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Monthly Archives: July 2008

Survey: understanding the web professions

31-Jul-08

The lovely people at A List Apart are running a demographic survey about people who build web sites.
Here’s a bit of the ALA blurb about why the survey is important:
“Possibly the most important invention of the past century, the web is undeniably one of the most robust engines of knowledge transfer, political and social change, [...]

Toolkit: Xobni plugin for Outlook

24-Jul-08

In August 2007 the University’s email system delivered about 6.6 million emails to staff and 2.9 million to students. The central email gateway rejected 32.5 million spam emails. [Source: Vice-Chancellor's email "Come September" sent to all staff, 28 September 2007]
I’m probably responsible for more than my fair share of this email traffic. The [...]

A room of one’s own

10-Jul-08

Moving into a new office is a bit like playing house: there’s an irresistible urge to decorate, to make it your own.
Fortunately, I have some good bones to work with:

The new office is in the Baillieu Library, which marks its 50th anniversary next year, so the retro furniture is quite at home here.
I have a [...]

SCOAP3: a viable business model for academic publishing?

08-Jul-08

The Information Futures Commission raised lots of questions about how the University of Melbourne wants to engage in public action and advocacy about Open Access and intellectual property.
Partly as a result of contacts we made via the boss’s US study tour, we can now announce that Australia has joined the SCOAP3 Open Access initiative that [...]

Signs of normality

03-Jul-08

How to tell you’ve moved out of ‘project world’ and back into ‘operational world’ — it’s close of business on the third working day of the month, and you have:

read, noted and/or written a total of 160 emails this month
attended two management meetings
made appointments for several further meetings in the next fortnight
acquired somebody else’s blue [...]