Archive | 3 Things and a Question RSS feed for this section

Three Things and A BIG Question

15 Sep

Remember earlier in the year when I was trying to kick-start myself back into my blog writing habit and did the “three things and a question” prompt? Well I’m there again today, though not because I don’t have much to share but more because I have a couple of other things I want to finish up before the week wraps up. So let’s go with this:

Thing 1: Gamestorming – ONLINE!

Gamestorming, by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo, is a book that I bought many years ago and have used often, whether planning a speaking engagement or workshop, a staff meeting, a retreat, or something not even work-related. It is an invaluable resource for finding games that work to solve problems, think creatively, build trust, and more. And I was delighted to recently discover that there is a new(ish) website, Gamestorming, by the same authors that’s filled with exercises and examples and lessons from the book. Now I don’t even have to get up from my desk to walk to my bookshelf – well, except to get those steps in! 🙂

Thing 2: Elsevier Connect Article: What’s next for researchers? Five key trends for librarians

I’m not sure why I didn’t read this article last summer when it came out (or maybe I did and just forgot), but it came across my radar recently and I found it to be a nice, concise overview of the major trends we’re seeing in biomedical research and how health sciences librarians can support them. The trends include preprints and open science, collaboration, AI, funding shifts, and work-life balance. I find it interesting that such a large publisher didn’t talk about publishing shifts, (think transformative and/or read & publish agreements) as something to watch, but maybe that’s in the 2023 newsletter that I missed. And will read next year! But it’s certainly something on the horizon. All to say, if you didn’t read this piece last summer either, give it a look. There’s good stuff in it.

Thing 3: The Pudding: This is how rare it is for a hit song to be credited to an all-women writing team

I KNOW that I’ve mentioned The Pudding multiple times in this space, but I can’t help it. It’s one of my favorite things. Data-driven, visual essays – nobody else does them so well. This particular one about women songwriting teams came out earlier in the summer. It fascinated and infuriated me. Also reminded me of my own related, simple data visualization I did several years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Grrrrr!

BIG Question: What good does it do to take away jobs?

Thanks to a last-minute reminder email, I attended a great community chat session this morning sponsored by the Massachusetts Library Systems (MLS) about Artificial Intelligence. I am purposefully out-of-touch with the topic of AI (to a good degree), because I’m just hoping it will go away. It frightens me. Jane Stimpson from MLS was the speaker and she gave a great overview, offered recommendations of interesting and likely useful tools, and in some ways helped me reframe my thinking of AI away from fear and more towards how it can (and already is) a beneficial thing. That said, there’s a lot about it that makes me think that for the gazilliointh time in the history of humanity, we’re rushing ahead with something without taking a moment to learn from our past. Jane described AI in the session by saying, “AI is like the internet in the mid-90s – it was exciting, but we didn’t know where it would go.” Exactly! But we DO know now some of the ways it went (and continues to go) that aren’t particularly great. Will AI follow the same path? I do wonder how it won’t.

But that’s not my question. The session prompted my BIG question as we discussed one of the risks and concerns of AI is its impact on labor. Because it WILL impact labor. And this is my BIG question. “Progress” is so often wrapped up/defined by things that supposedly make our lives easier, yet they make life easier and/or more convenient at the expense of work. Work is an essential aspect of life, of society, of human interaction. It gives people purpose, income, connection, a livelihood (life – live). I just don’t know if it’s always progress that we continually move in a direction that makes human beings irrelevant. I’m pretty certain that my car can go 120 mph or more, but that doesn’t mean I need to drive that fast. It’s dangerous, in more ways than one.

Think on!

A little lesson from one of my favorite films, “Avalon.”

This Week…

24 Mar

Someone referenced my blog in conversation this week, reminding me that – RATS! – I got off track again. But I appreciated the prompt to send me back here.

I’m working on preparing a session for this year’s Massachusetts Library Association’s annual meeting happening in Falmouth, MA in early May. The session, “Getting to ‘AHA!’ Using Creative Freedom to Build Justice through Empathy” is a brand new one for me. I’ve long been interested in the intersection between creativity and other aspects of life, particularly how physical activity and creativity are linked. This topic is helping me discover the depths to which creating things – art, music, writing – can help us develop empathy towards others. I’ll share more as I begin to pull the workshop together, but for now, I’d like to point you to a great resource I discovered. The Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts has some excellent on-site programming (for those who live in the area), as well as great things to follow on-line. You can find recommended readings, a white paper, toolkits, and more on their website. Check it out!

I also re-read an interesting blog post from last spring about citational justice. It’s easy to forget some of the inherent biases in current citation practices and worth thinking about how we might aspire to change them for the better.

Both my women’s and men’s NCAA March Madness brackets are in shambles, but my March Mammal Madness bracket is holding strong! I love that we have a friendly MMM competition each year in my library. A little animal trash talking is good for the soul. If you’re unfamiliar with this AMAZING activity, you must educate yourself. Dr. Katie Hinde and her colleagues, including librarians, at Arizona State University do an incredible job of bringing this fun, educational, and downright brilliant tournament to the world each year. MC Marmot’s “Rodent Recaps“ and the Twitter Play-by-Plays are not to be missed. And LET’S GO, SEA OTTER!!

Mike Baird, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m wishing the Research Data Access & Preservation Association (RDAP) a terrific 2023 Summit next week. One of my roles as the Associate Editor of the Journal of eScience Librarianship (JeSLIB) is to shepherd the special edition of JeSLIB dedicated to RDAP each year. I look forward to seeing what emerges from next week’s meeting!

Finally, I host a radio program on my local, community radio station, WCUW, every other Tuesday evening. This week, I celebrated Women’s History Month with a 2-hour program featuring all women artists. You can listen to the archive of the show through April 3.

Happy Spring, everyone!

Tags: , , , ,

Picture This

27 Jan

My gosh, it’s still only January and I missed a weekly post already. Argh! But back at it this afternoon.

This past week has been about data (data sharing, data visualizations, data love), sketchbooks, and artificial intelligence. Some things to share:

The beginning of a new calendar year means it’s time to pay association dues. The time to pay association dues also tends to bring out some grumpiness in folks. Why does it cost so much? What do I get for all that money? Why is MLA so much more expensive than ALA? Ahh, yes. Every year. So I got to thinking about the cost and decided to start brushing up (off?) my skills to compete in the upcoming NNLM Data Visualization Challenge. How much does an MLA membership cost this year? $245 or approximately sixteen 4-packs of decent craft beer. For me, put that way, it seems pretty reasonable. My professional home is worth that to me. No complaining here.

And speaking of that Challenge, be sure to check it out! Per the website, the contest is open to “anyone who has taken part in NNLM activities (e.g., training or grant programs), any health sciences library staff, health sciences librarians working in non-library settings, library or information students, or NNLM staff members are eligible to apply.” Find some data from an open data source and have at it! Should be a lot of fun. Thanks to the National Evaluation Center for the NNLM for bringing it to us.

Another thing for your calendars, the National Library of Medicine is hosting daily events during Love Data Week next month, February 13-17. Love Data Week is sponsored by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

I received a sad email last week. The Sketchbook Project, a wonderful, global, artist-driven effort is ending its run. The physical library in Brooklyn, NY closed last year and during the move of the collection to Florida, a fire broke out in the trailer carrying the books. That was but one set-back that helped founder, Steven Peterman, make the difficult decision to wrap it up.

I participated in several projects of The Sketchbook Project over the years. I had 2 sketchbooks in the Brooklyn Art Library, plus one in a traveling exhibit. I also did themed artist exchanges; wonderful ways to give and receive art with others around the world. With news of the end, I was able to get my sketchbooks back from the Library. One has water damage from the fire, but it’s still readable (and digitally archived – word to the wise). The other was untouched. They arrived back to me this week. It was fun to see them again.

My question of the week is prompted by all the recent news of ChatGPT. What is the purpose of writing a paper or taking an exam? Is is simply to write the paper and pass a test? If so, then what is the purpose of learning?

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries