Librarian of Things

Today the library is closed as is my place of work’s tradition on the last day of Reading Week. But as I have three events (helping in a workshop, giving a presentation, participating in a focus group) in my calendar, I’m just going to work the day and bank the time for later. §1 Barbara…

Another week in which I was doing a lot of behind the scenes work. §1 Duly noted: Here’s the article in full. §2 Years ago, I gave a keynote called Libraries are for use. And by use, I mean copying that featured the short and sad story of a person who was unable to donate…

§1 Last Friday I was interviewed for the podcast The Grasscast — a game-themed podcast named after the book, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. I ramble a little bit in the episode as I tried to be more open and conversational than concise and correct. But I also spoke that way because for some…

I don’t have much that I can report in this week’s note. You are just going to have to take my word that this week, a large amount of my time was spent at meetings pertaining to my library department, my union, and anti-black racism work. §1 Last year, around this same time, some colleagues…

Hey. I missed last week’s weeknote. But we are here now. §1 This week I gave a class on searching scientific literature to a group of biology masters students. While I was making my slides comparing the Advanced Search capabilities of Web of Science and Scopus, I discovered this weird behaviour of Google Scholar: a…

This week’s post is not going to capture my ability to be productive while white supremacists appeared to be ushered in and out of the US Capitol building by complicit police and COVID-19 continued to ravage my community because our provincial government doesn’t want to spend money on the most vulnerable. Instead, I’m just going…

§1 It looks like Andromeda Yelton is sharing weeknotes (“This week in AI“). I can’t wait to see what she shares with us all in 2021. §2 Earlier this fall, Clarivate Analytics announced that it was moving toward a future that calculated the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) based on the date of electronic publication and not…

§1 I don’t have much to report in regards to the work I’ve been doing this week. I tried to get our ORCiD-OJS plugin to work but there is some small strange bug that needs to be squished. Luckily, next week I will have the benefit of assistance from the good people of CRKN and…

§1 First off is this recommended read from the November 17th issue of The New Yorker, The rise and fall of getting things done by Cal ‘Deep Work’ Newport. As Newport himself describes his work, It’s not, however, really about David Allen’s productivity system, which longtime readers (and listeners) know I really admire. It’s instead…