Author archives

Slow Down and Write Better Emails

HBR: “Misunderstandings are rampant in today’s workplaces. While poor communication habits may feel inevitable with colleagues, we should always strive to engage with clarity and empathy, especially as we come to rely more on remote work and digital communication. What is a good first step to improving our habits? Relearning what it means to read …

Subjects: E-Mail, Knowledge Management

Google’s Model Search automatically optimizes and identifies AI models

VentureBeat: “Google today announced the release of Model Search, an open source platform designed to help researchers develop machine learning models efficiently and automatically. Instead of focusing on a specific domain, Google says that Model Search is domain-agnostic, making it capable of finding a model architecture that fits a dataset and problem while minimizing coding …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines

The Librarian War Against QAnon

The Atlantic – “As “Do the research” becomes a rallying cry for conspiracy theorists, classical information literacy is not enough…For too long now, shared reality has been fracturing before our eyes. Eli Pariser’s concept of the “filter bubble” is already a decade old. Yochai Benkler’s research on propaganda networks finds that the roots of our …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Social Media

Curating Public Tweets for Academic Research

Center for Data Innovation: “Twitter has released a dataset of historical public tweets available to academic researchers for use. Developers update the dataset on a weekly basis to include up to 10 million monthly tweets. Users can filter by recent searches and mentions on a timeline, applying up to 1,000 concurrent rules. Previously, researchers could …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

Experts Say the ‘New Normal’ in 2025 Will Be Far More Tech-Driven, Presenting More Big Challenges

Pew – “A plurality of experts think sweeping societal change will make life worse for most people as greater inequality, rising authoritarianism and rampant misinformation take hold in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Still, a portion believe life will be better in a ‘tele-everything’ world where workplaces, health care and social activity improve…Asked to …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Education, Health Care, Internet, Privacy, Social Media, Transportation

Should armed guards be in schools? This JAMA study on shootings may surprise you

Research Letter, Public Health. February 16, 2021. Presence of Armed School Officials and Fatal and Nonfatal Gunshot Injuries During Mass School Shootings, United States, 1980-2019. Jillian Peterson, PhD; James Densley, DPhil; Gina Erickson, PhD. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(2):e2037394. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.37394 – “..This study examined a total of 133 cases of school shootings and attempted school shootings …

Subjects: Education, Legal Research

To Avoid a Repeat of Blackouts, Researcher Suggests Diversifying

Medium – Big Idea: Thousands of Californians suffered blackouts this fall, but research offers steps for utilities to prevent similar outages in the future. “In October and November, more than 800,000 Californians lost power, when Pacific Gas & Electric turned off transmission lines to prevent wildfires. In 2011, 54 Japanese nuclear plants were closed, after a …

Subjects: Economy, Energy

Giving “Last Chance Books” New Life Through Digitization

Internet Archive Blogs – “Sometimes they arrive tied up in string because their binding is broken. Others are in envelopes to protect the brittle pages from further damage. Aging books are sent from libraries to the Internet Archive for preservation. Thanks to the careful work of the nearly 70 people who scan at digitization centers …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries