jdupuis | February 25, 2012
e-Books: Why Bother
Truly moving literature: Enhanced eBooks
Science Finds a Better Way to Teach Science
The Future of Science Publishing
Introducing Download the Universe: A new science ebook review
Canadian universities sign bone-stupid copyright deal with collecting society: emailing a link is the same as making a photocopy, faculty email to be surveilled
Culture is an echo chamber
California Dreaming (comment on value of libraries in crossing digital divide)
Heavy Hangs The Bandwidth That Torrents The Crown
The Open Access Irony Awards: Naming and shaming them
Libraries and publishers…
jdupuis | February 24, 2012The actual content of the post I'm highlighting isn't really all that amusing. It's actually quite pertinent in a real-world context.
But I really love how they've taken actually useful information that might be a bit dry and businessy and using a Star Wars / pop-cultural reference made it into something a little easier to wade through. A spoonful of sugar and all that.
Anyways, here's one of the five from: Five Leadership Mistakes Of The Galactic Empire:
Mistake #1: Building an organization around particular people, rather than institutions.
Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Galactic…
jdupuis | February 23, 2012
'Academically Adrift': The News Gets Worse and Worse
The Case for Publicly Owned Internet Service: Susan P. Crawford
On the 10th Anniversary of the Budapest Declaration
By one benchmark at least, we are probably halfway through the (r)evolution
Will Business Step Up or Step Out?
Attendance, Retention, and College Success
How to Enjoy a Sabbatical
TOC 2012: LeVar Burton, Libraries and The Bookstore of the Future
RLUK library trends
Why the book and the Internet will merge
Libraries Receiving a Shrinking Piece of the University Pie
Joining the Movement: A Call to Action
Google Director…
jdupuis | February 21, 2012A little while back the Cost of Knowledge site started up a boycott pledge list in response to mathematician Timothy Gowers' pledge to stop contributing to Elsevier's operations by ceasing writing, reviewing and editing for them.
Here is the call to action:
Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections:
They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals.
In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will…
jdupuis | February 17, 2012Given all the fuss and bother going on in the library world these last few days about ebooks, I thought this one would be a pretty fine choice to highlight today.
I just love me some Cracked!
8 Unexpected Downsides of the Switch to E-books
You Can't Hide a Gun in a Kindle
You Need Physical Books for Physical Tasks
No More Flipbooks and Mustaches in Textbooks
It May Change the Perception of the Necronomicon and Other Mystical Books
Book Burnings Will Have Less Visual Impact
How Will People Open Secret Passageways?
Seriously, if you can't pull a cleverly titled book out of a bookcase to get…
jdupuis | February 16, 2012
The Great Age of Librarians
Amazon Will Destroy You
Confessions of a Publisher: "We're in Amazon's Sights and They're Going to Kill Us"
Mobile Sites vs. Apps: The Coming Strategy Shift
Instructional Designers Wanted: No Experience Necessary
Libraries and the Commodification of Culture
Innovating the Library Way
About the Emerging Battles Over Textbooks: Options from Apple to Open Initiatives
fallacies of a market approach to public higher ed
The perils and pleasures of online gaming for married life
Scienceography: the study of how science is written
An Experiment in Teaching Writing: A Look…
jdupuis | February 15, 2012We have here what is sometimes known as a wicked problem.
On the one side, communities would like to be able to pool the resources of their members to acquire digital content that may then be shared and consumed by everyone in that community.
On the other, content creators and publishers would like to maximize their revenue from the content they produce and distribute.
Libraries want to pay the least amount possible but still have the maximum rights to share it among their communities.
Publishers want to make sure every possible reading transaction is monetized, so as a result want to…
jdupuis | February 14, 2012
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
Reading and Believing
Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?
"if libraries did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them"
Academia as Music Industry
Wolfram Alpha Pro democratizes data analysis: an in-depth look at the $4.99 a month service
Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
New Media Consortia - Horizon Report - Ten Top Trends in Education
Why Pay for Intro Textbooks?
The Future of Taxpayer-Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results?
Tim Berners-Lee Takes the…
jdupuis | February 13, 2012I was really angry riding home on the bus last Friday night. Not angry because the transit system here in Toronto is royally fudged in general or that transit to York University is fudged in particular.
No, it wasn't that particular aspect of the public sphere that had me upset.
It was the growing tendency of publishers of all sorts to try and take their works out of the public cultural commons and place them exclusively behind pay walls. It's their desire to monetize every reading transaction that had me hot under the collar.
Here's what I tweeted standing on the bus, altered a bit for…
jdupuis | February 12, 2012Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.
Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.
All the previous 2011 lists are here.
This post includes the following: The Independent Books of the Year: Science, History.
The Quantum Universe: Everything that can happen does happen by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen
The Magic of Reality: How we know…
jdupuis | February 11, 2012Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.
Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.
All the previous 2011 lists are here.
This post includes the following: January Magazine Best of 2011: Art & Culture, Non-Fiction.
The Magic of Reality: How We Really Know What's True by Richard Dawkin
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice…
jdupuis | February 10, 2012Ok, so none of these realizations has actually ruined science fiction for me, but they are pretty funny nevertheless.
4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You
#4. Sci-fi Needs a Straight Man Like a Laurel and Hardy Routine
The bulk of the workload in writing science fiction/fantasy is creating your whole world from scratch. It's a hell of a lot of fun, but it also has some unique problems. Characters, by being from this world you've just hand-built, are naturally going to be referring to places and objects and sometimes even speaking in a language that is completely foreign to…
jdupuis | February 9, 2012Come work instead of me!
Below is a posting for a 3-year contractually limited appointment in my unit. I'm chair of the search committee, so feel free to ask away with any questions about the position. I'll answer them to the best of my ability given the limitations of being on the committee.
As it happens, I'll no longer be the department head of Steacie Science & Engineering Library during the three year period of the appointment. For the first year, the successful candidate will be replacing me while I do a one-year acting Associate University Librarian appointment. The second year…
jdupuis | February 9, 2012Walter Isaacson's book on Apple founder & CEO Steve Jobs is a fairly long book. It's not exactly a thriller either, especially since I know how it ends. As a result it took me a while to plow through it. I tended to read it in bursts of 40 or 50 pages over a few days then maybe put it aside for a while.
As a result, I ended up reading a bunch of other auto/biographical works at the same time. And there are some interesting parallels.
Ozzy Osbourne's I Am Ozzy and Tony Iommi's Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath are both great books. Like Jobs they are…
jdupuis | February 8, 2012Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.
Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.
All the previous 2011 lists are here.
This post includes the following: The Top Cryptozoology Books of 2011.
The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff
When Bigfoot Attacks by Michael Newton
Tracking Bigfoot by Donald Wallace and Lori Simmons
In Search of…
jdupuis | February 7, 2012
The End of Academic Library Circulation?
Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries
Teens join Twitter to escape parents on Facebook: survey
Teens slowly migrating to Twitter
Academic E-Books: Innovation and Transition
Is Facebook Really a Good Business?
Who Does Google Think You Are? A tool tells users what the company infers about your interests and age
Social Media and Privacy
The (Not So) Inevitable Future of Digital Textbooks
Social Anxiety (ups and downs of post-pub online peer review)
5 Foundational Principles for Course Design
The nine golden rules of…
jdupuis | February 6, 2012Note: this post is superseded by: Around the Web: Research Works Act, Elsevier boycott & FRPAA.
This post has superseded my previous post which focused solely on the Research Works Act. I have added some coverage of the Elsevier boycott which at least partially grew out of opposition to the RWA. I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott as for the RWA.
Some relevant resources:
The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier (Boycott declaration site)
Notes on the Research Works Act a wiki maintained by Peter Suber, hosted by the Berkman…
jdupuis | February 5, 2012
College students will stick to paper books
Open Access Collection (PLoS)
A Vision for the Future of Scholarly Publishing
How to Become A Social Media Influencer: Ten Small Steps
The Declining Value of Subscription-based Abstracting and Indexing Services in the New Knowledge Dissemination Era
Scholars Seek Better Ways to Track Impact Online
Attempt to replicate "arsenic life" experiment fails
A Most Optimistic Unconference: Publishers, Libraries, and Independent Bookstores at Digital Book World 2012
Publishing's Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory
Saint Zuck
Is uncivil behaviour hijacking…
jdupuis | February 3, 2012Well, not me, exactly, but...
Anyways, some ideas and experiences from someone out there in blogland who used to be a lawyer and somehow managed to think opening a bookstore was a good idea.
25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
Here's a chunk from the middle:
19. If you're thinking of giving someone a religious book for their graduation, rethink. It will end up unread and in pristine condition at a used book store, sometimes with the fifty dollar bill still tucked inside. (And you're off and leafing once again).
20. If you don't have an AARP card, you're apparently too young to…
jdupuis | February 1, 2012Ever since I attended the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians last summer, I've been watching for interesting posts on academic library leadership, or just academic leadership in general. This is some of what I've found.
Let me know in the comments what else I should be reading.
Gordon Ramsay's Library Nightmares
On talking crazy, taking initiative, and having a comprehensive vision
The Faculty-Staff Divide
Two Years at Cupcake U: Reflections
What Were They Thinking?
Ask the Administrator: Professional Development for a New Dean
Wait for It... Wait for It...
Consensus…