March 22, 2010
Category: best science books 2009 • science books
For the last little while I've been compiling lists from various media sources giving their choices for the best books of 2009. Some of the lists have been from general media sources, in which case I've just extracted the science-related books. From science publications, I've included most or all of the mentioned titles.
What I'm doing in this post is collating all the books I've mentioned in all those lists and compiling a sort of master list of all the books mentioned three or more times. There were twelve of them and they are listed below.
Some notes/caveats:
- These aren't in any way the "best" books of 2009, only the most popular books on year's best lists. For the most part, all the books mentioned wil likely be very good since they've attracted the most media "best" mentions. But, they are also almost certainly the books that had the biggest promotional budgets and sent out the most review copies.
- There are probably one or two straggler "best of" lists that haven't come out yet. Library Journal, for example, does a list around the March time frame. (last year's) That's fine -- I just don't feel like waiting. I may update this list later on if it seems appropriate.
- Similarly, there may be lists that were published that I just missed.
- Finally, in some of the longer mainstreams lists that I did see, I can't guarantee I consistently pulled in the same "edge cases" in to my science-y lists. There were 25 books mentioned twice so one or two of those might have squeaked onto this list.
- British, American and Canadian publication dates can mean that a 2008 British & Canadian book is a 2009 American book and vice versa. It happens. For example, I have the British paperback edition of Age of Wonder already.
- There were 178 different books mentioned among the various lists. If you want to see my spreadsheet, just let me know and I'll email it to you. If I get more than one or two requests, I'll probably just load it into Google Docs.
Enjoy -- and good reading!
Here's the list, in descending order of mentions.
Any comments? First of all, there's not a whole lot of actual science among the books -- more edge cases or about historical or socail aspects of science. That's probably more a function of the number of pure science sources I found versus the mainstream ones. Second, not a whole lot of women on the list, unfortunately. Third,
Logicomix is third, which is pretty cool.
Update 2010.03.22: Updated the list with books from Library Journal Best of 2009 Sci-Tech Books. The standings did shift a little, for example with the Dirac book going into second place all by itself. Also, four books were added to the list with 3 mentions: Catching Fire, Healing of America, Reading the Brain and Cold. There are also now 198 separate books mentioned among all the lists.
Posted by John Dupuis at 4:17 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 19, 2010
Category: My Job in 10 Years Book • friday fun
John Scalzi's latest AMC column Why Hollywood Always, Always Gets the Future Wrong is, as usual, very smart and right on target.
And pretty funny too.
Everybody gets the future wrong. It's not just Hollywood or science fiction writers. When it comes to the future, no one knows anything. At the close of the 19th century, British physicist Lord Kelvin declared heavier-than-air flight an impossibility (despite the existence of, you know, birds) and that radio was just a fad. In the '70s, the president of Digital Equipment Corp. voiced doubts that anyone would ever need a personal computer. In 1995, scientist Cliff Stoll wrote in his book Silicon Snake Oil that the Internet wouldn't really take off, in part because it could never replace newspapers or shopping malls.
Here's to getting the future wrong!
Posted by John Dupuis at 10:14 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 18, 2010
Category: academia • blogging • culture of science • escience • faculty liaison • open access • scholarly publishing • social media
I received an email a couple of weeks ago from Daniel Cromer of the Hrenya Research Group located in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His group was interested in expanding their online presence and had stumbled up the presentation I'd given a couple of years ago on Academic Blogging: Promoting your Research on the Web. He asked me if I could explore those same ideas in a short presentation to the group.
That was Monday. Sadly, I wasn't able to actually go to Colorado for the presentation -- it was all online using the GoToMeeting software. I spoke and took questions for about an hour in a session that was lively and hopefully well-received. It was a bit odd to present without having any of the visual cues from the audience that are so helpful to the speaker. Fortunately, the audience was very engaged and we had a great discussion.
The actually presentation was based on the Academic Blogging: Promoting your Research on the Web presentation but also added in some new stuff as well as some content from the Web 2.0 Community Building Strategies: The World of Science 2.0 presentation I did from last year.
While the focus was still blogging and outreach, I did end up talking a bit about Open Access and Open Notebook Science.
In any case, the slides are below, with the link to the pdf version in our IR here.
Once again, thanks to Daniel and the Hrenya Research Group for both the invitation and the warm reception.
Posted by John Dupuis at 11:51 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 17, 2010
Category: academia • culture of science • education • faculty liaison • scholarly publishing
An interesting and provocative article in The Scientist by Steven Wiley iof the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, To Join or Not to Join.
The thrust of the article is that scholarly societies are having trouble offering true value to their members in the Internet age, that their business models and even their raisons d'etre are being disrupted.
In years past, the answer was easy because being a member came with tangible benefits, such as inexpensive journals and the ability to submit abstracts to annual meetings. Nowadays, these perks don't seem very important. Most society journals are freely available online [1], and the proliferation of scientific meetings has made it easier to find venues to present my current research. Thus, the frequency with which I ask that question--"should I bother?"--has steadily increased.
*snip*
Clearly, I am not the only scientist who is ambivalent about societies. Judging from their newsletters, many of the larger societies are struggling with stagnant or declining memberships, especially among young scientists. Although it is the youngest scientists who potentially have the most to gain from a scientific society because of networking opportunities, they are the ones who usually are most poorly served by those societies. This is because scientific societies generally cater to the status quo, not to the new and emerging elements of a field.
*snip*
Currently, many different fields in biology are undergoing a revolution in approach, driven by genomics, computationally intensive data analysis, and mathematical modeling. Once again, these new trends are being driven mostly by young scientists, who likely see the potential to make new discoveries and avoid competing with their elders. Not all scientific societies are embracing these changes, as evidenced by the relative absence of talks highlighting new approaches at their annual meetings and the dominance of their editorial boards by traditional scientists.
*snip*
If scientific societies truly want to promote their field of research and the careers of their members, then they should embrace new perspectives and approaches. If a society were helping me deal with the rapidly increasing rate of innovation and discovery in biology, then it would give me a great reason to bother remaining a member.
We live in interesting times. A lot of the posts I've done recently on scholarly publishing in computer science have really been about the role of scholarly and professional societies in a changing publishing and social networking landscape.
Here are some examples of those posts:
I don't have any answers about the future of scholarly and professional societies nor do I have any special insights on how they will change and evolve or perhaps even disappear.
But, not surprisingly, I do have some questions.
Questions for all of you library and science people:
- What societies do you belong to?(Me: Ontario Library Association & American Society for Engineering Education.)
- What value do you get from your membership? (Me: I do appreciate the print magazines I get. I also attend their conferences with some regularity and I really appreciate those.)
- Is how you're thinking about your membership and the society's role in your professional life changing? (Me: Not yet, but I can see it coming, especially if conference attendance becomes significantly more expensive.)
- Do you think societies should be in the scholarly publishing business? (Yes, I do. Most societies are more-or-less on the side of the angels -- they want to promote scholarship and add value to their fields and treat their authors, members and subscribers fairly. We all just have to figure out the best way into the future.)
Questions for scholarly societies:
- Does your society subsidize member programs with profits from it's publications program
- What kind of outreach do you do to the next generation of scholars?
- What do you tell them is the "value proposition" for joining your society?
- Do you facilitate your members online networking and professional development?
- What are your thoughts on an Open Access business model for scholarly society publishing?
- Do your members often mumble your name under their breath with the words to the effect of "just don't get it" or "waste of money?"
- Do librarians often mention your name in the same sentence as Elsevier?
- Do you have a librarian advisory group to work on issues of mutual interest?
- What's your biggest competition?
Better yet, if you are an administrator or officer at a society and want to answer some of these questions (and more) at greater length, drop me a line and we can set up an interview.
(Via Frank Norman.)
[1] I assume here the author really means that the societies' publications are available online without additional payment to members and people at subscribing institutions. Few societies have all their publications truly Open Access.
Posted by John Dupuis at 9:30 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 15, 2010
Category: blogging • culture of science • ebooks • education • engineering • escience • faculty liaison • librarianship • literature roundup • open access • scholarly publishing
ISTL is a great resource for those of us in science and technology libraries. I'm happy to report on the tables of contents from the last two issues.
Winter 2010
- Evaluation of an Audience Response System in Library Orientations for Engineering Students by Denise A. Brush, Rowan University
- Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo
- Information Portals: A New Tool for Teaching Information Literacy Skills by Debra Kolah, Rice University and Michael Fosmire, Purdue University
- Are Article Influence Scores Comparable across Scientific Fields? by Julie Arendt, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
- Using Course Syllabi to Assess Research Expectations of Biology Majors: Implications for Further Development of Information Literacy Skills in the Curriculum by Andrea L. Dinkelman, Iowa State University
- Developing the Oregon ExplorerTM -- a Natural Resources Digital Library by Janine Salwasser and Bonnie Avery, Oregon State University
- Virtual Research Environments: From Portals to Science Gateways by Phoebe Ayers, University of California, Davis (book review)
- Historical Dictionary of Environmentalism by Melissa L. Gold, Millersville University
- End-User Patent Searching Using Open Access Sources by Pat LaCourse, Alfred University
- Selected Internet Resources on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) by Erin O'Toole, University of North Texas
- Five Minute Screencasts -- The Super Tool for Science and Engineering Librarians by Olivia Bautista Sparks, Arizona State University
- The Future of arXiv by Robert Michaelson, Northwestern University
Fall 2009
- Preparing Science Librarians for Success: An Evaluation of Position Advertisements and Recommendations for Library Science Curricula by A.R. DeArmond, A.D. Oster, E.A. Overhauser, M.K. Palos, S.M. Powell, K.K. Sago, and L.R. Schelling, Indiana University
- A Season of Change: How Science Librarians Can Remain Relevant with Open Access and Scholarly Communications Initiatives by Elizabeth Brown, Binghamton University
- E-Books in the Sciences: If We Buy It Will They Use It? by Rajiv Nariani, York University
- How to Read Scientific Research Articles: A Hands-On Classroom Exercise by Roxanne Bogucka, University of Texas and Emily Wood, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom
- A Framework for Evaluating Science and Technology Electronic Reference Books: A Comparison of Five Platforms in Chemistry by Meghan Lafferty, University of Minnesota
- Electronic Scientific Data & Literature Aggregation: A Review for Librarians by Barbara Losoff, University of Colorado at Boulder
- Determining the Scope of Collection Development and Research Assistance for Cross-Disciplinary Areas: A Case Study of Two Contrasting Areas, Nanotechnology and Transportation Engineering by Jeanine M. Williamson, Lee D. Han, and Monica Colon-Aguirre, University of Tennessee
- Researching Climate Change: Trends in US Government Publications Distributed By the Government Printing Office by Kari Kozak, University of Iowa, and Laura Sare, Texas A&M; University
- International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009): Selected Resources by Mandy Taha, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and Joseph R. Kraus, University of Denver
- Author Identification Systems by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo
- I Am Not Captain Dunsel! A (Former) Head of an Academic Branch Library Replies to Steven Bell by Susanne J. Redalje, University of Washington
Posted by John Dupuis at 5:02 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 12, 2010
Category: friday fun • social media
Oh, I love The Onion. Oh so funny and yet oh so directly on target.
So funny it hurts. In reference to the Great Buzz Privacy Boondoggle, this is what they have to say: Google Responds To Privacy Concerns With Unsettlingly Specific Apology.
The whole piece is brilliant -- go and read it right away, and I mean you George Smith of 5432 Murray Crescent, Podunk, ON.
"Americans have every right to be angry at us," Google spokesperson Janet Kemper told reporters. "Though perhaps Dale Gilbert should just take a few deep breaths and go sit in his car and relax, like they tell him to do at the anger management classes he attends over at St. Francis Church every Tuesday night."
"Breathe in, breathe out," Kemper added. "We wouldn't want you to have another incident, Dale. Not when you've been doing so well."
In an effort to make up for years of alarmingly invasive service, Google will automatically add $50 to all American bank accounts as a gesture of goodwill. The company has also encouraged feedback, explaining that users can type any concerns they may still have into any open browser window or, if they are members of Google Voice, "simply speak directly into [their] phones right now."
Either way, the company said, "We'll know."
Posted by John Dupuis at 11:38 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 11, 2010
Category: best science books 2009 • science books
A big list of 35 titles in various categories: Astronomy, Biography, Biology, Climatology, Environmental Science, Evolution, Geology, Health Sciences, History of Science, Mathematics, Natural History, Neurology, Oceanography, Paleontology, Physics, Psychology, Science, Technology, Zoology.
This particular list that Library Journal does every year is one that I always use for collection development. I'll order pretty well all the books that we don't already have. It's also heartening that a good chunk of the books that we do have were checked out when I checked the other day.
BTW, I may get around to updating my Top Books of the Year list...or I might not.
- Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe by Gates, Evalyn
- The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Farmelo, Graham
- Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Yoon, Carol Kaesuk
- Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance To Save Humanity by Hansen, James
- A World Without Ice by Pollack, Henry N.
- Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Brand, Stewart
- What We Leave Behind by Jensen, Derrick & Aric McBay.
- The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning by Lovelock, James
- Evolution: The Story of Life by Palmer, Douglas & Peter Barrett (illus.)
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Wrangham, Richard
- Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World by Zoellner, Tom
- Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs Are Destroying Our Health Care System by Callahan, Daniel
- Experimental Man: What One Man's Body Reveals About His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World by Duncan, David Ewing
- The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by Reid, T.R.
- Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Fara, Patricia
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Holmes, Richard
- Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Levenson, Thomas
- The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics by Pickover, Clifford
- One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World by Hempton, Gordon & John Grossmann
- Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery by Nicholls, Steve.
- Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City by Sanderson, Eric W. & Markley Boyer (illus.)
- Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Streever, Bill
- Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Barry, Susan R.
- Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance by Restak, Richard, M.D.
- World Ocean Census: A Global Survey of Marine Life by Crist, Darlene Trew & others.
- How To Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever by Horner, Jack & James Gorman.
- Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Halpern, Paul.
- On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Boyd, Brian
- Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Behavior by Dahaene, Stanislas
- Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts. Includes: Shapes, Flow and Branches by Ball, Philip.
- Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Mooney, Chris & Sheril Kirshenbaum
- The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs by Belfiore, Michael
- The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by DeWaal, Franz
- On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear by Ellis, Richard
- Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Fraser, Caroline
Posted by John Dupuis at 9:30 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 9, 2010
Category: women in science
Yesterday was International Women's Day and since I'm a firm believer in International Better Late Than Never Day, I thought I thought I'd add my little contribution to the celebration. Or at least highlight a great post from someone else.
Computer Scientist Amy Csizmar Dalal's recent blog post Does Barbie's career matter? has some great things to say about the importance of role models and positive examples for girls who might be interested in scientific or technical careers:
I was a somewhat normal (don't laugh too hard) but nerdy kid growing up who loved math and science. And while I had wonderful role models growing up, I had no technical role models at all. So I had these nerdy interests but no real idea what people could do with them, career-wise. It was my high school guidance counselor who clued me in to the world of engineering, and the rest, as they say, is history. And it's not like you can just accidentally take a class in engineering and decide to major in it--you have to know going in to college that engineering is what you want to do. So that intervention by my guidance counselor was crucial to where I ended up, career-wise. And more importantly, this intervention from my counsellor was the one and only message I heard about engineering while growing up. But that's all it took: one message from an adult I greatly respected.
So what messages do girls hear about technology growing up, and about their place in the technical world? Unlocking the Clubhouse, the seminal book by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, tells us that girls often aren't getting the message at home that being into computers is socially or intellectually acceptable. Peer pressure in junior high (and even before then) sends the strong message to girls that being a computer nerd is often a social death sentence. And the media? Well, how many images of successful women computer scientists have you seen on the news, on commercials, on TV, in movies, online, etc. lately?
Barbie is an icon, like it or not. And she can send a powerful message to young girls. So in the face of all the other negative messages about computer science that our girls are hearing, why not have Barbie rail against that message and present an alternative, a role model and anti-stereotype?
There's a nice pic of Computer Engineer Barbie here.
One small contribution I did make is to set up a display of books on Women in Science & Engineering in my library. We have a couple of shelves where I can display 30 or so books on a theme for students to look at or check out. It's a real quick and dirty display, one that's easy for me to set up and easy to maintain for the month it's up. The themes vary (January was career books, February on green technology) but every year in March I get out a pile of books on women in science and put them out. Over the course of the month, maybe a dozen or so get checked out; as they do, I just replace them with other books.
This year, as an added bonus, we're also highlighting my display on the York University Libraries home page: Women in Science: On display in March on the Steacie Science & Engineering Library Spotlight Bookshelf. Hurry up and catch it before the display changes.
Here are a couple of pictures of the display:
Posted by John Dupuis at 12:35 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 5, 2010
Category: friday fun • librarianship
The Huffington Post has a couple of posts featuring the most amazingly beautiful libraries in the world, Part One here and Part Two here.
Here's the text from the two posts:
Times are changing for libraries everywhere. But even as many libraries build their digital collections and amp up their technological offerings, we thought we'd take a step back and show our appreciation for the beauty of many of these vast collections of books. Below are some of the most amazingly beautiful libraries from around the world.
Let us know what you think of these and let us know your favorites.
====
Last month, we brought you a slideshow of the most amazing libraries in the world. The responses from readers were so full of suggestions that we couldn't resist running another batch of our favorites and yours. We're getting a lot of bad news about libraries recently, as funding drops and major cuts are made, but these buildings and collections remind us of how important libraries are, and how much they are worth saving!
The first library featured in Part Two is Canada's
Library of Parliament.
Posted by John Dupuis at 11:35 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
by Richard Holmes (13)
by Graham Farmelo (9)
by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (8)
by David Grann (8)
by Ricard Dawkins (5)
by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (4)
by David Owen (4)
by Eric W. Sanderson (4)
by Eugenie Samuel Reich (3)
by Sean B. Carroll (3)
by Jeff Rubin (3)
by Greg Grandin (3)
by Richard W. Wrangham (3)
by T.R. Reid (3)
by Stanislas Dehaene (3)
by Bill Streever (3)
