librarianship
jdupuis | January 31, 2013Some colleagues and I are presenting tomorrow at the latest Ontario Library Association Super Conference. Here's the info:
Session: #1307:
Friday 3:45 PM 5:00 PM
IF I KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW
Career development
Speaker(s)
John Dupuis, Acting Associate University Librarian, Information Services, York University; Tanis Fink, Director, Seneca Libraries, Seneca College; Amanda French, Manager, Sciences and Business Dept, Mississauga Library System; Klara Maidenberg, Virtual Reference Services & Assessment and Evaluation Librarian, Scholars Portal, OCUL; Zachary Osborne, Head Librarian,…
jdupuis | January 8, 2013The Machine Apocalypse
Is Growth Over?
"The data are": How fetishism makes us stupid
Why Workers Are Losing the War Against Machines
An innovation agenda to help people win the race against the machines
Sure, Big Data Is Great. But So Is Intuition
The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
Will a Robot Take Your Job?
Artificial intelligence – can we keep it in the box?
You Must Make the New Machines
Why Making Robots Is So Darn Hard
The New York Times on Libraries
Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close
Handled With Care (what to do with deceased scholars books)
Failing to Close the ‘…
jdupuis | December 18, 2012
The End of the University as We Know It
The future of online vs. residential education by futurist Ray Kurzweil
Librarians or Baristas?
Prioritizing Academic Programs
Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
Assessing Campus Libraries (space, yes, services...)
Where is Library Technology going?
MLA President Offers a Sobering Critique of Graduate Education in the Humanities
Confessions of a (former) gatekeeper
Full Text Of The Grim Meathook Future Thing
Massive Open Online Courses -- A Threat Or Opportunity To Universities?
jdupuis | November 13, 2012Yes, I've fallen behind a bit on my MOOC due to conferences and other general insanity, but after doing the last week this week I vow to catch up a bit retroactively and do weeks 3, 4 & 5.
My weeks 1 and 2 posts are here and here.
Distributed Research: new models of inquiry (Nov 12- 18)
Introduction - Week Six
Distributed research, or more generally, open science, reflect the next logical progression of the internet’s influence on higher education. Early 2000’s saw the development of open content. Since 2008, teaching in open online courses has gained prominence. Distributed research labs…
jdupuis | October 22, 2012It seems that Brock University in St. Catherine's, Ontario really likes me. Two years ago, the Library kindly invited me to speak during their Open Access Week festivities. And this year the Physics Department has also very kindly invited me to be part of their Seminar Series, also to talk about Getting Your Science Online, this time during OA Week mostly by happy coincidence.
It's tomorrow, Tuesday October 23, 2012 in room H313 at 12:30.
Here's the abstract I've provided:
Physicist and Reinventing Discovery author Michael Nielsen has said that due to the World Wide Web, “[t]he process of…
jdupuis | October 18, 2012I'm at the Access Conference in Montreal this week starting today, so I'm a bit behind on the readings for the Current/Future State of Higher Education MOOC I'm participating in. I'm hoping a nice long relaxing train ride will give me the opportunity to catch up.
Anyways, Week 1 was a great introduction to the issues facing higher ed and here in Week 2
Week 2: Net Pedagogies: New models for teaching and learning
Readings and Resources
Blended Learning Models
The Blended Learning Toolkit: Improving Student Performance and Retention, Educause Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 4, December 15, 2011.…
jdupuis | October 11, 2012Well, I've done it. I've signed up for a MOOC. MOOC, of course, being Massively Open Online Courses, are all the rage in higher-ed-more-disruptingly-than-thou circles, what with their potential is greatly expand the reach of higher education beyond a campus-bound constituency. But not without criticism, of course. Coursera is a popular example of a company that's offering MOOCs but there are a bunch of them out there now.
Having read so much about them over the last year or so, I thought I'd give one a try.
And as a bonus, this one is about the changes happening in the higher education…
jdupuis | October 1, 2012The most recent controversy to whip up the library and science blogospheres revolves around SUNY Potsdam cancelling their American Chemical Society journal package because the subscription packages on offer sucked up too high a percentage of their total budget. SUNY Potsdam Library Director Jenica Rogers wrote about the decision on her blog, garnering quite a bit of attention, including a feature in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The feature included some rather rude and derailing comments from a representative of the ACS, who later threw some gasoline on the PR fire on a chemistry…
jdupuis | September 27, 2012Why do people go into science? Why do people go to work at scholarly societies? Why do people choose scholarly publishing as a career? Why do people choose a career at the intersection of those three vocations?
There are cynical answers to those questions, for sure, and even the non-cynical need to put food on the table. But I truly don't believe people start out their path in life based on cynicism. Rather I believe most people start their careers based on hope.
I can only hope that for a person to pursue a career in scholarly publishing at a scientific society, their goal in life is to try…
jdupuis | September 27, 2012The current Conservative government of Canada isn't too fond of Canadians having access to information. It's inconvenient for them because I guess a well-informed citizenry would be more likely to call them on the various shenanigans they've been indulging in.
A good general take on the situation is Allan Gregg's recent speech, 1984 in 2012 – The Assault on Reason:
I have spent my entire professional life as a researcher, dedicated to understanding the relationship between cause and effect. And I have to tell you, I’ve begun to see some troubling trends. It seems as though our government’s…
jdupuis | June 4, 2012Apologies to my loyal readers for the rather inside-baseball library and Canadian politics focus of my recent posts, but that unfortunately is where I'm at right now. It will probably continue for a least a little bit.
Onward.
The Canadian Library Association held its annual conference in Ottawa last week and one of the highlights was certainly a keynote by Daniel Caron, the head of the Library and Archives Canada. Which has been quite controversial recently in Canadian library circles due to the drastic cuts going on.
According to reports on Twitter, the keynote itself wasn't too…
jdupuis | May 1, 2012A fantastic quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson:
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
The source of which seems to be…
jdupuis | April 1, 2012Hi everybody,
It is with great pride and excitement that I'm finally able to announce something that's been in the works for a few months now. I will be accepting the role of inaugural editor-in-chief of an exciting new journal to be published by Elsevier: The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments.
This amazing opportunity arose a few months ago, initiated by a blog post of mine that congratulated Elsevier on their wise marketing and publishing moves and this one a bit later, where I declare my undying loyalty to the Elsevier brand. The publisher of Elsevier immediately contacted me…
jdupuis | March 27, 2012This post has superseded my two previous link collection posts here and here.
The first focused solely on the Research Works Act, the second added posts on the Elsevier boycott and this one also incorporates posts on the reintroduction of The Federal Research Public Access Act. These three stories are all intertwined to the extent that it is difficult to separate them out completely. That being said, I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott or for FRPAA as for the RWA.
Some relevant general resources:
The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against…
jdupuis | February 24, 2012The actual content of the post I'm highlighting isn't really all that amusing. It's actually quite pertinent in a real-world context.
But I really love how they've taken actually useful information that might be a bit dry and businessy and using a Star Wars / pop-cultural reference made it into something a little easier to wade through. A spoonful of sugar and all that.
Anyways, here's one of the five from: Five Leadership Mistakes Of The Galactic Empire:
Mistake #1: Building an organization around particular people, rather than institutions.
Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Galactic…
jdupuis | February 21, 2012A little while back the Cost of Knowledge site started up a boycott pledge list in response to mathematician Timothy Gowers' pledge to stop contributing to Elsevier's operations by ceasing writing, reviewing and editing for them.
Here is the call to action:
Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections:
They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals.
In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will…
jdupuis | February 15, 2012We have here what is sometimes known as a wicked problem.
On the one side, communities would like to be able to pool the resources of their members to acquire digital content that may then be shared and consumed by everyone in that community.
On the other, content creators and publishers would like to maximize their revenue from the content they produce and distribute.
Libraries want to pay the least amount possible but still have the maximum rights to share it among their communities.
Publishers want to make sure every possible reading transaction is monetized, so as a result want to…
jdupuis | February 13, 2012I was really angry riding home on the bus last Friday night. Not angry because the transit system here in Toronto is royally fudged in general or that transit to York University is fudged in particular.
No, it wasn't that particular aspect of the public sphere that had me upset.
It was the growing tendency of publishers of all sorts to try and take their works out of the public cultural commons and place them exclusively behind pay walls. It's their desire to monetize every reading transaction that had me hot under the collar.
Here's what I tweeted standing on the bus, altered a bit for…
jdupuis | February 1, 2012Ever since I attended the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians last summer, I've been watching for interesting posts on academic library leadership, or just academic leadership in general. This is some of what I've found.
Let me know in the comments what else I should be reading.
Gordon Ramsay's Library Nightmares
On talking crazy, taking initiative, and having a comprehensive vision
The Faculty-Staff Divide
Two Years at Cupcake U: Reflections
What Were They Thinking?
Ask the Administrator: Professional Development for a New Dean
Wait for It... Wait for It...
Consensus…
jdupuis | January 27, 2012A repost from February 9, 2006 from the old blog. it tells the story of how I became a science librarian. It's my small contribution to the #IAmScience meme on Twitter right now.
Basically it's about unconventional career paths in science. And this is mine.
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Inspired by Adventures in Ethics and Science and Stranger Fruit...
So, how does a person go from being a software developer to being a science librarian?
From a very young age, always read a lot of books, magazines, comic books and whatever else is lying around, mostly science fiction and fantasy but a lot…