jdupuis | December 3, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list is New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014.
Being…
jdupuis | December 2, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list is Financial Times Best books of 2014.
Dragnet Nation:…
jdupuis | December 1, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list is Brain Pickings The Best Science Books of 2014.
The…
jdupuis | November 27, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list includes Best Books of the Year & Best Canadian…
jdupuis | November 26, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list is 2014 Best Books of the Year: The Top 100 in Print…
jdupuis | November 25, 2014As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And here we are in 2014!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
The first list I'll be highlighting this year is the Globe and Mail'…
jdupuis | November 20, 2014Science Journals Have Passed Their Expiration Date -- It's Time for the Publishing Platform
An interview with Anurag Acharya, Google Scholar lead engineer (2006)
Google Scholar pioneer on search engine’s future
Google Scholar Is Doing Just Fine, Says Google
What if Google killed Scholar?
Making the world’s problem solvers 10% more efficient: Ten years after a Google engineer empowered researchers with Scholar, he can’t bear to leave it
A Decade of Google Scholar
On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles
Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals
The…
jdupuis | November 14, 2014Against Productivity
How to Escape The Age of Mediocrity
Re-imagining the McGill University Library and Archives - Feasibility Study (scope report here, planning page here)
Surprising Gadgets, Not Just Books, Are Ready for Checkout at College Libraries
Commodification of the information profession: A critique of Higher Education under neoliberalism
Understanding Facebook's lost generation of teens
What's the Academic's Role?
Get Cracking
Culture of cruelty: why bullying thrives in higher education
Being Irrelevant: How Library Data Interchange Standards Have Kept Us Off the Internet
On "…
jdupuis | November 10, 2014The fallout of the Great Sonny Rollins Jazz Satire Blowup of 2014 is still reverberating through the jazz community, prompting new uproars and bouncing off a surprising number of new jazz eruptions in the wider culture. Definitely interesting times to be a jazz fan, if not always for the right reasons.
Some cool stuff going on, see links below.
Tony Bennett teams up with Lady Gaga, of all people, to put out a duets album
David Bowie teams up with Maria Schneider on a song for his new greatest hits package
Annie Lennox doesn't team up with any famous jazz people for her new jazz standards…
jdupuis | November 5, 2014I have a son who's currently a third year physics undergrad and another son who's in first year philosophy. As you can imagine, I may occasionally pass along a link or two to them pointing to stuff on the web I think they might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other undergrad students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog.
Since I'm a science librarian, the items I've chosen are mostly geared towards science undergrads (hence, the title of the series), but I hope many of them…
jdupuis | October 31, 2014This past Tuesday I gave a talk as part of the York University Department of Science & Technology Studies' STS Seminar Series. Not surprisingly, my talk was centred on the work I've done as a chronicler of Canadian science policy issues. The title and abstract of my talk are:
Evidence vs. Ideology: The Canadian Conservative Government's War on Science
Canada has entered an era of decision-based evidence-making, where scientific and other evidence takes a back seat to an ideology of political partisanship in the service of economic development and “prosperity.” Where once we could hope…
jdupuis | October 24, 2014It has been a year since I last updated my chronological listing of the Harper Conservative government's war on science. The newly updated master list is here, where you can also read more about this project in general. The previous update from October 2013 is here. Some preliminary metrics about the impact of that original post in the wider world are here.
This update contains 140 new incidents, mostly from between the last update and now. They have been integrated into the master list.
Some notes.
Many of the incidents I list are programs or locations that have sustained significant…
jdupuis | October 22, 2014I find the whole idea of a "sharing economy" where people barter and exchange and free up excess capacity in their own lives and situations to make others' lives a little easier and cheaper an interesting notion. And worthwhile. After all broadly speaking the open access and open source movements do partake of this same spirit. Libraries too, in that we pool the resources of a community to acquire stuff for the benefit of all the members, so that everyone can share the wealth.
But is there a dark side to sharing?
With the advent of companies like AirBnB and it's ilk not to mention the whole…
jdupuis | October 9, 2014So what do I mean by Big Deals.
In the world of academic libraries, a Big Deal is when we subscribe to the electronic versions of all (or almost all) of a journal publisher's offerings. Usually for it to qualify as a Big Deal, the publisher in question is going to be one of the larger ones out there, like Elsevier or Springer or even a big society publisher like IEEE or the American Chemical Society. The whole idea of the Big Deal is that we should theoretically get a better price for a large volume commitment than for paying on an individual basis for just the ones we think we really want.…
jdupuis | October 1, 2014I'm always interested in the present and future of libraries and higher education. There's a steady stream of reports from various organizations that are broadly relevant to the (mostly academic) library biz but they can be tough to keep track of. I thought I'd aggregate some of those here.
Of course I've very likely missed a few, so suggestions are welcome in the comments.
I've done a few similar posts recently here and here.
NMC Horizon Report 2014 Library Edition
SPARC Article-Level Metrics Primer
Reed Elsevier: Goodbye to Berlin - The Fading Threat of Open Access
Ithaka S+R: Does…
jdupuis | September 30, 2014This is one scary book. Never mind The Exorcist or Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain trilogy, this is the real thing. And that's because unlike those authors' fevered dreams of gods and devils and vampires and plagues, the nightmare that all of our governments are spying on is really real.
And we can thank Edward Snowden for uncovering and releasing information about the extent of the spying and Glenn Greenwald (and others) for spreading the word far and wide.
Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State is the story of…
jdupuis | September 26, 2014The Ig Nobel prizes were awarded last week and as usual they are hilarious. And this time around a Canadian was included! Yay Canada!
What are the Ig Nobel prizes? For the uninitiated they are a mock set of awards given out at a lavish ceremony at Harvard every year for interesting and bizarre real research and other actual "accomplishments." But with a humourous twist, of course.
Here's what they have to say:
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then makes them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people…
jdupuis | September 26, 2014Science Advice: Cultivating the necessary functions in Canada
A rough guide to science advice
Principles and politics of scientific advice
What do policymakers want from academics?
Tips for Academics Who Want to Engage Policymakers
Top 20 things scientists need to know about policy-making
Top 20 things politicians need to know about science
12 things policy-makers and scientists should know about the public
Science in an Age of Scrutiny: How Scientists Can Respond to Criticism and Personal Attacks
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate…
jdupuis | September 22, 2014Melissa K. Aho and Erika Bennet's anthology The Machiavellian Librarian: Winning Allies, Combating Budget Cuts, and influencing Stakeholders is pretty good for what it is, in some ways better than I expected. It's a guide for maneuvering office politics and advancing your agenda, big and small, with the stakeholders and influencers that matters in your environment. Sadly, this book fails for what it isn't: a book that tackles the issues and trends where librarians really need to advance our agendas and make ourselves key "thought leaders" and "influencers."
The book is a collection of 25…
jdupuis | September 19, 2014Is jazz satire possible? Can it possibly be funny or even relevant?
This question is more immediate and pressing that you would normally imagine in the wake of serial controversies in the jazz world.
It all began at the end of July when The New Yorker posted a article in their humour column by Django Gold purporting to be the thoughts of jazz legend Sonny Rollins where he basically says jazz is a waste of time and they his whole life has been in vein. The jazz world exploded as it was not immediately obvious that it was satire. If it had been in The Onion people might have realized it…