Scholarly Communication

Using techniques garnered from startups and quickly evolving technology companies, in The Experimental Library: A Guide to Taking Risks, Failing Forward, and Creating Change (ALA Editions, 2023), Cathryn Copper explores how information professionals can use experimentation to make evidence-based decisions and advance innovative initiatives.The last five years have demonstrated that sticking with the status quo is not an option; instead, as the experiences of many libraries have shown, those that experiment are better positioned to adapt to rapidly changing environments and evolving user needs and behaviors. The Experimental Library supports librarians as they draw from new approaches and technologies to harness experimentation as a tool for testing ideas and responding to change. Copper borrows ideas and inspiration from the startup sector to teach you how to take a human-centered and design thinking-based perspective on problem solving. This conversation for New Books Network explores the mindset, methodology, and culture that support experimentation in libraries.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Emma Frances Bloomfield, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We talk about her novel analytical tool for helping you narrativize research! Bloomfield's new book is Science V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators (U California Press, 2024)Emma Bloomfield : "I'd love to see more direct incorporation of communication studies and communication skills into the science curriculum but also into a researcher's overall training as well. Because I think that researchers can be very good at communication, but unfortunately they're not specifically trained in it and they're not really incentivized to do it. Basically, we put researchers, unnecessarily, before the choice of becoming either public intellectuals or recognized members of their research community and tenured professors at university. But we can give people more time and more compensation so that they can do both — and that will benefit the research and the communication of the research." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation—and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way.This interview discusses the series with one of the two editors of the series, Dr. Christopher Schaberg. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time. Many Object Lessons books have been interviewed on the New Books Network to date, including: Trench Coat, Mushroom, Ok, Grave, Wine, Magazine, Stroller, Barcode, Recipe, Hyphen, Pregnancy Test, Gitter, Relic, Pencil, Air Conditioning, and Swimming Pool.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Miroslaw Staron, Editor-in-Chief of Information and Software Technology and Professor in the Software engineering division, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg. We talk about the collaboration and mentorship which publishing is meant to be.Miroslaw Staron : "The communication through academic publication is of course important to every researcher's CV. But really, it's much more important for science overall. If we cannot communicate our ideas, then we cannot make those ideas available to the scrutiny of others. That is, if we are unable to show what we have actually worked on and which kind of methodology we have used to do that work, and if we can't really describe the kind of results we have achieved — then really, I mean, just ask yourself, how should someone else ever be able to get back to us to say, 'Yes, this is a good idea,' or, ‘No, this is a bad idea, but I know how to do it right'? Because that is the way to move the field forward — it all rests on the communication."Links Miroslaw's advice on writing Information and Software Technology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Brandon Brown, Professor of Physics at the University of San Francisco. We talk about factoring in both message-sender and -receiver to your writing for STEM. Brown is the author of Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM (MIT Press, 2023).Brandon Brown : "I've seen so many different scientists and communicators, including Nobel Laureates, all the way to grad students who are struggling with the English — and it's just apparent to me that some people do have a much better sense of audience. And to my mind, that level of compassion, even perhaps of connection — that is what makes their communication work so very well. And really, this is a talent or disposition which is independent of a person's linguistic skills or background, isn't it?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.9 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois; and joining us, as well, is James Gee, Regents Professor and Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the generativity of machines.James Gee : "I fundamentally believe that humans are a screwed-up species — one of the few species that will put themselves out of business in a shorter evolutionary time than any species that has lived on Earth. So, something must be wrong with us. And I think what's wrong with us is, we don't understand what sort of animal we are. That's why our schools are no good — we don't understand how humans really learn. We don't understand what a human really is. We have an elevated view of our own rationality, of our own intelligence, and the consequence is, we are depleting the world. So, the biggest attempt we can still make now is to use everything we can (including Chat) to retheorize who we are as a being before we put ourselves out of existence." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Emad Shihab, Full Professor and Concordia Research Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University, Canada. We talk about authenticating learning and unlocking potential in people — the true ways to innovate research.Emad Shihab : "To build a vision, I always say, try to make it ambitious and then break it down. So, just saying, 'I want to change the world,' I mean, it's a great vision but the truth is, nobody knows what their part in that is supposed to be — how can they contribute to you changing the world. That’s why, for me, having a vision is — you try to build whatever it is that the vision is meant to do, then you make sure you break it down into smaller pieces so that people can know the parts that they could play in that vision.”Learn about Create SE4AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Rebekka Burkholz, faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. We talk about the composition of research groups and of research papers.Rebekka Burkholz : "I have the feeling that this meta-reading becomes more important as a person's career progresses. Because early on, a researcher is typically very focused on the details of each paper and they try to understand what this method does and so on — and of course, researchers need to begin that way, really spending the time to attain to expertise in a particular focus. But with time, as a researcher has seen more ideas (and of course, in one particular focus, methods and questions all share some similarity), then the person acquires more and more overview as they continue reading. They are reading, essentially, for the links between findings, for implications of the findings and those links — and in this way, a more experienced reader of the research actually becomes engaged in a sort of literature discussion." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the fascinating Ethno-Indology series now published at Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing which offers inexpensive peer-reviewed Open Access and Print-on-Demand publishing for scholars from all over the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Briana Barner, an Assistant Professor and cultural communications scholar, shares her journey of overcoming writing roadblocks. She emphasizes the importance of nurturing creativity through personal activities to restore joy. Barner discusses practical strategies like setting writing rituals and using self-affirmation to combat self-doubt. Music, too, plays a crucial role in maintaining motivation. Finally, she highlights the importance of consistency in writing, especially for those balancing academic ambitions with caregiving responsibilities.