Re: Olivia Judson

["B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>]

Olivia Judson's 12/16 NY Times blog seems rather uninformed. Her 
big gripe seems to be the naming conventions used for PDF files:

"The journal articles arrive with file names like 456330a.pdf or 
sd-article121.pdf. Keeping track of what these are, what I have, 
where I've put them, which other papers are related to them, is 
hopeless. Attempting to replicate my old way of doing things, but 
on my computer - so, electronic versions of papers in electronic 
folders - didn't work, I think because I couldn't see what the 
papers actually were."

As a number of commenters on her blog pointed out, she easily 
could have renamed the PDF files as she downloaded them so that 
the file names indicated author/title information. This would 
have solved her problem of not knowing "what the papers actually 
were".

For someone with such great intellectual/scientific curiosity, 
Judson seems surprisingly unimaginative when it comes to 
scholarly communication.

Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates
Bloomington, IN

--- On Fri, 12/26/08, Joseph J. Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Joseph J. Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Olivia Judson
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Date: Friday, December 26, 2008, 11:21 PM
>
> Some scientists could be called content.  The question is how 
> many, and for how long.  If Judson's article is in any way 
> representative, I would hazard that the answer is, most and for 
> quite some time.  Your project may be a harbinger, but 
> harbingers by definition are outside the mainstream.
>
> But as to your specific questions, I had in mind the very 
> things that you are working on.  The population at large--the 
> Internet population, at any rate--is at home with social 
> networks, certification systems, and the like. The form they 
> take is hardly suitable for serious research, but the raw 
> elements are there. MySpace is much more sophisticated than 
> DSpace, FaceBook more complex than ScienceDirect.  The future 
> of peer review is augured in the recommendation systems of 
> Digg, Slashdot, and even Netflix.
>
> People who disparage the consumer Internet usually point to the 
> quality of the content, which ranges from the stupid to the 
> simple-minded.  But that is not really the point:  what will 
> come to matter are the forms that encapsulate and disseminate 
> content, and this is where the research community has a 
> distance to travel.  But I was hanging my thought on Judson's 
> single article, which may not be fair.  I will admit that every 
> time I see a PDF I reach for my revolver.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Law" <jamesblaw@gmail.com>
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 9:41 AM
> Subject: Re: Olivia Judson
>
>> Judson's article is a good intro to some of the problems of 
>> personal information management. It doesn't even touch on some 
>> of larger scientific information problems such as 
>> collaboration, peer-review, dissemination, attribution, and 
>> evaluation. I work on an EU-funded research project that is 
>> trying to address a number of these issues, so I hardly think 
>> scientists could be called content. So, I'm curious about your 
>> perspective here. Could you expand on what it is that students 
>> take for granted, but scientists lack?
>>
>> Jim Law Liquid
>> Publications Project 
>> <http://project.liquidpub.org/>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 5:31 AM, Joseph J. Esposito
>> <espositoj@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Olivia Judson has an interesting New York Times blog post, 
>>> which can be found here:
>>>
>>> http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/defeating-bedlam/?ref=opinion
>>>
>>> The topic is software tools to help scientists fight through 
>>> the "bedlam" of information.  She reviews two products: 
>>> Zotero and Papers.  People familiar with Judson's work will 
>>> find here her admirably clear writing and talent for 
>>> instruction.
>>>
>>> Still and all I could not help but wonder how it is that the 
>>> scientific community could be content to work with software 
>>> that is at least a half step, maybe a full step or more, 
>>> behind what students take for granted. Desktop applications? 
>>> PDFs? No, I don't think so.  Compare this piece to Dana 
>>> Goodyear's infinitely more sophisticated article in the Dec.
>>> 22 issue of "The New Yorker" on so-called cell phone novels.
>>>
>>> Joe Esposito