The Distant Librarian – Thoughts on technology and libraries

4/16/2021

Google Earth timelapse of Fort McMurray

Google just announced what they're calling Google Earth’s biggest update in years. With Timelapse in Google Earth, 24 million satellite photos from the past 37 years have been compiled into an interactive 4D experience. Now anyone can watch time unfold and witness nearly four decades of planetary change. It's pretty neat! A number of years
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Posted Under: Ideas, Maps
3/3/2021

A couple of quick updates – FOIP and Twitter Academic

Just a couple of quick updates. First, in December, I posted about my initial experience with Alberta's new(?) FOIP process. And then I actually submitted that request on January 26. So the fact that I was never notified that my submission was incomplete is a strike, for sure. But on February 16 I did get
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Posted Under: Miscellaneous, Scholarship, Social Networks
2/26/2021

Thoughts on fighting QAnon – How can so many people believe things that are obviously untrue?

Well that was a sobering read. A few weeks ago the following post by Barbara Fister was circulated at MPOW: Lizard People in the Library. We were supposed to have a discussion about it, but I wasn't able to make the Zoom time, so I didn't read it then. Yesterday someone pointed out that the
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Posted Under: Ideas, Miscellaneous, Scholarship, Social Networks
2/25/2021

Queering Zoom: students and educators say online learning must be more inclusive

Here's a good article from the University of Alberta student newspaper: Queering Zoom: students and educators say online learning must be more inclusive. A couple of points and counterpoints: While professors often include anti-harassment and inclusionary policies in their syllabus, Morris noted that they feel these are hollow statements. “[These professors that have these inclusion
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Posted Under: Miscellaneous, Social Networks, Web/Tech
1/27/2021

Twitter Opening Its Tweet Archive to Researchers

Well this seems like good news. One of the biggest annoyances of trying to do research on Twitter, IMHO, is the difficulty in obtaining older tweets. There are workarounds, such as using a previously-captured dataset from Documenting the Now, or collecting via snscrape, but it seems there is now better official access for researchers via
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Posted Under: Data, Scholarship, Social Networks

Home

Google Earth timelapse of Fort McMurray

A couple of quick updates – FOIP and Twitter Academic

Thoughts on fighting QAnon – How can so many people believe things that are obviously untrue?

Queering Zoom: students and educators say online learning must be more inclusive

Twitter Opening Its Tweet Archive to Researchers