around the web
jdupuis | May 2, 2014
Occupy was right: capitalism has failed the world
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?
In One Stunning Graphic, NASA Shows Us What Climate Change Will Do to Earth by 2099
Exxon Mobil's response to climate change is consummate arrogance
We Should Be in a Rage
Capitalism simply isn't working and here are the reasons why
Paul Krugman: Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Surviving the post-employment economy
The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street
Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees
Tech Workers,…
jdupuis | April 25, 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 did a similar compendium about a month ago here.
NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition
Technology to the Rescue: Can Technology-Enhanced Education Help Public Flagship Universities Meet Their Challenges?
Policy…
jdupuis | April 21, 2014
Publishing may be a button, but publishing isn’t all we need
The Vacuum Shouts Back: Postpublication Peer Review on Social Media
bioRxiv: The preprint server for biology
Debt, Pensions and Capitalisation: Funding schol comms innovation
How to maximise usage of digital collections
Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals
How to energize scholarship for the digital age
Why universities should care about Altmetrics
Some Things Last A Long Time (How long does it take to publish a paper)
Do blog citations correlate with a higher number of future citations?…
jdupuis | April 17, 2014
Up to Here With Trolls?
This Is What It’s Like To Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meet-up
An Open Letter to Brogrammers
So You’ve Got Yourself a Policy. Now What?
Technology’s Man Problem
Why the ‘Open’ Internet Is So Closed to Women
The Brutal Ageism of Tech Years of experience, plenty of talent, completely obsolete
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
New Study: Internet Trolls Are Often Machiavellian Sadists
Twitter I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
Something’s Wrong When Sarah’s Quiet
The Brogrammer Effect: Women Are a Small (and Shrinking) Share of Computer Workers
Hey Silicon Valley! Not…
jdupuis | April 14, 2014As part of the celebrations for Canada's upcomming 150th birthday, the Canadian federal government has released its Digital Canada 150 strategy paper, and while it`s not all bad, at the same time there is not an awful lot to recommend it. Especially considering it was four years in the making.
My sense is that its main purpose is for the Harper Conservative government to be able to say it has a digital strategy during the next election campaign in 2015. The most telling thing about the strategy, of course, is which department it originated in: Industry Canada. Not Culture, not Heritage, not…
jdupuis | April 2, 2014Yesterday was April Fools' Day, a day I enjoy immensely. I even contribute to the fun every now and then. This year the crop among the science/scholcomm/library community seemed especially strong so I thought I'd share.
Science, Nature Team Up on New Journal / Science
PeerJ now requires authors to deposit ‘selfies’ in a data repository prior to publication / PeerJ
Publish or Perish: Is Publishing the Career it Once Was? / The Scholarly Kitchen
Oxford Commas to Perform at ALA Meeting / The Scholarly Kitchen
Announcing a better way to measure your value: the Total Impact Score / Impactstory…
jdupuis | March 27, 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.
Shaping the Future of Monograph Publishing in the Liberal Arts: Results of a survey to Oberlin Group Faculty
2014 Planning Guide for Data Management
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2013
Higher Education's Top-…
jdupuis | March 15, 2014
Trope or fact? Technology creates more jobs than it destroys
Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not.
The technology and jobs debate raises complex questions
Chasing Entertainment
Thinking the unthinkable: a library without a catalogue
You're not going to read this
The OPAC is Dead
Concordia rethinking its downtown library
Libraries are community assets
Think We No Longer Need Libraries? Think Again.
Students, faculty decry Penn plan to cut math and science libraries
Saving the Library
Reference Library Unveils 3D Printers, Is Cooler Than Indigo
jdupuis | February 19, 2014I have a son who's in the middle of his second year as 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…
jdupuis | February 11, 2014Many of my readers may recall that back in October I published a post announcing the Draft Open Access Policy consultation process launched by the Canadian Tri-Councils -- Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The deadline for submissions was December 13th. Since the deadline was just before the holidays I thought it best to wait awhile before compiling all the publicly posted responses. And that was probably a good idea, as many of the responses were published in the new year. I…
jdupuis | February 5, 2014
Taking a Longer View
Why librarianship is difficult and contentious
Schism in the Stacks: Is the University Library As We Know It Destined for Extinction?
The Future of Libraries: Harvard Students Are Thinking Outside the Box
Why piles of bad applications may not portend disaster
Silencing, librarianship, and gender: sticking up for stories
Making Space for the Silenced
A New Year’s Vision of the Future of Libraries as Ebookstores
How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box
5 Futures for Libraries
How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood
Who needs facts? We appear to be in the…
jdupuis | February 4, 2014
Silicon Valley goes to school – notes on Californian capitalism and the ‘disruption’ of public education
The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age
The Death Of Expertise
Closing Time for the Open Internet
Tech Workers, Political Speech and Economic Threat
Does Ikea Hold The Secret To The Future Of College?
Let’s Be Real: Online Harassment Isn’t ‘Virtual’ For Women
Can Pearson Solve the Rubric’s Cube?
Who Takes MOOCs? For online higher education, the devil is in the data
Making It: Pick up a spot welder and join the revolution
Higher Education Is Now Ground Zero For Disruption
Stupid Simple…
jdupuis | January 9, 2014As is occasionally my habit when a big story breaks, I have gathered together all the relevant documents I could find concerning the recent controversy about the Canadian Conservative government's recent consolidation of the libraries at their Department of Fisheries & Oceans. The consolidation has resulted in severely weeded collections, library closures and staff layoffs.
I have more to say on the situation, probably next week, but I thought I'd compile this list first both for the common good and to help me frame my own thoughts.
As usual, if you note any errors or omissions in my,…
jdupuis | December 10, 2013This is a tale of two companies and a bunch of not-so-innocent bystanders.
Both Elsevier and Academia.edu are for-profit companies in the scholarly communications industry. Elsevier is a publisher while Academia.edu is a platform for scholars that, among other things, allows them to post copies of their articles online for all the world to see.
Both are trying to make money by adding value within the scholarly communications ecosystem. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There is plenty of room within that ecosystem for all kinds of players, both for-profit and non-profit. It's all…
jdupuis | November 29, 2013
Do Librarians Need Tenure? Depends on Which Ones You Ask.
The Hunt Library, Innovation, and Tenure
Academic Freedom! Huh! What is It Good For?
My Thoughts on Faculty Status for Academic Librarians
How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang
An Academic Cartel?
Women and the Internet in Four Parts: Online and Offline Violence Towards Women; Context Collapse, Architecture, and Plows; Sexytime, Gender Roles, and Credit Where Due; Feminism's Twist Ending
The Gendering of Technology Work
Academic scattering
We Are Not Hypnotized (rejecting the extremes wrt online ed)
Libraries in the Time of MOOCs
The…
jdupuis | November 28, 2013
The College Boom Has Peaked
The Emergent Academic Proletariat and its Shortchanged Students
Why I’m quitting the academy
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
Our great, global cities are turning into vast gated citadels where the elite reproduces itself
Dear corporations, we’ll trade you a few cents for a better life
MOOCs and Economic Reality
When MOOCs profit, who pays?
Miami-Dade County Will No Longer Close Any Public Libraries But 169 Librarians Would Lose Jobs, Hours Reduced
Rebuilding the world technology destroyed
College for Free
Blood Money, or How Academia is like The Sopranos
A…
jdupuis | November 13, 2013
Admitting Our Agendas
A queer, feminist agenda for libraries: Significance, relevance and power
Agendas: Everyone has one
I dreamed of a book …
Why I'm not waiting for tenure to change the world...
Value of Libraries Megapost
Librarians, Gender, and Tech: Moving the Conversation Forward
Silencing, librarianship, and gender: award hate and the silencing of recognition
Public Libraries as Social Innovation Catalysts
The private-data-for-services trade fallacy
Business Model of the Internet Has Been Surveillance
Science and Its Skeptics
Why We Are Allowed to Hate Silicon Valley
You Can't Get…
jdupuis | October 2, 2013I have a son who's starting his second year as 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…
jdupuis | August 31, 2013
Choosing Real-World Impact Over Impact Factor
Practicing Freedom in the Digital Library
Dandelions, Prestige, and the Measure of Scholars
Programmers insist: “Everybody” does not need to learn to code
Digital Decay by Bruce Sterling
New York Public Library Rethinks Design
CIOs Wear Second Hat (ie. head of small colleges libraries too)
Can't Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections
A New Polemic: Libraries, MOOCs, and the Pedagogical Landscape
Ethical reflections on MOOC-making (Rebecca Kukla)
Why Teach English?
Learning Styles:…
jdupuis | August 28, 2013I have a son who's starting his second year as 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…