@jc@scholar.social Mastodon account post archive: 2018 - 2022

#introductions - I'm an academic librarian in Montréal. I'm currently working with Concordia University's engineering & computer science departments, plus I oversee some of our digital services. I'm interested in intellectual liberty and the junctions of physical and digital knowledge systems.

I'd originally made an account on another instance but I like the way this one targets a scholarly environment. I think I'll copy over my posts before I get too deep.

Examples on how makerspaces & Linux help cultivate communities https://goo.gl/oUnzWf

Trying to focus? A study shows that having a smartphone present (on or off) disrupts your attention from other activities. https://goo.gl/Jb9dJm

Smart cities: India's ambitious plans are critiqued in this article https://goo.gl/tZNGrw - complex issues to figure out.

Some context on knowledge management supporting AI techniques https://goo.gl/SqiTzi -- this blog post is pretty generalized but gives some useful considerations.

Good read about the way engineers overcame a variety of difficulties creating the new Queensferry Crossing bridge in Scotland https://goo.gl/3Ze8u8

Predicting how new meaning emerges might improve natural language processing systems. This is a really cool study on how humans have developed metaphors over a millenia https://goo.gl/HPb3hJ - #AI

These volvelles (paper "computers") from the 1500s are fascinating https://goo.gl/eqcDx1

I can’t resist news about the Voynich Manuscript - https://goo.gl/PKCL4X A computer science researcher at the University of Alberta has tried a new approach, using AI to help decipher the manuscript. The manuscript may be written in Hebrew and use some techniques to complicate deciphering it.

@bgcarlisle Hm... That's a habit from needing to limit things to 140 characters. I suppose it's not really a problem w/ 500 chars. :-) http://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2018/01/04/in-the-galleries-interactive-design-in-early-printed-books/

Call for Proposals from librarians for the True North Science Boot Camp 2018 #TNSBC18. Submission deadline for proposals is Feb. 12 by 9 AM. More information available here https://sites.google.com/view/truenorthsciencebootcamp/program/call-for-proposals-from-librarians

@bgcarlisle time to increase my verbosity.

There are good standards publishers but I keep bumping up against ones doing bad business. Me: "a student wants to study this standard, I'd like to buy it for our library." Publisher: "We own the copyright and the only person that can read is the one that pays." Me: We're a library, that doesn't make sense." Publisher: "Tough." So they lose a sale and the student cannot learn/research. Student now unfamiliar & unlikely to use that standard/publisher in the future. Standard becomes value-less.

@joeld it's not reasonable and different jurisdictions complicate things but when we're buying, we're agreeing to the terms of the sale. I feel like there may be a grey area or overreaching here but there are a lot of machinations to go through.

Here's a mainstream opinion piece on why Canada needs to develop a national data strategy to keep things in the public interest (rather than closed corps). Interesting also due to the fact that it's written by a former RIM CEO, Jim Balsillie. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/01/30/jim-balsillie-canada-needs-a-national-data-strategy.html

What IFLA is doing to shift #libraries toward providing the skills and tools to help people make sense of huge amounts of digital information. https://www.ifla.org/node/25481

A killer whale said "hello." Cool study on whale-learning and dialects, etc. but the audio clip cracks me up.
http://nationalpost.com/news/world/talking-killer-whales-can-learn-to-mimic-human-speech-one-learned-to-say-hello

I'm enjoying some ideas from reading this Aeon article about quantum entanglement of time. Or maybe the author wrote them for me to enjoy reading. https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time

Wow, sitting in a barbershop, with a 1972 National Geographic and i saw this ad. Feed your kids sugar, it's good for them.

https://scholar.social/media/OefZgOZWZ2epLmmdRn4

@robertwgehl Absolutely! I fell in love the Chicago style when I worked (long ago) as a copyeditor. No other style manual comes close. I still read their Q&A, if not to understand the rules, to bask in the wit.

@robertwgehl Exactly!

I was in the middle of teaching a class, trying very hard to answer a student's question. My alarm went off and I woke up from the dream very frustrated that it had prevented me from finishing responding to the student. It's been a full week.

@thelibrarian This is a nice diagram. I wonder about the line that leads from open source down to GNU/FSF. Since those GNU/FSF licenses predate and are philosophically different from open source, it might make sense to represent that area of concepts differently.

@devastatedmasterstu hi, I'd suggest trying out Zotero or Mendeley first. Both are pretty good at identifying metadata and sucking in the correct reference information. I prefer Zotero's functionality. I made a very detailed comparison of Zotero, Mendeley, RefWorks, and a few other tools. It's currently a spreadsheet (I'm turning it into a bigger analysis). Let me know if you'd like the spreadsheet to compare the functionality and I'll be happy to send it to you.

@BruceTindall @devastatedmasterstu the people submitting could have customized the reference manager tool to output in the style your journals require. If used well, a reference management tool ought to result in well-formatted, more complete reference information--not the reverse. Plus, it's a great way to keep track of what you're researching.

This article "What can data visualization learn from feminism?" brings up great points on the "view" of data. http://www.storybench.org/can-data-visualization-learn-feminism/
It's also a bit similar to what is sometimes raised in discussion of what we have from archives--dominant or privileged perspectives tend to be what we see and it takes effort to go beyond that.

Good piece for researchers about the utility of ORCiD and how to get one. https://orcid.org/blog/2018/02/15/create-sustainable-research-portfolio-orcid

@sevensixfive I like Zotero for managing the files also. I have a direct link between the file, the citation, and any sorts of notes, tags, links, or other info I associate with that particular reference. I'm a big fan of having it sync the files with a cloud storage provider. That lets me have the same set of files accessible from my home & work computers (+ backed up in the cloud). I'd recommend using the pcloud.com webdav service for this: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services

@lljohnston Our library at Concordia had a digital preservation librarian job posted. It's no longer on the site but the link to the PDF of the job description still works. http://library.concordia.ca/about/jobs/digital-preservation-librarian-posting-e.pdf

I support fair dealing because we need the liberty to share our knowledge and culture if we want those things to thrive.

I'm bringing this here (from the birdsite) as The Canadian Association of Research Libraries │ Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada is celebrating Fair Dealing Week by asking people to complete the sentence

"I support fair dealing because …" #fairdealingworks #faircopyright #copyrightreview

Also read their statement: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/docs/CARL_Statement_on_Fair_Dealing_2016_EN.pdf

@John I think choosing an instance that is likely to have people discussing things of interest is useful to get started because it helps to get involved in something you like. At the same time, I actively searched across many instances to start connecting with other people so that I'd expand on potential viewpoints and conversations.

Slow thought... I loved this long read, which presents 7 great points for slow thought (in manifesto form). https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto

In #2, Di Nicola says "Slow Thought creates its own time and place."

Brief summary of Paul Otlet's work organizing and making knowledge available. Prescient thinking for the Internet and semantic web https://daily.jstor.org/internet-before-internet-paul-otlet/

@mbbrown 8 - 10 (+ 4 cups of tea).

@mbbrown No time to die, too busy brewing coffee.

@thelibrarian Having lived near SF, I knew of Emperor Norton but I hadn't heard of Rask--interesting person!

I like this new values statement from the International Alliance of Research Library Associations (IARLA). It focuses on access to info, stewardship/production and preservation, freedoms (intellectual and expression), diversity/inclusion, and ethics. http://iarla.org/2018/03/research-libraries-our-values/

I spent a portion of yesterday setting up a short documentary about Telidon on our streaming server. Telidon = Canada's late 70s/early 80s impressive pre-Web web, which I knew little about until now. We had the documentary as a (dying) Umatic film and the NFB didn't have a good digital version so we transferred ours to digital. Very satisfying to be able to stream this in a Web browser now.

@ericgauthier Unfortunately our server isn't set up for public access due to some complications with streaming rights. But my colleague offered to give it the NFB so maybe they'll make it accessible. I'll have to see if we have another way to enable public access.

@gusriva Unfortunately our server isn't set up for public access. I realized though that there are several clips of other videos about Telidon accessible on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=telidon

It's delicate, the way reality interweaves its plot—like nobody expects outside of fiction. Plus, other conceits to engage data and information caretakers.

Political-ish (but much more)...
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

@vascorsd So very disturbing.

@mbbrown Or also try Qwant.com which has similar policies as DuckDuckGo.

After a few years of renovations our Concordia #Library celebrated its grand re-opening today and there's a nice write-up about some of the features in the Mtl Gazette http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/a-sneak-peek-at-concordias-newly-renovated-webster-library

Done. Facebook account deleted.

@bgcarlisle Interesting idea! In a meeting yesterday, a colleague brought up the point that in interdisciplinary courses, it's often difficult for students to read an article from outside of their familiar discipline because they aren't familiar with common structures or things that are taken for granted within the other discipline. Your suggestion could be a nice way to stretch comfort zones a bit.

I've been using Mastodon for a while but I'm uncertain how the Lists functionality works. Is it like Twitter? Are they public/private? Maybe I'm just missing it but I don't see it in the documentation.

@kibi thank you for the explanation, that helps!

Some really pleasing video animations created by rotating 3D printed sculptures.
https://aeon.co/videos/the-weird-wonders-of-combining-3d-printing-with-the-maths-of-pinecones-and-sunflowers

@Holly Ah! I have the same experience every time.

@bgcarlisle I switched to newsblur.com and ended up liking it much better.

I happened on this Mastodon instance for board games https://boardgames.social

Although I don't have a vast collection of board games, I love a few abstract strategy ones and like to try new ones.

I also conceived one a long time ago so of course had to make an account for it. :-) @adomoc

#boardgame #games

@socrates I'd be interested in being part of your discussion on the longevity of scholar.social. I had been thinking about that a bit and was going to ask if you had something like a patreon account to help--though you somewhat addressed that. Regardless, it's an important conversation, especially as the community grows and who knows for sure what obligations lie in the future.

@rysiek I've had a really good experience using SpiderOak One Backup https://spideroak.com

It has feature-rich, very mature client for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows, as well as mobile devices. Reasonable pricing and for the many years I've been using, rock solid. The only thing I don't like is that their servers are in the US, however they store and transit using strong encryption, claiming zero knowledge, and they seem to walk the walk.

Always sounds a bit pointless to me, when I say I love walking--most of us walk. But a lot of times people just walk for function, missing the pleasure in it. I love reading essays, etc. on walking too. This article had a mention of an "audio-walk" by Janet Cardiff, which I feel I need to try now. https://daily.jstor.org/the-art-of-walking

@maron I agree, such a good practice!

Just read a Nature article on EU copyright reform & potential problems w/ respect to open science (probably not only science though). I'm curious to get more context after the article stated that the reform would "let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines". That sounds like a significant overreaching of what ought to be acceptable--worrisome restriction on freedom of expression and research discourse.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03837-7

Just was introduced to this Conserve the Sound Project, which has recordings of the sounds produced while interacting with a large variety of old devices. For example, typing on a typewriter or opening the lid of a laptop. I'm glad that people have thought to pay attention to these otherwise ephemeral sounds. http://www.conservethesound.de

And they have the sounds of a pigeon racing clock!! http://www.conservethesound.de/en/sound-en/taubenuhr.html

@bouncinglime excellent idea on the record needle

Who would not want to see a six-hour snail ballet? Too bad I can't go to the full performance, maybe I'll just play this clip on a loop for a day. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/17/snail-ballet-dancers-slow-pixel-elizabeth-saint-jalmes-cyril-leclerc

This may be obvious but stands out for me after changing careers some years ago from corporate to academic. In the corporate sphere, I studied competitors, did CI, but would never have reached out to openly discuss operations, strategies, etc. Yesterday a librarian from a nearby university reached out to me to discuss reference services—and I've done similar things to other libraries. I really appreciate being able to have such open, helpful conversations across institutions.

@jasondclinton I went back to school for a new degree that put me on an academic path. I could have stayed in the corporate world with it too but I wanted a big change. Actually, it took a few steps beyond the degree, getting some smaller teaching contracts, etc. first. :-)

It's Bicycle Day http://www.maps.org/lsd75
After 75 years plus who knows how many many many more with other psychedelic substances in various cultures, we still have broad misconceptions and lack of knowledge about these substances. We need to remove irrational political/legal barriers to their study and positive use.

Just came from a great talk by Shannon Vallor (for Concordia's digital futures series)... talked about offloading authority on machines, what it takes to trust (or not) AI. Strikes me that there is no trusting of AI since it cannot have emotion or agency and I think I need what or who I trust to have those. Any way, I'm curious to read her book now... Technology and the Virtues

Le Devoir: Charles Taylor https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/525652/entrevue-avec-charles-taylor

I rethought this... clearly I can trust stuff without emotion or agency otherwise, as my wife pointed out, I'd never walk up the stairs in our home. Of course, if they started cracking, I'd lose that trust pretty quickly and my reality would come into question. :-) Anyway, different levels/types of trust. Who is known as a good philosopher on trust?

This IFLA post with respect to #WorldCopyrightDay makes many good points about situations that we should NOT try to stretch copyright to fit.

https://blogs.ifla.org/lpa/2018/04/23/out-of-copyright-when-rights-are-the-wrong-answer/

A nice point (among all the others) related to facts and text/data mining. Mined data needs to be analyzable by others.

@GardenOfForkingPaths I'd been thinking about Heidegger... but I don't recall (at least in my long-ago reading) specifically thinking into trust.

Listening to Yoshi's Bengio talk (part of Concordia's Digital Futures series) notes that most impressive AI progress is currently in perception. Generative adversarial networks produce some amazing results that didn't exist a few years ago.

Data trusts are an interesting point on helping to ensure the fairness of data collection and usage.

Civil society ought to engage more with all that's unfolding in #AI development with respect to #freedomofexpression. Absolutely. And this new document co-authored by Privacy International and Article 19 recommends much more than that. It also raises good points for governments and companies. https://privacyinternational.org/report/1752/privacy-and-freedom-expression-age-artificial-intelligence

@eliasg@mastodon.xyz @chendricks

Explaining wisdom often is accompanied with a value judgment, where it's got to be used in a beneficial way.

@bgcarlisle I agree, it's excellent

@John I've only ever heard it pronounced as lib-guide but it seems like libe makes more sense.

Library and Archives Canada just announced their Co-Lab site. It's a great initiative, getting volunteers to help tag, transcribe, etc. their digitized collection. They have somewhat gamified this too by making each task a challenge to complete. http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/Pages/2018/type-tag-share-co-lab.aspx

June will be exciting as I start a new job. Same institution but I'll focus on a new role they've just created as a Digital Scholarship #Librarian. I'm really looking forward to this, so many possibilities it's hard not to want to start everything at once and a lot will be defining & evolving the role. Got to keep my eyes open for all of you doing interesting digital humanities, visualization, etc. work!

@miguelsxvi It's emerging & I think needs to address a lot! Assessing tech suited to scholarly work (e.g. what will enable research goals & how can I support people w/ tools), participating in elements of research (e.g. could involve manipulating data for our new visualization studio) & helping people collaborate across disciplines, guiding w/ best-practices on things like digitization or planning metadata), supporting/promoting ways to get merit for digital scholarship (not always recognized).

@miguelsxvi Also, helping to incorporate digital scholarship within online educational work (students and professors). There's a lot of things but I guess those are some of the key things I've been thinking about, in just over 500 characters. :-)

@bgcarlisle @perig @JordiGH@mathstodon.xyz I rode a Bixi from NDG to the Plateau just between rain storms Friday night... a fantastic bit of Spring ozone.

@perig @bgcarlisle actually, I just followed Sherbrooke :-)

CBC Data Journalist, Roberto Rocha, spoke at the Concordia Library's 16th Annual Research Forum. He talked about fascinating data visualization work, storytelling, and raised insightful points on losing and regaining public trust in journalism. He's just put the full text (and images) on his web site. It's a really good read! (Err, I listened to him speak but I imagine that reading it is also really good 😃 ). http://robertorocha.info/how-data-and-transparency-can-restore-faith-in-journalism-a-speech-to-the-concordia-library-research-forum/

Il y'a 20 ans, j'ai entendu cet argument (la chambre chinoise) de Searle dans son cours et l'argument reste fort aujourd'hui.
"Doutons de l’intelligence de l’intelligence artificielle"
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/le-devoir-de-philo-histoire/527599/doutons-de-l-intelligence-de-l-intelligence-artificielle

@bgcarlisle The other benefit of looking out the window... I remember after getting glasses (when I was about 12) that it was possible to see individual leaves on trees and they weren't just big green blobs.

This initiative, granting a million $ to the Internet Archive to #digitize university press publications sounds great! But, I'd be curious to know more about what the phrase "controlled digital lending" constitutes in the post—unfortunate if it means the digitized titles will be broken with #DRM. http://blog.archive.org/2018/05/21/internet-archive-awarded-grant-from-arcadia-fund-to-digitize-university-press-collections/

The price of being (a dog). Don't look so forlorn, I told him. Work hard, save your money, you'll pay it off in no time.

I've been a member of the organizing committee for The True North Science Boot Camp #tnsbc18, which is a science and engineering conference for librarians. On our first day, yesterday we had a flood in the building, then as I asked the audience if they'd like to ask our first presenter any questions about his talk, a fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate. Other than that it's been great--with thought provoking speakers. Hoping today and tomorrow are a bit less exciting though. :-)

https://sites.google.com/view/truenorthsciencebootcamp

yesterday at Concordia we had a talk on AI in systems development from Wahab Hamou-Lhadj, Who's doing great work preventing errors before they get committed to the code base and Carmela Cucuzzella, who's done fascinating work rethinking how we approach innovative, sustainable design in urban spaces.

today, we're at McGill university, starting with Nitika Pai and her HIV self testing app, then Najmeh Khalili-Mahani on a game clinic for stress prevention, and Catherine Guastavino on urban noise management.

It was our last day for our True North Science Boot Camp 2018 #TNSBC18 & we heard about developing a data visualization application for DNA from my colleague Tomasz Neugebauer, University of Rhode Island's library's new AI lab, U of Alberta's great ScienceLiteracyWeek collaborations, and it ended with a super talk w/ Concordia's Jeremy Clark on "Bitcoin & Blockchain: Landscape & Future Directions". I really enjoyed getting to hear about work from such a broad variety of subjects and disciplines.

@clhendricksbc Nice news, congratulations!

Great Mordecai Richler display at the Concordia #Library right now! It includes items from our special collections and I especially like that it includes his #typewriters! https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#guid=http://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#i06_June_2018_11:00:14_EST (more here: https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/english/research/mordecai-richler-reading-room.html)

This study trained bees to recognize the value of less than 1 so this article says bees understand 0. It's the first time for an invertebrate insect. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/study-suggests-honeybees-have-zero-knowledge-1.4695906

I enjoyed this read "How Digital Archives Delete the Human Experience" though I'm not sure its resolution gave us fully what the title promised. I also appreciate that it touched on digital preservation/access issues being regularly dealt with, but in an approachable way for a popular audience. https://thewalrus.ca/how-digital-archives-delete-the-human-experience/

Mnemonic techniques... mentions a variety from different cultures https://aeon.co/ideas/this-ancient-mnemonic-technique-builds-a-palace-of-memory

I've been participating in an all-week long CARL #librarian research institute, which has been a super way to bring back to mind important considerations in the research process and reflect on my questions. It's been eye-opening too, to see how much the attitudes involving librarian research vary from institution to institution. #lri2018irb

@bgcarlisle during our last discussion of the Librarian Research Institute, the topic came up of how to stay connected (people wondering about setting up groups on LinkedIn, hesitant over Facebook)... so... of course, I plugged scholar.social (and Mastodon) as ways to connect with each other and other researchers. Maybe some of those ~30 people will try it out now.

@bgcarlisle nice! hm... makes me think I should look into getting new cards.

I love Arundhati Roy's writing and this article in the Guardian has her asking if the novel can be a city, which is a complex and multi-faceted way of conceiving it.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/17/arundhati-roy-interview-you-ask-the-questions-the-point-of-the-writer-is-to-be-unpopular

This article about the utility of literature reviews (in a science context) offers some provoking thoughts about cumulative literature reviews (CLR). #litreview
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/06/19/to-save-the-research-literature-lets-make-literature-reviews-reproducible/

Without knowing anything about Hannah Gadsby, I just watched her show "Nanette" and it's possible that I've never seen as masterful a work of stand-up "comedy". It transcended a stand-up routine and I'm not quite sure how to immediately describe it. It certainly gave me some new paths of understanding on LGBTQ and women's issues. But I think that alone would be too restrictive a description for all that she conveyed. Look it up, it's stunning. Everyone should see it.

I just read about this library services platform #FOSS project called FOLIO. Looks promising! https://opensource.com/article/18/6/folio and their site is here https://www.folio.org

Showing how social media use links to mental illness, The Economist reported on a study from the Royal Society for Public Health (UK).

Since #Mastodon wasn't listed among the culprits, it must be ok! 😉

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/05/18/how-heavy-use-of-social-media-is-linked-to-mental-illness

Not that I'd advocate promoting information literacy through sarcasm.

Tim Berners-Lee talks a little bit about his new work on Solid (to re-democratize the Web) in this Vanity Fair (?) article. It mentions Mastodon too. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets

Pushing scholarly #publishing toward a 100% #openaccess model. https://aeon.co/ideas/scholarly-publishing-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it

This Aeon article includes discussion on improving the way peer review, etc. works. The author (Tennant) says" "All of the technology and traits to build a hybridised scholarly commons infrastructure already exists. It is up to academic communities themselves to step away from their apathy and towards a fairer and more democratic system for sharing our knowledge and work."

@bgcarlisle yeah, it seems there are a bunch of difficulties—often institutional problems in not recognizing the merit of various non-traditional modes of publishing. I'm remembering a discussion where a tenured scientist mentioned how much she pushes back to ensure that her work is open access but that newer researchers have less leeway. A lot of innovative new things could happen but I think we need to figure out how to improve the institutional perspective to get to those. (1/2)

@bgcarlisle Also, I'm not certain that copyright is at the heart of the problem. Creative Commons licences require copyright to work and they extend a variety of use cases that wouldn't otherwise exist. More importantly, how would Moral Right fare without copyright? (2/2)

@bgcarlisle Oh, and I don't mean to say that copyright isn't a problem either. :-)

@GardenOfForkingPaths @bookandswordblog the author does seem to want an entirely different system and proposes some ideas of how that could work but I don't see why that would have to be the only way. Thanks for the link example.

@bgcarlisle thinking "out loud" if no copyright for scientific work, what would happen in this scenario? 3 researchers finish an important project and disseminate their results (via whatever publishing mechanism). Suppose 2 of them omit all mention of the 3rd. Aside from unfairness, that would close off information from the community because a key researcher would be silenced. Since I understand that attribution is among the moral rights in copyright law, I guess there wouldn't be much recourse.

@bgcarlisle I see that CWs also have an effective use in proper timing for comedy 😃

@bgcarlisle I was pretty certain that it did, I'm going to find out for sure. But let's say there's no copyright and we then get a different law to govern moral rights, wouldn't we essentially be where we are now through Creative Commons licences? They let you separate the commercial component from copyright and keep the moral rights.

@bgcarlisle that sounds like a pretty awful failing from the whole system.

@bgcarlisle I'm partial to the idea that info in the public space be transferable/copyable without restriction (assuming moral rights/attribution remain). It'd change how people view/are able to commercialize much, in extreme ways. I imagine that taking this beyond scientific work, to other research and creative domains would require serious change in society. Extending rights on intangible stuff (e.g. digital info) to logical extremes, eventually brings us to our own minds, which must be free.

Any opinions of collaborative LaTeX tools/services? I'm investigating Overleaf/ShareLateX, Authorea, Papeeria, SciDock, etc. I'd be curious to hear about anyone's experiences.

@drbjork Thanks, I have some people that specifically need LaTeX support but it's good to be aware of other techniques!

@jaranta @drbjork in your use, did you by any chance try their journal submission integrations?

@JoeOsborn Thanks, good to know. Was that on their existing version or on the beta of their upcoming release?

@seanlane @Benjamin Good point, it seems like this helps to bring people's different work styles together.

@hazybluedot @drbjork Interesting, I just searched on their site and they say that they're working on making R code executable https://www.overleaf.com/help/71-how-do-i-include-sections-of-r-code-within-my-latex-document

Ideas on #ritual, which I love, and the description of turning the eating of a fig into a ritual here.
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/figs/

Also brings to mind some of my favourite advice from Agent Cooper (#TwinPeaks) to once a day, every day, give yourself a gift (though I think he might of been referring to coffee or pie, I don't recall, but I take it seriously for coffee too).

Here's a smart editorial arguing that our government (in Canada) shouldn't frame its recently launched Digital and Data Consultations through the language of ownership, pitting the economy against privacy. I really like that Lisa Austin (Chair in law and technology at the University of Toronto) argues against treating data as a "natural resource."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-must-not-treat-data-like-a-natural-resource/

Enjoyed browsing through the #DLFforum schedule that was just posted https://forum2018.diglib.org/schedule/ there are so many interesting sessions to pick from.

@chendricks it seems like a very positive initiative. I contributed a bit to their fund-raising campaign a little while ago and am eager to see it start launching.Hopefully they'll build their social networking features supporting ActivityPub--could be very interesting to see how that would extend around something Mastodonish.

Good article introducing issues of #data #ethics and the associated responsibilities of #libraries. https://blogs.ifla.org/faife/2018/07/16/the-power-in-our-collections-data-ethics-and-libraries/

German and Swedish universities seem to have no more access to Elsevier journals due to their attempts to renegotiate an open access friendly change to the publishing model. Unfortunate that things sound stalled but this seems like a promising bit of change if it works out.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/universities-in-germany-and-sweden-lose-access-to-elsevier-journals--64522/

My librarian colleague, Tara Mahwinney at McGill wrote about the #solardecathlon2018 entry from Team Montreal. https://blogs.library.mcgill.ca/schulich/a-little-piece-of-schulich-library-goes-to-china/ There are 99 Concordia and McGill students collaborating to design and build a net zero energy home in a semi-traditional Montreal row-house style, which they've brought to the competition in China. It's quite impressive. The team took a little bit of our libraries with them :-) There's a bit more about the competition here https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/team-mtl-energy-efficient-home-china-1.4757015

@stephen That would be an impressive chatbot! :-) It's a good question though. Already, online library chat systems record a transcript of interactions (essentially a reference interview). My colleagues and I have discussed the ethical implications of the system retaining that info and how it might be used. We remain cautious. Also, I wouldn't trust an algorithm to interpret a history of reference questions--may aid some cases but ultimately it requires too much human contextual awareness.

How 5 companies publish more than half the research papers. This CBC News article is based on Vincent Larivière's research (Université de Montréal) and includes a PLOS One link to the source. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/academic-publishers-reap-huge-profits-as-libraries-go-broke-1.3111535

Reading this article called "Leveraging Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Undermine Embargoes" by Josh Bolick https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v2i2.7415
#OpenAccess #CreativeCommons

@dsrudmann Yes, every night before falling asleep, something similar runs through my mind.

Congrats to the McGill/Concordia Team Montreal's Deep Performance Dwelling in the #SolarDecathlon2018. They earned 1st in architecture, market appeal, & communications, plus 3rd in engineering & innovation. Such an impressive project! Some details and photos in this article: http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2018/08/23/three-first-prizes-for-a-concordia-and-mcgill-collaboration-at-the-2018-solar-decathlon.html

I appreciate IFLA's statement regarding fake news. They've been pushing library outreach to combat it w/critical thinking & info literacy skills. This new statement calls governments to "Refrain from passing laws which will have a disproportionate impact on freedom of access to information and freedom of expression..." Which strikes me as one of the risks of legislation in this domain. PDF link: https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/faife/statements/ifla-statement-on-fake-news.pdf

My 7 year old son told me he "googled up" the "least fast car in the world" & was bitterly disappointed because he got a page of Porsches & Lamborghinis, etc. Ah-ha, I thought, it's time we have that talk. About search expressions. #LibrarianDad

@vickysteeves depending on the size of the class and the context, a simple one (not necessarily creative though) is to ask everyone to make one recommendation (e.g. a restaurant, movie, book, etc.) but you could target it to something relevant for the subject. I did this with a class once and it worked nicely because people usually have something they're excited to recommend, everyone benefits from hearing these, and some people find natural "alliances" in the things they love.

@eloisa Thank you!

Watch this new documentary "Paywall: The Business of Scholarship" (#OpenAccess, free stream) https://paywallthemovie.com It covers a fair amount of ground. Could be an eye-opener for many people but also if, like me, this is a subject you're familiar with, you might still appreciate the variety of points it makes. I especially was interested in some of the voices speaking about the issues in countries that cannot afford Elsevier, etc. & how that access (lack thereof) directs their research.

It's a shame that the EU Parliament has voted to adopt so many poor choices with respect to #copyright.

https://www.communia-association.org/2018/09/12/eu-parliament-vote-unprecedented-copyright-giveaway/

Hey #librarians and #library supporters, IFLA is requesting your ideas to help realize ten opportunities they've identified for the future of libraries. Here is the link to submit your ideas (open 'till the end of September) https://ideas.ifla.org/ and here is where they summarize the opportunities envisioned: https://ideas.ifla.org/global-vision-opportunities/

I got a book chapter proposal accepted the other day and I'm just thinking of my strategy to do the work now. I'm considering Nanowrimoing it to get a draft done. That's not really the point of Nanowrimo but I don't know that there's any harm.

@platypus I was just thinking maybe there ought to be some equivalent event. So then checking, of course there is. :-) It's #AcWriMo and there's an article about it here https://daily.jstor.org/6-tips-for-academic-writing-acwrimo/
Too bad, it looks like the site that it originates from is down.

@delibrarian I like that idea.

@platypus wow, glad I didn't become an archivist.

I just realized that last month (August) marked 20 years since I first launched a web site. I'm not sure what to make of that yet.

@jorge it's pretty regular, several times a week I'd guess. Possibly it's due to my e-mail address being exposed on the university web site. At this point, I don't know that it can be prevented, probably just managed.

@jorge even then, I never fell into the temptation to use blinking text.

#librarians #bibliothécaires save the date! The Concordia Library Research Forum will be on Friday, 26 April 2019 at the Loyola Jesuit Hall & Conference Centre, in Montreal, Quebec! https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum
A call for proposals is coming in Dec. 2018! #libraries #bibliotheques

@Taweret Yeah, it's a shame. Once, a long time ago, they apparently *were delicious* but greed for what looks pretty seems to have gotten out of hand. Good read about them here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-evil-reign-of-the-red-delicious/379892/

I've been thinking about this CBC news article on having "a right to be forgotten" for information in the public sphere (e.g. search engine results). That implies dangerous things for memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums, etc.). I don't see how erasing history is a good idea. I do see how people need some kind of control over companies keeping private info about them but that's a different situation to information in the public sphere. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/privacy-freedom-expression-charter-1.4843451

In agreeing to this new #NAFTA or #USMCA, Canada allows the US to impose its wrong-headed "intellectual property" restrictions. After multiple copyright consultations in Canada & other agreements revealing we don't support these, this shouldn't be acceptable! http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2018/10/from-copyright-term-to-super-bowl-commercials-breaking-down-the-digital-nafta-deal/ Look at this alarming section on "intellectual property" https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/united-states-mexico

@bgcarlisle Yes, same here. I've just sent a letter to Ms. Freeland, and Ms. Laverdiere (she's my MP), as well as the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, Science and Sport,
and Innovation, Science and Economic Development. I think they're all responsible in various ways. It's like they just trashed and disregarded years of public debate across Canada. So shortsighted.

@mogurinho I think it's good to distinguish a commercial aspect, for the separate and very different sort of thing that it is.

Interesting dissection of Plan S (European #OA publishing initiative) on Martin Paul Eve's blog
https://www.martineve.com/2018/10/03/on-the-practical-implementation-of-plan-s/

Really enjoyed the Scholarly Communications UnBoxed Activities (SCUBA) at #Force2018 this morning. Led to some good conversations/thinking about possibilities of tools vs. offering services because of tools. Also ways to remove burdens from OA IR depositing. If you're interested, this is a way of getting people together in your institution to develop ways of addressing scholarly communications needs/services. Developed by the UPenn Library https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jlDN7gleI6Ic2tpWu0XxCyfre3geqscz

If you're in Montreal today and interested in oral history and digital storytelling, drop by the Concordia Webster Library. There are a lot of free exhibits, presentations, and events as part of the Oral History Association’s annual conference. http://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/artsci/2018/10/10/conference-kickoff-oral-history-in-our-challenging-times.html

Inspiring start to the 2018 Digital Library Federation Forum #dlfforum w/ a talk by Anasuya Sengupta about decolonizing the Internet, good thinking on the perspectives producing & access knowledge. I'm hearing lots of interesting digital scholarship work, & nice to see the Concordia Library with so many other new DLF members welcomed.

What's the appeal of markdown? I feel like I'm missing something. Every few years I try using a note-taking app or something that relies on it and I've never really figured out why I'd want to use it over, for example, HTML or a WYSIWYG editor. If I want to format some basic text and don't want to mark it up with code, then I like a simplistic WYSIWYG editor. If want to format some text using code, then it seems like Markdown is barely easier than HTML. What am I missing?

@cyberpunklibrarian I get the feeling, from what you're describing, that I'm not missing anything. It really is just that some people prefer to have a slightly simpler form of text formatting. Thanks for the tip about typora.io, I'll check it out.

Prepping for #OpenAccessWeek. I've been organzing w/ our Office of Research, a Q&A session about how Concordia supports researchers with OA (follows a free screening that we're offering of the Paywall film). More in this news article here http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2018/10/17/cctober-22-to-28-is-open-access-week.html?c=/news/stories

@bgcarlisle ah-ha, so that I can see is a feature that goes above and beyond. Thanks!

@LPS Thanks, nice idea!

Argh, typo in my URL... fixed here: http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2018/10/17/october-22-to-28-is-open-access-week.html?c=/news/stories

It's #OAWeek2018 :oa: - Here's the Concordia Library web pages to find out how you can take advantage of #OpenAccess resources & contribute to the #OA research ecosystem: https://library.concordia.ca/help/open-access/

We just finished up a really nice discussion, inspired by #PaywallTheMovie. Thanks to everyone that participated! http://paywallthemovie.com #OpenAccess

Halloween is around the corner & it's #OpenAccessWeek so I have to make the obvious play on words to mention this new #OA book "Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed" from Concordia prof. Fenwick McKelvey — you can get it from our :oa: repository here https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/984629/

Wow, I just discovered that Zotero is now integrated with Google Docs. I know a lot of people aren't so crazy about Google these days but a huge number of students use Docs to collaborate and until now, there really wasn't a good way to manage citations and references from Google Docs. ❤️ #Zotero https://www.zotero.org/blog/google-docs-integration/

@archivist I was thinking of pursuing an #AcWriMo month. I'm not fully ready to commit to it right this moment though. :-)

@stevefoerster It's been a long time since I tried zoho, are you saying it also integrates with Zotero?

There's now a searchable database of retractions in scientific papers. http://retractiondatabase.org/

They explain it in this article http://retractionwatch.com/2018/10/25/were-officially-launching-our-database-today-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

Plusieurs chefs d'états ont publié une lettre au sujet du journalisme. Ils appellent "...à considérer l’espace mondial de la communication et de l’information comme un bien commun de l’humanité, dans lequel doivent être promus la liberté, le pluralisme et l’intégrité des informations."

https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/541272/la-liberte-d-opinion-et-d-expression-en-peril

par Justin Trudeau (Canada), Carlos Alvarado (Costa Rica), Emmanuel Macron (France), Saad Hariri (Liban), Erna Solberg (Norvège), Macky Sall (Sénégal), Béji Caïd Essebsi (Tunisie).

It's the third Thursday of November, which means it's #WorldPhilosophyDay. A message from Audrey Azoulay (Dir. General of UNESCO) talks about how practising philosophy equips & enables us for understanding & synthesizing knowledge, perceiving meaning & principle, exchanging views, and more. Read it here http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002661/266101e.pdf and UNESCO's page is here https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/philosophyday

Article about a group that uses philosophy, art, literature in communicating with homeless people, exploring possibilities. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-exeko-street-philosopher-homeless-1.4916422?cmp=rss

Dix principes pour guider les scientifiques, les entreprises et les élus. https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/science/542846/lancement-d-une-declaration-montrealaise-pour-developper-l-intelligence-artificielle-de-maniere-responsable

Early this morning I dreamt that my alarm was going off. That caused me to wake up 30 minutes earlier than I'd set my alarm for.

Yes! Enough of the nonsense. Greta Thunberg argues to "...take the responsibility they [world leaders] should have taken long ago" on the climate change crisis. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/04/we-have-not-come-here-beg-world-leaders-care-15-year-old-greta-thunberg-tells-cop24

@socrates Ah! this is good for old users too. I knew there was a distinction but for some reason the use case had never clicked until I read this post.

Anyone worked/published with a micropublication? I'd be curious to know what kind of value you found in it. I went to a talk a while ago about wormbase.org and how they got the publication going (working on peer review, becoming reputable, etc.). Not sure that I'm going anywhere with this but it keeps circling in the back of my mind what some other possibilities for micropublications might be.

@vickysteeves Thanks, that looks like it's working on the micropublication path. My understanding is that micropubs are essentially small components that are useful on their own or could be used within other articles, maybe taking from a day to month to peer review. They can also have the effect of opening publication opportunities up to people that might not otherwise be able to.

@arjen Oh interesting! A nanopublication network, that's a very neat layer.

This is nice! It looks like the Government of Canada's Directive on the Management of Information Technology now says "Where possible, use open standards and open source software first" and goes on into detail with more guidance. I'm fully in favour of this sort of thinking, especially since it's a more free and sustainable approach https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249 #GCdigital #OpenSource #FreeSoftware

@bgcarlisle hah!

@bgcarlisle It's true, right after you posted that I looked to see if there was any official gov't announcement on Twitter... thinking it would be an opportunity to call attention... but I didn't see one.

How using open data science has worked for the Ocean Health Index. It's impressive how big a difference their open processes have made on their progress. https://opensource.com/article/18/12/protecting-world-oceans #OpenScience #OpenData

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) published its response to Europe's Plan S (pushing publishers on #OpenAccess). COAR supports Plan S generally but makes some good critical points on where it should be revised to improve it (mostly dealing with technical processes in repository systems).
https://www.coar-repositories.org/activities/advocacy-leadership/open-science-and-sustainable-development/

I walked past this cemetery and noticed their sign. I hadn't realized what a problem vigilante shrub planters can be.

@emsenn good points in that read. It's similar to the Netflix video culture machine--now pumping out films and series from "all over the world." They generally have formulaic Netflix or Hollywood style filming/scoring/acting no matter the country they purport to come from. Tiring.

Good points in this article about data and all that shapes its context to not actually be "raw" as implied. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-data-is-never-raw

I started reading the only kid's novel I've written, to my just turned-8-year-old son. I never finished editing it (like my others) though it's probably older than the kid. I figured it was past time to get some feedback. So far it's primed good questions, laughs, more enjoyment than I expected. The sticking point was the in medias res beginning—he really disliked that abrupt start. I wonder if most kids would feel that way? Maybe too unsettling when you're young not to get some background.

Library Planet is a great idea: a crowd-sourced #library travel book. They're publishing articles about interesting libraries to visit when you travel. https://libraryplanet.net

Although Elsevier hasn't come around yet, Wiley made an #OpenAccess publishing :oa: deal with Germany. Sounds interesting, the universities essentially pay for publishing services but all their authors' works will be available. It includes launching a new journal too. I haven't read through the details but this sounds really positive at first glance. https://www.hrk.de/press/press-releases/press-release/meldung/wiley-and-projekt-deal-partner-to-enhance-the-future-of-scholarly-research-and-publishing-in-germany/

@mplouffe yeah... though I immediately started wondering if I'm missing something from this announcement. I noticed a Twitter comment from someone that seemed to suggest this might be problematic with respect to Plan S.

#1Lib1Ref started on the 15th and goes until the 5th of February. It's a time when #librarians focus some attention on improving/augmenting #Wikipedia references. Info here http://1lib1ref.org – :wiki: #CitationNeeded

@platypus Hi, you might already have this but I thought that the DLF Forum code of conduct was very well considered. https://www.diglib.org/about/code-of-conduct/

I guess Google can't legitimately show a doodle today but take a look at https://qwant.com (data privacy & protection day). Their eyes shut as soon as you start typing. Cute. @Qwant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Privacy_Day

Wow, it's cold.

This evening I asked my kid (age 8) what he learned today (I hate questions set up like that, not sure why I said it). He indignantly responded: "Nothing. I don't learn things, I DO things." I'm still mulling whether that was a good response or not.

Confessing an irrational editing hang-up: When I replace a word or phrase that I've typed, I intentionally do not delete letters that will be used in the new word/phrase even though I could type more quickly if I did. I feel sorry for them every time I delete them. I feel sorry for their siblings that I've deleted. I usually write too much so I have to delete a lot. There, got that off my chest.

@hvincent same here!

@christianp wow now there's at least three of us.

#AI In the news today seems to be capable of producing writing in various styles that seem to be potentially indistinguishable from human writing. And the code authors are concerned about fully releasing it due to the potential for misuse. https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/

Canadians have opposed extending #copyright in other trade agreements. Yet the government perversely agreed to that in the new NAFTA. When/if CUSMA gets ratified, it means a 20 year dry spell before new work enters Canada's public domain. Good read on #FairDealing here: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/publish/scholarly-publishing/radical-access/fair-dealing-and-cusma

For #FairDealingWeek there is a petition to the Canadian government initiated by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to prevent a bad reworking of copyright. http://copyright.caut.ca/petition — please spread the word!

Preparing your thesis or another research paper? Find out how to use and benefit from fair dealing at Concorda Library's info page: https://library.concordia.ca/help/copyright/theses.php?guid=fairdealing … — It's #FairDealingWeek / #FairUseWeek

IFLA post about #librarians involved in #FairDealing around the world. https://blogs.ifla.org/lpa/2019/02/28/where-fair-use-and-fair-dealing-is-being-fought-for/

#FairDealingWeek #FairUseWeek #copyright

University of California couldn't get Elsevier to agree to universal #OpenAccess to UC research so they're not renewing their contracts with Elsevier. Fascinated to see How this plays out. (go bears) https://news.lib.berkeley.edu/elsevier-outcome

@NightRose Hah! That's excellent.

I came in to work this morning only to realize that actually, we had the day off. Which explains why no one else is here. I had so much I wanted to get done--I'm begrudging the day off.

At supper tonight, my wife was telling our son and I about a talk she'll be giving. She started to explain that she was going to say something about meta humour but the kid burst into laughter before she could finish her sentence.

(For the record, he didn't actually know what meta means, but I've heard comedy is all about timing.)

Many good points on #copyright reform supporting Canadian innovation in this article (especially on digital locks)! Also concerning and relevant (though not mentioned) there's the issue of the new Canadian change to timeframe for works entering the #PublicDomain due to US pressure in the new NAFTA.

https://www.cigionline.org/articles/how-copyright-reform-could-support-canadas-supercluster-investment

The New England Journal of Medicine seems to be spreading odious commentary on #OpenAccess issues. Good rebuttal from Lenny Teytelman https://www.protocols.io/groups/protocolsio-news/news/data-and-open-access-parasites-nejm-is-at-it-again

Also, although protocols.io is not about publishing articles, that platform is an excellent concept for sharing specific methods from your research work :OpenAccess: . I went to a talk from the CEO (author of the article) last year and was really impressed with the thinking that went into building the platform.

Machine learning is becoming more useful for journalists' work as explained in this article. It also cautions journalists to take care in how they employ it. https://gijn.org/2019/03/19/how-machine-learning-can-and-cant-help-journalists/

#MachineLearning #AI #journalism #InvestigativeReporting

Just heard about this Early Carribbean Digital Archive (https://ecda.northeastern.edu) which does a really interesting job at extracting non-colonial voices in archival materials from within the records of slave-owners and others. Great start to the CNI/ARL Digital Scholarship Planning workshop at Northeastern! https://dsg.neu.edu/cni_workshop - @dancohen

Sitting here in an American hotel I decided to see what was on TV, something I haven't done in years. 75% of ads flash by super fast & are incomprehensible. I mostly figure out the products/services but I have no clue what the messages convey. Advertising comprehension section in my brain must've atrophied. Every channel was filled w/ depravity: murder scene reenacting, ambulance missions, ghost "experts" lecturing & Alaska survivalist family solders circuits to scare bears. WHAT IS TV?

Really I am in shock abort the advertising. It's baffling how difficult it is to understand without, what I guess must be some serious ongoing background/cultural context. There's a whole tv advertising aesthetic language that requires initiation now.

I enjoyed reading these perspectives from Ted Underwood on interdisciplinarity when speaking of quantitative research, machine learning approaches, etc. with the humanities. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Dear-Humanists-Fear-Not-the/245987

We've been in the process of helping our community migrate their citations to Zotero for the past few months. I'm glad that when we did our evaluation of potential tools, we did not go with Elsevier's offer for Mendeley https://library.stanford.edu/blogs/stanford-libraries-blog/2019/04/stanford-mendeley-institutional-subscription-will-be-cancelled

@miren @galego_daluz that's all fair, the tool has many strong points and indeed it was my favourite, years ago. But they also did some annoying things with the interface (incorporating online job search features is a distraction to me) and i felt like it also became somewhat less Linux-friendly.

Wow, Julian Assange arrested. Many worrisome futures could unfold with respect to press freedoms. https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/551935/wikileaks-julian-assange-arrete-a-londres

In the old days of text mining... :-) "500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/10/extraordinary-500-year-old-library-catalogue-reveals-books-lost-to-time-libro-de-los-epitomes?CMP=share_btn_tw

I love this extramission theory of vision. There are so many possibilities for #EyeBeams. https://daily.jstor.org/the-extremely-real-science-behind-the-basilisks-lethal-gaze/

@LPS Neat comparison! Ancient Greeks were far ahead of their time—their eye-beams travelled far.

Tonight I found out what a transposed instrument is. My son began learning the saxophone a few months ago. I wanted to play along with him on my violin and was pulling my hair out as to why the notes weren't the same. I'm surprised I've lived this long without knowing about this.

Enjoyed these points on holography, AR, machine learning, and video games with respect to libraries but also (oddly, for the subject) got me thinking more about text-oriented interactions. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:23981/

Do you have some thoughts on what #OpenAccess :OpenAccess: to knowledge means? The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking your short films, visual art, poetry, short fiction, & creative essays for an anthology (also there's a prize). Deadline: 30 April 2019 https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/03/28/announcing-the-heart-of-knowledge-contest-help-us-illustrate-why-knowledge-matters/

Here's a good effort from the National Observer to expose disinformation campaigns (particularly leading up to the next Canadian federal election). Here's the link to donate & support it: https://www.nationalobserver.com/support and here is more information about what they're trying to do https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/17/opinion/disinformation-will-only-ramp-we-approach-federal-election

@pixel I just did a quick search and came up with a couple studies (though I'm sure there are more). One says people do it to manage impressions and form relationships. The other identifies "motives of socializing and information seeking". They're both behind paywalls but I found links from 1 of the author's personal sites and the other's institutional site to freely accessible versions. http://www.jenniferihm.com/uploads/5/0/2/7/50277035/published_nms.pdf and https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8Y9xqRdmrRp2JINziVPm/full

This new poem from Anna Swanson in Maisonneuve magazine was very satisfying with my second morning coffee on the second real day of sunlight this year. https://maisonneuve.org/article/2018/06/8/sometimes-whole-day/

I had a good day hearing about great research that involved Foucault, arcade phantasmagoria, indigenous voices, phenomenography, online instruction, love/breakup letters, team research services, systematic reviews, artist alter-egos & more at the 17th Annual Concordia Library Research Forum #CULibraryForum – I've attended a few years but this was the first where I helped plan it. Fun, and happy it's complete (except I need to put up the presentations) https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/

@Holly This is a great idea! A couple of my colleagues and I were just starting to plan some sort of Zotero migration workshops but hadn't thought about doing it as an online thing. I'd be game to help support something like that.

Classement mondial de la liberté de la presse 2019 : la mécanique de la peur https://rsf.org/fr/classement-mondial-de-la-liberte-de-la-presse-2019-la-mecanique-de-la-peur #WorldPressFreedomDay #PressFreedom #JourneeDeLaLiberteDeLaPresse @LibertedelaPresse

UNESCO's page about #WorldPressFreedomDay -- Freedome of the press and of expression are of the utmost importance to so much https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldpressfreedomday #PressFreedom

A brief explainer of some economic models for #OpenAccess publishing from SPARC. https://sparcopen.org/our-work/alternative-publishing-models/

There are a lot of excellent tips and well-thought-out explanations in this article on trans-inclusive web design, information architecture, etc. https://alistapart.com/article/trans-inclusive-design/

Have you seen Mozilla's new Internet Health Report for 2019? I just started reading it. I like how it is organized around assessment themes, which include privacy & security, openness, digital inclusion, web literacy, and decentralization. https://internethealthreport.org/2019/

My colleagues at the Concordia Press launched their first catalogue today. In 2019 there will be a collection of writings by Ken Lum and Richard Foltz's "Les religions de la Route de la soie," translated by Benoit Léger. https://www.concordia.ca/press/catalogue.html – Here's a to a new university press becoming more concrete, they've been hard at work the last couple years to get to this point.

Talking about the ice in Greenland, Robert Macfarlane not only explains how it records all manner of things for millennia but does it in a sincerely beautiful style. Read this "The Blue of Time" excerpt from his book, Underland about deep time. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-blue-of-time/

Just realized this intro isn't entirely correct anymore–moved from engineering. Now I'm a Digital Scholarship Librarian and a subject librarian for Communication Studies and Journalism.

You can read Arundhati Roy's Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/13/arundhati-roy-literature-shelter-pen-america

It's an abridged version but still, she covers a lot. Indian politics to forms of writing that don't fit nicely into popular categories, to characters in her books, and the way things may play out against those most hurt by our climate catastrophe.

Need help negotiating #OpenAccess publishing rights (or simply retaining your authorial rights) for your article? CARL just released an update of its Canadian Author Addendum to Publication Agreement along with two guides on using it. http://www.carl-abrc.ca/news/updated-canadian-author-addendum-and-author-rights-guide/ :OpenAccess:

Voynich manuscript news always seems exciting at first... then we're deflated. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/no-someone-hasnt-cracked-the-code-of-the-mysterious-voynich-manuscript/

The fruiterie down the block started carrying these grapes advertised as "cotton candy" grapes. I thought, marketing, but tried them & wow! They're amazing! Totally uncanny that their flavour isn't artificial. Seems people put a lot of effort into making it happen though. hm does that make it artificial in a way? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Candy_grapes

42 countries (including Canada) agreed to a set of principles & public policy recommendations adopted by the OECD on AI and its development. These address things like safety, transparency, human rights, sustainability, etc. https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0449 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

@jaranta yeah... maybe time to rethink what constitutes artificial. Nonetheless, they're delicious. :-)

While Wikipedia works to open up knowledge to everyone, commercial enterprise, The North Face, works to manipulate it against its policies, defacing the public site, in the name of... advertising? Bad corporate social responsibility. https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/05/29/lets-talk-about-the-north-face-defacing-wikipedia/

Glad to read these many positive recommendations on copyright reform made by the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology. They seem to favour more reasonable freedoms & exceptions. Here's a post from the Creative Commons blog about it (with a link to the report) https://creativecommons.org/2019/06/06/new-canadian-report-offers-balanced-recommendations-for-progressive-copyright-reform/

Someone / people(?) threatened to release a bunch of Radiohead minidiscs from the mid-late 90s. Instead of paying the ransom, Radiohead put the work on Bandcamp with proceeds going to benefit Extinction Rebellion — what an excellent response! Here's the link https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/

Nice little guide to spotting "fake news" err, that is to say, it's to help people consider information presented online, through a critical eye. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fake-news-misinformation-online-1.5196865?cmp=rss #FakeNews #FakeNewsMedia #MediaLiteracy #InformationLiteracy

Open-mindedness... "How Intellectual Humility Can Make Us More Curious, Reflective & Able to Learn More: Read the Findings of a New Study" http://www.openculture.com/2019/07/how-intellectual-humility-can-make-us-more-curious-reflective-able-to-learn-more.html

Recent data (BP's Statistical Review of World Energy) show humans burn more and more fossil fuels. This article with charts based on the BP data explains that we've increased 4 times the amount of fossil fuels we burn & renewable alternatives way behind. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/07/31/opinion/fossil-fuel-burning-leaps-new-record-crushing-clean-energy-and-climate-efforts

Research on Canadian news-getting habits sheds some light on what happens with different groups becoming more or less informed vs. uninformed vs. misinformed. I can't help but see this as more reason to focus on education for critical thinking. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/08/07/news/canadians-media-consumption-habits-lead-misinformation-study-finds

Hold the opinions, sit, and care for your thoughts. Matthew Beard writes about how we engage with media, about our fast trading of opinions, and we ought to sit with things more. I appreciate this thinking. https://ethics.org.au/opinion-economy/

Let's hear it for footnotes! Washington Post article argues for more footnotes, especially in non-academic work to help battle disinformation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/29/could-footnotes-be-key-winning-disinformation-wars/

Crowd-sourced publishing... nice post from the Library and Archives Canada blog discussing an example https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/09/05/a-novel-with-soul-or-at-least-half/

A prof wanted his class to build a collaborative annotated bibliography on the semiotics of nuclear waste. I had the class use Zotero's group functionality within the context of learning search strategies, being critical of sources, etc. and then to actually create the bibliographies... and it worked really nicely! It seems like so often, technology has glitches and difficulties, which get in the way, so it's refreshing when it just supports exactly what you want people to get from it.

@meena nice idea. I'll see how the prof feels. It's a work in progress for his class so he might want to let it continue a bit first.

@dbs almost 3 hours, which was just right.

@dbs yes, 1 hour would be pretty tough to cover what you need. Also, good point on the connector... when I've done workshops with Zotero where the browser setup wasn't done, it's surprisingly time-consuming to get everyone on the same page.

Waiting at a carwash the other day, my son (8) read the choices.
Son: Why does it say hashtag 1, hashtag 2, hashtag 3..."
Me: That only started to mean hashtag in recent years, usually it means number.
Son (now indignant): Well then how did they used to say hashtag?

Though always well-considered, Thunberg’s recent speech powerfully conveys the urgency in which we all (every person and government) needs to act.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KxE4Kv9A8

Transcript in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/23/world-leaders-generation-climate-breakdown-greta-thunberg

If you're in a teaching role (or other academic sort of position) beware of M-Journal citations. It's a fake article generator based on Wikipedia content. It's designed to give a realistic appearance. The link is: https://m-journal.org and there is an article about it here https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/wikipedia-fake-academic-journal

This was important & inspiring... walked with family and friends in Montreal. Appreciated hearing Greta Thunberg's words encouraging so many people at the end #MarchePourLeClimat #ClimateStrike #klimatstrejk #FridaysForFuture #cdnpoli

Half a million people marched in our city!

@esty That's great, everyone that goes out helps, to spread the ideas and show that people want change.

@esty Ah, I see your point.

There's a great deal of information here about the state of #OpenAccess throughout Africa. https://blog.doaj.org/2019/10/11/guest-post-overview-of-the-african-open-access-landscape-with-a-focus-on-scholarly-publishing/

Heading to Florida in a couple days to present at the 2019 #DLFforum (Digital Library Federation). I attended for the first time last year and was impressed by how well organized it was and the great variety of interesting topics. One of my colleagues and I have a brief talk based on our digital scholarship needs gathering work at Concordia.

@platypus Cool, I will keep my eyes open!

Lisa Lamont's digitization work in www.detaineeallies.org project really stands out among the wonderful talks at #DLFforum 2019 #t2e. Letters from imprisoned migrants will prove important for things that we haven't even imagined. Complexity of the ethical issues to grapple with is immense. Repercussions? Identification via unique travel routes? What does repetition among routes tell us? Letters made public are good or will there be repercussions in the migrants' home? For-profit prisons? Ahh!

Next week the Concordia University Library has a great line-up of events for #OpenAccessWeek. I'm offering a session on Using and Sharing #OpenAccess Content with #CreativeCommons Licenses. Most of our events are open to everyone (in Montreal): https://library.concordia.ca/research/open-access/open-access-week.php spread the word and join us!

For International #OpenAccessWeek Project Muse has put up a curated bibliography of #OpenAccess books and journals relevant to the theme of equity in #OA :OpenAccess: https://about.muse.jhu.edu/muse/open-access-week-2019/

Levitated the evening on a Godspeed You! Black Emperor show. I could've been lost in there for weeks, except outside the hall things are as they were.

New tab in Firefox browser this morning had this little message at the bottom: "Blink182 is one of the most common passwords that has been hacked. If that's your password, you now have TWO reasons to change it." I think that's reason enough to use Firefox.

@bgcarlisle ahh! I never worried about that before.

@bgcarlisle so thoughtful!

Brought my son and several of his friends to our cabin for the weekend—9th birthday. Phrase "the children" inextricably linked with Joy Williams' character(s?) in her brilliant novel "The Changeling" went through my mind repeatedly. Regardless, great time!

Call for Proposals! Concordia #Library’s 18th Annual Research Forum (April 17, 2020), presentations or posters on research or a case study in any area of #LIS, in English or French, due Jan 30, 2020 at 11am: https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/ #Librarians #Bibliotheques #Bibliothécaires

Counteracting misuse of the WWW and related information, The #WebFoundation has launched the Contract for the Web (https://contractfortheweb.org). Tim Berners Lee explains the motivation in this op-ed https://webfoundation.org/2019/12/i-invented-the-world-wide-web-heres-how-we-can-fix-it/ -- great initiative to encourage improvement.

Past midnight, a morpheme slithers from my head. I haven't found where it comes from nor where it goes. Maybe there are many. It floats away.

Over the holidays, I read Olga Tokarczuk's book, Flights. I loved how it played with time, historicity, through the scopes and structures of its characters. Anyway, that's just a bit to encourage people to check it out.

@Cyborgneticz Tough question. I don't know that a good comparison comes to mind. For some reason, the first thing I thought of was David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas in terms of structural technique (not subject matter or style) but more fragmented, insightful links, and better written. But that's really not a good comparison. Then I thought of William Carlos Williams' Patterson... which I can't fully articulate why but it may be through some spirit of a thematic comparison--rather different though.

Explanation of where two new Canadian government considerations unfold for the future communications, digital culture, privacy rights, etc.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2020/feds-faced-with-two-visions-for-future-of-communications/

One of the coolest #library displays I've seen: with my son at the #Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). I walked right past but at my son's eye-level, he spotted it. Just in the stacks, a little projector hides behind some cut-out books and projects ghosts onto this display, which appear to glow.

Walking with my son today, he was excited about his friend coming over after school tomorrow.
Kid: Can me and [friend] dig in the basement tomorrow?
Me: Why?
Kid: So we can find bones.

@lrhodes it really is about the timing, isn't it?

It's #FairDealingWeek 2020 (24 - 28 February). Fair dealing copyright exception enables people to use copyrighted works for certain purposes (like research or educational use) w/o requiring special permission from the copyright holder. Find out more https://fair-dealing.ca -- #FairDealing

This week of 23 Feb is also #FreedomToRead Week, which is intended to promote #FreedomOfExpression find out more here: https://www.freedomtoread.ca/freedom-to-read-week
#FTRWeek

Amateur des efforts de Paul Otlet ? peut-être la visioconférence et lnternet? en 1934 https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/les-origines-de-l-internet-en-europe/QQ-RRh0A?hl=fr

Pleasant

There is a large, open dataset of #COVID19 research made available by the Allen Institute for AI. Here's the link for background info on the data and how to get it: https://pages.semanticscholar.org/coronavirus-research (CORD-19)

Students (or anyone), in a situation where you need to do more deep reading on a screen right now than normal... it might be a struggle. This Reddit thread has some good tips to help: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/frac5o/how_do_you_manage_to_read_deeply_from_a_screen/

Here is a nice list of tools that are free (libre) alternatives to conferencing/communcating applications like Zoom
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/better-than-zoom-try-these-free-software-tools-for-staying-in-touch

@bgcarlisle see now I'm going to domain squat that.

@bgcarlisle hang on while I setup the link to the kickstarter campaign.

There are 14 riddles/clues (seedlings) on this LibraryThing Seedling Hunt page. Take a look and try to search the site to find what they correspond to. https://librarything.com/hunt.php?y=2020 -- just for fun.

After the kid told me today that he and our dog live on different servers, he asked if I knew what there was before social media. No... and he replies that it was "social medieval." The pandemic has either resulted in far too much screen time or just the right amount.

I see Nick Cave is auctioning his socks to raise money for charity. I also read that Grimes is auctioning her soul. I wonder which one will fetch the highest bid? https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/06/nick-cave-socks-charity-auction/

Statement from the Concordia Library (where I work) condemning anti-Black racism. It also includes a few links to relevant resources. https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#guid=https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#i09_Jun_2020_12:43:12_EST #BlackLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatterMontreal

Listen, let's make less noise and allow for the natural ambient sounds of our world https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/07/12/news/listening-silence-why-we-must-protect-worlds-quiet-places

This starfish travelled to Montréal, fulfilling its life's greatest dream. It expired moments before being able to cross the fence and ride the red slide. A moment of silence.

Definition of a museum? I hadn't been following this issue so this article surprised me, it's not very in-depth but it does raise interesting complex points. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/what-is-a-museum.html

Waiting to cross the street. I love this sign...

JSTOR summing up library anxiety. I enjoyed this but its target audience is more-likely non-librarians. https://daily.jstor.org/do-you-suffer-from-library-anxiety/

Stick with it. Often "...distraction is your brain ducking challenging feelings such as boredom, loneliness, insecurity, fatigue and uncertainty. These are the internal triggers – the root causes – that prompt you to find the comfort of distraction" https://psyche.co/guides/to-become-indistractable-recognise-that-it-starts-within-you

Thumbing through pages to look up something in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, first sentence under "principle of contradiction" caught my eye: "also called principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a statement and its negation cannot both be true." love that

@bgcarlisle @platypus Ask if there is a discount on the APC.

Concordia students, come to my GradPro Skills workshop to learn about #CreativeCommons licences and how they enable #OpenAccess — https://www.concordia.ca/students/gradproskills/workshops/details.html?subject_area=GPLL&catalog_number=246 — Find out more about #OpenAccess here http://www.openaccessweek.org

It's #OAweek read about how Québec university libraries espouse open & free access to knowledge. https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#guid=https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#i19_Oct_2020_10:09:00_EDT — #OpenAccess

The mail just delivered my copy of Richard Ovenden's new "Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack" which I'm looking forward to. Nice this arrived during #OAWeek as #OpenAccess helps somewhat prevent the erasure/destruction of knowledge. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/10/burning-the-books-by-richard-ovenden-review-knowledge-under-attack

This positive announcement on a new collaboration to preserve fully #OpenAccess journals is important (and on World Day of Digital Preservation #WDPD20). The DOAJ, the CLOCKSS Archive, Internet Archive, Keepers Registry/ISSN International Centre and Public Knowledge Project (PKP) have a new initiative for archiving these #OA journals. Info here: https://blog.doaj.org/2020/11/05/doaj-to-lead-a-collaboration-to-improve-the-preservation-of-open-access-journals/

"Reparative Aesthetics: The Museum’s Incarceration of Indigenous Life" is an online talk this afternoon (2 - 4pm EST) with Dylan Robinson: thá:ytset: shxwelí li te shxwelítemelh xíts'etáwtxw. It looks really interesting! Register for free here:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/dylan-robinson-thaytset-shxweli-li-te-shxwelitemelh-xitsetawtxw-tickets-126454923079

Will oligopolistic academic publishers (SNSI) get to plant surveillance software in libraries? https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/spyware-in-libraries/ No, libraries are not passive recipients of such tech. Librarians wouldn't allow such a thing because it'd go contrary to our professional code(s) of ethics. Mehta's article is good but only mentioned "digital rights advocates and scientists." Since it concerned libraries, I felt there should be a librarian's perspective so I just blogged a bit here https://www.phydeau.org/chroknowlogy/information-ethics/2020/publishers-proposing-surveillance-tech-on-libraries/

This new SFDORA repository of case studies on how institutions have made changes is helpful https://sfdora.org/dora-case-studies/ Assessment criteria for promotion form an ongoing blockage to fixing publishing practices (e.g. moving toward innovative #OA models)

This shows some difficulties journalism is facing. Author says "To protect Canadians from disinformation, local news outlets need support" (I'd also say augment education in critical thinking & media awareness skills but that'd be another article) https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/10/opinion/canadians-will-pay-price-if-local-journalism-doesnt-get-lifeline

You should read this really nice article. It helps to figure out ways for better surviving the ongoing trudge of this pandemic https://theconversation.com/try-a-little-playfulness-if-your-familys-pandemic-routine-needs-a-reset-150893

Interesting article with much more to say than its title (Librarians vs. QAnon) suggests. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2021/02/how-librarians-can-fight-qanon/618047/ Many thoughts related to info literacy E.g. "We are experiencing a moment that is exposing a schism between two groups: those who have faith that there is a way to arrive at truth using epistemological practices that originated during the Enlightenment, and those who believe that events and experiences are portents to be interpreted in ways that align with their personal values."

@bgcarlisle in addition to this, I've never understood the trend that resulted in removing the up/down buttons from scrollbars. Those were especially useful when needing to scroll in a tiny window where using the mouse, trackball, touchpad, whatever has an oversized impact. I hate it, so hard to get the movements fine enough to show me what I want... especially if using a device without some kind of physical scroll wheel.

The new University of California transformative agreement with Elsevier has some interesting details. It certainly seems like a big change to increase #openaccess https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relationships/elsevier-oa-agreement/

I cannot applaud the title of this article enough. It's like it's been on repeat in my head for over a decade whenever I try to walk anywhere. "People Who Text While Walking Actually Do Ruin Everything" https://www.wired.com/story/people-who-text-while-walking-actually-do-ruin-everything/

@robertwgehl these new Zotero features are excellent and you have a nice post. I'm looking forward to Zotero 6. One thing for anyone trying out this beta (which I learned when I tried it recently) is that it changes some things in the Zotero database that are not backwards compatible. There is a way to revert but... still good to be cautious.

Super interested to read this major new "...analysis and overview of collaborative, community-driven open access journals and platforms" #OA #openaccess sponsored by colation S. This article includes links to the reports (findings & recommendations) as well as the datasets and bibliographic info https://oaspa.org/major-oa-diamond-journals-study-completed-report-emphasizes-diversity-and-sustainable-pathways-for-diamond-open-access/

Good joint response to latest Canadian government copyright consultation from CARL-ABRC & CFLA-FCAB. Much to like in its recommendations & that it sheds light on more than just the short-sighted term extension imposed by CUSMA (NAFTA) https://www.carl-abrc.ca/news/joint-response-to-consultation-on-copyright-term-extension/

Take a look at our lineup for the 19th annual Concordia #Library Research Forum (April 27 & 28). Registration is still open. It's a free, online event this year. Here is the link to the schedule and registration: https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/index.php #CULibraryForum

@pixouls Ah, yes we just haven't put them up yet. We'll have the posters accessible next week so that people can view them before the conference.

@be this is a very refreshing approach to a lot of the problems with free and open source software paradigms!

@elizabeengland Framadate works well. It's hosted and free on free and open source software. Similar to Doodle but with a few more options. https://framadate.org/

19th of April is #BicycleDay - learn more about Dr. Albert Hofmann and LSD https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/swiss-chemist-albert-hofmann-discovers-lsd

@pixouls Hi there, just to let you know the posters are available to access in PDF form now. https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/index.php

About to get started at the Concordia Library Annual Research Forum https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/ #CULibraryForum. Keynote this year from Raegan Swanson, the Executive Director of The ArQuives https://arquives.ca/ Canada's LGBTQ2+ archives

Swanson mentioned that since its community started it in the early 70s, ArQuives is now among the largest LGBTQ2+ archives in the world. #culibraryforum

Interesting point on archivists needing to ask questions about their organization's history... how that led to the materials they have. Getting to a better understanding how to improve the diversity of what's in the archives. #CULibraryForum

Next in the #CULibraryForum (at 2:30) Lynne Bowker will be presenting on machine translation literacy.

Now learning about Canadian Federal Government Depository Publications at CARL Libraries with Michelle Lake, Graeme Campbell, and Catherine McGoveran #CULibraryForum

Now we get to hear from Jeanette Hatherill about her research on deceptive publishers and scams #culibraryforum

About to start our 2nd & final day of the annual Concordia University Library Research Forum #CULibraryForum with Emily Kopley's research into the statistics of anonymous publications. https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/index.php

Monique Flaccavento is telling us about hiring practices in academic libraries with respect to improving diversity now in the #culibraryforum

All the #CULibraryForum posters are available to download here: https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/index.php and we can chat with their presenters now.

Next, looking forward to Camille-Hélène St-Aubin's research on Jeanne-Marguerite Saint-Pierre et la place des femmes dans le développement des bibliothèques au Québec #CULibraryForum

Wrapping up our #CULibraryForum, so many great speakers, many of which we've recorded and I hope will be availble in the near future. Our last speakers are Nadine Anderson & Raya Samet who are discussing Designing Student Research Opportunities Across Differences

There is a "rally on wheels" this morning to protest
the decimation of Laurentian University https://www.scholarstrikecanada.ca/laurentian-university - Also sign a petition (or donate to spread the word) here https://www.change.org/p/those-responsible-for-the-ccaa-process-at-laurentian-laurentian-solidarity-call-to-action-appel-à-l-action-de-solidarité-de-la-laurentienne
#IWillDefendPublicEducation #JeDéfendslÉducationPublique

The Zotero beta (thus upcoming versions) makes it possible to import your data from the online Mendeley. This is important if you want to switch but struggle getting out of Mendeley's database encryption lock-in. Here's the info: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/89393/available-for-beta-testing-online-mendeley-importer

@misty That people think it makes sense to put millions into polluting the environment in order to create imaginary stuff that only has value due to a temporary mass hysteria... Beyond asinine!

Provincial and federal governments must step up and invest in post-secondary education so we can stop the corporatization of universities. #weloveOCADUlibrarians - https://utfa.medium.com/ocadus-decision-to-terminate-four-librarians-reflects-a-troubling-trend-in-the-post-secondary-4fdf11043cf1

@mpjgregoire It is not something I've looked into deeply, sorry I don't have a recommendation for you. Issues I'm aware of are mostly of personal experience (from people I know), which I can't really share. We have public funding but of course that's only a part of where funds come from. CAUT has a few articles that include links to some info (may not fully answer your question though) https://www.caut.ca/search/university%20funding

This is interesting, first in North America, the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) is joining cOAlition S, adopting Plan S so that publications from the research they fund immediately become open access #oa - https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-expands-its-global-footprint-as-the-quebec-research-funds-adopt-plan-s/

This is a very worthy effort, I think, on raising awareness, developing new responsibility toward environmental concerns with respect to doing digital humanities work. See/collaborate on the manifesto fo the Digital Humanities and the Climate Crisis : https://dhc-barnard.github.io/envdh/

Today is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (Sep. 28) #AccessToInfoDay #RightToKnow — Important for free expression, free press, being well-informed citizens, improving our institutions/accountability, improving our societies, & more. https://www.un.org/en/observances/information-access-day

I know I'm not supposed to but I always loved Lynch's Dune. This article nails so many reasons why. "Characters drift in and out, and their identities and relationships are unclear. A bear-sized scrotal mutant can move spaceships with drug-induced mind-magic... The pacing is leisurely, almost hypnotic. You're here for the wild sights... conversations so formal they border on liturgical. Just sit back and let them wash over you." https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/before-the-new-version-lets-revisit-1984s-dune-the-greatest-movie-ever-made/

I'd like to hear more playlists created this way. :-) Fascinating research (using a large corpus of music from Spotify) on music that gives people the "chills." I was struck with the sophisticated/sad intense/happy characteristics. The full article is, fortunately, open access #OA. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20416695211024680

Most of the playlist is accessible here https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0gUDCB11A5jL1CyLM9h1fK which came from this article about the research https://qz.com/2071652/a-spotify-playlist-with-715-songs-known-to-give-people-chills/ -- I guess Spotify's API rules didn't permit the researchers to publish the entire list of music used though they provided their R script to use.

Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle's article in Time magazine calling out the problems with publishers holding libraries hostage over control of electronic resources. I'm glad to see this issue getting popular press https://time.com/6108581/internet-archive-future-books/

Wow! The General Index to over 107 million science articles is available in its 32 terabytes of glory. That's quite something in the midst of #OAweek #OpenAccess — Here's a video from Carl Malamud (founder of public.resource.org) talking about it (also links to it) https://archive.org/details/GeneralIndex

@bgcarlisle keep up the good fight

Uh-oh. Ask Delphi:
Is artificial intelligence good?
Delphi speculates:
“It's expected”
https://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+artificial+intelligence+good%3F

On the other hand, I've learned from Ask Delphi that it's pretty much always wrong to eat a neighbour but if they give me just a little piece of their ear, it's merely disgusting. I'm vegetarian so won't have this dilemma. Also, okay to hug a tree if it's sad.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/02/delphi-online-ai-bot-philosophy

The spice must flow. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/maple-syrup-strategic-reserve-1.6268352

International Holocaust Remembrance Day (https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/holocaustremembranceday)... explore some of these portraits in the virtual exhibition https://museeholocauste.ca/en/virtual-exhibitions/ of Montreal's Musée Holocaust
— #HolocaustRemembranceDay

Concordia Library's Researcher-in-Residence call for applicants is now open! We have a range of areas that we're seeking proposals from. Researchers and practitioners from library and information studies, as well as other disciplines are welcome to apply: https://library.concordia.ca/about/researcher-in-residence/apply.php --> Deadline to apply is 25 March 2022

#ResearchResident #Library #bibliothèque

It's been 20 years of #OA since the Budapest Open Access Statement. There are 4 new recommendations, which I think are important. You can read about them here: https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/

The new version of Zotero was released! Among other things, it's got some very nice new note functionality (markdown support included!) and built-in PDF reader/ annotating features. https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-6/

I think I missed posting an #introduction when I signed up here previously so... I'm a #librarian at Concordia University in Montreal. I like thinking about intellectual liberty (often in a digital context), the ethical care of information, knowledge, culture, and what we do for societies over a very long time.

Outside of my professional life, I write (novels/poems), invented a game, etc. Errant hallway wanderer.

As I was showing some people what markdown is today, I remembered that just a few years ago I felt like it was a useless thing and that I might as well just use HTML. I'm not sure what shifted in my head there but now I just want everything in markdown.

Bear is suspected of being polar.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/polar-bear-gaspe-1.6437187?cmp=rss

@Jeff I think this is the second article I've noticed. Might be coincidence but then again, with climate change, etc.

@bgcarlisle the first time I read that, I didn't hear the pause after "was not," but instead understood it as "was not convincing us" and I thought whoah that's a complex double negative, what a lazy trick, that Devil.

I know very little about nuclear energy. What I really would like to understand is why, when new nuclear energy is proposed (like the small modular reactors in Canada) why do they always seem to focus on uranium? In my very very superficial understanding it seems like thorium waste becomes safer much more quickly than uranium, poses fewer other problems, and is more plentiful. That it doesn't seem to be talked about in popular news on the subject makes me think, am I missing something?

@stevefoerster @Palanix -- I have a hard time seeing a good justification for creating radioactive waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years.

@bgcarlisle that was a contributing factor that got me to switch to Manjaro. I was surprised to find that using its AUR approach seems easier/more efficient to me than having snaps and apt repositories. Manjaro's customizations in themes, etc. aren't to my taste (I removed those to get a plain system) but otherwise I've been satisfied with it as an Ubuntu alternative.

@socrates although I've been on here for a relatively long time, I'm somehow not familiar with what moderation involves or new sign-ups require. Is it something that people can collaborate on/that you'd want others to help with? I ask because it seems like using this becomes more valuable to each person as more connections join. If there are a bunch of new people, they might be encouraging others they know to sign-up (though I guess that could also happen through other instances).

This is the thermostat in my office. I am the only person that uses the office but there's a locked plastic box around the thermostat so that I will not adjust it. To change the temperature, I put in a request to our facilities people and in a few days they send a person to come unlock it and push the button to adjust the temperature for me. They re-lock it before leaving.

Sometimes, like in today's heat, I look at it with a yearning to press a button. Yet, it's just out of reach. Perhaps I should merely be thankful that I can rely on a service where someone will push that button my behalf.

@mplouffe So tempting. I tried to reach inside with a letter opener but wasn't successful. It's got a clever inner liner that overlaps the opening to prevent such a thing. 🙂

@LaCrecerelle not exactly hacker, but maybe hacker-adjacent-esque (VR game?) Existenz from David Cronenberg.

@LaCrecerelle I guess I made me think of reality hacking.

@TomLarrow I've had the exact same experience!

Enjoyable read and very broad overview on aspects of the mycorrhizal network https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/05/06/What-Do-You-Say-To-Thinking-Forest/

Bread is among my favourite things. A long time ago, traveling through Transylvania, I remember discovering this treat of coiled bread (chimney cake). It was really exciting when this shop opened a few blocks from me in Montreal (rue Rachel) specialising in these.

@scully yes exactly!

Concordia Library's 20th annual #Library Research Forum, which recently concluded, now has the presentations available online from our site: https://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/past.php?guid=2022 (video recordings and slides)

The plenary session was a conversation on racial capitalism and knowledge production in LIS.

I enjoyed a session involving some Rwandan history from archival work with Lisa Ndejuru and Kristen Young ("Waking our Stories")

@robertwgehl there should be a word for that experience.

Open call for obsolete sounds! This project is really fascinating. They're requesting recordings of sounds from our environment, old tech, etc. that are no longer commonplace and then those will be reimagined by sound artists "to draw attention to the world’s disappearing soundscapes." https://citiesandmemory.com/2022/05/open-call-your-field-recordings-of-obsolete-sounds-wanted/

@samwilson Good point! It does seem like it would be a good CC licence use case particularly with the way they have the remix part of the project working. I wonder why they have not gone that path. Thinking of asking them since I was considering participating. If I do, I'll post the response.

Listening to a great talk right now from Malvika Sharan of the Turing Way Project @turingway at the Open Science @ Concordia conference #OSConcordia. Malvika is talking about shared spaces creating shared experiences in the context of open science. #OpenScience #OpenAccess :OpenAccess:

@bgcarlisle doing something similar but fortunately where we are nobody would contest it.

Enjoyed seeing these displays as I walked into our library this morning. #fungi #mushrooms

Visiting family in California. I brought the kid to Haight Street, SF & wow it changed. Surprised & intrigued at the odd form of gentrification it underwent. Still a few headshops and 2ndhand clothing stores but my memory as a teen/early 20s, 25-30 years ago is hard to reconcile.

@juliana and often also those who *are* college educated. :-)

Today is the 95th birthday of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The organization facilities international collaboration. https://www.ifla.org/news/95-years-strong-an-ifla-anniversary/

It's #OpenAccessWeek2022 (themed for climate justice) :OpenAccess: & a few of us at Concordia's Library wanted to make something fun to show the value that #OpenAccess research can have in everyone's life, so we made Seer, an interactive digital experience. It's designed for our large visualization studio but we also have a more basic web version. Info here (though more will be added): https://github.com/lib-development-concordiaU/Seer try here: https://library.concordia.ca/apps/seer/

Here's some background on a project my colleagues and I made for #OpenAccessWeek2022 -- we wanted to help people see that sources of #OpenAccess research can answer all kinds of questions (in this case, related to the climate crisis). https://chroknowlogy.ca/intellectual-liberty/2022/talk-broad-value-open-access/

@thunderbird Owl to connect with Exchange (forced by workplace requirement). It'd be great for Exchange mail, calendar, contacts and MFA to be integrated.

@bgcarlisle ah, hate when that happens. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to go on record with the claim that a good Spartan apple is better than a Honeycrisp.

@actualham One tool that helps you identify instances to use is https://instances.social/ however, it has lot listed and can be a bit unwieldy to search through. Also, it includes many sites that you might not want to spend time with. However, it can be useful to get a sense of what is out there. You might also consider sites like glammr.us, fediscience.org, idf.social, and scicomm.xyz, which are scholarly-related but I don't know what their policies are so can't say if it's what you're seeking.

My son requested his toast, raw, for breakfast this morning.