A couple of fun space science sites discovered via the SF world:

• Planetary Scorecard: Expensive Hardware Lobbing is a site chronicling our attempts to get expensive hardware safely landed on other planets. via SciFi Weekly.
  
• SpaceRef is a general space science news site with an awful lot of interesting content. via SciFi Weekly.
  
• An Astrobiology Magazine article about the recent Astrobiology Science Conference. via Locusmag.

In the March 2004 issue of Technology Review there's an article "Search Beyond Google" about the state of the art in search engines, and especially the kinds of things we can expect in the future from Google and its upstart competitors. Highly recommended.

Today's Toronto Star has a great series of articles on Linux in the business section. You can get to it here. If that doesn't work, most of the articles are by Rachel Ross or Tyler Hamilton, so you should be able to get to the articles via their columnist pages.

Long-time readers of this humble blog know that I'm a chess player and quite interested in computer chess. So this article from Chessbase on the first "chess computer", The Turk, is quite interesting. It seems that the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany has recreated the machine, including finally more-or-less establishing how the elaborate hoax was carried out. As usual, I'm john_d on GameKnot. Any other chess-playing librarians out there up for a challenge?

Ripoff 101: How the current practices of the textbook industry drive up the cost of college textbooks makes interesting if not surprizing reading. I find it interesting that most student don't actually use the cds or other extras packaged in with their textbooks. via Cynthia Archer via ARL-DIRECTORS.

Here There Be Data: Mapping The Landscape Of Science is an article about the most recent PNAS. They have a special section on using maps to represent the ebb & flow of scientific progress. It's a facinating way to see the interconnectedness and interdisicplinarity of the work that's happening these days.

An interesting quote: "The traditional method involved books, reference works and physical materials on library shelves, most of which had been verified for accuracy by one or another authority. Now, we sit at computers and cast our net into a sea of information, much of which is inaccurate or misleading." It's hard to tell which side he's coming out on, but I think he's trying to make the point that maybe the net hasn't quite replaced real, peer-reviewed literature yet. Much of which can still be found in books & reference sets on the shelves or in actual journals that the library still has to pay for. Also a BBC story here. via LISNews & ScienceDaily.

Research Blogs is an online community/blog for masters & PhD students. Nothing posted in the sciences section yet... via OAN.

The following LISNews poll gives you a chance to vote for your favourite librarian web site. Hint Hint Hint. Oh, and vote for STLQ & EngLib too! Scitech librarians of the world, Unite!

Welcome to the newly created Communicating Astronomy With The Public division of the IAU!! via Liz Bryson, slapam-l.

Information-seeking behavior of chemists: A transaction log analysis of referral URLs by Philip M. Davis is an interesting look at how chemists actually end up at the journal articles they read. via SEPW.

Internet Resources: Gray literature: Resources for locating unpublished research by Brian S. Mathews from C&RL News, v65i3, March 2004. Very good and very complete article on grey literature. via Internet Resources Newsletter.

STLQ: It Had to Happen: AIM has a Blog is a posting from Randy. The only thing I can add is that there's a feed too! Oh, and that would be The Annals of Improbable Research, with the blog here.

Why engage in e-science by Tony Hey is from a recent Update. This is a rather interesting slam article about librarians from what appears to be a CS prof:

'Why do all universities need to keep a physical copy of the Physical Review? Maybe one copy, held by the British Library, would be enough. Libraries get a chunk of money from the funds allocated to the universities by HEFCE. There isn't going to be much new money in universities to access new forms of services so we need to take a hard look at the changing rationale for the existing services. Libraries are in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant to students in engineering and science. I recognise that these are difficult issues, but it is obvious that things cannot remain the same. Libraries need to engage with the changing IT landscape and rethink what the library needs to do.

'I am not anti-library. I just feel that there are some technological trends that are inevitable. Putting one's head in the sand is no way to approach them. There needs to be a national debate.'

This is just a sample from the very end of the article. It seems to me that Hey hasn't spoken to a librarian -- metadata? Has he heard of Dublin core? digitization? Has he heard of Instititional Repositories? Data? Do you know of a large institution that doesn't have a Data Librarian? It seems to me that virtually every negative point he makes is actually either exaggerated or totally wrong. Has this guy been to his local library in the last 10 years? He mentions that he doesn't think libraries are that relevant to scitech students -- if he'd ask someone would tell him that practically nothing circulates as much as CS books. Electronics books, too. Scitech students use the library a lot. In fact, my (admittedly anecdotal) evidence would suggest that scitech profs are beginning to understand that the library is more relevant to their students now, not less. Sigh. End of rant. I invite comment. From Catherine, who seems much more restrained.

How to quickly find articles in the top IS journals by Ruth Bolotin Schwartz and Michele C. Russo is from the February 2004 CACM (v47i2). The authors go through a rather convoluted process, no doubt taking months of exhaustive research to discover that ABI/Inform has very good coverage of IS journals. And in full text too. It strikes as rather unbelievable, especially since they could have spent 15 minutes going down to the library in their institution, asked a librarian, and gotten exactly the same answer. But what would be the fun in that? Actually, if I may be serious, the authors do pay close attention to libraries and librarians in their article and the issues we face is deciding what to subscribe to. They also come up with something I didn't know: Ingenta indexes most of the top journals! Good article, worth reading.

Going on right now at the NASA Ames Research Center is the Astrobiology Science 2004 Conference. The program includes a Science Fiction Night and a Mars Terraforming panel with Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson. via LocusMag.

The website for the Engineering Library Division of the American Society for Engineering Education has moved here.

A couple of recent articles from the IEEE on women in computing:

• "Deterrents to women taking computer science courses" by S. Beyer, K. Rynes and S. Haller in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, v23i1 , Spring 2004.
  
• "Women and gender in the history of computing" by J. Abbate in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v25i4 , Oct.-Dec. 2003.

Have that massive EndNote file lying around and not sure how to share your extensive bibliographic research with the world? Oh sure, setting up your own searchable web database isn't that hard, who wants to go through it yourself when you can get someone else to do it for you. Biblioserver.com is a new site that will mount your EndNote or ProCite database online for you and make it searchable. Free for now, it will be a for-pay service very soon. As long as the price is reasonable, this is a great idea. There's lots of research in niche areas out there looking for way to make it more accessible, and this could provide it. I sure we all could think of a project that could find a good home here -- computer chess, IL in the sciences....the possibilities are endless. Via LISNews.

A couple of very interesting articles on information seeking behavior in the most recent Journal of Academic Librarianship (v30i1):

• "Factors Influencing Distance-Education Graduate Students' Use of Information Sources: A User Study" by Zao Liu and Zheng Ye (Lan) Yang. The message here is that distance ed grad students tend to follow the path of least resistence when finding information -- tending to use the net as their primary source. Also, the more motivated the student, the more likely they are to use the library.
  
• "Identifying University Professors' Information Needs in the Challenging Environment of Information and Communication Technologies" by Maria Anna Jankowska is a facinating article full of interesting details, mostly broken down by field. From the conclusion:

  The results of this survey clearly confirmed previous findings about the fact that unawareness of the range of databases, the lack of knowledge about electronic resources among faculty, lack of time, lack of training, and instruction were critical obstacles in effective use of electronic resources and services by faculty. The marketing of library e-resources and e-services should be a critical component of academic libraries' activities.

The CAUT Almanac of Post-Secondary Education: 2004 is now available. Prepared by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, this document has all the stats on post-secondary education in Canada that you can shake a stick at. Absolutely fascinating reading, even, I imagine, for non-Canadians as it gives plenty of details of the make-up of students and profs in Canada, including lots of salary information. Most stats on profs are also split by gender. There are a couple of pages on librarians & libraries, which are also very interesting.