Raquel Von Cogell, the librarian in the Stone Center Library, gave a tour of the library today at 2. This was my first time in that library – in fact, my first time in the Stone Center building. The library is very nice, small (we estimated around 3,000 sq ft), but with very spiffy new furniture, beautiful wood shelving, and wired carrells and wireless access. Raquel said that there’s room.. Read More
Distributed computing pays off: An eye surgeon in Germany has discovered the world’s largest known prime number – or at least his computer did. The surgeon, Dr. Martin Nowak of Michelfeld, is among thousands of participants in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, one of several big projects that tap idle computers worldwide. Now, Can You Find Its Square Root?, from the NY Times Here’s the GIMPS site itself. Me,.. Read More
I wrote the other day, in my fit of pique, that I want my graphic novels on paper, but most of my other reading materials electronically. Well, I take it back: I’ll take my graphic novels electronically too, thank you. Manga and eBooks on Your PSP, from Gizmodo And the article from 1UP.com that Gizmodo was reporting on. Not that I have a PlayStation Portable, of course, and I really.. Read More
Oral arguments for MGM v. Grokster start tomorrow before the Supreme Court, according to this article from CNN. Docket from the Supreme Court. Compiled documents from the EFF. (Note the brief from Greg Newby!) Press releases & related news from Grokster. Tellingly, I can’t find a thing about this on MGM’s site.
I don’t want to make light of the very serious recent political happenings in Kyrgyzstan… but this headline is totally fracking hilarious: Kyrgyz Prtstrs Vrthrw Gvrnmt, from Slate I love that they capitalized the V. Reminds me of Operation Vowel Drop.
Jessamyn posts this, which seems relevant to one of my recent rants: as she puts it, the “Do we make the library more like Google, or make Google more like the library?” debate. She tracks this back to this post on It’s all good. And then, true to form, Jessamyn sums up in one sentence what it took me a very long post to not say very well: she boils.. Read More
A paper in Science Magazine: Underwater Bipedal Locomotion by Octopuses in Disguise. Also covered on NPR. It’s just too weird for words to watch these blobby creatures walk on two legs (tentacles?). Cthulhu fhtagn.
In teaching my undergrads to use literature databases, I use the analogy that bibliographies are a primitive form of hypertext: they’re a way for one document to reference related documents. Also, like hypertext, they’re uni-directional. This is actually a way for me to introduce students to Web of Science: bibliographies allow you to move backwards in time, but how do you move forwards in time? I get considerable mileage with.. Read More
VC Announces Funding to Support “Open Access” Authors’ Fees Support for author fees of up to $750 per article is available upon faculty request from a new fund established by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development. I personally consider this a major step for the university. I was on the planning committee for the Convocation on Scholarly Communications in a Digital World, & we recently.. Read More
Davis has launched an IM reference service, using AIM! IM a Librarian at Davis Library Buddy name: davisrefdesk As that page points out, the UL and Math/Physics already had IM a Librarian services. As I understand it, the UL’s AIM service has been very popular, so it’s very exciting to me for Davis to be launching this service. Though actually they’re gluttons for punishment over at Davis: this is 3.. Read More