Posts Tagged: unc

Noticed — No Comments
25
Mar 09

Jones to Lecture on the Media Gap

Local folks: Paul Jones will give an interesting talk Tomorrow at UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. I was just reviewing his slides, and it looks like an interesting talk.

Who: Prof. Paul Jones, UNC-Chapel Hill
Where: Room 283, 2nd floor, Carroll Hall, UNC-Chapel Hill
When:Thursday March 26, at 2 pm
What: Changing Communities Inside the Media Gap

Abstract: We know that social networking software is creating new spaces for discourse and interaction. We see SNS forming the social lives and attitudes of our children and to some extent ourselves.

How did this come about? Certainly not overnight and not unnoticed by scholars and technologists.

In 1980, Tetsura Tomito noticed a media gap that he felt will soon be filled by new communications technologies. At the same time, work in the areas of social capital, friendship networks, brain scans (fMRI) and conceptions of community began to grapple with the changes within Tomito’s media gap.

This talk will look at selected attempts to understand how communities are constructed and what changes have already been noticed in these converging areas of research.

You are invited to read, edit and comment on the slides by going to GDocs here: http://tinyurl.com/JOMC-March-26 and during the presentation, you are invited to bring your backchannel discussion to the front by joining a gTalk commentary at the same address.

You’ll also want to mark your calendars, as next week’s speaker is Prof. Daniel Solove, noted privacy expert and author of The Future of Reputation, The Digital Person, and Understanding Privacy.

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25
Feb 09

SILS seeks applicants for Dean position

Looking for a new job?  SILS is on the market for a new Dean:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites nominations and applications for the Dean of the School of Information and Library Science. The Dean, a senior level administrator, reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost. The position is a tenured academic appointment.

The Dean is expected to:

  • Provide dynamic leadership for the School’s academic programs, research, funding, faculty and staff development, and service to state and national constituents,
  • Demonstrate an awareness of the dynamic and complex nature of the field and assist in maintaining the School’s leadership role,
  • Possess successful management experience,
  • Demonstrate a commitment to a consultative, decisive, and responsive deanship,
  • Articulate the vision of the School for the University, state, and national and international communities of information professionals,
  • Provide personal commitment and leadership in pursuing an effective advancement program for the School,
  • Collaborate with faculty, staff, and students to translate the School’s vision into achievements in research, teaching, and service.

Find out more and apply here.

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19
Feb 09

Palfrey, Calvert, Jones to discuss “Cyberspeech”

Somehow I missed this:

UNC School of Law First Amendment Law Review will host its seventh annual symposium, “Cyberspeech,” on Feb. 20, 2009, in collaboration with the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. Check-in opens at 9 a.m., and the event is from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the UNC School of Law, 160 Ridge Road, Chapel Hill.

Paul Jones will be stepping in as the guest keynote speaker, replacing former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Speakers include

  • Susan Brenner, NCR Distinguished Professor of Law and Technology , University of Dayton School of Law
  • Clay Calvert, John and Ann Curley Professor of First Amendment Studies and Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, Penn State University
  • Robert Frieden, Pioneers Chair and Professor of Telecommunications and Law, Penn State University
  • John Morris , General Counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Internet Standards, Technology, and Policy Project
  • Dawn Nunziato, Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
  • John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School
  • Robert Richards, Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Law and Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, Penn State University
  • Hannibal Travis, Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law
  • Alfred Yen, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School

The symposium is open to the public. Lunch will be provided on-site. UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty and staff are admitted free; students from other schools are admitted for $5; other guests may attend for $40.

Noticed — 1 Comment
10
Dec 08

Study Break

It is exam time here at UNC Chapel Hill.

Hacks / Research / Software — 2 Comments
2
Dec 08

Hacking Google Scholar

If you connect to Google Scholar through a proxy (for example, through your library’s proxy), you’ll find that GS is unable to remember your preference settings.  Although Google seems to forget my preferences far too often, in the case of Google Scholar it isn’t their fault.  When you connect through a proxy you appear to Google as a different user every time, and until preferences are tied to your Google account (and not a session/cookie), Google is simply unable to remember them.

To “solve” this problem, I’ve found that you can set a bookmark that will set your preferences each time it is clicked.  While this doesn’t solve the problem of Google forgetting preferences between sessions, it will save you the time and effort of having to reset your preferences each time.  You will need to custom-craft your bookmark.  Here’s mine:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_setprefs?num=50&scis=yes&scisf=4&submit=Save+Preferences

As you can see, in with I’m passing some options to “scholar_setprefs” – i.e. the mechanism that sets your Google Scholar preferences.  I’m manipulating two options, Number of Results (num=50) and Bibliography manager (scis=yes&scisf=4).  I could also directly manipulate the interface and search language, library links, and if the results opened new windows or not (I don’t because I’m happy with the GS defaults).

The options accept a range of values, which I’ll describe briefly:

Number of results (num), accepts:

  • 10
  • 20
  • 30
  • 50
  • 100

If you’d like 100 results to be displayed, you’d change the url so that num=100.

Bibliography manager (scis=yes&scisf=4).  Google Scholar supports a number of different export formats, and to change their default, you’ll need to change the scisf value.  Here are the corresponding values:

  • 4 (Bibtex)
  • 3 (EndNote)
  • 2 (RefMan)
  • 1 (RefWorks)
  • 5 (WenXianWang)

If you’re a RefWorks user, you’d change the string so that it looked like this scis=yes&scisf=1.

Putting it all together, if you’re a RefWorks user who wants 100 results displayed, you’d set your bookmark as follows:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_setprefs?num=100&scis=yes&scisf=1&submit=Save+Preferences

Finally, if you’re accessing GS through your library proxy, you’ll need to add the proxy information into the URL. In the case of UNC we place the proxy information directly in the url. Therefore, my proxied bookmark looks like this:

http://scholar.google.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/scholar_setprefs?num=50&scis=yes&scisf=4&submit=Save+Preferences

As you can see, I’ve added .libproxy.lib.unc.edu to the beginning of the URL. This will vary by library, so you’ll want to look at other proxied URL’s at your institution to get a feel for where the proxy information goes.  As I noted above, there are a bunch of other options you can change directly. If you’d like to change those, simply view the source of the Google Scholar preferences page, look for the option and value pairs in the form, and tack them into the URL (making sure to add & before the option/value pair).

Teaching — No Comments
14
Nov 08

Invitation: Guest Lectures on Work, Organization and Action

On November 24, we’ll be discussing new forms of work, organization and action in INLS490.  We’re lucky have four experts coming in to discuss their first-hand experience with the topic.

Our guests for November 24 will be:

All of these guests are leveraging new media and technologies in their work.  Brian’s work with Carrboro Coworking is addressing a very real new-economy need – creating collaborative spaces for creative work.  Dave works virtually and physically with many different teams, and Wayne is the glue of the Triangle-area technology scene.  Abe is venturing out with his first startup, addressing work patterns and productivity.  Clearly, this is going to be a dynamite class.

If you’re in the area and would like to attend, please do – the class is in Manning Hall 307, Mon Nov. 24 from 6-8:30.  One thing I ask – if you’re not affiliated with UNC, please drop me a line and let me know you’re coming.  I’ll provide cookies and snacks.

Teaching — No Comments
8
Oct 08

Spring 2009 – Social Networks

Even though it feels like the Fall semester has just started, registration for Spring 2009 is underway.  I’ll be teaching Online Social Networks, with the class meeting on Monday evenings from 6-8:30.  If you’re interested in taking the class, you can view the syllabi from previous semesters on my teaching page.

Social networks is a class that gets updated each semester, but the existing syllabi should give you an idea of the form and expectations.  One notable change is the class will no longer require purchased texts (yay!), as all readings will be electronic.  I also hope to integrate my forthcoming work Research and Analysis of Online Social Networks into the course.

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