Infomatters

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Learning a lot at CSSP

I attended the Council of Scientific Society Presidents meeting this past weekend in DC and it proved fascinating. A slate of top speakers covered advances and challenges across the spectrum of scientific enquiry, and both the stories and numbers are thought provoking.  How about unique and groundbreaking drug therapeutics research that cannot get published as reviewers don’t think it’s interesting enough? Or imagine looking for one data point in trillions to test a theory in physics? The information angles here alone are challenging.

Lori Garver of NASA delivered a myth busting talk about how they work and what they do. The organization, with 18000 employees and 40000 contractors has a $17bn annual budget,  is still committed to human space exploration, And spends half its budget on just this. She also confirmed that no dinosaurs were found on Mars!  Meanwhile, the man from Monsanto (aside from noting that a scarily high proportion of the US population believes its food is made in grocery stores!) referenced studies showing that the most noticeable shift in behavior that comes from increased prosperity is a shift in diet from grains to meat, which has major implications for our planet.

CSSP is a great group for ideas and its clear that many professional societies share the same problems with dwindling memberships and threatened publication shifts. It seems many members no longer value the publications that once one joined a society just to obtain. The bundling process, aggressive publisher pricing, and general worry over control runs across disciplines and there was a lively discussion in one of my groups about CSSP serving as a leader in new consortial efforts to retain control of scholarly publishing at the professional society level. More on this for sure.

All told, a great group and a stimulating event that rivaled (and beat) most academic conferences I’ve attended over the last decade. And this from a group of people who are mostly strangers to each other, personally and professionally. Proof indeed that ideas matter more than identity.

 

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Announcement of incoming ASIST presidency

UT did a nice PR piece on my being elected to lead ASIST – perhaps the first time we’ve ever had ASIST mentioned on the university news feed — onward!  Meanwhile, the name change results are due this week, looks like most people are in favor of our becoming the Association for Information Science & Technology.

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The Information Institute is launched

We’ve been working on this quietly for awhile but it’s now about to launch officially, see the full details here

The aim of the institute is to bring information education to communities that have begun to recognize the importance of information skills and techniques, have perceived a gap in their own company or organizations information activities and have not previously known where to go to obtain the knowledge they need. This is not continuing professional education as you may have experienced it in the past. This is a distinct effort aimed at making information science available to those who would not come here for a full degree, are motivated to learn quickly in focused, thematic chunks, and who place value on acquiring these skills from recognized experts. It’s a new move for us but one we think is needed.

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Trumping the Trump

So Donald Trump imagines he can influence the presidential election by requesting college and passport records from Obama (and THIS is what he told us would be a major scoop?). Seems he is less than willing to provide his own records, at least according to The Guardian’s story today. The paper asked him for his equivalent records and the request was declined – but only after further bluffing when the records were offered in a direct swap with the journalist’s own records. Well, same Guardian reporter agreed to do just that…..only then for Trump spokesman to declare the request ‘stupid’.  Well, at least one part of that exchange was correct. One has to feel sympathy with journalists — imagine drawing this story as your beat on the election trail. ‘Farce’ is too limiting a descriptor but who would imagine such information would ever be such a focus of public attention?

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Best intelligence books?

 

 

Good alternative link to Intelligence reads published today in the Sources and Methods blog. As noted, these books might not be the typical ones you read for intelligence studies. I can certainly confirm this. I’ve been slowly working my way through the standard textbooks on intelligence work as we develop our program here in the iSchool and I can safely say that if you imagine intelligence work to be dry, method-bound, and slow moving, these books will serve the stereotype. Of course, intelligence work is so much more, but you have a hard time knowing this from the most commonly recommended books on the topic. Please someone, submit a proposal to me for a better book.  I’ve decided to push people at Susan Hasler’s Intelligence: a novel of the CIA, as an alternative window. The work seems mind-numbing at times in this too but you get a sense of how it works on a human level far better than most textbooks suggest.

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George Miller dead at 92

 

Rather sorry today to learn of the death of George Miller, a legendary scientist in the field of psychology who most people know for his formulation of   the 7 +/- 2 chunks in short-term memory storage capability. He did far more than this, including excellent work on reading and writing, and the nature of information but it’s that ‘law’ for which he will always be known. I remember reading him as an undergraduate and later discovering all the other areas of work where he had made significant contributions (and I don’t mean he published a paper or two on eclectic topics, he really shaped whole areas of work). There’s a decent obit in today’s NYT that covers the life but he was a great scholar, a man of real impact, the kind we rarely see these days in the rat-race for citations. Coming so soon after the passing of Ulrich Neisser, it seems a generation of true greats is leaving us.

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Lots of life at SLA

I enjoyed a lively week in Chicago at the SLA conference last week. An alumni event in Kroll’s neighborhood bar on South Michigan also gave me a chance to connect with some of our graduates who work in Chicago or were attending SLA.  Most of my time was spent with the competitive intelligence group who seem to be engaged in lots of interesting work and are sufficiently energized to connect, share and enthuse. I participated in a lively panel session on cross-cultural aspects of CI, though my role was mainly to outline how we had developed our own Certificate of Advanced Study in Global Media and Research Analysis which is targeted at those seeking preparation or further education in open-source intelligence work. The mood there was extremely positive all round, unlike so many other conferences, and the message that came through loud and clear was that there are remarkable career opportunities for folks with information skills is they are willing to take non-traditional positions and apply their education to the numerous information challenges faced by companies, government agencies and related organizations. Of the 100 or so people in our panel, more than 75% (by my quick show of hands request) had a degree from an LIS program so clearly this is a recognized path and further proof, if needed, that an information degree can take you a long way.

 

 

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Horses, motorcars and mergers on the LIS horizon

Two more LIS programs are being maneuvered into new homes in the coming months. St. Catherine’s is apparently set to announce that its School of Professional Studies is being eliminated with LIS being moved into the Business School. All this, apparently, without much if any consultation, if the emails from various parties are to be believed.  The other programs in that school also move, with Education also going to Business and Leadership, while Social Work moves to the School of Health. No doubt one can spin this in positive ways and I am sure they will. At Indiana, the long-standing School of LIS is embarking on ‘discussions’ about a merger with Informatics but it’s hard to think there’s much room for negotiation when the President is quoted on this very subject in the weekend paper saying: “There’s no point in saving a school that trains people to manage fleets of horses if the motorcar has taken over horse-drawn transportation.”  Guess which one of the two he was talking about?

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Why universities probably don’t need ‘strategic dynamism’

Strange tales emanating from Virginia where the totally surprising ouster of the President of the University of Virginia, Teresa Sullivan, is leaving in it’s wake a series of revealing records that suggest, in the words of one commentator, a ‘coup by a cabal of MBAs’. In his critical report of events in SLATE, the energetic Siva Vaidhyanathan describes eloquently some of the nonsense surrounding the explanations offered by the university. Yes, people do really talk about the need for ‘strategic dynamism’ as if it means something new, different, and more effective than old fashioned strategic planning. Well, a certain kind of person does anyhow. That would be the same kind of person that accidentally leaves an email trail revealing some shenanigans on the Shenandoah. Said author then resigns over the furor caused by his email. Does it surprise you that he’s connected with the Darden School of Business and Wall St?

However, all is not lost. As if to confirm decency is not entirely lacking in Virginia, Prof Bill Wulf of Computer Science resigns stating publicly that he cannot work any longer for a university that is being led to disaster by an out of control Board of Visitors, urging other faculty to follow suit. It’s the stuff of a bad novel, only it’s happening in the real world. One might be forgiven for thinking that some interest groups have woken up to an idea that universities are an untapped resource for revenue generation and they are not about to let a minor mission like education get in their way. “There’s money in them there ivory towers”, I can just hear it now, though the call is coded in the buzz words of b-speak like ‘structural dynamism’. Don’t imagine it’s only happening in Virginia. The attack on public higher education is not going away anytime soon. Meanwhile at least Teresa Sullivan is retaining her dignity throughout, as befits a leading university president. What a shame the same cannot be said of all others connected with the venerable institution.

 

STOP the PRESS — this afternoon, June 26th, Terry was reinstated as the President by a new vote of the Board. Now is THAT an example of structural dynamism?