Below are 14 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in The plural of anecdote is not data's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, November 17th, 2005
7:11 pm	complex networks So this afternoon I went to the talk that I referred to below, by Michelle Girvan on complex networks and their applicability in various interdisciplinary sciences. This talk was sponsored by the CSE group, which is an interdisciplinary computer sciences research group. (I still haven't quite figured out what they do, but ultimately they will be part of my collection development responsibilties. No one quite knows how to serve interdisciplinary groups like this, because they're not a real department and they're certainly not all in one LC class number -- and at any rate, who knows where these people get their information from? They aren't checking out the books; they seem to have the information habits of other engineers. Anyway.) At any rate, the talk was quite good. Girvan went over the background of complex networks, showing how studying them differed from studying "traditional" distributions in physics -- ie. complex networks are neither perfectly random or perfectly regular, which makes the math to describe them of course much more difficult. She swept over the mathematics and broad classes of networks -- it was general enough that I understood a fair chunk of the math (although she lost me at a couple points), so you know it was pretty basic -- but nevertheless managed to give a sense of the different types of distributions of complex networks, and possible situations that could be described by them. For instance, the internet is a classic complex network. But so is a social network -- and mapping complex networks can show us the math that makes "six degrees of separation" possible. Neural nets are complex networks, as are metabolic systems, air traffic routes, disease transmission vectors... the list goes on and on. This poster has pretty pictures of many of the kinds of networks Girvan was talking about. What I liked best about the talk was that Garvin -- who is young and clearly quite bright -- got us all excited about the possibilities for complex networks -- and then talked about the future of the field, and whether it was worth pursuing. Having the presence of mind and grace necessary to critique your own field is rare among scientists, I've noticed, but Garvin had them both. She made us laugh by talking about the 'scientific fads' that have come out of the area of statistical physics -- fractals! HOT! Edge of chaos theory! -- and then asked if complex networks were going to be similar. She seemed to be critiquing the field for focussing on the sexy -- e.g. the internet -- rather than the substantial and scientific. I suspect that this technique of critiquing what she talks about has served her well at, counterintuitively, getting taken more seriously on the speaking circuit. In all, I think network theory is certainly something to pay attention to -- from a collecting-information-for-the-computer-scientists point of view, anyway. Like I said, she looked and sounded to be about my age. Which is pretty awesome. Theoretical physics could use some more smartypants young women. eta: in fact, she turns out to be slighty older than I am. But she looks young, no? Not that it matters, of course. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:02 pm	Rowland Institute blog The Rowland Institute at Harvard, which is an experimental, high-falutin' science research group, has it's own library. And that library has a blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/rihlib/ It's maintained by Garrett Eastman, the librarian. He's also given some presentations about blogs and wikis (and presumably their use in science libraries). It's a nice idea, that a specialized library *should* have a blog, to communicate both with patrons that are presumably comfortable with such things and with the outside world. (Comment on this)
9:10 am	dorkiest -- but possibly best -- title for a research project ever "Where the Rubber Meets the Sky: Bridging the Gap between Databases and Science" (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
10:23 am	new o'reilly book There's a new O'Reilly book out called "Ambient Findability" that looks fabulous. The title is not particularly helpful, but here's the publisher's description: "Overview How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability. Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet. The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life. Ambient Findability doesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more -- ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately." Morville, Peter. "Ambient Findability." Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: September 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00765-5 It should be full-text in Safari, if you belong to an institution that subscribes. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
9:03 am	talk I am going to this talk. It sounds fabulous. http://johnmuir.ucdavis.edu/activities/amcfes/girvan.html (Comment on this)
8:59 am	scientific data management class This sounds like, if not a *fun* class per se, at least a useful one. http://cse.ucdavis.edu/Members/bill/ECS166 (Comment on this)
Monday, November 14th, 2005
9:52 am	subjects there are exactly three items cataloged with "Internet entertainment industry -- Law and legislation -- United States" in the entire world, one of which is a thesis. Don't you hate it when you find the absolute spot-on subject heading for your topic, and then discover no one uses it? (Comment on this)
9:47 am	freakin' catalogs 1) the law library here is a "departmental" library, not really part of the greater campus lib system 2) because of this, results in the law library are not included when you search the campus lib catalog 3) but they are included when you search the union catalog of our greater university system 4) which leads to mass confusion when you see a result in the union catalog and it says "belongs to your campus" and you think what? I didn't find this in *our* library catalog... bleah. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:34 am	electronic theses The "networked digital library of theses and dissertations" -- or just www.theses.org They have a poorly designed website and an unclear mission statement, but they appear to be an initiative to encourage electronic t & d publishing at universities, and to collect a union-cataloged digital library of theses/dissertations. The site where I got it from says they're funded by the U.S. Department of Ed. Also, they have a wiki! The purpose of which is unclear, however. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 11th, 2005
12:30 pm	update Do you love OCLC? 'Cause I love OCLC. Who knew they had a "research laboratory"? That's as cool as Google's. (Comment on this)
12:29 pm	Wolfram Continuing on with the theme of online, growing encyclopedic sources, I am madly in love with Scienceworld, for all your mid-level mathematical and physics defining needs. (On an academic desk and someone asks you for a definition of the Gompertz Curve, for instance? Try here). Anyway, they're apparently looking for some help verifying citations. Each ScienceWorld branch has it's own list -- here is physics. Some more information: Wolfram is the company that publishes Mathematica, a well-known and highly respected (and expensive) math program. They have turned themselves, under the auspices of Stephen Wolfram, into a kind of math franchise, with books, journals, and a lot of free online content, such as the library of functions (crazy!) A while ago they decided to get themselves into the online encyclopedia business, using Eric Weisstein's World of Science site as a base (a history of mathworld et al can be found here). Although most of the content is from Weisstein, outside folks are encouraged to submit contributions, a la Wikipedia, with the difference being (I think) that the scienceworld sites review content that's submitted to them, and they have a higher standard for references and such. The material on the sites is also copyrighted. (I do know that the scienceworld sites are typically considered WP's "competition"). Mathworld is the most developed and extensive of the sites; the others (chemistry, physics, astronomy, and biography, all served off scienceworld.wolfram.com) are less developed, weighing in at between 300 and 3000 articles each, but they still provide a potentiallly good resource, as well as a place for people in these fields to contribute to this academic encyclopedia. (Comment on this)
12:28 pm	since when... does Amazon sell articles? (Comment on this)
12:27 pm	database reviews This may be old hat to many of you, but it's new to me. In my collection development class, one thing I had a big problem with was finding review sources for databases. There are several, but I was having trouble finding something recent. One source of new, relevant database reviews that I just discovered is the Charleston Advisor, which is a print/online periodical that provides extensive reviews of databases and other "web products," include evaluations of licences, content and accessibility. If this source was mentioned in class, I certainly don't remember it, but it seems quite useful. The UW subscribes both print and online, which will be good enough for many of the people reading this (my school doesn't subscribe). Otherwise, it's indexed in Information Science and Technology Abstracts. (Comment on this)
2:31 am	Welcome! Welcome to this journal, where I'll be stashing tidbits that I come across that are of interest to me, and possibly thoughts about being (and becoming) a science librarian. The platform of this journal may change, but there was an urgent need to get it going. Enjoy and comment. I'll be populating the first few entries with items I've already posted elsewhere, so some of you may see some duplication. -- brassratgirl. (Comment on this)