Research

Bibliographies Research

Readings on issues facing university research in Canada

Here is a bibliography on the topic of research in Canadian universities. In no particular order, I’ve tried to incorporate some sub-themes, namely graduate students; research support; international; innovation. I’ve grouped results based on the type of source, such as trade associations, government reports and academic articles.

 

Trade Associations​ & Think Tanks

(Criteria: reports in English from the last 5 years issued by Canadian organisations. Method: Google with a focus on PDF files and keywords such as research, innovation, university)

Government

(Using Google and Publications Canada’s search engine. Because universities are governed by provinces in Canada, I also looked to Québec. I included here reports provided by Concordia University, my employer, to government agencies. OECD also had some interesting reports, but not UNESCO.)

Academic articles

(Using Concordia University Library‘s Discovery layer, I searched for canad* AND universit* AND (research* or innovat*) and filtered for peer-reviewed articles from the last 5 years. I reviewed the first 50 hits and selected articles based on perceived relevance.)

Books and ebooks

(Using CLUES, the library catalogue, for books with a Canadian focus from the last 5 years).

  • Brownlee, Jamie,author. Academia, Inc : How Corporatization is Transforming Canadian Universities. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing. Retrieved from: http://clues.concordia.ca/record=b3271762
  • (ebook) Lacroix, Robert, Louis Maheu, and Paul Klassen translator, eds. Leading Research Universities : Autonomous Institutions in a Competitive Academic World. Montreal Quebec ;aKingston Ontario; Ottawa, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press; Canadian Electronic Library. Retrieved from: http://clues.concordia.ca/record=b3231050
    • (ebook, original edition) Lacroix, Robert, and Louis Maheu, Les Grandes universités De Recherche : Institutions Autonomes Dans Un Environnement Concurrentiel. Montréal, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Retrieved from: http://clues.concordia.ca/record=b3293016
Gamification Research

Indie Games Licensing for Libraries Presentation

Aussi en français: http://www.culturelibre.ca/tag/knight/

Follow the evolution of this project here: http://outfind.ca/tag/knight/

Panel_07
Here is the presentation I will be delivering to the Knight Foundation about the Indie Games Licensing for Libraries project.

This slide explains the main idea behind the project, namely connecting indie developers with libraries through a series of copyright contracts, also called licenses:
ecosystem

Librarianship Research

What is LIS?

Practionners have a love-hate relationship with Library and information science. Here is a recent article on the topic of whether it is a science or not:
Citation: Fredrick Kiwuwa Lugya, (2014) “What counts as a science and discipline in library and information science?”, Library Review, Vol. 63 Iss: 1/2
(Lugya says yes).

Also of interest, this recent book on theories of information:

Theories of Information, Communication and Knowledge: A Multidisciplinary Approach edited by Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan and Thomas M. Dousa (Eds.). London, UK: Springer, 2014. 380 pp. $179.00 (hardcover) (ISBN 978-94-007-6973-1)
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-6973-1
(Also reviewed in JASIST)

Assessment Publishing Research

Altmetrics in Context

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has published a useful guide to altmetrics (pdf). Altmetrics are alternative metrics to measure the impact of research.

Also of interest, the Summer 2013 (vol. 25 issue 2) issue of Information Standards Quarterly from NISO covers altmetrics (direct link to the PDF of the full issue).

In the same vein, one can determine the impact of an institutional repository by visiting this page ranking repositories. The link send you to the Canadian listing, where my home institution’s Soectrum ranks fifth. In fact, I just learnt that I’m still in the top 10 researchers being downloaded from my University’s Institutional repository!

Librarianship Read Me Research

A quick dip in the Unified Theory of Information

I like big ideas. I really like big ideas that solve some of the theoretical issues that I worry about. That’s why I had to follow a thread that come through my RSS feeds… “Unified Theory of Information” – has a nice ring to it, no? Like leafs blown onto my yard by a chance gust of wind, I had to follow them to the tree.

First came the post, an item from a table of content from a scholarly journal:

Claudio Gnoli, Riccardo Ridi, (2014) “Unified Theory of Information, hypertextuality and levels of reality“, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 70 Iss: 3

Quick Google searches have given me these threads:
– The group behind this epistemological idea: Unified Theory of Information (UTI) Research Group – Association for the Advancement of Information Sciences
– This 20-question long essay explaining the concept by Wolfgang Hofkirchner, a central figure behind UTI.

Man, I’ll have to stop searching… I keep stumbling on these awesome pockets of ideas !!! More later on the UTI (I am not certain it is of immediate interest to my doctoral dissertation, but definitely worth keeping on my radar screen).

Research

Ignorance… the stuff of science

Great TED Talk by Stuart Firestein called The Pursuit of Ignorance:
[ted id=1827]
He gives a course at Columbia called Ignorance and I love how in his model, knowledge leads to “better” ignorance and not the reverse. In this age of readily available facts on Google and Wikipedia, the role of universities is to articulate meaningful questions that science will chip at. He uses the analogy of ripples on a pond, where knowledge is a drop in the human experience and the ripples represent the extent of our knowledge. Science and academic research aims to work beyond the edges of these ripples, in the nether regions where ignorance lies.

Lectures and conferences Research

75 academic librarian conferences

Mark Weiler had an awesome idea. As a member of the UWO Student Chapter of the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL), he posted a message to our mailing list (I am a member of CAPAL) and asked us to send him the list of conferences we attend. A few weeks later, the list includes about 75 mouth-watering conferences, enough to send you around the world a few times.

Mark has very graciously and generously allowed me to post the list here. As he says:

“I think it’s a list for academic librarians to reflect on — a kind of starting point which librarians can use to advance the profession in important directions. “

Well said ! If you have additional conferences, please feel free to add them to the comments section of this post!

Conference List
International Center of Medieval Art
Leeds International Medieval Congress
ABC Copyright
Access
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) – Conference
American Chemical Society (Chemical Information Division) – Conference
American Educational Research Association
American Library Association (ALA) – Conference
American Psychological Association
American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS)
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) (Engineering Libraries Division) Conference
American Theological Libraries Association (ATLA)
Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA):
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC): http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference/
Association of College and Research Libraries – Conference
Atlantic Provinces Libraries Association – Conference
BC Library Association
BookCampTO, hosted by the Canadian Book Professionals’ Association, which has a solid librarian presence, albeit usually more in the public library sphere: http://bookcampto.org/
Canadian Association of Legal Librarians (CALL) – Conference
Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (CAML). Now held annually with Congress: http://www.yorku.ca/caml/drupal/?q=en/conferences
Canadian Association of University Teachers (committee meetings)
Canadian Association of University Teachers, Librarians’ Conference
Canadian Economics Association
Canadian Engineering Education Association
Canadian Health Libraries Association Conference
Canadian Library Association Conference
Canadian Society for the Study of Education
Centre for African American History – Conferences
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Charleston Conference
Computers in Libraries
Distance Library Services Conference (formerly Off-Campus Library Services conference).
Distance Teaching and Learning Conference
Educause
Electronic Resources in Libraries
Evidence-based Library Information Practice (EBLIP) Conference
Federated Computing Research Conference
Guelph Accessibility Conference
Handheld Librarian Online Conference
Hawaii International Conference on Education
International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML)
International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) Conference
International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
International Congress on Medieval Studies
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
International Leadership Association Conference
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Internet Librarian
Joint Conference of Librarians of Color
Librarians Conference – Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
Library Assessment Conference
Library Association of Alberta (Conference)
Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX)
Music Library Association (MLA)
Netspeed
North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG)
Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services
Ontario Chemistry Librarians’ Workshop (no website)
Ontario College and University Libraries Association
Ontario Library Association – Superconference
Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) – Conference
Shanghai International Library Forum (SILF)
Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues
Society for Teaching and learning in Higher Education (STHLE)
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP)
Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques
Special Libraries Association (SLA) – Conference
Timberline http://www.acquisitionsinstitute.org/
Tri-University Group (Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, and Guelph) Conference
TRY – Toronto/Ryerson/York Conference
University of Toronto’s Internal technology conference: Techknowfile
Upstate New York Science Librarians
Visual Resource Association conference
Workshop on Instruction in Library Use (WILU)
World Library and Information Congress (WLIC)

 
 
Interestingly, this could be the start of an interesting research project. For example, I notice that some of the conferences are held by library-related groups (IFLA, CLA, ALA…) while others are from other fields. Why is that? Is it related to the field of interest of the librarian (social sciences librarian will prefer library-conferences or domain-conferences)? Or perhaps the location of a librarians home institution (Ontario librarians will just naturally gravitate to the OLA super-conference). Or does it have to do with the timing or location of the conference (Paris in the Spring anyone)?

In any case, enjoy the list and thanks again to Mark!