ebooks
jdupuis | January 19, 2011Yeah, I'm talking about you, #scio11. The conference that still has significant twitter traffic three days after it's over. I've been to conferences that don't have that kind of traffic while they're happening. In fact, that would be pretty well every other conference.
Every edition of ScienceOnline seems to have a different virtual theme for me and this one seemed to somehow circle back to the blogging focus on earlier editions of the conference. Of course, the program is so diverse and the company so stimulating, that different people will follow different conference paths and perhaps…
jdupuis | January 7, 2011I'll be doing a session at the upcoming ScienceOnline 2011 conference on ebooks with David Dobbs, Tom Levenson and Carl Zimmer:
Here's the description:
Sunday, 11.30-12.30
eBooks and the science community - Carl Zimmer, Tom Levenson, David Dobbs and John Dupuis
Ebooks are by far the fastest growing sector of the publishing industry. The New York Times is about to launch a best-seller list exclusively for ebooks. New systems, such as Amazon CreateSpace, allow writers to directly place their ebooks in the marketplace. In theory, they could do away with the need for a conventional publisher.…
jdupuis | January 7, 2011A nice tutorial for all those Born Digital Natives out there who only know how to use the dagnabbit newfangled flibbergibbet iPadnicks and Kindlemawhoosits and Kobots.
HOW TO OPERATE THE NEW PAPER BOOK YOU RECEIVED FOR CHRISTMAS:
1) Pick up book. Place in lap.
2) Open book.
3) Read the words.
Voila! Just three easy steps for you to enjoy that brand new paper book you received from Santa.
Put that in your manual typewriter and smoke it, you whippersnappers!
And get off my lawn!
jdupuis | November 23, 2010A terrific new edition of The Journal of Electronic Publishing (v13i2), focusing on the future of university presses and, by extension, of scholarly publishing as a whole.
A lot of terrific-looking articles:
Editor's Note for Reimagining the University Press by Phil Pochoda
Reimagining the University Press: A Checklist for Scholarly Publishers by Peter J. Doughtery
Reimagining the University Press by Kate Wittenberg
Stage Five Book Publishing by Joseph J. Esposito
Next-Generation University Publishing: A Perspective from California by Daniel Greenstein
What Might Be in Store for Universities…
jdupuis | October 21, 2010Ok, not a bar, more like an information literacy class.
I thought I'd bring to everyone's attention a presentation by two of my York University Libraries colleaques, web librarian William Denton and instruction librarian Adam Taves.
It was at Access in Winnipeg a week or so ago:
After Launching Search and Discovery, Who Is Mission Control?
Reference librarians are whiny and demanding.
Systems librarians are arrogant and rude.
Users are clueless and uninformed.
A new discovery layer means that they need to collaborate to build it and then -- the next step -- integrate it into teaching and…
jdupuis | October 15, 2010A really interesting article on Tor.com from this past August by Ryan Britt, A Fondness for Antiques: The Future of Books According to Science Fiction.
In the past few years, media pundits and tech experts have been abuzz with variations on the question: "what is the future of the book?" Luckily, science fiction has been around a whole lot longer than Amazon, Apple, and Google, and as such, might be able to teach us a thing or two about the future of the printed word.
It's a really terrific look at some futurism from the past -- the old "Where's my rocket pack and flying car!" but this time…
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 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 | May 11, 2010I have a few conferences coming up and I thought I'd share my schedule just in case any of you out there in sciencelibrarianblogland will also be attending.
I'll list them in order, along with whatever I'll be presenting.
BookCamp Toronto, May 15, Toronto
9:30: eBooks in Education and Academia -- the glacial revolution
John Dupuis (York University)
Evan Leibovitch (York University)
Description: Despite growing public acceptance of eBooks, two areas in which they could offer the most benefit -- education and academia -- are far behind the eBook mainstream. This session will discuss issues…
jdupuis | April 1, 2010From the news release:
Google to Digitize Lost Library of Alexandria
by Paoli du Flippi
-- posted @ 4/01/2010 12:01:00 AM PT
Today at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, Executive Dan Clancy, head of the Google Books project, announced plans to digitize the contents of the Lost Ancient Library of Alexandria.
Initially, some confusion arose among the assembled media representatives, who immediately began to inquire about the details of dealing with the recalcitrant and xenophobic government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But Mr. Clancy quickly set the press corps straight…
jdupuis | March 30, 2010The second Book Camp TO is coming up in about 6 weeks or so: Saturday, May 15, 2010 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
Last year's edition was terrific and I'm really looking forward to another great conference.
What's it about?
What: BookCampTO is a free unconference about the future of books, reading, writing and publishing. Ebooks have arrived, and with them great changes are afoot. BoomCampTO 2010 will focus on what happens next, how this big shift to digital is changing different parts of the book business, and how we are adapting. Our focus is not so much on ebooks as everything else.
When:…
jdupuis | March 15, 2010ISTL is a great resource for those of us in science and technology libraries. I'm happy to report on the tables of contents from the last two issues.
Winter 2010
Evaluation of an Audience Response System in Library Orientations for Engineering Students by Denise A. Brush, Rowan University
Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo
Information Portals: A New Tool for Teaching Information Literacy Skills by Debra Kolah, Rice University and Michael Fosmire, Purdue University
Are Article Influence Scores Comparable across Scientific…
jdupuis | January 22, 2010Horror author Cherie Priest has a very nice post from a couple of days ago called Control. It's basically about what mass market fiction authors do and don't have control over in the book production process. Now, the mass market fiction publishing niche is hardly the main concern on this blog, but I also think it's interesting to see what she comes up with and compare it with the list of things academic authors both do and don't have control over.
On some points it's strangely the same but mostly starkly different.
It's also worth contemplating how this list would be affected by an…
jdupuis | July 29, 2009During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from November 7, 2007. It generated quite a few interesting comments, so you might want to check back at the original post. My feeling on a lot of these points has shifted a bit with time, so I'll probably revisit the topic in the fall.
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This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot recently, as we (at York and as a profession) start to move in a coordinated way to making ebooks an important part of our collections. What's the…