yorku
jdupuis | October 31, 2014This past Tuesday I gave a talk as part of the York University Department of Science & Technology Studies' STS Seminar Series. Not surprisingly, my talk was centred on the work I've done as a chronicler of Canadian science policy issues. The title and abstract of my talk are:
Evidence vs. Ideology: The Canadian Conservative Government's War on Science
Canada has entered an era of decision-based evidence-making, where scientific and other evidence takes a back seat to an ideology of political partisanship in the service of economic development and “prosperity.” Where once we could hope…
jdupuis | March 17, 2014York University mathematician and civil rights activist Lee Lorch died February 28, 2014 at the age of 98.
A few years ago I posted on the 2007 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans Lee Lorch where Lee was awarded the Yueh-Gin Gung and Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics.
The citation read:
Lee Lorch's mathematical research has been in the areas of analysis, differential equations, and special functions. His teaching positions have included the City College of New York, Pennsylvania State University, Fisk University, Philander Smith College, the University of…
jdupuis | March 14, 2014Earlier this week I was invited (er, invited myself, really) to give a talk to a class of first year computer science students about open access and open science. Sadly, there was a partial snow day that day and I was unable to actually give the talk. Which is too bad, because I've done similar talks before for undergrads and really enjoy the opportunity. In particular, the challenge I wanted to set forth for those budding computing professions was to be a part of developing software solutions for science on the web be they open access journals systems or web data hosting or whatver.
In any…
jdupuis | April 29, 2013A note for my Toronto area friends, Blogfather Bora Zivkovic will be giving a talk at York University in Toronto on May 6, 2013 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm.
Here's the info:
Science and the New Media Ecosystem
Bora Zivkovic, Blog Editor at Scientific American
Monday, May 6, 2013, 2:00 – 3:30 pm
Paul Delaney Gallery, Room 320, Bethune College
York University, TorontoMap
Abstract:
The whole media landscape is shifting and changing – newspapers on the decline with blogs, Twitter and YouTube on the rise.
Science is no different. Come listen to one of the pioneers of online science communication talk…
jdupuis | April 16, 2013Since I work at York University, I'm going to refrain from commenting on this lawsuit. However, as is my practice I'll be creating and maintaining a list of relevant articles and resources here to help me stay current on the matter.
I am not attempting to create a comprehensive list.
General
Statement of Claim against York University by Access Copyright
Monday,April 8, 2013: Canada's writers and publisherstake a stand against damaging interpretations of fair dealing by the education sector (Access Copyright press release)
Access Copyright Interim Post-Secondary Educational Institutions…
jdupuis | November 9, 2012As I mentioned way back on October 22nd, I was kindly invited to give a talk at the Brock University Physics Department as part of their seminar series. The talk was on Getting Your Science Online, a topic that I'm somewhat familiar with! Since it was coincidentally Open Access Week, I did kind of an A-Z of online science starting with the various open movements: access, data and notebooks. From there I did a quick tour of the whys and wherefores of blogs and Twitter.
There was a good turnout of faculty and grad students with lots of great questions and feedback, some more skeptical that…
jdupuis | May 17, 2012My union, the Library chapter of The York University Faculty Association (YUFA) has released a couple of open letters to The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages in the current Canadian government.
The letters protest the current cuts to staff and programs at Library and Archives Canada. The letters do sketch out the context but you can read more here, here and here.
I completely support these letters. You can consider them to be related to my series on the Canadian War on Science, perhaps under the title of The Canadian War on Library and Archives. In…
jdupuis | February 9, 2012Come work instead of me!
Below is a posting for a 3-year contractually limited appointment in my unit. I'm chair of the search committee, so feel free to ask away with any questions about the position. I'll answer them to the best of my ability given the limitations of being on the committee.
As it happens, I'll no longer be the department head of Steacie Science & Engineering Library during the three year period of the appointment. For the first year, the successful candidate will be replacing me while I do a one-year acting Associate University Librarian appointment. The second year…
jdupuis | January 16, 2012A terrific new opportunity at my institution. I'm not in the reporting department or on the search committee, but I'd be happy to answer general questions about York and the environment. My email is jdupuis at yorku dot ca.
The online job posting is here.
Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream - Assistant LibrarianDiscipline/Field: Digital Assets LibrarianHome Faculty: LibrariesHome Department/Area/Division: Scott LibraryAffiliation/Union: YUFAPosition Start Date: June 1, 2012
Digital Assets Librarian - York University Libraries
York University Libraries are seeking an innovative and self-…
jdupuis | December 6, 2011I'm doing a short presentation tomorrow on blogging for researchers as part of a day-long communications workshop for faculty here at York. And since a few months back I created a reading list for a social media presentation for grad students, I thought I'd expand that list in this post and add some more specifically blogging-related resources.
Enjoy!
Our Blogs, Ourselves (Paul Krugman)
The Power of Blogs in Forming New Fields of International Study
Should you enter the academic blogosphere? A discussion on whether scholars should take the time to write a blog about their work
Social media…
jdupuis | December 5, 2011First the good news.
Saturday's Toronto Star had a really nice little piece on the trend among some Toronto-area science grad students to get a sign of their scientific passion tattooed onto their bodies.
T.D. MacDonald fact-checked the design five times before he let one drop of ink penetrate his skin.
"I didn't want to have an incorrect chemical structure on my body," he says, recounting the long hours he spent creating his tattoo. "The way it is oriented in space had to be right."
That his ink is accurate matters to him, of course.
But few of us would know the strangely beautiful tattoo…
jdupuis | November 8, 2011Before heading off to the Charleston Conference last week, I blogged about the big announcement of Pierre Lassonde's big $25 million donation to York to found the Lassonde School of Engineering.
I attended the announcement and livetweeted it quite extensively: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
I also created a Storify story of a fair bit of the quite extensive twitter traffic of the annoucement and that is here. I've embedded the Story at the end of this post. It's mostly tweeting form the day of the announcement but I have…
jdupuis | November 1, 2011It's a big day here at York University, especially for us science & engineering types both within the Faculty of Science and Engineering and those of us who support their teaching and research missions. There's a big announcement about the coming expansion of our engineering programs to include many of the more traditional streams, such as electrical and others.
The details are being announced today at a news conference at 1pm. I'll be there livetweeting as will others, I imagine.
There was a first announcement a little while back about some government money that was being committed.…
jdupuis | July 20, 2011Come work for me!
We have an 11 month opening here at my library for a reference assistant. The position doesn't require the library degree but a science background will be necessary.
The posting is here.
Posting Number: YUSA-7393Position Title: Reference AssistantDepartment: Steacie Science LibraryAffiliation: YUSABand: 10Salary: Annual salary of $51,439 will be prorated based on the number of weeks worked.Duration: Temporary Full-TimeHours: Fall/Winter (Sept to April): Mon. to Fri.; 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. Require to work a 12:00 noon to 8:00 p.m. shift one day per week. May be required to work…
jdupuis | June 25, 2011As you read this, I'll be at TEDxLibrariansTO helping out with registration. And having a great time talking about librarians as thought leaders!
As I've done for the last few days, here is my answer for yesterday's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Question:
Question 1: What means should librarians choose to encourage their institutions to embrace change?
I'm not sure I know how to approach even beginning to answer this question other than to just say 42!
However, I was lucky enough to attend Drew Dudley's amazing keynote address at yesterday's York IT Day conference. He really talked about…
jdupuis | June 23, 2011The Library Chapter of the York University Faculty Association has released the following unanimously approved letter:
York University Faculty Association, Library Chapter
240 York Lanes, York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON
M3J 1P3
June 2, 2011
Dr. Patrick Deane, President and Vice-Chancellor
238 Gilmour Hall, McMaster University
1280 Main St. West
Hamilton, ON
L8S 4L8
Dear President Deane,
We write in support of the librarians and archivists at McMaster University. In particular we express our grave concern over the recent downsizing of professional staff, the casualization of labour…
jdupuis | June 8, 2011As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I did a short presentation on Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Case for Social Media as part of a panel for a York Faculty of Graduate Studies Scholarly Communications Series.
And yes, I was the Twitter guy, although some of the other presenters did talk about their use of Twitter. Basically, my point was that Twitter and blogs can be part and parcel of the research and research outreach life of academics. I mostly concentrated on Twitter, but I did try and make the same sorts of points about blogging as well as I spoke.
Anyways, I thought I would share…
jdupuis | June 2, 2011Yesterday York University Libraries was visited by a delegation of 39 academic librarians, mostly from The Netherlands but also a couple from Belgium. They are on a tour of many of the academic libraries of Southern Ontario, hoping to learn and share a bit about how libraries in different countries are handling the challenges of the future.
You can follow their progress on Twitter using the hashtag #nvbcan.
As I said, they were here yesterday. During the morning they got some presentations about the York Libraries in general and a tour of the Scott Library and its new Learning Commons. In…
jdupuis | April 26, 2011The following is a job posting for the York University Libraries for a Reference Assistant position. Note that a library degree is not required.
The job involves both regular science reference and supporting maps & GIS users and will be both in my unit and the Map Library here at York. For basic questions about the science-y part of the position, you can contact me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca. For the maps/GIS part, you can contact Rosa Orlandini at rorlan at yorku dot ca.
Posting Number: YUSA-7280Position Title: Reference Assistant (Map & GIS/Science)Department: Steacie Science…
jdupuis | March 10, 2011If you're in the Greater Toronto Area next Tuesday, please drop by and see Michael talk. I'm thrilled that my library is co-sponsoring such a fantastic event!
Presented by:
Janusz A. Kozinski - Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering
The Division of Natural Science
The Steacie Science and Engineering LibraryLocation: Paul A. Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune CollegeDate: Tuesday, March 15, 2011Time: 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Refreshments will be served courtesy of Steacie Science and Engineering Library
Prof. Nielsen will describe an evolution in how scientific discoveries are made driven by new…