around the web
jdupuis | April 2, 2015
Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous
Science Is Essentially Human; Or Why Better STEM Education Isn't A Threat
Why thinkpieces on STEM education are dangerous
STEM and the "Liberal Education"
STEM Education Promotes Critical Thinking and Creativity: A Response to Fareed Zakaria
Pearson admits to monitoring students' social media use during its online tests
The church of TED
Learning My Lesson: Marina Warner on the disfiguring of higher education
The College Amenities Arms Race
The customer isn't right when it comes to higher education
Marketing Lessons From Sweet Briar…
jdupuis | March 11, 2015
Love in in the time of austerity: Library advocacy in tough times
Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job
Google’s slow fade with librarians
The Library is Not for Studying
Libraries don’t need more advocacy, they need better advocacy
Check this out: Halifax councillor proposes finding a new name for libraries
MLS Required
Talk to your librarian
The near and far future of libraries
Ryerson Learning Centre lets users reshape the space
The Sixth Estate
Time to consolidate law school law libraries?
Learning Commons as Symbol: the new heart of our communities?
Seven things I’ll miss…
jdupuis | March 10, 2015I'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, here and here.
What Is the Internet of Things?
Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia's Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums
Project Information…
jdupuis | February 24, 2015Welcome to my latest "liberation bibliography" project. This time around I'm gathering resources concerning the recent rather worrying trend towards people not vaccinating their children. In particular the last couple of months have seen multiple cases where vaccination has been in the news, from statements by politicians, outbreaks among hockey players and at amusement parks and many others. There's been an awful lot written about vaccines and their safety recently and my aim here is to gather some of the best information, both in terms of outlining the main events as well as some commentary…
jdupuis | February 11, 2015
Why Science Journal Paywalls Have to Go
Authors or journal editors: Who faces more pressure in the academic publishing system?
STM Consultation on Article Sharing (Draft principles here)
ICOLC Response to the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) Statement
A second front
STM’s new publishing licenses raise antitrust concerns amid wider efforts to pollute open access standards.
Scientists have the power to change the publishing system
The costs for going Gold in the Netherlands
Springer and universities take key step towards open access (The Netherlands)
CERN and…
jdupuis | January 26, 2015I'm doing a presentation at this week's Ontario Library Association Super Conference on a case study of my Canadian War on Science work from an altmetrics perspective. In other words, looking at non-traditional ways of evaluating the scholarly and "real world" impact of a piece of research. Of course, in this case, the research output under examination is itself kind of non-traditional, but that just makes it more fun.
The Canadian War on Science post I'm using as the case study is here.
Here's the session description:
802F Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government…
jdupuis | November 20, 2014
Science 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, 2014
Against 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 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 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 26, 2014
Science 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 10, 2014
A Creative Commons Guide to Sharing Your Science
Why do some academic publishers think they should charge extra for more liberal licenses (CC BY)?
The opportunity cost of my open access was 35 hours + $690 (UPDATED)
The future of open access and library publishing
Sick of Impact Factors
Making a spectacle of scientific research
Open for Business – Why In the Library with the Lead Pipe is Moving to CC-BY Licensing
The tone goes up on the open front
No Need To Only Send Your Best Work To Science Magazine
Why I am a product manager at PLOS: Linking up value across the research process
Are…
jdupuis | September 4, 2014I have a son who's currently a physics undergrad, just starting in third year. And another son who's starting 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…
jdupuis | August 26, 2014
7 Things Librarians Are Tired of Hearing
Library without books debuts at Florida’s newest college
How Streaming Media Could Threaten the Mission of Libraries
Books: Important Symbol or Annoying Physical Reality?
Ice Ice Baby: Are Librarian Stereotypes Freezing Us out of Instruction?
UNBSJ students protest for study space: Say the new library is too noisy
How Libraries Can Survive In The Digital Age
What does an unsuccessful academic library look like?
Editorial: Evolving libraries still need people
The future of libraries is in good hands
Schism in the Stacks: Is the University Library As We…
jdupuis | June 30, 2014
The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats
Facebook's massive psychology experiment likely illegal
Facebook and Engineering the Public
College graduates earn more, but that doesn't prove college is worth it
Mirrortocracy: The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture
Google’s latest empire-building tactic: cheap phones
How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine
Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media
Education’s war on millennials: Why everyone is failing the “digital…
jdupuis | June 26, 2014I'm always interested in the present and future of libraries. 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 similar compilations recently here and here.
MOOCs: Expectations and Reality: Full Report
Trends in Digital Scholarship Centers
Sustaining the Digital Humanities
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians
A Guide…
jdupuis | June 17, 2014There's been a lot around the intertubes the last few months about journal pricing and who pays what and why and reactions all around. I thought I'd gather a bit of that here for posterity, starting with the Timothy Gowers post on the UK Elsevier Big Deal numbers up to the most recent item in PNAS about US numbers. In both cases, they authors dug up the numbers using Freedom of Information requests to the various institutions.
Needless to say, I'd love to see these kinds of numbers for Canada and if anyone out there is interested in working on such a project I'd love to hear from you.
The…
jdupuis | May 28, 2014I have a son who's currently a physics undergrad. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog.
By necessity and circumstance, the items I've chosen will be influenced by my son's choice of major and my own interest in the usefulness of computational approaches to science and of social media for outreach and…