple Appears to Have Stopped Innovating3D TV Failed, and Television Makers Are Lost as to What's NextWearable Gadgets…
jdupuis | December 18, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's EFF's Reading List: Books of 2013.
The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed by Nate Anderson
On Internet Freedom by Marvin Ammori
Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society edited by Benedetta Brevini, Arne…
jdupuis | December 17, 2013Welcome to the rebooted science interview series here at Confessions of a Science Librarian! The previous incarnation mostly concentrated on people in the broadly definined scholarly communications community, like Mark Patterson of eLife, Peter Binfield and Jason Hoyt of PeerJ or author Michael Nielsen.
The series has been lying fairly fallow for the last few years so I thought my more recent involvement with Canadian science policy advocacy presented an interesting opportunity to start over. In particular, my participation in the recent iPolitics science policy series presented itself as a…
jdupuis | December 16, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Science Friday Science Book Picks for 2013.
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping by Adam Schrager
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the…
jdupuis | December 16, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's The Economist Books of the Year.
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of…
jdupuis | December 15, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's Cocktail Party Physics Baker’s Dozen: Best 2013 Books for the Physics Fan.
The Universe in the Rear-View Mirror by Dave Goldberg
Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game by Anissa Ramirez and Allen St. John
Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among…
jdupuis | December 10, 2013This is a tale of two companies and a bunch of not-so-innocent bystanders.
Both Elsevier and Academia.edu are for-profit companies in the scholarly communications industry. Elsevier is a publisher while Academia.edu is a platform for scholars that, among other things, allows them to post copies of their articles online for all the world to see.
Both are trying to make money by adding value within the scholarly communications ecosystem. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There is plenty of room within that ecosystem for all kinds of players, both for-profit and non-profit. It's all…
jdupuis | December 9, 2013As I've often said, there are two kinds of science-themed graphic novels. The kind that's usually more fun reading are historical or biographical in nature, like a couple of my favourites Feynman or Logicomix. Generally in this species of graphic novel, the actual science content kind of takes a back seat to the historical or biographical narrative. In some ways, I think those are easier to do than books that try to very directly convey scientific information via the comics medium. These often end up as little more than regular textbooks with funny pictures, kind of boring and dry but…
jdupuis | December 5, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's New Scientist The best science books of 2013.
Big Data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work and think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier
Forecast: What physics, meteorology, and the natural sciences can teach us about economics by Mark Buchanan
The…
jdupuis | December 3, 2013Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here.
This time it's the Boing Boing 2014 Gift Guide.
Make: Analog Synthesizers by Ray Wilson
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong-and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars by Lee Billings
Toms…