Wishlist for a cool website for scientists

A very interesting conversation going on in the Nature Network SciBarCamp forum. Corie Lok asked the question:

[W]at kind of website do you wish there was that would help you with your work? What sorts of tools and features would it have? What parts of your work/job would be greatly helped by a well designed website?

So far there have been quite a few interesting comments and suggestions. A consensus is forming that the ideal would be a platform where scientists could pick and choose a bunch of interoperable services and mash up all the resulting data and results. Oddly, a vision of grafting those types of services on the Nature Network platform would be sort of like the way FaceBook applications are grafted on Fb. (Obviously, with a vastly higher "useful to junk ratio" that those damn Facebook apps. And without the constant crashing too.)

To recap my own comment on the thread, it would be interesting to see Nature integrate their own peripheral services into NN more tightly -- such as Connotea, Precedings, PostGenomic/Scintilla and Second Life. Added to that, some other services I'd like to see added/made interoperable would be citation-oriented (ie. Zotero or CiteULike) and document preparation (ie. Zoho or Google Docs) and data analysis (ie. Mathematica web services). Some other services would be data repositories, multimedia authoring and wiki lab notebooks tools.

Check it out. If you're not already a member of NN, join up and put in your own 2 cents worth.

Rockstardom, notoriety, influence

In a reputation economy, our personal levels of fame and influence are extremely important. It's what gets us jobs, in the front of the line for plum speaking gigs, interesting/influential committee appointments and the best freebies and perqs. It's how you know who the opinion leaders and gatekeepers are. In other words, it opens doors that wouldn't otherwise be open to us. Go to a conference for the first time and you should be able to tell with some certainty who plays those roles in the community you're dropping in to. Go to the same conference several times, and the names of the gatekeepers will scream out at you -- because those are the ones you'll see in the best speaking spots and on all the right committees year after year. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing; it's just how these types of communities form.

Academia is a reputation economy, as are most professions. They always have been. More and more, every economy is becoming a reputation economy as the emphasis goes from selling stuff to selling performance, experience and lifestyle.

It seems that a lot of people are thinking about what it means to be an Important Person these days, two examples from within the library world and one from outside.

First of all, I guess everyone wants to know how to become an important person, from Meredith Farkas:

Every few months, I get an email from someone in library school or a new librarian basically asking me how I’ve accomplished all that I have in this profession in three years and how they can do the same...

And time is what all this takes. Read the profiles of Movers and Shakers in Library Journal and read about a lot of the big name librarian bloggers and you will see a lot of people who are really passionate about what they do. Many of us spend lots of time outside of work on these projects. We spend our free time writing, speaking, and networking online with folks who have similar professional interests. We often spend our own money to go to conferences in our areas of interest. The woman who wrote me last week mentioned that she doesn’t get many opportunities to publish or contribute to the profession. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve mostly made my own opportunities and I’ve done all of it on my own time. Sometimes you just need to do something and hope for the best; you can’t sit around waiting for someone to drop opportunities into your lap.

Of course, sometimes we can even undervalue our own fame quite seriously, thinking ourselves to be a American Idol dropout when in fact we're just a step or two off the Rolling Stones, maybe like the Doobie Brothers. Rockstardom isn't everything, after all. Dorothea Salo makes a good point.

Look, folks, rockstardom isn’t the only face of success. In spite of my bulldog’s face, in spite of my snark, in spite of everything, I am quite as successful as I need or want to be. I found work in my heart’s home. When I need to say something serious about what I do, I can get it said and hearkened to, here or even (to my own surprise) in The Literature. (I could do considerably more, even, if I were a more fluent writer than I am.) In spite of the people I’ve alienated (and they are not few), I have my own network of well-loved colleagues and friends; I’ve never been lonely in this marvelous profession. If rockstardom got dumped in my lap, I’m honestly not entirely sure what I would do, but I lean toward “running and hiding,” because I have serious being-around-hordes and travel-hassle limits, and rockstardom would stomp all over them....

Most of all, I have the luxury of defining success for myself. I fully and freely acknowledge that non-tenure-track academic librarianship has its discontents, but they pale to insignificance beside the phenomenal freedom of picking my own goalposts.

But again, it can be hard to judge just where we are on the totem poll.

Several kindly librarians of my acquaintance tried to convince me yesterday that indeed I am a rockstar. Evidence clearly shows otherwise, but thanks to them anyway.

One told me (paraphrased), “I wouldn’t know anything much about open access if not for you.”

But clearly, a reputation economy also has potential for inequalities just like any other. What if people who deserve to get fame and influence are denied it just because of their gender? What if you were a physicist and all the men were given the plum assignments when they clearly don't deserve it? It seems that the gatekeepers of a community can use their influence unfairly.

I think the essence of what determines your long-term success as a scientist is your ability to influence the scientific discussion. When you’re at a point in your career when people pay attention to your work, and want to know “What does think about this?”, you are on a near certain path to a stable position as a research scientist. Instead, if no one is reading your papers (to the extent that you’ve published them at all), or wants to hear what you say at conferences, or calls you up to ask you about your area of expertise, then you’re in danger of drifting out of the field....

A former particle-physics postdoc (and current grad student in statistics) carried out a very detailed analysis of the productivity of postdocs on the Run II Dzero experiment, and how that translated into giving conference presentations, and being hired into faculty positions. The paper found that the postdocs’ success in eventually landing faculty jobs were highly correlated to productivity (as measured by internal papers), to conference presentations (which were awarded by the leadership of the project), and to the degree of “physics socialization”....

The jaw-dropping aspect of the paper is that the awarding of conference presentations was grossly gender biased (as was the fraction of service work assigned to the women). The female postdocs had drastically higher levels of productivity (indeed, half the men were less productive than the least productive woman), but were allocated far fewer conference presentations than men with comparable productivity....

In this exercise, we see the influence game writ large. You need to be productive and visible. If some sort of bias (against women, or shy people, or people from state schools, or whomever) is present that conspires to make you less visible, you’re going to have to be even more productive. It’s not fair, and people in positions to fight against the bias in their institution should do so. But, at least it’s something that you have a chance of controlling.

Read Sherry Towers's jaw-dropping paper A Case Study of Gender Bias at the Postdoctoral Level in Physics, and its Resulting Impact on the Academic Career Advancement of Females. Oddly, it seems that reputation can acrue to someone for being discriminated against, hopefully to raise awareness and make things better.

Me? I've no illusions about being in the Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones category of rock star, or even mid-range like Genesis or The Doobie Brothers. It's fine for me having a niche, a small core audience, like Walter Rossi or Frank Marino. I'm afraid I'm just not that interested in (or necessarily good at) the kind of driven self-promotion it takes. And I think what modest level of fame I do have is split between the science and library domains, giving me more modest levels in two communities rather than a larger share in one (ie. Rossi + Marino = Bob Seger), which I actually think is pretty cool and which suits my interests just fine.

Books I'd like to read

A bunch more, this time some of them in paperback reprint:

The Canon by Natalie Angier

THE CANON is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time—from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it's for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or how electricity works. Angier's sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works. "Of course you should know about science," writes Angier, "for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun and fun is good."

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained—or lost—by the decisions we make today.

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit

At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not. In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. In Not Even Wrong, he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth. In the face of many books from enthusiasts for string theory, this book presents the other side of the story.

The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins

Boasting almost one hundred pieces, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "the discovery of Lucy" to "the terror and vastness of the universe." Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more.

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

In True Enough, Manjoo presents findings from psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to show how new technologies are prompting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact. In an age of talk radio, cable TV, and the Internet—the blog- and YouTube-addled million-channel media universe—it is no longer necessary for any of us to confront notions that contradict what we "know" to be true. Stephen Colbert calls this "truthiness"—when something feels true without any evidence that it is. Here Manjoo probes the cognitive basis of truthiness, exploring how biases push both liberals and conservatives to select and interpret news in a way that accords with their personal versions of "reality."

Why has punditry lately overtaken news, with so many media outlets pushing partisan agendas instead of information? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they've been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture. We meet people who espouse far-out interpretations of reality—about everything from the history of John Kerry's time in Vietnam to the integrity of the 2004 election to the truth about 9/11—and dig into the mechanism by which they came to hold those beliefs.

(Why, you ask, do I list far more books that I'd like to read that I would ever possibly get a chance to actually read? Well, you know the old saying, "He who dies with the most books wins!"

FWIW, I try and read one science/net culture book per month, aiming for about 15 per year.)

Most valuable and unlauded investigative resource

A great quote from James Lee Burke's novel The Tin Roof Blowdown:

Then I used the most valuable and unlauded investigative resource in the United States, the lowly reference librarian. Their salaries are wretched and they receive credit for nothing. Their desks are usually tucked away in the stacks or in a remote corner where they have to shush noisy high school students or put up with street people blowing wine in their faces or snoring in in the stuffed chairs. But their ability to find obscure information is remarkable and they persevere like Spartans.

The Tin Roof Blowdown is one of Burke's Dave Robicheaux Louisiana detective novels, this one set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I've read about a dozen of the Robicheaux novels and this is definitely one of the best; it's well worth reading even for those not normally mystery fans. It's also worth noting that Burke was named the 10th best all time crime writer by the Times ahead of people like Dashiell Hammett, P.D. James and Jim Thompson.

Getting on board for SCOAP3

What is SCOAP3, you ask? One of the most interesting Open Access projects out there these days and perhaps one pathway into the future of scholarly publishing.

To quote myself:

And look at what's happening in the High Energy Physics field with the SCOAP3 project! Imagine a world where libraries could band together to pay publishers to make their journals all Open Access. It's almost a utopian dream.

Ah yes, a utopian dream. So, here's the story in a nutshell: The HEP field is fairly small, with only a handful of core journals (at both commercial and society publishers) and another handful of journals that publish some HEP content. There's already a great tradition of open access using, for example, the arXiv repository. But, the journals in the field and still valued for their peer review/gatekeeping function. But how to get all the peer reviewed content freely available to everyone?

The SCOAP3 idea is for all the libraries and institutions that subscribe to the journals to band together and form their own consortium. That way, all the money can be collected and negotiations can be started with publishers for the best price. Aha! Here's the trick. Instead of all those subscribers paying their money for exclusive access to the publisher's content, they would use that money to pay for open access for everyone to the content. Basically, all the same funders pay more-or-less the same money to the same publishers but instead of for their own good, it's for the common good.

Now, there's a lot more to the details of this and the best source is the SCOAP3 website itself.

• About
  
• News
  
• What they say about SCOAP3

Some more info from other sources:

• Audacity of SCOAP3 by Ivy Anderson (ARL Bimonthly Report)
  
• Report of the SCOAP3 Working Party
  
• Slides and Videos from the U.S. Focal meeting, February 29th, 2008 (I'm linking to the YouTube videos. Higher quality available at the link)
  
  
  
  • Welcome & Opening Address
    
  • What is Open Access, anyhow (Rick Luce, Emory University)
    
  • The SCOAP3 model (Salvatore Mele, CERN)
    
  • Fund-raising in Europe (Jens Vigen, CERN)
    
  • SCOAP3: Expectations of a large research institution (Ralf Schimmer, Max Planck Digital Library)
    
  • US consortia in SCOAP3 (Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library)
    
  • Individual US libraries and SCOAP3 - I (Miriam Blake, Los Alamos National Laboratory)
    
  • Individual US libraries and SCOAP3 - II (Kimberly Douglas, Caltech)
    
  • OA synergies: Repositories for High-Energy Physics (Travis Brooks, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center)

CERN is one the driving forces behind SCOAP3 and in general they've had really good success in Europe. They're also beginning to make real headway among US libraries. Check out who's involved.

For whatever reason, Canada isn't on board yet. I don't know why. If you're reading this and you're a Canadian science (esp. physics) librarian, bring it up to your administration or to your consortium. Talk about it, explain why it's so important to look to the future of scholarly publishing, to look beyond locking us in to the whims of the commercial publishers. At the Open Access session hosted here at York this past Wednesday, one of the speakers bought up SCOAP3 and wondered aloud why Canada wasn't involved. I wished I had an answer for him.

Friday Fun: Student emails

Call me cruel, but I love this stuff:

Dear Mr. ———,

This letter is just my opinion, but I think many of the other students will agree. I want you to know that I enjoy your class, and actually look forward to coming. However, I think that 3 hrs is way too long. I know that it is the time given to you, but I am sure that by the last hour of class most or all of the studens are in a different zone.

Three batches of posts on the Chronicle of Higher Ed's Wired Campus blog here, here and here. More on the associate Chronicle forum.

The comments on the posts are great too, even if there is the occasional spoilsport:

How smug and mean-spirited to drag out these emails in public and sneer at them. We shouldn’t throw stones in our academic glass house. Yes, some students make lame excuses and some lie. But we also have to remember that our students are people, and not objects to ridicule. As for the second e-mail in this article, it may have been poorly written, but we must remember that technology does occasionally fail even the most cautious of students. I say this as both an IT professional and an educator.This student may have been making up an excuse, but s/he also just may have been frustrated and anxious to the point of tears. One never knows.

And just to prove I'm an equal opportunity mocker, here's a link to Ellen Degeneres's post on librarians.

Open Access in Canada

Dean Giustini posted recently a first part of the history of Canadian involvement in OA, with a promise of further installments to come. Well, he's done us all a huge service by incorporating part I and his additional information on the UBC Health Library wiki as part of the overall entry on Open Access. (via OAN.)

A lot of interesting information included, of course. And the best thing is that if you know more about the subject you can add it yourself!

This is also a good opportunity to remind everyone that the York Scholarly Communications event on Open Access is tomorrow! It should be a great event with Jean-Claude Guedon and Leslie Chan as the featured speakers.

Two more books I'd like to read

First of all, Clifford Pickover emailed me about his most recent book and it looks pretty cool:

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

Throughout this fascinating book, Clifford Pickover invites us to share in the amazing adventures of brilliant, quirky, and passionate people after whom these laws are named. These lawgivers turn out to be a fascinating, diverse, and sometimes eccentric group of people. Many were extremely versatile polymaths--human dynamos with a seemingly infinite supply of curiosity and energy and who worked in many different areas in science. Others had non-conventional educations and displayed their unusual talents from an early age. Some experienced resistance to their ideas, causing significant personal anguish.

Pickover examines more than 40 great laws, providing brief and cogent introductions to the science behind the laws as well as engaging biographies of such scientists as Newton, Faraday, Ohm, Curie, and Planck. Throughout, he includes fascinating, little-known tidbits relating to the law or lawgiver, and he provides cross-references to other laws or equations mentioned in the book. For several entries, he includes simple numerical examples and solved problems so that readers can have a hands-on understanding of the application of the law.

Next up is one of the big buzz books from the last month or so, this one by Jonathan Zittrain:

The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.

The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”

Ayres, Ian. Super Crunchers: Why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart. New York: Bantan, 2007. 260pp.

You know how I'm always complaining about business-y buzz/hype books & articles? How they're 1/3 repetition, 1/3 hype and 1/3 real ideas?

Like I commented to Michael not too long ago: "I find these tendencies very true of a lot of cases where I look to the business literature to understand something important about the way our culture is changing."

The book under consideration in this review, Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres, is a business book. It says something important about the way our culture is changing. On the other hand, it is also very profoundly a popular science book about the mathematical and statistical analysis of large datasets. Yes, indeed -- this is a popular math book about data mining. And it is a very good to boot. Thankfully, not so much plagued by the repetition and hype of many of the pure business books. I suspect it may have originally been aimed at a popular science audience as much as a business audience, accounting for a slightly different emphasis.

So, what is super crunching? (p.10)

It is statistical analysis that impacts real-world decisions. Super Crunching decisions usually bring together some combination of size, speed and scale. the sizes of the datasets are really big -- both in the number of observations and in the number of variables...And the scale of the impact is sometimes truly huge. this isn't a bunch of egghead academics cranking out provocative journal articles. Supter Crunching is done by or for decision makers who are looking for a better way to do things.

In other words, data mining. To it's credit the book doesn't really talk about the hows and whys of the actual mathematical analysis; it mostly concentrates on the applications and implications of these powerful tools. The core theme of the book is how do you make decisions in the data mining (I've decided to to not bother with Ayres's cutsie term and just say data mining) world: evidence or intuition? Evidence wins every time.

Some interesting points to consider: the rise of data mining tools is in large part to the drastic decrease in storage costs the last number of years, far more than any increase in processing power. On the other hand, the use of neural network technology has also contributed to better and better techniques.

The book basically goes through a bunch of applications areas and shows how each are affected by data mining -- basically showing that the evidence provided by statistical evidence beats out human intuition every time. It's an interesting examination of the nature of expertise: what does it really mean to be a human expert when math wizards can transform large data sets into much more accurate predictions about human behaviour. What's left for us to do? Of course, the human role is to decide what data to collect, what questions to ask in the analysis and how to apply the results.

Ayres looks at recommendation systems (like Amazon), data mining application in the entertainment industry (yes, scripts and box office data are data mined, resulting in, apparently, Will Farrell), economics and government policy and evidence-based medicine (perhaps the best chapter).

To his credit, Ayres doesn't duck the hard questions all this brings up. He deals with privacy concerns, the dangers of over-reliance on programmed creativity and other interesting areas. It's a powerful technology, and while balance is needed in some respects, understanding is a far preferable reaction to change.

Instead of a Luddite rejection of this powerful new technology, it is better to become a knowledgeable participant in the revolution. Instead of sticking your head in the sands of innumeracy, I recommend filling your head with the basic tools of Super Crunching. (p.191)

A good reaction to any new technology. And I like the way he ties it in with the general innumeracy of our times, especially the media and chattering classes. A tool can be used for many purposes. Let's all be

Passionate about the need to inculcate a basic understanding of statistics in the general public. "We have to get students to learn this stuff...We have to get over this phobia and we have to get over this view that somehow statistics is illiberal. There is this crazy view out there that statistics are right-wing"...One can crunch numbers and still have a passionate and caring soul. You can still be creative. You just have to be willing to put your creativity and your passions to the test to see if they really work. (p. 215)

I recommend this book without reservation. Any library that collects math or popular math books would find it a terrific addition to their collection. Business libraries would also find it appropriate. Collections that are looking at the way technology is changing our culture would find that Super Crunchers belongs alongside books like Wikinomics or Everything is Miscellaneous.

Friday Fun: Greatest comedy sketches of all time!

After that last post, I need to take a bit of a mental shower.

The perfect thing is to check out the fifty greatest comedy sketches of all time. I can't believe Who's on First only made it to 2nd place! Anyways, a perfect list to argue with and dispute and, especially, brighted up you day.

via BoingBoing.

Fear the library

By turns ugly and amusing, check out this post: The 5 People Who Make Me Hate the Public Library.

It if were a bit more amusing and correspondingly less ugly, I might have put it under Friday Fun like a couple of posts from the same blog a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, I'm having trouble even reading the post all the way through.

Are there 5 (or more) kinds of people that keep students out of academic libraries?

Open Access: what it means for research, teaching, and one's career

If you're in the Toronto area next Wednesday, please drop by York for a talk on Open Access.

Scholarly Publication Speaker Series: Open Access: what it means for research, teaching, and one's career.

with Jean-Claude Guedon and Leslie Chan
Apr 16, 2008, 12:00 -- 1:30 pm,
Accolade Building East - Lecture Hall 001, York University
Lunch Provided

More information (including speaker bios) here. Facebook event here.

It's being sponsored by the York University Scholarly Communications Initiative.

An update on my Computer Science & Engineering blog

Way back in September I posted about an experiment I was running with a new blog directed at Computer Science & Engineering students here at York.

I'll excerpt myself a little to remind everyone what I was hoping to accomplish:

I've created yet another blog, this one I'm aiming at Engineering & Computer Science students at my institution. I have two main ideas for this blog: first, as a place to locate my IL related links and other information. In the past I've used static web pages and was pretty happy with them. However, over time (and mostly over my sabbatical) I thought that I might want something a little easier, a little more flexible, a little more interactive and mashupable. And I saw an example of what could be accomplished at Heather Matheson's OLA presentation.

It took me a while, but I think I've got something I can live with. It uses WordPress instead of Joomla; but it also incorporates some rss feeds like my linkblog and the new book lists from my library. It has Meebo so students can touch base with me directly. Mostly I like that I've been able to move over the old IL instructional pages I did in FrontPage with relatively little fuss and bother. The classes I've used it for so far seem to like it and the reception from faculty too has been positive. It just looks cooler.

Second, as a place where I can highlight York science profs in the news and post some interesting links to engineering/CS stuff I think is neat, useful or interesting. I plan on using the WordPress pages feature to add digested versions of the full blown pathfinders we have. As well I want to create a list of all the different IL pages so anyone can find them without scrolling or searching.

So, how did it the experiment go?

Overall, I have to say that I'm very happy with the experience.

Some things that I thought went really well:

• Easy to create & maintain. I really like the WordPress interface. It's very easy to create a blog and set up a bunch of cool widgets for RSS feeds or whatever. The array of themes is impressive (although since I am using a local implementation, I only have a few choices). The wysiwyg authoring tool is certainly good enough for what I need. For the most part, I was able to transfer the old FrontPage versions I created a few years ago into WordPress by just copying and pasting the HTML code and altering it to my current needs. I think that there's also something to be said for how cool and "with it" the blog looks compared to a simple web page.
  
  
• The stats. Since September, the blog has received 3,087 visits and 6,851 page views. Both those numbers make me very happy. No need to go into detail, but the posts I expected to be popular were (ie. bigger classes generated more hits than smaller ones), the keywords I expected to lead people to the blog did and the ebb and flow more-or-less matched the assignment due dates for the courses I was doing sessions for. I'm still getting a handful of hits every day.
  
  
• Meebo. I love Meebo! During busy periods, I was averaging two or three IM sessions per week, sometimes more (by session I mean either live chat or a message left by a student). I was even getting students using Meebo to ask about courses that I wasn't doing a session for. Whether they were students who had my session in one of their other classes or not, that I don't know. Either way, it's still pretty cool that they found me and I was able to help. I even ended up chatting with a couple of librarians about using Meebo.
  
  
• Class management. And speaking of Meebo. You know how when you do a lecture-style IL session there's always a bunch of students at the back of the class using laptops, probably doing email or playing poker? You know how hard it is to involve them? As well, we all know that a class can start with good energy then peter out after a while. Well, Meebo helped with both those things, believe it or not. After a few sessions, I got into the habit of starting every IL class by firing up Meebo on the demo PC I was using and inviting the students on the laptops to surf to the blog. Well, of course a whole bunch of beeping and other weird noises resulted as Meebo notified me that people were coming to the blog and starting to chat! Windows opening, weird chat sessions exploding all over the place. Of course, this is all quite amusing to the students. It also gets their undivided attention right at the beginning of the session and also lets them see what the Meebo widget is all about. I'd have to say that this little opening stunt got me at least 20 minutes of really good attention and energy in the class. I usually asked the students if they wanted me to leave Meebo open so they could ask questions during my demo but they always declined because they thought it would be too distracting.
  
  
• Findability. One cool thing -- if you Google the course number for the majority of the sessions I did, my blog posting comes within the first few results. For many of them, it's number one, even before the course web page. A little disconcerting for the profs, I think, but great for the students -- and the profile of the library. In the sessions I would just say, "Hey, don't worry about remembering the url or the page or anything, just Google your course number!" Even a day after first publishing the post it would appear at or near the top of the rankings.
  
  
• Profs Liked it. It looks cool, has all the main resources, is in a format that students can relate to, what's not to like? Just today I had a Prof remark to me that based on my blog he's considering using WordPress for his own course management needs.

Some things I'm still figuring out:

• Branding. Although the blog is branded for CSE, in the end most of the classes I used it for were Natural Science, STS or other courses. So, I think I need to re-brand the blog, starting with a new name. Initially, my idea was to create a separate blog for the non-CSE areas but that's probably needless duplication. I think I'll end up with a name something like "York University Science Library Blog: Featuring Engineering, Computer Science, Natural Science and STS." Yes, we have other science library blogs for other areas.
  
  
• Clutter. The design is still a bit busy for my liking. I probably need to pare it down a bit, maybe take out a few of the widgets. Way back when, Jane suggested embedding slides in the posts rather than just recording my notes/links as part of the post itself. That idea probably has a lot of merit and I may give it a try next year.
  
  
• Informational Posts. By these I mean newsy posts about York or various profs. I didn't do as many of these as I hoped and I'm still not sure how useful they are. On the other hand, it's been really handy for demonstrating how blogs can be used to institutional outreach. The jury is out on these posts. I'll probably do a few more during the spring and early summer but I'll re-evaluate in the fall.
  
  
• Sidebar content. Not sure how used or useful it was. I like that it gives students a reason to come back to the blog after the course is over but on the other hand it may just add clutter and distraction.
  
  
• Resource Pages. I never did get around to creating mini-pathfinders for the various subject areas on some of the WordPress pages. We'll see how my thinking on that evolves over the summer.

If any of you out there on the Internet have any suggestions, feel free to jump in. If you're a prof or student, especially if you were involved in one of my sessions, I'd also really like to hear what you have to say.

Blogorama

Wow, it's been a couple of years since I last did a Blogorama post. Now that I'm around 250 feeds in my Bloglines, I think it's time to update here on some cool new-to-me blogs I've discovered in the last little while. And yes, it's time to trim the subscriptions a little.

• Whatever by John Scalzi. It's not really about science or libraries but Scalzi often does post about issues that interest me as a participant in the Internet reputation economy. Or lack thereof, in my case. A couple of really good recent posts in that vein are Fame or Lack Thereof and The Problem With 1,000 True Fans. They later is a pretty depressing analysis of how "easy" it is to convert reputation into cash.
  
  
• WoW! Wouter on the Web by Dutch librarian Wouter Gerritsma. Infrequent, but lots of good commentary on the way libraries could be.
  
  
• Digital Curation Blog. "Blog inspired by the Digital Curation Centre to discuss issues relating to the curation and long term preservation of digital science and research data." Excellent new blog on a topic libraries and librarians need to keep on top of.
  
  
• shimenawa by Peter Brantley, Executive Director of the Digital Library Federation. Commentary about where library collections and services are headed.
  
  
• Librarian in Red. "I am a Librarian at a governmental research and development aerospace laboratory. I find topics of information architecture and information usability very exciting. When I'm not being a library geek, I am a World of Warcraft geek/Star Wars geek/Dog lover. I am a geek onion." I am a geek onion. Classic!
  
  
• if:book is supposed to be about the future of the book, but really it's about the future of the transmission of culture. Coincidentally, the most recent post on Tex is dear to the heart of the geek onion in me.
  
  
• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. By turns brilliant and frustrating it's well worth reading. Most recent post: Anderson actually thinks newspapers are doing relatively well!
  
  
• apophenia by danah boyd. Wide ranging commentary on the culture of the web. Best of here.
  
  
• Joho the Blog and Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. A bit like Chris Anderson, by turns frustrating and brilliant (though I'll admit, mostly less frustrating) commentary of the miscellaneousness of the culture we live in.
  
  
• Tools of Change for Publishing and O'Reilly FYI. Two blogs from tech publisher O'Reilly. The ToC blog is really interesting because you get to see a forward thinking publisher in the process of rethinking what publishing is.
  
  
• business|bytes|genes|molecules by Deepak Singh. Not too many blogs that cover the escience and science 2.0 bioinformatics scenes better than this one. But is it mmgb, ggmm, mgbm?
  
  
• Science-Based Medicine. A woo-free zone. Great posts on acupuncture and other so-called complimentary and alternative medical treatments.
  
  
• Open Reading Frame by Bill Hooker. Bill Hooker is at the forefront of re-imagining what scientific publishing could be.
  
  
• Science and Religion News by Salman Hameed.
  
  
• Michael Nielson, like Bill Hooker, is thinking hard about how science could be communicated in a reputation economy. Cool recent post on collaboration.
  
  
• Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood. Amusing and insightful commentary on the life of a coder.
  
  
• Shtetl-Optimized by Scott Aaronson. We all need more theoretical computer science blogs in our blogrolls.
  
  
• Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard. Rosenberg is the author of Dreaming in Code, one of my favourite recent books. His next one will be about blogs and bloggers.

And one for the fun of it -- I just love Pulp of the Day!

So, who out there should be blogging but isn't yet? C'mon, you know who you are...Stacy, Jen, Tim?

Best Science Books 2007: Library Journal

I only have a few more of these list to get through for 2007. This one is from Library Journal and it's a pretty long one: Best Sci-Tech Books 2007: Beyond the Bounds of Science. I'll only highlight a few titles that I haven't seen in other lists.

• Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space by Belfiore, Michael
  
• The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement by Lytle, Mark Hamilton
  
• The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse by Ludlow, Peter & Mark Wallace
  
• The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans by Sawyer, G.J & others
  
• The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man by Aczel, Amir
  
• How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox To Create Mathematics by Byers, William
  
• The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology on the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic
  
• The New Time Travellers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics by Toomey, David
  
• Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding by Weidensaul, Scott

It seems to me that this list would be particularly useful for any library that wants to order a wide range of well-reviewed popular science.

Is computer science a science?

It's been a long time since I last posted on this topic but it's not a subject I'm any less interested in. It's just that good stuff hasn't really popped up for me to post about.

Until now.

Jane is starting a series of posts on the subject with parts I and Ia already up. Normally, in this type of situation, I'd wait until Jane was finished the series or at least had a few more posts up. However, the Seed blog, Page 3.14, has a new poll up asking if readers think computer science is really a science. I've voted (Yes, natch) and I think you all should head over and cast your ballot. The poll was posted today but only 17 people have voted so far.

But first, a couple of tastes of the first two parts of Jane's series:

Is computer science a science? (part 1)

Computer science is in many respects a tool. It's a discipline that has its reach into many other disciplines. And that's one of the coolest, most interesting things about it. But that's also what makes it so hard to classify, to quantify. Computer science doesn't have to neatly fit anywhere, of course. But classifying it as something could make it a bit easier for non-computer scientists, and even computer scientists, to begin to understand just what it is and what its purpose should be. Having this strong sense of "self", of identity as a field, is, I believe, crucial to the survival of computer science as a field.

Is computer science a science? (part 1a: what do computer scientists do?)

I then spend the next 30-60 minutes working on my most important project. If there's a deadline approaching, this means writing/editing a conference or journal article or grant proposal. If there are no deadlines coming up, I'll tackle my most difficult research problem. Often I'll choose one that requires some thinking/planning/analysis. So I'll sketch out, on paper or on my board, a system design, or some coding diagrams or outlines, or an algorithm (a recipe for solving a problem). I'll occasionally work through some equations or work on mathematically modeling some aspect of a system. If I'm in the midst of some really tricky data analysis, I'll fire up Matlab and slice and dice the data in various ways to see if I can find some pattern I missed before. Whatever requires the most brain power and attention.

Friday Fun: Most & Least Annoying People @ Your Bookstore

Bookgasm has a couple of funny posts on the kind of people you see hanging around in book stores. They're kinda rude but definately funny. Of course, both lists have lots of resonance for library people. You will surely recognize some of your own patrons in these lists.

The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore

STUDY GROUPS
Didn’t you hear me? I said this isn’t a library! How can you study any way when all you’re doing is talking? Shouldn’t you buy something to make nice for that free wifi you’re using and all the space you’re taking up for hours and hours?

The next list is also pretty funny, 'cause you know "Least annoying" is meant in an ironic way --

The 9 Least Annoying People I Occasionally See at the Bookstore

CHRONICALLY DEPRESSED EMPLOYEES
Is there anything that makes a person feel better about themselves than being served by someone who’s clearly lost all will to live? No matter how hopeless or suicidal I may feel when I walk into my neighborhood Chapters (a Canadian chain for those of you who like to learn something new every day), I know that by the time I walk out, the sight of dozens of poor, pasty bastards whose lives are clearly much, much, much worse than my own never fails to reinvigorate my soul!

So, what amusingly odd people do you encounter in your library? I'll start it off with a couple of groups that I find particularly amusing.


CELL PHONE PACERS
Hello? People on cell phones often talk a lot louder than normally and some people have naturally booming voices. Combine the two with a tendency of some to pace and wander while talking on their cells makes for a very annoying phenomenon. Fortunately this group is almost always understanding when you point out to them that they might be disturbing others.


LAPTOP POWERCORD STRINGERS
Ok. we have study tables with power outlets. We have soft seating that can be moved around. Combine the two and you get the phenomenon of people stringing their laptop powercords from the tables to the chairs three or four feet away creating a pretty obvious tripping hazard for anyone walking around the library. Sometimes, for those sitting further away from the tables, the cable is swinging a foot or two off the ground. A couple of times, people have managed to situate themselves so that the cable swinging in the air is also blocking access to the emergency exit. Laptop powercord stringers are also usually fairly understanding but tend to include a fair number of repeat offenders.

State of the Computer Book Market

Mike Hendrikson reviews the state of the computer book market twice a year on the O'Reilly Radar blog (using Bookscan data). The most recent set of posts finished a couple of weeks ago. It's always a very helpful analysis, one that I use to inform my book (and ebook) buying habits. All four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) are well worth reading in their entirety but I'll just exerpt a telling remark or two from each.


Part 1: The Market

So what's was news in 2007? The year got off to slow start and by mid-year it looked like results were going end below the prior years. But around the middle of July, which is typically a slow time in computer books, the market climbed above the most recent years. Not only did the market climb above of the prior years, but it did not dip below any of the prior years until the third week in December [Christmas week]. That being said, the market ended up at 1%, or 4,089 units above 2006 - on a base of over 7.4 million units. That is truly a small increase but mostly realized in the second half of the year...

In the fourth quarter of 2006, new interest in web development associated with Web 2.0 and strong performance of books on digital media applications like Photoshop helped to drive the market.

Some categories to watch include Collaboration & Office Suites while declining categories include web programming and digital photography.



Part 2: The Technologies

In response to previous State of the Computer Book market posts, there have been reader comments indicating that part of the decline in the market is due to a lack of anything that new in the Tech world to sustain lots of books selling lots of copies. It begs the question -- will we ever see another Java-like phenomena similar to what we experienced 12 years ago? (And yes, we understand it was much more than just a Java event, but Java skyrocketed more than all others - it was truly astronomical...) However, we believe that one reason why programming and administration topics are suffering more than consumer topics is that sophisticated users are the first to show the preference shift from books to online content consumption. (emphasis mine. -- jd)

Part 3 -- The Publishers

o what is notable from this data? First that these large publishers are down about 165k units from 2006 to 2007. So that means that in 2007 we experienced our modest market growth from the middle-to-small publishers even though the large houses published nearly 100 more titles and had slightly better efficiency. Wiley gained market share while getting more titles into the top 3000 and with slightly better efficiency. Pearson lost market share and had 159 fewer titles make the top 3000 and experienced a very slight drop in efficiency. O'Reilly had about 100k fewer units on 11 more titles making the top 3000; our efficiency took a hit as a result but remained well above the efficiency average. (We actually published about 60 fewer titles than in 2006, so the fact that we had 11 more in the top 3000 was a surprise to us.)

The top three publishers are Pearson, Wiley and they O'Reilly. It's also very interesting to see everything broken down by category and to see the top books in each category. For example the top books in Web Design and Development are:

1. Peachpit's HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Visual Quickstart
   
2. New Rider's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
   
3. O'Reilly's Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
   
4. Wiley's Building Web Sites All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
   
5. Pragmatic's Agile Web Development with Rails
   
6. O'Reilly's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

Part 4 - The Languages

Overall the 2007 market for programming languages was down (1.67%) in 2007 when compared with 2006. There were 1,809,695 units sold in 2006 versus 1,779,523 units sold in 2007 which is (30,172) fewer units in 2007. So the modest 1% growth in the Overall Computer Book Market must have been fueled by non-programming oriented books. You don't need a programming language to learn to use MacOsX, Vista or Office and that is where the growth was in 2007...

Before we dive in, let's look at the high level picture for the grouping of languages. As you can see in the table below, the MidMinor and Minor languages experienced growth in 2007 while the rest experienced a decline. The languages driving the growth in the Minor category are Groovy, SAS, Erlang, Matlab, and Processing. For the sake of grouping and presenting this information in a more readable format, we have classified the categories for the languages in this way:

It's extremely interesting to see the language breakdown in the major to minor categories, inlcuding the top books. For major, the top languages, in order, are java, c#, php, javascript, c/c++ and .net languages. The top books are:

1. O'Reilly: Head First Design Patterns
   
2. Peachpit: JavaScript and Ajax for the Web
   
3. Peachpit: CSS, DHTML, and Ajax
   
4. Sams: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One
   
5. O'Reilly: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

In the minor category, it's interesting to note that Basic still has 1% market share. Who knew? Matlab, latex and SAS are all less than 1% market share. Cobol, fortran, ada and alice are all categorized as immmaterial. Inactive languages, those with barely detectable sales: labview, lingo, ml, mumps, net languages, oopic, opl, pascal, pda languages, pl/1, qbasic, rexx, s, smalltalk, spark, squeak, unrealscript, windows script.

Wright, Alex. Glut: Mastering: Mastering information through the ages. Washington: Joseph Henry Press, 2007. 286pp.

This book should have been called Everything is not Miscellaneous. In fact, this book could be imagined as Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous as written by a slightly old-fashioned librarian.

Book-jacket blurb descriptions aside, Alex Wright's Glut is a fascinating look at the history and methods human culture has used to organized and categorize knowledge and information. More Academic in tone than Weinberger's book, it's a bit dryer and more serious and, of course, a little less prone to unsubstantiated hype. This very clearly not a book aimed at the business audience; you will find no strategies within to make your customers buy more virtual widgets.

Let's have a taste (p. 3-4):

My aim in writing this book is to resist the tug of mystical techno-futurism and approach the story of the information age by looking squarely backward. This is a story we are only just beginning to understand...[W]e are just starting to recognize the contours of a broader information ecology that has always surrounded us. Just as human being had no concept of oral culture until they learned how to write, so the arrival of digital culture has given us a new reference point for understanding the analog age.

Overall, Wright has quite a strong humanities focus in the book with lots about religion, philosophy and literature as well as the history of writing, printing, libraries and how people deal with information. Books and libraries are the main focus. Not so much about biology, physics, chemistry and astronomy. Even the biology chapter is more a mythological or sociological treatment of taxonomy rather than an emphasis of the scientific systems. It really gives the impression that scientists don't classify or organize, only humanists. The second half of the book is better, but a general treatment of the organization of information is missing a lot if it doesn't include the periodic table or the various number systems. Astronomical tables, navigational charts, fossils, chemical names and descriptions, genomic data, all are extensive systems of organized scientific data. Wright also doesn't pay too much attention to non-Western systems of organization.

So, let's do a quick drive-by series of impressions to get the main points. We start with a brief introduction of information networks and hierarchies in both the natural and human information space and then into some discussion of folk taxonomies and the relationship of categorizations to family structures. We then get into the measn of transfering information symbolically in pre-literate cultures and the development of written cultures through alphabets. The role of classical Greek culture is stressed and the Library of Alexandria is name-checked.

Next up, Irish monks save civilization and the role of books and libraries in those efforts during the dark ages. The printing press arrives, increasing the distribution of books and fixing texts in time and space. Next we explore Bacon, wilkins, memory and the role of philosophers. The enlightenment and the development of the scientific methods follows, as does the popularity of encyclopedic projects. Lineaus versus buffon and taxonomy.

As book production grows and libraries expand, librarians must systematise the ordering of the collections and we see Dewey and Cutter make their entrances. Here we really do see that in a library, everything is not miscellaneous. Now the true here of the book makes his appearance -- Paul Otlet! His amazing accomplishments during World War II are examined and explored, followed by the contributions of Vanevar Bush and his Memex. Eugene Garfield, Ted Nelson, some Andrew Keen-like gnashing of teeth (p. 227-229). Jumping to the modern internet era the web is a place to talk, we see almost the re-emergence of old fashioned oral patterns of communication and increasing tensions between oral and literary cultures.

So, on the whole, what do I think? Wright's book is a pretty good summary of what libraries and librarians have done over the years. It's not so good at looking at what's been done outside the humanities. In fact, in the final chapter I sense a bit of a disdain for computer science people and technologists in general.

Also a bit of obliviousness (p. 201):

Web browsers are ultimately unidirectional programs, designed primarily to let users consume information from a remote source. To the extent that users can create information through a web browser, they must do so through the mediation of that remote source. As an authoring too, the web browser is all but impotent.

It's hard to imagine three sentences that could destroy the credibility of a book on web and information culture more in 2008 than those three.

Today most of us experience personal computers as fixed entities, with hierarchical folders adn a familiar set of programs. Our computers are not so far removed from the dumb terminals of the mainframe era. The know very little about us. [Vanevar] Bush's vision suggests the possibility of smarter machines that could anticipate our needs and adapt themselves to our behaviours, like good servants. (p. 202-203)

Of course, this vision has been around for quite a while in the form of the data mining technologies so widely used by Google, Amazon and others to actually find out so much about our wants and needs.

Even so, Wright's efforts do repay close attention, with lots of good analysis and history if perhaps a bit limited in scope and reach. I would certainly suggest that anyone interested in where the information landscape has been and where it's going read this book. You may not agree with it, but it will get you thinking.

(Book supplied by publisher.)

Urgent Computing!

That's the theme of the latest issue of CTWatch Quarterly, v4i1. I have a strange little soft spot for this journal and will read just about anything it publishes, even if it's only very vaguely related to my main concerns here.

Anyways, here goes the TOC from the Urgent Computing: Exploring Supercomputing's New Role issue of CTWatch Quarterly!

• Urgent Computing: Exploring Supercomputing’s New Role by Pete Beckman
  
  
• LEAD Cyberinfrastructure to Track Real-Time Storms Using SPRUCE Urgent Computing by Suresh Marru, Dennis Gannon, et al.
  
  
• Cyberinfrastructure for Coastal Hazard Prediction by Gabrielle Allen, Philip Bogden, et al.
  
  
• Urgent Computing in Support of Space Shuttle Orbiter Reentry by Benjamin S. Kirk, Grant Palmer, et al.
  
  
• Life or Death Decision-making: The Medical Case for Large-scale, On-demand Grid Computing by Steven Manos, Stefan Zasada and Peter V. Coveney
  
  
• An Interaction Based Composable Architecture for Building Scalable Models of Large Social, Biological, Information and Technical Systems by Karla Atkins, Christopher L. Barrett, et al.
  
  
• Supercomputing On Demand: SDSC Supports Event-Driven Science by Paul Tooby, Dong Ju Choi and Nancy Wilkins-Diehr

Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His life and universe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 674pp.

Walter Issacson's 2007 biography of Albert Einstein was one of the best reviewed books of that year, appearing on nearly all the year end lists of favourite science books. Humane, magisterial, accessible, comprehensive, engrossing, all words used to describe this book. And each of them is very well deserved. So, as you can imagine, I was delighted when I found the book under the christmas tree this past December. I started reading it almost immediately, amid the genial chaos of my sister's Ottawa home during the holiday, reading it slowly but surely over the next couple of months. This is a perfect book to read and savour over a leisurely read. As with most biographies, you know how it ends. As well, Isaacson goes into quite a bit of detail, so parts of it can be a bit slow.

Oddly, this happens to be the first real Einstein biography I've ever read. I've had the Clark biography knocking around the house for years but have never actually started it. Reading Isaacson's book also felt somewhat like a gap in my knowledge and reading history had been closed. It's a nice feeling.

Like I said, this book is a lot of things.

Engrossing. Now I mentioned a bit slow. That's true, a detailed biography can sometimes drag a bit and this was no different. However, for the most part I found the story quite fast paced, especially the section when Einstein's fame started to grow right through the start of WWII. As well, I found the last section, Einstein's final years in Princeton, hard to put down.

Comprehensive. Isaacson covers Einstein's youth, his important years as a Swiss patent examiner, a lot of detail about his miracle year of 1905, his struggles to land a secure academic job, his marital woes, his political views, his life in Berlin up until the Nazis took over, the war years as well as his post war life in Princeton.

Accessible. Isaacson hits the right balance when it comes to actually explaining Einstein's scientific ideas and the overall context of the scientific times. Since Einstein himself relied on very visual thought experiments to frame his theories, Isaacson takes advantage of those thought experiments to explain the theories to us.

Humane. This is a warts and all portrait of Einstein. His infidelity, absent mindedness, emotionally distant relationships with his familty, stubbornness, scientific mistakes, his resistance to quantum theory, all are covered. Granted, in many ways these failings are presented as quirky rather than damning, but we do get a pretty fair presentation of the human side of Einstein.

Magisterial. Human side, yes. But this is clearly in the "Great Man" tradition of scientific biography. We really finish the book feeling we know Einstein the genius. While still covering the all-too-human nature of Einstein, Isaacson still treats Einstein with kid gloves, glossing over some pretty significant controversies. Overall, it's a very gentle, respectful and even sentimental account of Einstein's life.

Borrow this book, buy it for yourself, get someone to buy it for you, buy it for your library's collection, recommend it for your local library's collection, but read it. It's a great book, a great introduction to the life of one the most interesting and important people of the last 100 or so years. It's rare to read a great big biography of a person and want to read more. This isn't the last Einstein book I'll read. It's only the first. I would heartily recommend it to any library that collects any scientific or general biography. It might be a bit weighty for high school libraries, but any level beyond that would be fine.

Uncomfortable Question: LIS Education

Thanks to Graham Lavender for this question:

What is your biggest criticism of MLIS programs in North America, and what do you think library schools should be doing to fix this?

I guess one of the dangers of asking for open-ended uncomfortable questions is that somebody could ask a penetrating question on an issue I haven't really thought a lot about.

Such is the case here. But I'll give it my best shot.

First of all, Graham is a MLIS student at McGill, where I graduated in 2000. Obviously I'm not going to comment directly on McGill too much except to say that the program has changed dramatically (vastly for the better, from what I can tell) since my time there.

I'll address this post to a hypothetical student and/or LIS faculty member. I'll mostly concentrate on the librarianish aspects of Info-schools and not so much on the "how much overlap can we manage with computer science, business and information technology programs at our institutions before those programs get annoyed at us for trying to poach their students"-type programs. I didn't do one of those programs, wasn't interested in one and really don't know much about them.

I'll come at this from a couple of different directions. I was recently on a search committee here at York and our experience I think was quite illuminating. I can say quite safely that for this search (and all the others I've been involved in here) where you went to school, what courses you took and what marks you got were all nearly totally irrelevant in getting you the job. The only place might have been as a four or fifth tie break to get on the short list. What really matters is experience. Have you worked in a similar environment to the one being advertised? If so, can the people you worked with articulate your contribution in a reference letter and can you effectively describe what you did during the interview. Even very basic entry level positions have so many applicants that we can be picky.

From this perspective, I would say that a very important part of the MLIS experience has to be the facilitation of solid work experience. Be it work in the institution's libraries or via a practicum/co-op placement elsewhere, this is vital. The value in getting you the opportunity to have a practical learning experience as part of your education can not be underestimated. The practicum should replace two courses and could be two one-term placements or one two-term placement.

The other angle that I'd like to approach this from is how I think MLIS-like programs should be structured. The first year or so is mostly going to be core courses and I think this is probably where most programs are doing ok. An introductory course to the profession, it's history, themes, significant personages, etc. is inevitable. Everyone should take at least one cataloguing/metadata course (even if Everything is Miscellaneous is the text -- how cool would that be?) because as unglamourous as it can seem, the organization of information is the core of what we do. Everyone should also take at least one course on collections, broadly defined to include books, databases, indexes, digital collections and a variety of formats. Reference sources and services also deserve solid treatment, although in the modern era I imagine the course would be very different from what I took 9 years ago; many would also find it interesting to take a subject oriented reference/collections course, such as the scitech & business ones I took. As a final part of a core, I would also think that a organizational context course (or two) covering management, marketing and budgets would be very useful.

One interesting thing that always comes up is the technology course. How many courses should be part of the core and what should they cover. Well, I'm pretty minimalistic on this, surprisingly. You often see on blogs long laundry lists of stuff every librarian should know about technology, as if we're not allowed to have colleagues whose talents and interests compliment our own. Everybody should take one (maybe two) courses that establishes a basic common vocabulary and knowledge base as well as some experience with a few key tools, like a basic web development tool, a CMS, blogs, wikis or databases. Beyond that, students can explore more in depth in their electives, reading courses or practicum placements. The idea that everyone should be able to program or even have a deep understanding of what programming is to be a librarian is absurd. Students can also explore new tools or solidify their experience with basic ones while working on assignments for other courses.

The second year should concentrate a couple of electives (archives, specific subject area collections/reference courses, some advance tech stuff, etc.) and the practicum placement I mention above. Most importantly, I think the second year should replace at least two courses with a thesis option (three or four course equivalent) or two directed reading courses, one per term.

I think the reason that I'd really emphasize a directed reading course or thesis option is because I think we really need to learn to think like librarians. To take an issue and explore it deeply and critically, to formulate ideas and to express them coherently. It is a graduate program, after all.

Does the output take the form of one big paper or a series of blog posts? That's not really that important. The important thing is that a significant part of the program should be to grapple with the past, present and/or future of the profession. Can it have an active component like building a wiki, programming an OPAC widget or some other web site? Sure, why not. But the important part of this should be analyzing why the wiki, widget, web or whatever are important contributions to/aspects of the profession not the details of the construction.

It's interesting that in my vision, combining a thesis option and a two course practicum could replace 5 or 6 of 8 second year courses, probably nearly all the non-core courses. That's ok. If someone knows what they want to explore, turn them loose and let them learn on thier own. It is a graduate program, after all. In my second year, I did two one-course reading course -- one on information architecture and one on digital libraries -- as well as a practicum placement at the McGill Physical Sciences & Engineering Library. Not surprisingly, all three of those were very important aspects and indicators for my future career. I followed what interested me and it got me where I could apply that knowledge. At the risk of repeating myself, that's what a graduate program should be about.

The above rantings are really just off-the-top-of-the-head thoughts and musings about a complex and important issue. I'm sure there's lots of stuff I've left out that I'd mention in I thought about the issue for a week instead of a day before answering, or if I'd actually done some reading up on the issues or researched the state of various existing programs. As well, my answers could be totally different next week, month or year.

(Don't forget, if you have more Uncomfortable Questions for me, just leave a comment here or on the original post.)

SciBarCamp summary & impressions: Sunday

So, on to Sunday! I have to admit, that getting to the conference for 9am on a Sunday, given that the TTC only starts running at 9am was just more trouble that it was worth. So, I aimed to get there by 10am and I was still able to enjoy a full day of discussion and enjoyment.

(Link to Participants list. Link to Sunday's program, which was emailed on Saturday night. It's also worth noting that sessions changed, combined, morphed during the conference, so if I've got participants wrong below, I apologize.)

Like I mentioned, I only arrived at 10am, just in time to catch Part Two of Eva Amsen's "Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science." This time she enlisted 3 panelists to help her narrow down the suggestions that people wrote down on her poster the previous day. And narrow they did. Ultimately, they came up with a very short list of 3 really important things. Which I can't remember any more. Fortunately, Eva is a lot younger than I am so if you're reading this Eva, please drop a comment! Anyways, the session worked really well, with a lot of great input from the panelists and the audience.

Next up was the "Art vs. Science" panel with a whole cast of characters: Roberta Buiani, Bill Leeming, Dave Kemp, Scott Menary and Enrico Lappano. Good wide ranging discussion here about various projects. Very interesting was the film clip of a documentary currently in post-production about science, art and science in society.

Wendy Banks (of the Toronto Public Library) and I moderated a session on the future of libraries. With Wendy coming from the public library perspective and me from academia, the session covered a lot of ground. Mostly, people wanted to know what libraries were for in the digital age. Peter Watts may have amiably yanked my chain a bit, but I think (hope?) I was able to make a case for libraries having a role in mentoring and helping students navigate an increasingly complex information environment. We also discussed the digital divide, digitizing collections and the fact that sometimes your institution may already have what you need, you just don't know it yet. I'd definitely like to thank Wendy (whom I'd never met before Friday!) for co-moderating this session with me.

After my session ended I headed for the Jen Dodd's session on the conference itself. A lot of the minor glitches or issues I've mentioned already were brought up, but nothing major at all. Certainly the huge consensus in the room was, "Same time next year!" Unfortunately, it also seems that the conference ran a not-insignificant deficit, so any attendees that are reading this can feel free to contact the organizers if they want to send a little cash their way.

Finally, the closing session was Lee Smolin on "What is Mathematics?" Opening up with Rick Sacks talking about how he used math to create his 10 Planets percussion album was a stroke of genius. Rick's discussion and demo was fascinating and weird, enough to make me want to check out his music some more. Smolin was, not surprisingly, mystifying in a compelling and provocative way. What is math? Well, what is "What?" What is "is?" Food for thought, for sure.

Most of all, I like to extend hearty congratulations on a job well done to the organizers/advisors: Jen Dodd, Eva Amsen, Jamie McQuay, Michael Nielson, Karl Schroeder and Lee Smolin. I met a lot of great people at the conference, did a lot of cool networking, presented twice when I was only expecting to present once (on the Future of Libraries), watched my son have a blast on Saturday, seeing how at ease he felt among the attendees. It was open and friendly, not intimidating at all even though there were clearly some scarily accomplished people there. Here's to another edition of SciBarCamp next year!

Ask Me Uncomfortable Questions

Ok, trying this on a blog with a fraction of the traffic or Uncertain Principles might be a bit risky (ie. what if nobody asks any questions?). But, I think it's an interesting idea and worth trying at least once. I'm really enjoying Orzel's responses as they give insight into the inner workings of one of my favourite bloggers.

So, the rules. Ask me any uncomfortable question about any topic: life, books, work, libraries, science, web 2.0 culture, free stuff, whatever, and I'll answer it here on the blog. Only restrictions: I reserve the right not to answer any question that might be too personal concerning me or my family. I also won't answer any question that basically asks me to trash somebody.

You can leave your questions in the comments. Ask away!

SciBarCamp tshirt

Had there been a SciBarCamp tshirt, this would have been perfect:

SciBarCamp summary & impressions: Saturday

Getting up for a conference on a Saturday is always tough. When it's in you home city and you have to get somewhere downtown for 9am, well, that counts as cruel and unusual punishment. But, for SciBarCamp, it was well worth the pain and anguish. It was even worth the pain and anguish of dragging my 15-year-old son Sam out of bed and onto the Subway with me. Organizers Michael Nielson and Jen Dodd know that I have a teen aged son who's interested in science so they suggested I bring him along as a way of judging if this kind of even might be interesting to high schoolers. As it turned out, Sam had a great time, and even asked a few really great questions (it makes a Dad proud!). He was a bit tired and ready to leave by about 3.30, but he really enjoyed the experience.

So, on to Saturday! (Link to Participants list. It's also worth noting that sessions changed, combined, morphed during the conference, so if I've got participants wrong below, I apologize.)

Like I said in the previous post, the Saturday program was mailed to us during the night.

Corie Lok of Nature Network was scheduled to speak about Science 2.0 first thing on Saturday. As it happened, while Corie and I were talking on Friday night, she asked me if I wouldn't mind joining her up on the stage and helping moderate the discussion. Of course, I said yes. And it went extremely well, too. Corie and I only talked for about 5-8 minutes, with Corie setting the stage and me briefly mentioning some specific tools and trends. After that, in true unconference spirit, the rest of the 40 minute slot was filled with a lively discussion about the impact of these new tools on the practice of science. At first, we talked a bit about JoVE and then we drifted into talking about lab wikis and electronic lab notebooks.

There was only one programming track in the morning. The other items from the morning were Daniel Gottesman's mind expanding talk on quantum mechanics and computing which I think had a few people scratching their heads -- but in a good way. Thinking about hard stuff is good for our brains and this was certainly the hardest stuff of the weekend. That was followed by a provocative session by Andrew Hessel and Jim Thomas about the pros and cons of synthetic biology; lots of issues to think about, for sure. Eva Amsen next gave the first half of her two-part talk on "Ten Thinks Everyone Should Know about Science!" where she talked about what she hoped to accomplish with the project and invited everyone to make suggestions on a poster board during the rest of the day. She promised to come back and Sunday and talk again about the results.

Lunch was included in the conference; on Saturday is was sandwiches, coffee and juice and lots of opportunity to talk. During lunch, some EE students from UofT demoed their solar car outside.

The afternoon was a bit of a dog's breakfast. The scheduling broke down and the four function rooms quickly got out of phase. With a variety of session lengths (20 or 40 minutes) and no time alloted between sessions, the best plan was probably just to pick a room and stay in it! It's worth noting that this aspect was vastly better on Sunday as the organizers more strictly enforced sessions lengths.

In the afternoon, I caught only bits and pieces of a couple of the sessions so I'll only mention the ones I saw in their entirety. Diane Nalini and Lee Smolen talked about "Can Technology Make Us Happy?" and, not surprisingly, there was no consensus. Like some of the sessions, a lot of the discussion ranged around definition. What is "technology", what does "make" mean, what is "happy," and who are "us." Old vs. young, techie vs. luddite, these were some of the issues that came up.

Rob Sawyer took the opportunity of the conference to workshop some of the plot points in his upcoming trilogy on the WWW gaining consciousness to ask some questions of us, like what is consciousness? And how would we know if the web had it? Good discussion with, again, no firm outcome.

Diane Nalini's "Physics through Music" was a great session as she talked about some of the pedagogical tools she uses in her classes to teach physics using an extra sense -- hearing! Springs, software, singing, sine waves. Compelling stuff.

The last item on Saturday's agenda was deciding the program for Sunday. I ended up proposing a session on the Future of Libraries with Wendy Banks of the Toronto Public Library. But more on that tomorrow. It's worth noting that the fluid nature of the unconference format meant that I presented twice -- both times with people I had never met before the conference.

After all the sessions were done, we broke for dinner. I ended up at a Ethiopian restaurant with a bunch of people and then walking to the Duke of York with Mark Tovey. Another organizing glitch was that the 5pm ending didn't flow naturally into dinner or meeting up at the pub at 8pm.

SciBarCamp summary & impressions: Friday

I was at the inaugural of the SciBarCamp all this past weekend and I have to admit that I'm just starting to recover from all the fun, networking and stimulation! The conference ran from 7pm Friday until about 5pm Sunday, with the attendance peaking at around 100 on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Overall, it was a great event with a couple of minor growing pains-type issues with scheduling.

It was an unconference, so the program was collaboratively set by all the participants, starting on Friday evening.

Actually, before going much further, I should probably just summarize the conference starting on Friday. We all arrived at the conference venue (Hart House at the University of Toronto) Friday evening with a cash bar and some snack ready for us. Once we had a chance to mingle a bit, the organizers introduced the event and told us how we would proceed with setting the program. First of all, every one gathered in a large 100-person circle and introduced themselves for 30 seconds or so, saying who they were and what they were interested in (this went surprisingly well, BTW, with almost no one rambling uncontrollably). Then, everyone that wanted to present on Saturday was invited to get one of the Session Description forms lying around and fill in some details about what they wanted to talk about.

Once that was done, people needed to paste their forms on one of the easels dotted around the hall. After a while, we were told to vote on the sessions that we wanted to see by filling in little circles on the forms. As opposed to trying to judge "quality," this gave an indications of what people wanted to see and an idea of which room to assign to which session. The organizers promised that they would try to let everyone that wanted to present to have a chance during the weekend. After the voting, the organizers did take a minute to try and figure out what the first session would be at 9am Saturday so a) the presenters would know and b) people could judge if they were interested enough to come in that early. They also emailed the complete Saturday schedule at some point early Saturday morning so we could check it out and print it off before coming in.

This whole process worked relatively well. It may have been a bit more involved than it needed to be but the plus side was that the session building exercise also worked great as a way to get people to mingle and discuss.

So, that's Friday.