Roy Tennant's "Open-Access Journals" in the Oct 15 Library Journal is a good introduction to (and manifesto supporting) the topic. From OAN.

The fall 2003 issue of the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (v22i3) is a special issue on "women and minorities in information technology." All the articles look very interesting and well worth checking out. A sampling from the TOC:

• "The computer science pipeline in urban high schools: access to what? for whom?"
  
• "Gender and race in predicting achievement in computer science"
  
• "Women of color in it: degree trends and policy implications"

Another article that's not online that's is worth taking a look at is "Bibliographic Databases in a Changing World" by Jim Ashling. It's in the October 2003 issue of Information Today (v20i9). It's about a subject that interests me greatly, the fate of traditional bibliographic databases in the face of increasing competition from other tools, such as full text aggregated databases, publisher databases, free services (ie. arxiv, NASA ADS) and, of course, Google. Ashling does a good job of outlining the issues, including impacts on vendors and librarians. He continues next month looking specifically at vendor reactions.

From the Recent Atlantic Monthly, "Columbia's Last Flight: The inside story of the investigation—and the catastrophe it laid bare" by William Langewiesche (v292i4 Nov 2003). This doesn't appear to be onlline, but is well worth seeking out. Langewiesche is also the author of the truly excellent series "American ground: unbuilding the World Trade Center" from the July-August, September and October issues of 2002. It was also published as a book.

The latest D-Lib is out and, as usual, has a few very interesting articles:

• "On-line Publishing in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities" by Geneva Henry
  
• "Patterns of Journal Use by Faculty at Three Diverse Universities" by Donald W. King and others.
  
• "Who Uses What? Report on a National Survey of Information Users in Colleges and Universities" by Deanna B. Marcum and Gerald George

Now, a new journal to watch. It might be a bit techie, but it has great potential: The IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries (TCDL) Bulletin. Some sample articles from the first issue: From Open Access News.

• "Usability of digital libraries: A source of creative tensions with technical developments"
  
• "Visual User Interfaces: Challenges and Opportunities"

The latest issue of the High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine is out. As usual, it is full of interesting articles for all science librarians. This time I would like to point out "Documenta Mathematica: A Community-Driven Scientific Journal" by Ulf Rehmann. Basically, it is a specific case study of the economics of open access publishing, interesting for us because it is a math journal. From Open Access News.

A couple of recent entries in the poplar-science-watch category:

• "E-mail is broken: Four Internet pioneers discuss the sorry state of online communication today. The consensus: It's a real mess" by Katharine Mieszkowski is a discussion about why email has gone from the Net's killer app to a pain in the app.
  
• "Net guru peers into web's future" is an interview with Tim Berners-Lee from the BBC. This is a rather "gosh-wow" style interview, with some pretty silly questions. But still, it is very interesting to get up-to-date with the web pioneer. From the ResourceShelf.

It's that time of year again. Nobel winners here. Peace prize to be announced tomorrow. On a lighter note, IgNobels here. This year's favourite, noted without additional comment, is the biology prize: "C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck."

ConferenceAlerts.com is a interesting service that keeps you abreast of the conferences in various fields. Some fields seem to have better coverage than others, but overall it is quite good. From ResearchBuzz.

I knew it was only a matter of time until I got to blog something by Bruce Sterling, one of the most realistic and sensible futurists out there. Perhaps also the most amusing. There are terrifically amusing and sensible aspects of "Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die" from the October 2003 issue of Techonolgy Review. The technology I would miss least? The internal combustion engine. From Locusmag.