And speaking of Ginsparg...

Here's a bit of a quote from the Data Science Journal article I mentioned above:

Successive generations of students have increasingly adopted the attitude that “if it isn’t online, then it may as well not exist.” Something qualitative frequently happens at critical threshholds, known colloquially as “tipping points.” People formerly accustomed to regular library usage first move to a mix of library and online desktop usage, but eventually enough of what they need is online that they abandon library usage altogether, forcibly ignoring those materials available only in paper as no longer worth the effort for so small a percentage of potential research materials. Moreover, recent generations of undergraduates have increasingly come to visualize campus libraries as much as a place to buy expresso and connect laptops to a wireless network as a place to find archival resources, and they do not acquire a conventional library habit in the first place.

It's called "Scholarly information architecture, 1989-2015." I guess his alma mater isn't trying to solicit him for the library building fund.

Recent highlights from Open Access News

Some recent posts related to math & physics literature:

• Open overlay journals in mathematics points to the Greg Kuperberg article Scholarly mathematical communication at a crossroads from arXiv.
• SCI may undercount eprint citations points to the E. R. Prakasan, and V. L. Kalyane article Citation analysis of LANL High-Energy Physics E-Prints through Science Citation Index (1991-2002) on E-LIS. Not surprisingly, they find that ISI's products aren't very good at disciplines that don't rely on traditional journals for all their scholarly communication.
• Musings on the evolution and future of arXiv points to an article in a recent Lecture Notes in Physics 650, 313-336 (2004) where the man himself, Paul Ginsparg speculates about the past, present and future of arXiv. The article is titled: "Scholarly Information Network." Ginsparg touches on some of the same themes here in arXiv and here in Data Science Journal.

Beer Has Same Benefits As Red Wine

Personally, I can't imagine any better news than this. Or, to quote Ian Gillespie of the London Free Press, "I love scientists. I really do." via Google News.

A bunch of sf writers thinking about the future

From Locus Online, John Shirley's seminar Global to Local.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics

The Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics site is a real pleasure to peruse. All those action movies, they've got it wrong. My fave: you know when the bad guy/hero uses a cigarette to light a puddle of gasoline? Doesn't work. The tip of the cigarette just isn't hot enough to ignite the fumes -- of course it's the fumes not the liquid that burns. The liquid gas actually puts the cigarette out! via Now Magazine.

The walrus was paul

Beloit College's famous Mindset List for 2007 is out. Thanks Brent.

Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE

The latest IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is up and has three extensive articles on the history of the IBM Beoblingen Laboratory. I can't read those article without thinking about the darker side of IBM's involvement in Germany in the middle of the last century. For more information on this controversial (and by no means settled) bit of history, try the IBM and the Holocaust home page. On an unrelated note, there's also a think piece in the issue entitled "The Circulation of Knowledge, Institutional Ecologies, and the History of Computing" by Atsushe Akera. A little postmodern-y for my tastes, but still interesting.

Cooking For Engineers

From Blogger's Blogs of Note list, I couldn't resist highlighting Cooking For Engineers. He has these weird/beautiful/brilliant flowchart/circuit diagram thingies to map out the recipees. Not to be missed! All cook books should be written by engineers!

Checkmate XML

The Checkmate XML article by John Simpson from the O'Reilly XML.com site is sort of from the "Who knew?" file. Who knew that somebody out there was working on XML applications for the chess world?