jdupuis | February 25, 2011In the spirit of openness and transparency and "does anybody really care except me" I've included some blog hit statistics below for 2010. These stats are from the Google Analytics application that ScienceBlogs has installed.
For 2010, this blog got 77,630 visits and 91,022 pageviews. To put it all into perspective, to say that this is a fairly insignificant portion of the total traffic for ScienceBlogs is a bit of an understatement. There are defunct blogs that still generate more traffic.
Here are the numbers in graphical format (click to see full year):
And by month (click to see full…
jdupuis | February 23, 2011The authors over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe have posted about my recent manifesto on Stealth Librarianship.
There's some pretty healthy debate, agreement, disagreement, qualification, additions and subtractions going on there, so please do check it out: Lead Pipe Debates the Stealth Librarianship Manifesto.
Some excerpts:
What Dupuis fails to mention here is that many academic librarians MUST publish in traditional, peer-reviewed library publications while striving to attain tenure. I am not personally in a tenure-track position, so I have the liberty of not fretting over where I…
jdupuis | February 23, 2011
The problem with online reputation
E-Book Piracy on the Rise
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
Another Lesson About Cognition And The Web: Lara Logan And Hate
Hawking contra Philosophy
The 'Triumph Of The City' May Be Greener
Email is Over
Early results: public data archiving increases scientific contribution by more than a third
Kobo: What Do eBook Customers Really, Really Want?
Optimism in reality-based reality
Does the web make experts dumb?
Bring on The Live Web
Social innovation: a simple model
Citation tools & Future of Publishing
About the preservation of databases
Things I…
jdupuis | February 21, 2011While I don't have a huge amount of experience reading science-themed graphic novels, I do sort of have a sense that they come in two different broad categories.
The first is basically transforming a boring, stilted, text-heavy textbook into a boring, stilted, illustration- and text-heavy graphic novel. In other words, the producers think that anything in graphic novel format will by definition be more interesting and engaging than something that's purely text-based.
The second involves taking advantage of the strengths of the graphic novel format to re-imagine how scientific knowledge can…
jdupuis | February 20, 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 Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, is from September 7, 2008.
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As with many of the business books I review in this space, I am profoundly torn by this…
jdupuis | February 19, 2011
Earn a Nobel Prize in your Lunch-Break! The Best "Citizen Science" Games Reviewed!
Digital Technology Innovation in Scholarly Communication and University Engagement
On Twitter and Machiavellian Intelligence
Who Needs a Netbook?
Tech Tools for Scholars - The Sequel
From the Archives: On Blogging
Letter Re Software and Scientific Publications - Nature
The urgency for change
In Defense of Science Blogs (yes again)
Want to succeed in online content? Get small, be open, go free
Science Dogme: a manifesto for science, technology and medicine exhibitions and here for the article.
Citation tools…
jdupuis | February 18, 2011Twitter brings us some truly wonderful and, yes, bizarre things. I saw this one a few days ago via Vitor Pamplona and thought it was too good to pass up.
Anyways, here's the story from the original Listverse post, Top 10 truly bizarre programming languages:
This is a list of some of the most bizarre programming languages you will ever see. These types of languages are usually called "Esoteric Programming Languages". An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a computer programming language designed either as a test of the boundaries of programming language design,…
jdupuis | February 17, 2011
The Edupunks are coming ... to an Edu-Factory near you!
The connected company
Scholarly Reportage: Fad or Movement?
The Importance Of Physical Space
2010 State of the Computer Book Market, Post 1 - Overall Market
Taking scientific publishing to the next level
A father knows best: Vint Cerf re-thinks the Internet in Stanford talk
Dumped On by Data: Scientists Say a Deluge Is Drowning Research
You Can Lead Students To Knowledge, But How Do You Make Them Think?
Social media: A guide for researchers
There Is No Such Thing As A Girl Gamer
Social Media Metrics
What We Talk About When We Talk About…
jdupuis | February 16, 2011McMaster University colleague Andrew Colgoni (Twitter) has taken my Stealth Librarian Manifesto and tamed it a little bit and come up with his own version, which is here.
I like what Andrew has to say in a post titled, I prefer Ninja Librarianship, myself:
[T]here's much that can be learned from discovering where your faculty are reading/going and finding them there. This can be as simple as finding on-campus conferences that draw a broad faculty audience, and visit that. Here at McMaster, the Centre for Leadership in Learning annually hosts a teaching and learning conference, which draws…
jdupuis | February 14, 2011Welcome to the long-awaited latest instalment in my occasional series of interviews with people in the library, publishing and scitech worlds. This time around the subjects of my first group interview are the gang at EngineerBlogs.org.
From my welcome-to-the-blogosphere post, here's a condensed bit about them:
Cherish The Scientist (EB)
I am an electrical engineer with an interest in various areas of electromagnetics, including antennas and numerical simulation techniques, as well as IC packaging. I have completed a master's degree in electrical engineering and am currently pursuing a…
jdupuis | February 14, 2011Way back when, I used to post fairly frequent interviews with publishers, bloggers, librarians and scientists who I thought were interesting people to hear from. Mostly I wanted to hear about what they thought about changes in the scholarly publishing environment.
I've got links to a bunch of them below, mostly to the old blog. (I'll start moving the rest over here when I'm done with the book reviews.)
The last significant interview I did was with Dorothea Salo, way back in October 2008.
What happened?
Well, I decided I wanted my next interview to be with someone involved with publishing at…
jdupuis | February 13, 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 group review is from October 12, 2008.
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A few books that I've read in 2008 that haven't quite made it into their own reviews:
Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. New York: Picador…
jdupuis | February 12, 2011
Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking
Contemporary Student Life
Discovering the scientific conversation
It isn't just students: Medical researchers aren't citing previous work either
The Evolution of Book Publishing; or, On the Trail to Stage Five
Turning vanity publishing on its head
One in Three College Students Is Coasting. This Is News?
What if a book is just a URL?
Big Data, Big Problems
Producing Academic Leaders
What Degrees Should Mean
Good Old Fashioned Values
Seven ways to think like the web
The Web: Why Users No Longer Matter
How to Make a Geek Goddess Spit with Rage
jdupuis | February 11, 2011Sometimes we collect stuff that we think no one else wants. Sometimes, maybe we should be anti-librarians and erase from all human memory things that should never have existed.
Kind of like that scene in The Ten Commandments where The Pharaoh orders all mention of Moses be obliterated from monuments and records.
I kind of like The Onion's take on it, Library of Congress Adds 3 Titles To List Of Films That Should Be Destroyed Forever:
The Library of Congress announced this year's selections for the National Film Incineration Project on Tuesday, naming three titles it had chosen to permanently…
jdupuis | February 11, 2011
Startups in the Personal Data Ecosystem
Elements of an Effective Public Education Toolkit
The Politics of the New Huffington Post at AOL
How to Promote Zotero at Your Institution and Why
Disruption, Delivery and Degrees
Measuring Impact Beyond Academic Fame: An Alternative Social Impact Factor
Character Education for the Digital Age
Encouraging Scientific Data Use
Time for textbook tycoons to give students a break
Publishing science in a connected world
Data-security horror stories
In Person: Falling Off the Ladder: How Not to Succeed in Academia
The Complete History of Social Networking…
jdupuis | February 10, 2011Stealth librarianship is a way of being.
This particular edition of the manifesto applies to academic libraries. The principles of stealth librarianship apply to all branches of the profession, each in particular ways. Other manifestos could exist for, say, public or corporate librarians.
However the core is the same: to thrive and survive in a challenging environment, we must subtly and not-so-subtly insinuate ourselves into the lives of our patrons. We must concentrate on becoming part of their world, part of their landscape.
Our two core patron communities as academic librarians are…
jdupuis | February 10, 2011
Are science blogs stuck in an echo chamber? Chamber? Chamber?
What's a PhD worth at the finish line? On hiring committees
'Academically Adrift'
Dlib on research data
E-books and Their Containers: A Bestiary of the Evolving Book
Managing your scholarly identity
To Library, or Not to Library
Knowledge Dissemination: blogging vs peer review
The journo-programmer
Publishing an open access book?
10 reasons NOT to be on Twitter
Heads they win, tails we lose: Discovery tools will never deliver on their promise
Pirates of Perchance
Science Blogging and Tenure
On Science Publishing by John Wilbanks
jdupuis | February 8, 2011Many thanks to Peter Janiszewski and Travis Saunders of Science of Blogging for reposting my old chestnut, If you don't have a blog you don't have a resume.
I've closed the comments here so you can argue with me over at the other site.
jdupuis | February 7, 2011Or make that the house that the house that Calculus: Early Transcendentals and Calculus: Concepts and Contexts built. And more books too, all in multiple editions!
A few days ago The Toronto Star's Katie Daubs published an article on the home of James Stewart, the Toronto resident who wrote all those calculus textbooks.
James Stewart is a calculus rock star.
When he goes on book tours in China, they ask for his autograph. In Toronto, the city's movers and shakers gather at his home for concerts. People have drunkenly stumbled into his infinity pool.
Stewart's 18,000-square-foot home, named…
jdupuis | February 6, 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 Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science, is from November 19, 2008.
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Enough with the physics books, already! After a summer of more or less nothing but physics books, I should…