Science Library Pad

tag cloud on book cover

I was kind of amused to notice this tag cloud on the cover of the Lonely Planet Lyon travel guide

I assume it's a pseudo-cloud, rather than being based on the actual book text, but it has all elements of a typical cloud: terms vary both in size and brightness.  It would be interesting to compare it with a real tag cloud for the book, but I'm the only one on LibraryThing with it (most people don't put travel guides in their LT, let alone travel guides en français).

report from Recommender Systems 2007

My colleague André Vellino has a brief conference report on Recommender Systems 2007.

four years of Internet Librarian wikis

I have a fond place for Internet Librarian since blogging it in 2004 is what started off this blog.
I must say I was a bit disconcerted to arrive in a giant conference hall in 2004, snap open my laptop, and look around to see... people writing on paper notepads.

I am however really impressed at the librarian uptake of conference reporting over the net since then, whether it's blogs, wiki, Flickr etc. and I would now say in my experience at a wide variety of conferences over the past four years, librarians are now one of the most accomplished groups in terms of Internet-enabling conferences.

You can view some of the progression in the wikis

http://il2004.xwiki.com/ - started by me, post-conference
http://internetlibrarian.pbwiki.com/ - Internet Librarian 2005
http://il2006.pbwiki.com/
http://il2007.pbwiki.com/

Internet Librarian 2007 will be October 29-31, 2007 in Monterey

27th Ottawa Antiquarian Book Fair - Oct 27-28, 2007

They don't seem to have a website, but the Ottawa Congress Centre events site says

The Twenty Seventh Ottawa Antiquarian Book Fair has become an exciting fall event for book lovers from across Canada. A display and sale, recognized as one of the finest book fairs in the country, features rare, unusual and collectible books. The fair will include over 40,000 items, dating from the 15th century to the present day, displayed by over 65 booksellers from across Canada.

Open Chemistry

Murray-Rust, Peter. Open Chemistry. Available from Nature Precedings http://hdl.nature.com/10101/npre.2007.1200.1 (2007)

discussion in his blog at http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=650

This is an interesting choice:

reducing the citation count to zero. I provide one link to the blogosphere which then links to the rest of the blogosphere and I provide 2 other links to other information. For the rest I use copious links to Wikipedia, which should increasingly replace ritualised citation of methods, algorithms, fundamental work, etc. Of course this isn’t applicable to most current scientific publications, but it’s worth considering whether the reader is disadvantaged. I doubt it.

one search, multiple publishers, articles on your desktop: CISTI PPA

<marketing-mode>

CISTI offers a Can$12 flat-base-fee^*, credit card payment, electronic article delivery service: Pay Per Article (yes, it sounds like "paper article"; I didn't choose the name).

There is a single search box, it does a search across many CISTI holdings available for immediate or 24 hour delivery, including a little publisher you may have heard of called Elsevier.

http://ppa-ac.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/payperview/jsp/find.jsp?lang=en

http://ppa-ac.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/payperview/jsp/faq.jsp

As always, if you have questions about this or any other CISTI service, don't contact me.
Contact CISTI Help Desk, your CISTI client service person, or CISTI Communications, as appropriate.

^* C$12 plus taxes and publisher fee.

</marketing-mode>

New World of Open Access - Ottawa - Oct 10, 2007

The University of Ottawa Library, in association with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), hosted a public seminar entitled Open Access: the New World of Research Communication on Wednesday October 10, 2007.

Open Access: the New World of Research Communication

Speakers were Kathleen Shearer, CARL Research Associate; Stephen Choi, MD, FRCPC, Co-Editor, Open Medicine; Christian Sylvain, Policy, Planning and International Affairs Director, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); and Professor Michael Geist.

The presentations are available along with audio

http://web20.uottawa.ca/academic/library/openaccess.mp3

(Note: Although the audio starts out in French, the main seminar is in English.)

There's a webcast as well but I couldn't get it to work.

via Resource Shelf

10th Interlending and Document Supply Conference - October 29-31, 2007

10th ILDS Conference - Interlending and Document Supply - Resource Sharing for the Future: Building Blocks to Success
October 29-31, 2007
Singapore (Hosted by the National Library Board, NLB)

http://www.nlbconference.com/ilds/
or
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/ilds

CISTI's Michael Ireland and Bronwyn Woods will be presenting "eBook loans – an e-twist on a classic interlending service".

Note: Although there are paper and presentation links, they currently serve up empty files - they won't be active until after the conference.

GIS Library 2.0

I honestly don't quite understand this, but I think it is possibly cool

Library Floor Plans 2.0: The Spatial Information Manager for the Library

If I understand it it's a sort of idea about using GIS as a foundational tool for managing a wide variety of information in the library.

Once developed, our GIS-based Spatial Information Manager for the Library could serve a wide range of applications including but not limited to:

• a method for the analysis and optimization of existing space within the Tisch Library
• a tool used to orientate new staff to the Tisch library building
• a real-time high quality map generator
• one-click access to the square footage of any room in the library
• a web-based room locator for patrons attending Author Talks and other events
• a tool advertising the placement and content of exhibits and art galleries within the library
• a database of geo-encoded uniquely identified objects - public access terminals, rooms, etc. - accessed by a web-based graphical user interface
• a searchable query engine showing what software exists on the computers in the library

a new academic library strategy?

A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
by David W. Lewis

There are five components of the model:

1. Complete the migration from print to electronic collections;
2. Retire legacy print collections;
3. Redevelop library space;
4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise; and
5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content.

via the new IATUL website

CLIR cyberinfrastructure short articles

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has a publication which I guess is called CLIR Issues, some recent... issues it has covered in its... issues include:

• Digital Scholarship: What's All the Fuss?
  by Stephen Nichols
• Cyberinfrastructure: It's All about Sharing
  by Amy Friedlander
• As We May Rethink
  by Chuck Henry

here's a section from "As We May Rethink":

The new cyberinfrastructure calls into question many of the methods and procedures with which we have worked for the past two decades. We have become comfortable with the technology, and execute much of our work using familiar applications on indispensable machines. CI is, in essence, an environment that facilitates sharing of data on an unprecedented scale, which in turn implies a far greater degree of federation, aggregation, and interoperable capabilities than we have heretofore experienced. It demands new kinds of expertise, which will require new forms of training and mentoring to recognize and respond to changing research behaviors. While the transformational potential of CI on higher education is not difficult to intuit, the details of this transformation have yet to be defined, and remain ambiguous.

It is precisely this ambiguity that allows us to explore the multiple possibilities of developing a functional and robust cyberinfrastructure and to create this new environment in the most flexible and nuanced fashion possible. Succeeding in the evolving CI will require that we thoroughly rethink our procedures and expectations on the technical as well as the social levels, for the technical and social are deeply interrelated in cyberinfrastructure.

Consider, for example, the sheer enormity of data to be supported. Many of the vast data sets are relatively new—not only in the humanities, with its large full-text and video databases, but also in astronomy and particle physics. Challenges such as data mining, semantic searches, multimedia data stewardship, and interoperability are common to all disciplines. This suggests that forward-looking researchers and scholars will need to exchange ideas and CI requirements for their mutual benefit.

There is little precedent for this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Past practice, characterized by a focus on traditional disciplinary purviews, silos of funded projects, and poor communication among researchers across intellectual boundaries, is at odds with the conceptual underpinnings of CI. In this respect, the past should not be prologue: our traditional methods of doing business and conducting research, as well as our systems of professional advancement, may undermine our best intentions unless we recognize the limitations of the academic procedures that have brought us to a point of new awareness.

Birkin Diana on lightweight SOA

A nice presentation on lightweight SOA (PDF).

global research data library - GRL2020 and PV 2007 presentations online

Global Research Library 2020 - GRL 2020 - http://www.lib.washington.edu/grl2020/presentations.html

PV 2007 - Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation and Value Adding to Scientific and Technical Data - Proceedings

Some presentations of interest:

• Dealing with data down under (PPT)
  Cathrine Harboe-Ree, University Librarian, Monash University
• The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communication – and Research Libraries (PPT, 10MB)
  Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President of Technical Computing and External Research, Microsoft
• A Service-Based Architectural Approach to Enhanced Data Access (PDF, PPT)
  Lyndon R. Oleson - U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), USA
• Long term digital preservation of scientific and scholarly information: the perspective of the European Commission (PDF, PPT)
  Carlos Oliveira - EC, Luxemburg

IATUL 2007 presentations and papers now online

Proceedings

By author

By theme

International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) 28th Annual Conference, 2007- "Global Access to Science: Scientific Publishing for the Future"

See my blogging of the conference in category IATUL2007.

David Dunlap Observatory to close, replaced by Dunlap Institute

The observatory, in a sense, has fallen victim to the urban sprawl around Toronto. Light pollution from encroaching development has "limited the reach of the telescope in terms of the objects you can actually see," explained Pekka Sinervo, dean of U of T's arts and science department.

When it first opened 72 years ago, it was surrounded by farmers' fields. Now, housing abuts the wooded site that is home to the domed observatory and its stately administrative building.

...

Prof. Sinervo said money from the sale would be used to create a new Dunlap Institute at the university's downtown St. George campus. Among other things, the institute would concentrate on the design and development of sophisticated equipment for the next generation of huge telescopes being planned for more remote and darker locations around the world.

Globe and Mail - Historic telescope blinded by the light - October 16, 2007

The article mentions the work of Prof. Tom Bolton related to black holes, according to the Wikipedia article on Cygnus X-1 the relevant article is

Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868
Nature 235, 271 - 273 (04 February 1972); doi:10.1038/235271b0

PS The palindrome of Bolton would be "notlob"

National Science and Technology Week 2007

National Science & Technology Week
October 12-21, 2007

There are various events and tours.

Although not specifically for SciTech Week, the NRC website has a section on Student Science & Tech.

IJDL special on e-Science and Digital Libraries

The International Journal on Digital Libraries (IJDL), Vol. 7, No. 1-2, October 2007, pp. 1-122, ISSN 1432-5012 (Print) 1432-1300 (Online) is a special feature on e-Science and Digital Libraries.

Within the issue is a set of ten articles (six long and four short) representing a range of perspectives on eScience, and the use of digital libraries to organize science collections, that will be of interest to both the eScience and digital library communities. The articles highlight the synergies and differences between the communities, and the challenges present in managing
massive collections.

...

the digital library community is concerned with the scholarly life cycle, an essential component of eScience practices that are driven by the nature of scientific scholarship. As such, there will be benefits from increased partnership between the two communities. A closer partnership between the two communities can be developed around three areas:

• Support for the range of the scholarly communication lifecycle
• The role of data within both communities
• Broader participation of the digital library community in eScience

Connecting digital libraries to eScience: the future of scientific scholarship
doi:10.1007/s00799-007-0030-9

There are many topics that you will have read about in my blog before, including

• Pathways - doi:10.1007/s00799-007-0016-7 - blog posting September 26, 2005
• DILIGENT - doi:10.1007/s00799-007-0023-8 - blog posting September 24, 2006
• Provenance Explorer - doi:10.1007/s00799-007-0018-5 - blog posting September 23, 2006

CODATA 2008 - CFP - Scientific Information for Society

The call includes a session on e-Science

Session 2 . e-Science and e-Science Networks

    * International multi-disciplinary large data projects for science and education and for business applications; Global scientific data sharing and application;
    * Regional and global e-science and cyberinfrastructure developments;
    * Grid infrastructure and standards for resource sharing across networks and institutions;
    * Advanced cluster computing algorithms for data processing in computational fluid dynamics, structural crash analysis, MEMS design, financial modeling, factory scheduling, etc.;
    * Advanced distributed data processing methods for science and engineering applications;

21st International CODATA Conference: Scientific Information for Society - from Today to the Future
Ukraine, Kyiv, 5 - 8 October, 2008 - Call for Papers

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 1 February 2008

2008 Sangster award for Cdn grad student to attend CODATA in the Ukraine

The CNC/CODATA is accepting applications for The Sangster Award. This award, valued at Can. $3000, will enable a graduate student enrolled in a Canadian university, or recent graduate (within 3 years of graduation), to attend and present his or her work at the 21st International CODATA Conference, Scientific Information for Society - from Today to the Future, 5 - 8 October, 2008, Kyiv, Ukraine.

CNC/CODATA - The Sangster Award

Deadline is March 31, 2008.

The Wrath of the Professional: more anti-Internet nonsense

There is a line of argument popular in the mainstream media, most notably captured in Keen's The Cult of the Amateur.  Another example was the nonsense in Maclean's cover "The Internet Sucks".

It goes something like this: "writers are trained professionals supported by editors", which is true, and then makes a leap to "therefore anyone who is NOT a professional and NOT supported by editors must be writing utter shite".

Yes, thank goodness for all that quality editing, that has produced well-crafted sentences of total untruth over the past years and decades.

Let me see if I can somehow craft a readable sentence even though I am bereft of an entire supporting organisation: a lot of what we get in the mainstream media is lazy, me-too, "consensus storytelling", factless junk.

I can't remember, are we still spending "blood and treasure" to clean up "pockets of resistance" or have we moved on to some other well-worn consensus story?

Remember, you must never break the narrative.  You can never write about how Google is amazing, or Wikipedia is incredibly useful, or shopping online saves time while providing vastly more information than is available in the store.

Which brings me back to the current threadbare tale of how all amateur content is junk, and it's all lonely people in their basements writing about their cats and collections of Star Wars action figures.

Of course most of the net is junk.  So is most TV, most movies, most music, most newspaper articles and most books.  But usually people don't decide to dismiss the medium entirely (although I do know people who watch little or no television).  Christie Blatchford, however, feels no such compunctions of reasonable balance, issuing a blanket dismissal:

Now, people merrily post their diaries online and call them blogs. The writing hasn't noticeably improved.

... most blogs: They are the writer's unedited, uncensored, unexpurgated thoughts.

...

So I do not read blogs, and if the day comes that, after I write for the newspaper, I am asked to write a blog for the online edition, I will take up surgery instead, or law, or social work. You know, without any training or practice at all.

   In a related vein, I do not have any Facebook friends. I do not respond to invitations to be anyone's Facebook friend.

...

   I am no one's beloved. I have no Facebook friends. I want no Facebook friends. I have no online community. I do not blog, I have not blogged, I will not blog and, furthermore, I do not care to read blogs.

Yeah, you tell it sister.  I read a book once that wasn't good.  So I guess I will stop reading books.  Oh and I saw a TV show that sucked, so I no more television for me.  Oh, and this one time, I read an article in the newspaper that was generic, lazy nonsense...

Globe and Mail - Dogs among blogs - Christie Blatchford - October 13, 2007 - behind a paywall, but available via rbcinvest.globeandmail.com

$10k US blogging scholarship

• U.S. citizen or permanent resident;
• Currently attending  full-time in post-secondary education in the United States
• 20 Finalists Announced and Public Voting Begins: 9am EST on Oct. 8th [2007]
• Public Voting Ends and Winner Declared: Midnight PST on Oct. 28th [2007]

from College Scholarships.org - The Blogging Scholarship

the portal is dead

The recent rush by major Internet portals to buy advertising companies and extend their sales networks is a sign that the business of being a one-stop shop for information and entertainment isn't what it used to be.

Gone are the days of emphasizing ways to attract and keep visitors — the way television networks long have operated — by creating destinations with anything people might need for work, leisure or companionship.

Instead, those companies are now more aggressively trying to follow Web surfers elsewhere — and bring lucrative advertising to them.

Globe and Mail - AP - Wither the Internet portal? - October 10, 2007

Thomson CTO says semantic enhancement through good metadata is the future

It's interesting to see the business perspective on the value of good metadata.

Thomson's chief technology officer [Michael Wilens], an MIT-educated engineer ... spends most of his time manning servers that handle almost as much data as Google Inc. or Yahoo Inc. on a daily basis

...

Mr. Wilens isn't merely concerned with the next three months: He is looking ahead to the next 10 years, to the intense technological race he expects to unfold between Thomson and rivals such as Bloomberg.

The competition for high-end financial, legal and scientific data is just getting started, he argues.

The coming decade will see extensive amounts of time and money invested by companies like Thomson and Bloomberg to develop artificial intelligence capable of crunching the vast amounts of information circulating throughout the world each day.

It will be used to develop what Mr. Wilens calls “meta-data,” or the ability for computers to create “smarter” information from existing data.

...

“The war of the future, in all information services and on the Internet, is going to be fought around data, about data,” Mr. Wilens said last week. “The ability to build products quickly and get them into the market faster than competitors is really critical.”

...

“All we need to do, though, is put additional data fields on those news articles [or company statements] that say this was a positive article, this was a negative article, or this was the specific individual that said it. All of a sudden you can build analytics against it.”

Globe and Mail - Thomson's challenge: Make data smarter - October 9, 2007

Phil Bradley is Typepad featured blogger

Internet Consultant Phil Bradley runs his UK-based blog around topics such as web design, search engines, and "anything that will interest librarians".

TypePad Featured Blogs: Phil Bradley

Check out http://philbradley.typepad.com/

Canada needs better identity theft and anti-spam legislation: Globe

The Globe had a strong editorial yesterday about identity theft and spam

Identity thieves can hijack a lifelong reputation for prudence at one stroke. They can rummage through household mail or recycling boxes, looking for personal documents. They can steal credit cards. They can use false pretexts to solicit personal and financial information. They can hack into computer databases. Identity theft can lead to fraud, organized crime and terrorism. It can devastate the victim, who may be forced to patiently reconstruct his or her life. So it is commendable that the federal Conservatives have promised to introduce legislation to allow police to nab identity thieves before they actually commit identity fraud. As it stands, the law covers offences involving the misuse of another person's identity information. But the existing list of Criminal Code offences generally does not cover the preparatory steps of collecting, possessing and trafficking in identity information. "I think it's a growing problem," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson declared last week, "and we've got to get on it now because the technology people use to obtain information will only get better. We've got to get something on the books." Wise move.

...

Ottawa could also tackle the dramatic growth of spam, which identity thieves deploy to trick people, often the elderly, into revealing personal information. Canada is the only G8 country without anti-spam legislation. And it could deal with "pretexting," in which the thief obtains information by pretending to be someone else. It should ensure that businesses do not ask for social insurance numbers as routine identification. And it should create a one-stop federal shop for identity theft, focusing the efforts of several departments and agencies. With so much information in so many databases, the current situation can only get worse.

Unfortunately the editorial is behind a paywall, although I don't know who they think is going to pay to unlock 580 words.

Globe and Mail - Stealing an identity - October 9, 2007

Canada did have a Task Force on Spam that wrote a report with a bunch of recommendations, but as usual, we have done nothing.  Meanwhile the filters necessary to make my work email usable now catch over 100 junk messages per day.  I don't like spam.

Monty Python: Spam Song.