I went to a book signing last week -- Tuesday, October the 20th to be exact. Stewart Brand was in town pushing his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto at the Tattered Cover. The presentation was associated with the Rocky Mountain Land Series. (See also their library.) I last saw Stewart Brand speak at the 2003 SLA conference in NYC.
Anyway, the presentation was really good. I learned about some new types of small nuclear reactors that are being developed. The best part of the talk for me was his discussion of the recommended reading list. I am glad that my academic library already has most of these titles, and I plan to buy the two books we don't already have.
My thoughts on librarianship, open access, computing, and other stuff.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
SLA Name Change: First Impressions
I am not quite so keen on the proposed name change for SLA. The leadership announced about a week ago that they would like to change the name of the organization to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. This is all part of a strategic "alignment project". They say "this alignment project will not only help refine our current positioning in the marketplace, but provide a framework for discussing the inherent value in the profession and the Association in a clear, compelling and cohesive voice."
Some other relevant sites are the portal, research from Fleishman Hillard (ppt) and the SLA Name Change Info Center and the name change discussion forums. Many people have left comments on this post.
One of my first thoughts was that while the individual words strategic, knowledge and professional are all well and good, I was not sure if I liked the combination. It could be like throwing filet mignon, gourmet chocolate ice cream, and a nice dijon mustard into a blender. Yes, they are wonderful ingredients, but I am not so sure about the combination. Over the last week, the three word combination is starting to grow on me, a little bit.
However, I was a little perturbed when Stephen Abram wrote: "For those who don't read, discuss and absorb its insights and implications, then they're choosing to remain uninformed and unarmed. They're open to people lying to them that somehow this is against the librarian job title - which is so untrue and silly but apparently some people are easily lead. They're not real information professionals in my view since they're not informed and they're relying on their gut and experience instead of the fuller picture."
To say that librarians (or information professionals or knowledge professionals) who read, discuss and absorb the insights, and STILL disagree with the proposal are not "real information professionals" is ludicrious. That attitude will not win over many votes.
One of the aims of the proposed name change is to make it clearer to the decision makers in our organizations what the association does. I am not sure that the name change makes it any clearer.
The vote is NOT on the acronym, ASKPro. However, SLA leadership and the companies that helped in their research did consider the acronym when proposing the new name. Gloria Zamora noted that "we also eliminated names that did not have good acronyms or shortened versions associated with them." I do not like the acronym all that much for a variety of reasons, but since we are not voting on it, I won't go into any more detail.
I am also not pleased with the fact that only 25% of the survey population were librarians or information professionals. The rest were marketers, C-level execs, HR people, etc. Many of the librarians in SLA are academic librarians. I would guess that the majority of the STM librarians in SLA are academic. Where are the academic leader responders to the survey? They were not represented. As an STM academic librarian, why do I care what a C-level executive thinks of the word "library" or "strategy" or "knowledge" or whatever? Yes, I know that the majority of the members of SLA work in corporate libraries, but it seems like the survey ignored the academic, government and non-profit sectors. [10/20/09 changes. Two of those groups were represented in the naming survey, see slide 8 of the "PowerPoint summary of that research". More discussion is here. However, it is not clear if the survey was of academic and government librarians, or academic and government administrators, or a mix of the two. I also don't like the sentence on slide 9 -- "They are accountable for ensuring businesses have the right information to grow, succeed and benefit the bottom line." I don't work in a "business"; I work in a non-profit educational institution. A LOT of SLA librarians don't work for "businesses". This assumption is just plain wrong. All this talk about the bottom line, competetive advantage, and "having access to the right information for the best business decisions" is not relevant to me.]
Michael Fosmire brought up the point that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE have no (or little) problems with their acronyms. As long as we have innovative people in the association that can attract more innovative people, then why bother with the name change? Will changing the name of the association really attract more innovative thinkers to become members?
Hilary Davis of NC State (and chair-elect of the ST Division) asked a small sample of people about the proposed name, and 9 out of 10 preferred the "Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals". However, one of her respondents said it "sounds more cerebral and formal, but I doubt anyone outside the librarian world would realize it had anything to do with libraries or librarians." Thus, does changing the name make it any clearer what we do as information or knowledge professionals?
Right now, I would vote for Information Professionals International if I could, but that train left the station years ago. I am leaning against the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. Who says they are a "strategic knowledge professional"? When I talk to strangers when they ask what I do, I say either librarian or an academic librarian, and they have a sense of what I do.
Yes, I know that the association wants to reach out and attract more members, particularly IT and other information workers, but is this the best way? If it passes, I will deal with it. I will continue to be active in an organization that houses innovative thinkers and knowledge workers. And librarians. And we can also be strategic. But the full phrase -- "strategic knowledge professionals" is a mouthful. Maybe I will get used to it if it passes.
Some other relevant sites are the portal, research from Fleishman Hillard (ppt) and the SLA Name Change Info Center and the name change discussion forums. Many people have left comments on this post.
One of my first thoughts was that while the individual words strategic, knowledge and professional are all well and good, I was not sure if I liked the combination. It could be like throwing filet mignon, gourmet chocolate ice cream, and a nice dijon mustard into a blender. Yes, they are wonderful ingredients, but I am not so sure about the combination. Over the last week, the three word combination is starting to grow on me, a little bit.
However, I was a little perturbed when Stephen Abram wrote: "For those who don't read, discuss and absorb its insights and implications, then they're choosing to remain uninformed and unarmed. They're open to people lying to them that somehow this is against the librarian job title - which is so untrue and silly but apparently some people are easily lead. They're not real information professionals in my view since they're not informed and they're relying on their gut and experience instead of the fuller picture."
To say that librarians (or information professionals or knowledge professionals) who read, discuss and absorb the insights, and STILL disagree with the proposal are not "real information professionals" is ludicrious. That attitude will not win over many votes.
One of the aims of the proposed name change is to make it clearer to the decision makers in our organizations what the association does. I am not sure that the name change makes it any clearer.
The vote is NOT on the acronym, ASKPro. However, SLA leadership and the companies that helped in their research did consider the acronym when proposing the new name. Gloria Zamora noted that "we also eliminated names that did not have good acronyms or shortened versions associated with them." I do not like the acronym all that much for a variety of reasons, but since we are not voting on it, I won't go into any more detail.
I am also not pleased with the fact that only 25% of the survey population were librarians or information professionals. The rest were marketers, C-level execs, HR people, etc. Many of the librarians in SLA are academic librarians. I would guess that the majority of the STM librarians in SLA are academic. Where are the academic leader responders to the survey? They were not represented. As an STM academic librarian, why do I care what a C-level executive thinks of the word "library" or "strategy" or "knowledge" or whatever? Yes, I know that the majority of the members of SLA work in corporate libraries, but it seems like the survey ignored the academic, government and non-profit sectors. [10/20/09 changes. Two of those groups were represented in the naming survey, see slide 8 of the "PowerPoint summary of that research". More discussion is here. However, it is not clear if the survey was of academic and government librarians, or academic and government administrators, or a mix of the two. I also don't like the sentence on slide 9 -- "They are accountable for ensuring businesses have the right information to grow, succeed and benefit the bottom line." I don't work in a "business"; I work in a non-profit educational institution. A LOT of SLA librarians don't work for "businesses". This assumption is just plain wrong. All this talk about the bottom line, competetive advantage, and "having access to the right information for the best business decisions" is not relevant to me.]
Michael Fosmire brought up the point that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE have no (or little) problems with their acronyms. As long as we have innovative people in the association that can attract more innovative people, then why bother with the name change? Will changing the name of the association really attract more innovative thinkers to become members?
Hilary Davis of NC State (and chair-elect of the ST Division) asked a small sample of people about the proposed name, and 9 out of 10 preferred the "Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals". However, one of her respondents said it "sounds more cerebral and formal, but I doubt anyone outside the librarian world would realize it had anything to do with libraries or librarians." Thus, does changing the name make it any clearer what we do as information or knowledge professionals?
Right now, I would vote for Information Professionals International if I could, but that train left the station years ago. I am leaning against the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. Who says they are a "strategic knowledge professional"? When I talk to strangers when they ask what I do, I say either librarian or an academic librarian, and they have a sense of what I do.
Yes, I know that the association wants to reach out and attract more members, particularly IT and other information workers, but is this the best way? If it passes, I will deal with it. I will continue to be active in an organization that houses innovative thinkers and knowledge workers. And librarians. And we can also be strategic. But the full phrase -- "strategic knowledge professionals" is a mouthful. Maybe I will get used to it if it passes.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
New version of the Periodic Table
This MIT Technology Review blog post explains how a new graphical presentation of the periodic table of chemical elements was developed. For more background, take a look at the PDF of the research behind the idea.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Reasons why I like the APS
Gene Sprouse, Editor in Chief, from the American Physical Society (APS) displayed some data at the September 17th Publications Oversight Committee Meeting. His presentation was "A View from the Clouds". He gave me permission to publicly repost some of the slides from that presentation.
Data was derived from the Thomson/Reuters Science Citation Index and the "Physics" section. They have a high percentage of the citations while publishing a small number of journals.
Snapshot of top Physics Publishers. Data derived from Thomson/Reuters Science Citation Index and the Journal Citation Reports.
Average cost per article was derived from journalprices.com. The APS publishes their journals with very low cost per article.
Note: I am on a rolling position as a library adviser on the APS Publications Oversight Committee.
Data was derived from the Thomson/Reuters Science Citation Index and the "Physics" section. They have a high percentage of the citations while publishing a small number of journals.
Snapshot of top Physics Publishers. Data derived from Thomson/Reuters Science Citation Index and the Journal Citation Reports.
Average cost per article was derived from journalprices.com. The APS publishes their journals with very low cost per article.Note: I am on a rolling position as a library adviser on the APS Publications Oversight Committee.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Poll for the Friday Noon OPAL unconference session.
This is for the OPAL unconference session on Friday at Noon eastern time. Here is the "Strand" room.
Monday, August 3, 2009
What I learned at the Handheld Librarian Conference
Here is the stuff I learned from the Handheld Librarian Conference.
The conference organizers set up http://www.flexyourinfo.com/track/hhlib2009/ for tracking images, delicious tags and tweets concerning the conference. During the course of the day, Guy and I learned about an even better real time twitter tracker -- http://tweetgrid.com/search?q=%23hhlib.
I Got to meet a lot of other really, really, really cool librarian tweeters, including two of the presenters. Val Forrestal's presentation is here. She posts many good articles (concerning twitter) at delicious, and she also wrote a followup to the conference.
I really liked the afternoon keynote by Tom Peters on "Mobility and Singularity: People, Communication, Information, Information Objects, and Information Services in Motion". I would "lug my guts" to meet Tom in person. In short, because of mobile communication technologies, people don't need to meet face to face to get work done, and people will travel less in the future for business purposes.
Joe Murphy did his session on "Sending out an SMS", but since I was not able to attend that hour, I could still get a sense of the session by following the tweets and comments. He also posted his slides at SlideShare.
From the twitter conversation, I also heard that the session on "Mobile Medical Information: View from the Medical Library" was very good. I will go back and listen (and/or look at the slides) to it sometime in the future.
It was a good, but long and productive day.
The conference organizers set up http://www.flexyourinfo.com/track/hhlib2009/ for tracking images, delicious tags and tweets concerning the conference. During the course of the day, Guy and I learned about an even better real time twitter tracker -- http://tweetgrid.com/search?q=%23hhlib.
I Got to meet a lot of other really, really, really cool librarian tweeters, including two of the presenters. Val Forrestal's presentation is here. She posts many good articles (concerning twitter) at delicious, and she also wrote a followup to the conference.
I really liked the afternoon keynote by Tom Peters on "Mobility and Singularity: People, Communication, Information, Information Objects, and Information Services in Motion". I would "lug my guts" to meet Tom in person. In short, because of mobile communication technologies, people don't need to meet face to face to get work done, and people will travel less in the future for business purposes.
Joe Murphy did his session on "Sending out an SMS", but since I was not able to attend that hour, I could still get a sense of the session by following the tweets and comments. He also posted his slides at SlideShare.
From the twitter conversation, I also heard that the session on "Mobile Medical Information: View from the Medical Library" was very good. I will go back and listen (and/or look at the slides) to it sometime in the future.
It was a good, but long and productive day.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Running for SLA Sci-Tech Division Chair, 2010-12
Here is a draft stump speech. It will probably go into the STN and the sla-st discussion list sometime in August.
Joseph Kraus has been active in SLA for the last 15 years. He has volunteered for several committee spots in the Sci-Tech Division and in the Physics-Astronomy Mathematics (PAM) Division. Sci-Tech Division activities -- From 1996-2000, he was the Webmaster of the Sci-Tech Division. In 2002, he moderated the Contributed papers session. For several years after that, he reviewed the contributed papers. From June 2003 through June of 2005, he was the Secretary. In 2004, he gave a paper at the “Winner's Circle of Best Science Websites". PAM Division activities -- Over the last 15 years he moderated the PAM-wide roundtable twice, moderated the vendor roundtable and was a member of and chaired the Awards committee. He co-taught a CE class concerning science resources in 2002 and 2003. He presented a poster paper in 2006 concerning science and engineering library branch renovations. He was Chair-Elect, Chair and Past-Chair of the PAM division from June 2006 through December 2008. He was very happy to chair the PAM Division when the SLA Conference was in Denver in 2007.
There are several big issues I think the Division should address. We need to: 1) Attract and retain DST members. We also need to get more members involved in the Division. 2) Encourage greater use of the discussion list and other communication and social networking technologies. Since the division has such a wide variety of academic, corporate and other special librarians, we should encourage the sharing of innovative ideas and solutions to common problems. 3) Make sure that the June conference is intellectually and socially stimulating. 4) Address the serials crisis and open access issues.
In short, I think libraries and librarians should strive for even more sharing of ideas and knowledge. In my work, I try to share as much information and knowledge as I can with others. If you want to learn more about me, take a look at some of my social networking accounts.
http://friendfeed.com/jokrausdu
http://www.nuthingbut.net (miscellaneous thoughts on librarianship and other stuff)
http://sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com (work blog)
http://delicious.com/jokrausdu
http://twitter.com/jokrausdu
http://www.facebook.com/jokrausdu
Joseph Kraus has been active in SLA for the last 15 years. He has volunteered for several committee spots in the Sci-Tech Division and in the Physics-Astronomy Mathematics (PAM) Division. Sci-Tech Division activities -- From 1996-2000, he was the Webmaster of the Sci-Tech Division. In 2002, he moderated the Contributed papers session. For several years after that, he reviewed the contributed papers. From June 2003 through June of 2005, he was the Secretary. In 2004, he gave a paper at the “Winner's Circle of Best Science Websites". PAM Division activities -- Over the last 15 years he moderated the PAM-wide roundtable twice, moderated the vendor roundtable and was a member of and chaired the Awards committee. He co-taught a CE class concerning science resources in 2002 and 2003. He presented a poster paper in 2006 concerning science and engineering library branch renovations. He was Chair-Elect, Chair and Past-Chair of the PAM division from June 2006 through December 2008. He was very happy to chair the PAM Division when the SLA Conference was in Denver in 2007.
There are several big issues I think the Division should address. We need to: 1) Attract and retain DST members. We also need to get more members involved in the Division. 2) Encourage greater use of the discussion list and other communication and social networking technologies. Since the division has such a wide variety of academic, corporate and other special librarians, we should encourage the sharing of innovative ideas and solutions to common problems. 3) Make sure that the June conference is intellectually and socially stimulating. 4) Address the serials crisis and open access issues.
In short, I think libraries and librarians should strive for even more sharing of ideas and knowledge. In my work, I try to share as much information and knowledge as I can with others. If you want to learn more about me, take a look at some of my social networking accounts.
http://friendfeed.com/jokrausdu
http://www.nuthingbut.net (miscellaneous thoughts on librarianship and other stuff)
http://sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com (work blog)
http://delicious.com/jokrausdu
http://twitter.com/jokrausdu
http://www.facebook.com/jokrausdu
Handheld Librarian virtual conference
I will be attending the Handheld Librarian conference tomorrow. If you are attending, maybe you could win a door prize? Go ahead and enter here. They will also be tracking delicious tags and tweets concerning the event. Use #hhlib. Thanks to Luke for the info.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Shanachie Tour came to Chicago
The members of the Shanachie Tour (Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer) are "World Famous" for their travels and interviews. Here are some new ones. They interview some great librarians and friends of mine.
ALA Annual Conference 2009 Chicago from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.
OCLC Blog Salon:Shenanigans with Shanachies from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.
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