jdupuis | September 1, 2010Yes, YASBC. Yet another science blogging community.
Welcome to PLoS Blogs!
From the introductory post:
Today we are pleased to announce the launch of PLoS Blogs a new network for discussing science in public; covering topics in research, culture, and publishing.
PLoS Blogs is different from other blogging networks, because it includes an equal mix of science journalists and scientists. We're excited to be welcoming our new bloggers, including Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum to the network.
*snip*
Our scientists:
Take As Directed:
David Kroll, Ph.D. is a cancer pharmacologist who…
jdupuis | August 28, 2010Some interesting articles, as usual, in the latest issue:
External Characteristics of Computer Operations: Toward Large Conversational Time-Sharing Systems by Wiehle, Hans Rudiger
First Edition Unix: Its Creation and Restoration by Toomey, Warren
The Network Information Center and its Archives by Feinler, Elizabeth
Promoting the Prosaic: The Case for Process-Control Computers by Aylen, Jonathan
There are also a few articles on the AEG-Telefunken TR 440 computer.
jdupuis | August 27, 2010Classic, just classic: 15 Signs You're Talking To A Canadian.
Here they are:
We Are Completely Comfortable With The Term "Homo Milk"
We Correct You When You Say "Soda"
We Are Offended When You Ask Us If We Know A Friend Of Yours Who, Coincidentally, Also Lives In Canada. You're from Canada? Do you know my friend Tom? He lives in Canada too. Ever since Canada was invented, we've been asked this question. The American soldiers did this during the War of 1812. Good war, dude. Good war. I think my buddy Jacques lives up in Canada. Vancouver or some shit. Tall guy, eyepiece? You…
jdupuis | August 26, 2010Here's a list of the reasonably active Science & Technology library blogs I know about. I've not included medical library blogs in this post because it's not a field I'm all that knowledgeable about. That list would make a great post in it's own right, but it's not this one.
My definition of "scitech librarian blog" is pretty loose (even on the librarian part of it), but in this case I think casting a fairly wide net is probably the best plan of action.
In no particular order:
Science Intelligence and InfoPros by Herve Basset
Christina's LIS Rant by Christina Pikas
Book of Trogool by…
jdupuis | August 25, 2010The latest issue of ISTL has just been released and, as usual, it's filled with very interesting-looking articles.
The table of contents is below:
Metrics and Science Monograph Collections at the Marston Science Library, University of Florida by Michelle F. Leonard, Stephanie C. Haas, and Vernon N. Kisling, Ph.D, University of Florida
Zoo and Wildlife Libraries: An International Survey by Linda L. Coates and Kaitlyn Rose Tierney, San Diego Zoo
How Much Space Does a Library Need? Justifying Collections Space in an Electronic Age by Nancy J. Butkovich, The Pennsylvania State Universitty…
jdupuis | August 24, 2010I'm just finishing four weeks of vacation, a nice break from the regular routine. No, I don't get the whole summer off because I work at a university. I do get four weeks of vacation every year and when you work at a university it just makes sense to take it all in the summer.
Anyways, we didn't really go anywhere this year, for a variety of reasons. And hence, no summer blogging break, only perhaps a tendency to slightly lighter, summery blogging topics. And since we didn't spend much time at a secluded cottage with nothing to do but read, well, I didn't quite read as much as in previous…
jdupuis | August 23, 2010The Who is pretty well my favourite band of all time. Without a doubt. Way back in the seventies (yes, I'm that old) when everyone else was arguing about whether the Beatles or the Stones were the greatest rock 'n roll band in the world, I always argued it was The Who. Townshend, Daltry, Moon were the noisy ones, the famous ones, the crazy ones. But the bassist, John Entwistle, he was The Quiet One. The one who held it all together.
So, over the years I've collected a fair big of Who music, but also solo stuff by Pete Townshend and a bit by Roger Daltry. But also John Entwistle, who's…
jdupuis | August 21, 2010From the Eligibility and Submission Requirements page:
The annual Lane Anderson Award will honour two jury-selected books, adult and young reader, published in the field of science by Canadian-owned publishers, and authored by Canadians. The winner in each category will receive $10,000.
Two three-person jury panels drawn from the Canadian academic, publishing, creative and institutional fields will review submissions in the two categories, and the jury will be announced with the winners at an event in Toronto on the 15th September.
The two shortlists will be announced on August 16th, 2010.…
jdupuis | August 20, 2010Check it out: Scienceblogging.org. On twitter too!
Thanks to Dave Munger, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker for coming up with what we've all been waiting for -- a way to keep track of all the new science blogging networks that have been sprouting up everywhere lately.
From Bora's Drumroll, please! Introducing: Scienceblogging.org:
But over the last month or two, the world of science blogging changed. Scienceblogs.com is there, big and good, but not as dominant as it once was. Other existing networks suddenly became more interesting and more visible. They started growing. New networks got…
jdupuis | August 20, 2010Ah, zombies. I found myself feeling a certain, ah, nostalgia for the good old days when I used to post non-stop about shambling dead, decaying wrecks. The good old days, way back at the beginning of July and even earlier.
I seem to be obsessed.
So, from Cracked: 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly):
They Have Too Many Natural Predators
They Can't Take the Heat
They Can't Handle the Cold
Biting is a Terrible Way to Spread a Disease
They Can't Heal from Day to Day Damage
The Landscape is Full of Zombie-Proof Barriers
Weapons and the People Who Use Them. As we touched…
jdupuis | August 19, 2010A nice post from computer scientist Amy Csizmar Dalal on Five things that helped me survive summer:
5. Interlibrary loan and ebooks (tie). I am almost certain that I have checked more out of the library through interlibrary loan this summer than I have in my previous 7 years at Carleton combined. And this summer, I bought my first ebooks (because I was too impatient to wait for the paper versions to ship, but still). Recently I've expanded my view of which subfields relate to my research, and by expanding my view, I've discovered a whole new set of literature that will help push my research…
jdupuis | August 16, 2010I actually read the freely downloadable version of Cory Doctorow's novel Makers on my Kobo ereader, even though I did buy the hardcover when it came out last year. Mostly, I wanted to check out the experience of reading a long text on my reader. Overall, the Kobo reading experience was terrific, not much different from reading a paper book. I tried it on both long inter-city bus rides and my regular commute as well as just sitting around the house. The Kobo is pretty bare bones, as these readers go, but it was good enough to consume fairly simple text. The Makers text was in epub format…
jdupuis | August 13, 2010I'm still enjoying my informal, semi-serious, so-funny-it-hurts Friday Fun series on the slings and arrows of online social media/networking practices.
The first three have been:
5 Signs You're Talking To A Social Media Douchebag
5 Terms Social Media Douchebags Need To Stop Using
5 Things Serious Tech People Need To Stop Tweeting
This entry is probably the most serious and, oddly, the only one that doesn't revolve around the number 5.
Anyways...
Scott Berkun has a though-provoking list of things we should keep in mind when extolling the insane virtues of all that social networking and…
jdupuis | August 12, 2010I recently had an interesting online exchange with Andrew Colgoni, Science Fluencies Libraries at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. (blog).
He's interested in how I somehow seem up-to-date on all the various cool conferences and happenings in the Science 2.0 space. While I'm not sure I have all the answers on this issue -- and that we all really need to find our own way in our professional development activities -- it is interesting to be able to provide some mid-career advice to an early-career librarian.
Here it is, a slightly edited version of our FriendFeed DM conversation:
Andrew:…
jdupuis | August 11, 2010Consider this a bonus Friday Fun entry for the summer silly season...
Anyways, the Cronk of Higher Ed finally sees fit to subject librarians to the mockery we deserve: Librarians Abandon Dewey Decimal System in Favor of Netflix Categories!
"We found that we were spending an extraordinary amount of time explaining the Dewey Decimal classification system to our students, and they simply weren't retaining the information," explained Janet Poleman, director of the college's library. "Our students will return this fall to find an exciting new system categorizing our literature."
All books in the…
jdupuis | August 10, 2010Now that's an attention-getter!
It comes from Ted Chiang's Big Idea post on John Scalzi's blog Whatever. It's a promotional piece for Chiang's latest book, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, which is about artificial intelligence.
For those of you that haven't heard of him, Chiang is one of the real breakout science fiction writers of the last two decades or so; his stories have consistently won both awards and the highest praise from reviewers and critics. This is his longest work to date. (His first collection is Stories of Your Life and Others, which has many of his most famous…
jdupuis | August 9, 2010Eugene Wallingford of the blog Knowing and Doing was at the SIGCSE Computer Science Education conference this past spring and as usual he provides a very fine report over a number of posts.
SIGCSE DAY 0 -- Media Computation Workshop
I headed to SIGCSE a day early this year in order to participate in a couple of workshops. The first draw was Mark Guzdial's and Barbara Ericson's workshop using media computation to teach introductory computing to both CS majors and non-majors. I have long been a fan of this work but have never seen them describe it. This seemed like a great chance to learn a…
jdupuis | August 6, 2010Today's Friday Fun continues the curious informal summer series of light-hearted takes on social media/network etiquette, begun two weeks ago with 5 signs you're talking with a social media douchebag and last week with 5 terms social media douchebags need to stop using.
This time around it's 5 Things Serious Tech People Need To Stop Tweeting.
Look technology friends, Twitter is a lovely thing, but when we tweet certain things we make our followers cringe and twitch towards the unfollow button. Do whatever you will, but after reading literally millions of tweets I think that if we cut out the…
jdupuis | August 5, 2010Dorothea Salo asks the question over on The Book of Trogool.
What do you, scientists, want librarians to know about how you communicate with other scientists? Where do you feel uncertain about the process? Where do you think it's coming up short? Do you think the process should change, and if so, how and how not?
I'm aware that librarians get stuck in our own thought-bubbles just like everybody else--I myself am certainly no exception. Here's a stab at bursting the bubble.
Head on over and let her know!
jdupuis | August 5, 2010Thanks to Mike the Mad Biologist for tagging me with this meme. Like Mike, I'm not much of a memer, but this one looks interesting (and simple) enough to give a try.
The idea is to "Sum up your blogging motivation, philosophy and experience in exactly 10 words" and then to tag 10 further blogs.
So, here goes:
Bring the world of scientists to librarians and vice versa.
That was strangely easy to formulate and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Similarly, I think it's an overall mission statement rather than something that needs to be implemented with each post I make. Over the long view,…