The York email system was down yesterday evening (Sept 11, 2003) from 6pm to 11pm EST. If you by chance sent me an email at jdupuis at yorku.ca, it is likely that it did not get through.

A colleague passed around copies of an article from the September 2003 Scientific American (p. 23-24): "Public Not Welcome." The article is basically about how the rush towards electronic only access & higher access prices from the publishers is seriously restricting the public's access to scientific literature. It used to be that anyone could go into a university library and see the latest in the journal literature or even use Chem Abs to find information there. Now, with print copy cancellation and e-only access to most indexes, what is the public to do? Don't they pay the taxes that lets us buy these things for our students and researchers? Librarians of the world, Unite! Keep whatever print you can for important public access journals (ie. JAMA), fight for walk-in clauses in electronic licenses and, most of all, keep as many of those terminals non-password-protected as you can. Thanks Chris.

A few very good articles from the ever-reliable Katharine Mieszkowski in recent issues of Salon.

• "The triumph of fringe science" about global warming deniers in governement.
  
• "A textbook case of bad science" is another depressing article, this time about evolution deniers in schools.
  
• "Superbug to the rescue!" is about using genetically modified organisms to help clean up pollution. Or not.

A quote from a BBC news story, quoted in The ResourceShelf: "Now Google has stopped simply reflecting the organisation of the web. Instead a high Google rank for a search now defines a page's quality and relevance." How can we compete with this attitude. And, coupled with the news that IEEE is now indexed on Google, how long before Google will be the one-and-only -- or at least close enough that no one really cares? I&A services, what's your reaction? On a lighter note, I can't complain too much with the above expressed sentiment: this humble blog comes first on searches for both "science librarian" and "John Dupuis." ;-)

Our old friend Garry Kasparov is at it again, this time playing a match against X3D Fritz using a 3d interface. It seems that no real chessboard will be used in the contest! And speaking of virtual chess, my handle at GameKnot is john_d. GameKnot is a turn-based system rather than real-time -- it's a kind of internet postal chess. Although I'm not very good, I look forward to playing some of my fellow scitech librarians.

Bioinformatics is one of the hottest areas in science these days, with grad & undergrad level programs sprouting up like mushrooms at universities all over. This interdiciplinary field combines statistics, molecular biology and computer science, so it's possible to see those programs housed in any of a number of different departments. Computer Science seems to be the most likely, however. The recent issue of IEEE Transaction on Eduction (v46i3 August 2003) has an article "Crossing the interdisciplinary barrier: a baccalaureate computer science option in bioinformatics" by T. Doom, M. Raymer, D. Krane and O. Garcia. A slightly different version is available here.

In recognition of the recently completed Toronto World Science Fiction Convention, I submit for your consideration: "The double helix: Why science needs science fiction" by Athena Andreadis. It's in Thought & Action, v19n1, Summer 2003. How's this for a quote: "If science was my romance literature, science fiction was my hidden stash of bodice rippers." The article is actually an impassioned plea for encouraging creativity and vision in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, leading to another great quote: "And though science will build the star ships, it's science fiction that will make us want to board them." Interestingly, Andreadis is also the author of The Biology of Star Trek. Pete Lowentrout via SFRA-L

The most recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication is on "English language training for nonnative speakers of English in science or engineering," which is certainly an important topic here and I imagine in most other schools as well. Interesting (which seem to have the potential for a library connection) articles include:

• "Imitation, copying, and the use of models: Report writing in an introductory physics course" by AA Jones & TE Freeman.
  
• "A project-based approach to teaching research writing to nonnative writers" by JM Levis and GM Levis.
  
• "Communicating in the intercultural classroom" by P Goleman.

The other science-related thing we did on our summer vacation was visit The Miller Museum of Geology at Queen's University in Kingston. It's a very nice little museum, perfect for kids at the hyper-curious stage.

Have way too many books filling up your house? Me too.

Good plagiarism bibliography here by Sharon Stoerger. She also has similar pages on various ethics topics including bioethics and a general page on research ethics. Stephen Abram via ocula-l.

The ever-EEVL Roddy MacLeod has informed me that EEVL has put up an RSS Primer for Publishers and Content Providers. A quick glance is quite impressive -- something I wish I had a few months ago when I was trying to figure out what the fuss was all about.

Two recent announcements from the SLAPAM-L listserv:

• "World's Particle Physics Laboratories Join To Create New Communication Resource" at www.interations.org. This is a news and resourses site for particle physics. (Rob Atkinson at FNAL)
  
• Also a new free Superconductivity Papers Database"database includes 68000+ articles, primarily from almost 60 chemistry, physics, and engineering journals. Coverage is mostly 1987+" (George S. Porter)

I'm back...Sorry about the extra long absence from this forum, but I promise to try and catch up. And boy has the stuff been pilling up on my desk. BTW, the only scientifically oriented thing I did on my vacation was to visit the Montreal Insectarium. It was great fun, much better than the last time I was there about 5 years ago. There were lots of displays with living insects to look at.

I'm on vacation for the next three weeks. I don't expect to post again until the week of August 11th.

Find metadata mysterious? Try Metadata Demystified: A Guide for Publishers from the NISO Press. While aimed at publishers rather than librarians, it certainly covers all the main points. And since librarians obviously deal with publishers, that perspective can also be valuable from our end.
From ResourceShelf.

Via Randy, the newletter of the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications looks very interesting. In particular, it takes a lot of the same-old-same-old issues and gives them a refreshingly global spin: "INASP is a cooperative network of partners whose aim is to enhance worldwide access to information and knowledge. " The current issue, for example, has an article: "Strengthening the local creation and adaptation of health information in Tanzania."

"Textbook Writing 101" by M. Garrett Bauman. Thirteen rules, some serious, some tongue-in-cheek, many both. From Arts & Letters Daily

All Google all the time. "Digging for Googleholes: Google may be our new god, but it's not omnipotent" by Steven Johnson is an article in Slate about the holes & biases in Google searching. It's interesting that he rightly points out that much of the search results you get are skewed towards companies selling products, but then he complains that too many journals are putting their articles online in pdf. He laments the fact that no one is putting their books available online for free, thus biasing his research process against books and towards articles: "Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you're better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal." An interesting thought. To somewhat subvert himself, though, he concluding by saying maybe he shouldn't be doing his research on Google at all: "We're wrong to think of Google as a pure reference source. It's closer to a collectively authored op-ed page—filled with bias, polemics, and a skewed sense of proportion—than an encyclopedia."

In my on-going quest to find legitimate reasons to make science fiction-related posts here, I would like to draw attention to The Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications project. From the project description, they're aim is to "conduct a study on technologies and concepts found in Science Fiction, in order to obtain imaginative and innovative ideas potentially viable for long-term development by the European space sector. " They are requesting input from all interested parties, especially in the form of "fact sheets" giving details of the use of space technology in a particular sf story. The projects sponsors seem to be the European Space Agency, the Maison d'Ailleurs and the OURS Foundation. After a quick glance at the brochure, the project seems quite serious and impressive. The brochure itself looks better than half the sf novels I've read recently. From Hal Hall via SFRA-L