jdupuis | May 12, 2011The standard commercial library citation tools, Web of Science (including their newish Proceedings product) and Scopus, have always been a bit iffy for computer science. That's mostly because computer science scholarship is largely conference-based rather than journal-based and those tools are tended to massively privilege the journal literature rather than conferences.
Of course, these citation tools are problematic at best for judging scholarly impact in any field, using them for CS is even more so. The flaws are really amplified.
A recent article in the Communications of the ACM goes…
jdupuis | May 12, 2011
Inventing the college store of the future
Stepping up to the Genius Bar
Why College Is Not A Bubble (Except For The University Of Phoenix)
Why Academics Should Blog: A College of One's Own
How I Talk About Searching, Discovery and Research in Courses
Future of Media: Lots of Questions, But No Easy Answers
Why the term "data science" is flawed but useful
Library Digital Content at the Tipping Point
Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education
Why people don't like us (ie. universities)
The cloud is currently a question, not an answer
The Association between Four Citation Metrics and Peer…
jdupuis | May 9, 2011Ok, not really.
It's hard to directly compare the industrial disco-metal stylings of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails with the tango nuevo of Argentina's Astor Piazzolla. The music itself is very different.
Or is it? Both of them -- Piazzolla and Reznor -- certainly create music that has a propulsive, relentless almost narrative drive to it, also music that appeals to both the head and the heart and the feet.
It's really all about the passion and intensity. You don't listen to either Reznor or Piazzolla and come away from it with "eh."
You see, I listen to music on my commute. I have…
jdupuis | May 8, 2011I 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 Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one.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 occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, is from February 24, 2008.
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Just so you all know I don't just read the brightest, shiniest, newest books. I also read some old classics too. And classic…
jdupuis | May 6, 2011I'm not usually a big fan of Seth Godin's guruish pronouncements, but I thought this one was a pretty good encapsulation of what it means to be a public professional or a public academic in the 21st century.
In other words, Why bother having a resume?
If you don't have a resume, what do you have?
How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow
up?
And we shouldn't kid…
jdupuis | May 6, 2011I guess it's not just the physical hits to the head that leave a lasting effect on people's brains, but the long-term effects of bad video games also can cause your brains to leak out your ears.
From The Onion, Neurologists Paint Grim Picture Of 'Madden' Football's Long-Term Effect On Players' Brains.
SAN JOSE, CA--In an alarming report that sheds new light on the dangers of the game, the Institute for Brain Injury Research published Wednesday the results of a five-year investigation into the long-term neurological consequences of playing Madden football.
"The situation is far more serious…
jdupuis | May 4, 2011
Hey Apple, Sony and Amazon: Crisis Response is Real Time Now Too
It's Time to Realize Our Location Concerns Aren't Dumb
The REAL Death Of The Music Industry
What is the Future of Books? Kindle Lending Library, Piracy, and More!
Achievement P o r n
Should Teaching Be Outsourced?
No Room for Books
Libraries, IT, Reference, the Future...and Learning?
Is reference service dead?
Not With A Bang: The First Wave of Science 2.0 Slowly Whimpers to an End
The purpose of gamification: A look at gamification's applications and limitations. (Great comment stream too, with input by Kathy Sierra and…
jdupuis | May 2, 2011A while back I posted some semi-coherent ramblings inspired by the HarperCollins/Overdrive mess concerning how libraries were able to license ebook collections for their patrons.
I'm not sure my ideas have changed or solidified or evolved or what, but I've certainly come to a slightly different way of articulating them.
Here goes.
At a certain level, libraries -- public, academic, institutional, special, whatever -- lending ebooks makes no sense at all.
If a library acquires a digital copy of a book there is no good reason why every person in that library's community (school, town, city,…
jdupuis | May 1, 2011I 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 occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, is from February 26, 2008.
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I try and spread around the disciplinary love in my science book reading. Some physics, some math,…
jdupuis | April 29, 2011On Tor.com over the last couple of years, Kate Nepveu has been taking us through a chapter-by-chapter re-read of The Lord of the Rings. In each post she would give a brief summary of the action as well as some commentary.
It's been a great project and it's just come to an end in the last week or so. I've really enjoyed following along with the posts, although I have to admit not with the re-read. Last time I re-read the books was timed with the release of each of the films.
There's an index of all the relevant posts here.
And a little bit from the very first post, way back in December 2008…
jdupuis | April 28, 2011
How Libraries Can Leverage Twitter
Geeks Are the Future: A Program in Ann Arbor, MI, Argues for a Resource Shift Toward IT
"A New chapter for our Unwinders Management Book - Evaluating Candidates from their Internet Profile"
Legislative Alternatives to the Google Book Settlement
What Are Digital Literacies? Let's Ask the Students
If You're Not On Facebook, It's Time To Get Over Yourself
Archive Watch: British Library Purchases Poet's 40,000 E-Mails
Video-Game Rooms Become the Newest Library Space Invaders
Hard economic lessons for news
For-Profits and Satellite Radio
Byliner Launches With…
jdupuis | April 26, 2011The following is a job posting for the York University Libraries for a Reference Assistant position. Note that a library degree is not required.
The job involves both regular science reference and supporting maps & GIS users and will be both in my unit and the Map Library here at York. For basic questions about the science-y part of the position, you can contact me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca. For the maps/GIS part, you can contact Rosa Orlandini at rorlan at yorku dot ca.
Posting Number: YUSA-7280
Position Title: Reference Assistant (Map & GIS/Science)
Department: Steacie Science…
jdupuis | April 24, 2011I 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 occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, is from March 25, 2008.
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This book should have been called Everything is not Miscellaneous. In fact, this book could be imagined as Weinberger's Everything is…
jdupuis | April 22, 2011And perhaps student tweets complaining about professor tweets also reaches an all-time high!
Anyways, here it is, 11am on a holiday Friday morning and all I really want to do is relax and read a book. But what do I have to do? Write a Friday Fun post! What a drag.
So, if I want to get the dreary chore of trying to be funny over with as quickly as possible, where do I turn? The Cronk News of course!
Professor Tweets Complaining about Student Tweets Reaches All-Time High
Twitter has become a popular way for faculty and staff to complain about the students with immediate gratification by "…
Around the Web: The 4 Stages Of Understanding Twitter, Tweeting presidential doppelgängers and more
jdupuis | April 21, 2011
The 4 Stages Of Understanding Twitter
5 Myths About the 'Information Age'
Presidential Doppelgängers Tweet
If You're Not On Facebook, It's Time To Get Over Yourself
Conversation is the New Attention
What are Libraries For?
PubMed and beyond: a survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature
Record Number of Women Declare CS (at Harvard)
The Library and the Research Essay
Relevance of Library Collections for Graduate Student Research: A Citation Analysis
Study of Doctoral Dissertations at Notre Dame
The Five Social Media "Facts of Life"
Big Blog on Campus
Librarians Put Increasing…
jdupuis | April 20, 2011I don't usually announce these sorts of things on the blog, but since Randy is a long-time friend, colleague and fellow Habs fan, I just had to make an exception.
The SLA Engineering Division is the group that hands out the award. From their mailing list:
2011 SLA Engineering Librarian of the Year Award
The Engineering Librarian of the Year, sponsored by IHS, highlights the accomplishments and contributions of SLA Engineering Division members to the engineering librarian profession.
The SLA Engineering Division is pleased to announce: Randy Reichardt is the recipient the of the SLA…
jdupuis | April 19, 2011
Stop the Madness: The Insanity of ROI and the Need for New Qualitative Measures of Academic Library Success
29 Statistics Reveal How The Apple's iPad Is Changing Our Lives
Building Types Study: Libraries
Learning Through Digital Media: Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy
The Academic Library Impact on Student Persistence
Scientists & the Social Media
Retooling Libraries Indeed
The Agony and the Advocacy/The Advocacy and the Apathy
Collaborating with Faculty Part I: A Five-Step Program
Context Matters
Incompetent Research Skills Curb Users' Problem Solving
Web search reading list
Going…
jdupuis | April 17, 2011I 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 occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Einstein: His Life and Universe, is from March 24, 2008.
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Walter Issacson's 2007 biography of Albert Einstein was one of the best reviewed books of that year, appearing on nearly all the year end lists of…
jdupuis | April 16, 2011Yeah, and I'm touchy and upset and discomfited by this whole thing as much as anyone. This is about my touchiness, not yours. Although please feel free to add your own feelings in the comments.
Thinking about it over the last few days I've come to glimpse the sources of my own unease.
And I've come to think that they are related to the various threads that are becoming tangled up in this controversy. It's almost like there's a Cartesian diagram with four or more quadrants of issues and all the various responses are each focusing on one drawn through one or two or three of those quadrants…
jdupuis | April 15, 2011Ok, not quite.
But I take my little title image from a post by Eric D. Snider on Arianna Huffington's "hostile takeover" of the "pay people fairly for the work they do" culture at AOL. (Yeah, scare quotes are relevant here, read the post.)
Anyways, the post is called, Leaving in a Huff.
And this is what inspired me to use it for a Friday Fun:
Did you know that when she had her first meetings with the AOL staff, she brought them Greek cookies and regaled them with amusing personal anecdotes?? It's true! Then she taught them traditional Greek folk songs! Then they all danced a tsamiko, drank…