Aaron Tay's thoughts about academic librarianship

Singapore Management University

My blog focuses on the two primary ways "AI"—or more accurately, transformer-based models—are impacting academic search.

A Deep Dive into EBSCOhost's Natural Language Search and Web of Science Smart Search - Two bundled "Ai-powered"search (I)

National University of Singapore

Due to the popularity of this post, I have created a separate page , which I will keep updated with new entries.

iPhone apps for librarians

I recently compared three academic AI search tools: Primo Research Assistant, Web of Science Research Assistant, and Scopus AI for a review article.

The reproducibility and interpretability of academic Ai search engines like Primo Research Assistant, Web of Science Research Assistant, Scopus Ai and more

Curious about academic librarianship in Singapore as a career?

Day in the life of a librarian - An academic librarian in Singapore 2014

Google Scholar is increasingly becoming a subject that an academic librarian cannot afford to be ignorant about.

8 surprising things I learnt about Google Scholar

It's the end of the year, and perhaps it's time to take stock of what went right and what to work on the next year.

Some big picture thinking - my favourite "future of academic libraries" articles in 2012

It's common for libraries to have a Facebook page now and as such we are all affected by the new Facebook Timeline for pages that will be turned on March 30 2012.

What are library facebook pages using as cover photos? A survey

Hi all, this is yet another conference report from me, my 3rd and last international conference for 2012.

My experiences at Internet Librarian International 2012, London

I am sure you have seen presentation slides done in the libraryland by speakers that are often stunning in simplicity.

Create effective presentations using Haiku Deck - iPad app

Wikipedia was on strike for 24 hours on 18 Jan 2012. Many libraries attempted to take advantage of this backout to turn it into a "teachable moment" . Libraries Tweeted (Topsy finds about 500 mentions of Library and wikipedia during the period), blogged, posted on Facebook, created libguides to help students survive the blackout and otherwise advertised the importance of libraries.

Wikipedia was on strike for 24 hours on 18 Jan 2012.

Is Wikipedia really the library's competition?

Compared to a couple of years ago where most people had to manage files/information on at most two devices - Home + Work PC, today we have multiple devices.

Options for managing content across multiple devices - iPhone/iPad/Desktop

I am not by any stretch a customer service guru or expert, but one thing I noticed about libraries is that user needs tend to come in cycles and often can be easily anticipated in advance.

A thought about predictability of user requests

I've being thinking of the nature of the work I do for my institution and it hit me that one way to classify my work is to divide it into 2 groups.

Balancing Micro level vs Macro level work in the library

In 2015, Marshall Breeding the guru of Library technology and discovery summarized the state of Library Discovery in a NISO White paper entitled "The Future of Library Discovery"

The rise of the "open" discovery indexes? Lens.org, Semantic Scholar and Scinapse

Xtranormal has the tag line "If you can type, you can make movies" and it's really that simple!

Funniest library related movies made using Xtranormal

I spend quite a lot of time working on my blog in 2010, and in return it has brought me many rewards.

Library New Year Resolutions

Web 2.0 services like Slideshare, Youtube are now an accepted part of the web, and Libraries are using them as a matter of course to embed their presentations onto webpages.

Updating presentations in widgets

Haven't had much time to blog this weekend, as I was busy running a pilot survey for my Phd (more about that in the future), but I will just share 2 wild/random ideas I have about email.

Some email ideas for library use - LibX and Xobni

I used to own a web domain a few year ago, and every month I would dutifully download and analyse my server logs using Analog.

4 Different ways to track social media reactions for your blog or site

Introduction

In this post, I will talk about a little known service called Google Profiles, why it is becoming important, and I will describe how libraries have being using it, the web 2.0 accounts they are listing on it, and compare it to the accounts listed by libraries on Friendfeed.

Google Profiles of libraries

Many libraries in the world provide remote access to electronic resources via EZproxy .

Adding ezproxy to the url - 5 different methods

We recently started a small scale experimental presence on Friendfeed (official announcement) .

Libraries on FriendFeed

One visitor to my blog, commented that she couldn't make heads or tails of my postings because it was too technical and obscure (opensearch plugins??).

Google Books tips and tricks by a librarian

New!  Listen to a 7 min autogenerated podcast discussing this blogpost from Google LLM Notebook

I recently watched a librarian give a talk about their experiments teaching prompt engineering.

Prompt engineering with Retrieval Augmented Generation systems - tread with caution!

In a previous post, I discussed the different ways, one can add support to searching OPAC and other library subscribed databases.

Opensearch vs custom toolbar vs smart keyword vs bookmarklet (II)

Want to collaborate with a user, or fellow librarian but you are both not at the same location?

Real time collaboration tools

I have a controversial and perhaps somewhat surprising (to some) view.

Why use of new AI enhanced tools that help with literature review should be discouraged for undergraduates

If there is one academic discovery search that dominates it is Google Scholar.

5 ways Google Scholar helps you get access to what you discovered

Web of Science - Pilot- enhanced cited references

In the recent years I have been blogging quite a bit about the idea of citation contexts (or citation intent or citation sentiment or...) in journal articles. While definitions and concepts might vary a little, the idea is not to simply just count citations but also try to figure out what they mean.

Web of Science - Pilot- enhanced cited references

Web of Science and Scholarcy adds citation context features with a twist

Note: This is a lightly edited piece of something I wrote for my institution

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is now available in 120+ countres. What you need to know

UN Sustainability Goals or UN SDGs was first adopted in 2015 , and consists of 17 goals adopted by all United Nations Member States to achieve by 2030.

Mapping literature to UN SDGs, issues &amp; tools that support it - Scival, Dimensions &amp; Overton.io

In my last post, I talked about the state of retractions in the literature and how so much of the literature includes authors who probably unknowingly cites retracted works

Checking for retractions &amp; other quality checks on your manuscript before journal submissions - some free tools scite, Zotero, Pubpeer, Scholarcy and more

Update Nov 2021 - A relook at GetFTR , Libkey, Exlibris Quicklinks, and other linking and authentication technologies

Improving access and delivery of academic content - a survey of current &amp; emerging trends

My apologies for the little deception in the last blost post. I guarantee you this blog post is 100% written by the human Aaron Tay, though as always in areas I am teaching myself take everything here with more than the usual pinch of salt!

Playing with GPT-3 via AI Dungeon - some Library scenarios and test cases

Microsoft Academic (first relaunched in 2016) is one of the biggest index of academic content next to Google Scholar.

6 Surprising things I learnt about Microsoft Academic (I)

It's a cliche to say that the volume of scientific literature produced is increasing at a rate beyond which researchers can keep up.

More research/literature mapping tools - Connected Papers and CoCites

In a 2012, blog post titled - Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings, Google announced that they would be augmenting Google results not just with links but also results from the Google Knowledge Graph.

Researchers appearing in Google Knowledge Graph/panel - drawing data from Google Scholar profiles.

Yes, I made it. 10 whole years of blogging about librarianship. It has been a long road and it's hard to believe 10 years on I'm still here blogging. If you are curious, this is  the posts that started it all , 10 years ago in 2009! My very first blog post on my old Wordpress platform   Looking back it seems incredibly long ago. I was then a very new librarian with over a year of experience, very much wet behind the ears.

Musings about librarianship is 10 years old! Looking behind the curtain....

It has been over a year in April 2018 since I had the opportunity to present at two panels in conferences alongside experts such as Lisa Hinchliffe, Johan Tilstra (Founder Lean Library), Jason Priem (Cofounder Unpaywall), Ben Kaube (Cofounder Kopernio

Kopernio, Lean Library, Anywhere Access &amp; other "Access Broker" browser extensions - a roundup &amp; update of current state of play

I was recently invited to the Changing Landscape of Science and Technology Libraries (CLSTL) 2019 conference.

Crossref Participation reports - assessing quality of metadata provided by Publishers

Note : Jan 2019 - I wrote the bulk of this in July 2018, when Scopus announced a deal with Unpaywall.

Linking to freely available articles - how various databases and citation indexes use unpaywall data

I first read about Lens.org via a tweet on my way back from a conference in April 2018.

Lens.org - detailed review of a new open discovery and citation index

I’ve recently come across an idea known as inversion.

Inversion : How to fail at implementing a web scale discovery service

2018 appears to be the year of the voice assistants and smart speakers.

Library and academic related services on Google Assistant and Alexa - a preliminary survey

When I first came to my current institution, I remember meeting a faculty who kindly explained to me how he worked and what struck me was how unimportant journal articles and how important relatively speaking datasets were to him .

Datasets as a first class entity - preliminary musings

The "inside-out library" was a concept coined by Lorcan Dempsey as an interesting way to capture the change in the function of libraries today.

Enhancing the discovery of institutional repository contents - 6 sources to consider

2009 to 2013 was a exciting time for library discovery as University Libraries starting rolling out so called Web Scale Discovery services.

My look at some interesting discovery ideas, trends and features for academic search

It's 2018 and perhaps you are looking for interesting new tools to add to your repertoire.

6 tools for easy data cleaning, modelling and statistical analysis - Rapidminer, Orange, Rattle, Trifacta, Talend, JASP

As a generalist with hands in many pies, I'm prone to throw around terms I barely understand.

Using oaDOI &amp; Crossref event data API to calculate your institution's open access citation advantage

I'm actually a pretty big fan of Google Scholar, which in some ways is better than our library discovery service ,but even if you aren't a fan, given it's popularity it's important for librarians to keep up with the latest developments.

4 New things about Google Scholar - UI, recommendations, and citation networks

The concept of ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor ID) appears to be simple.

ORCID is 3 things or why some researchers instinctively dislike the idea of ORCID

We can all agree that Google Scholar has many strengths , but no matter how complete or deep it's indexing, how much better it is at finding free articles or it's presumed better relevancy ranking , we librarians have always had one weakness of Google Scholar to point at.

Are search results in library discovery really more trust-worthy? Of Predatory journals &amp; Authority

8 years ago in March 2009, I started blogging about librarianship on a WordPress system powered by Edublogs Campus.

Musings about librarianship turns 8 with a refreshed layout and a quick note!

The recent rise in interest in fake news has given us librarians a reason to once again trumpet loudly the value of what we do in teaching information or media literacy.

Librarian &amp; fake news - Bayes, metaknowledge &amp; epistemic humility

As every librarian knows, there are three main sources of citation data.

ResearchGate and Microsoft academic search (beta) - new rising citation indexes?

I've come to believe that learning how to search for and manipulate data will become the next "must-have" skill sets for academic librarians.

OpenRefine, &amp; reconciliation services - learning the ropes

2016 seems to the year Sci-hub has broken out into popular consciousness.

5 Extensions to help access full text when starting outside the library homepage

When I was back in school, I dreaded art class as I was simply horrible at it.

A quick comparison of online infographics makers - Infogram, Pikochart and Venngage

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend VALA16 in Melbourne and I capped off my visit down under by seizing the opportunity to attend ANZREG (Australia New Zealand Regional Ex Libris Group for users) seminar.

Primo and Summon - Same but different? - (I)

Devices and workflow - A mini review of Moto 360

In the early years of my blog, I used to post about my use of my new devices like iPhone (2010), iPad (2011) and web services that I use. I've now switched over to the android world, current setup is Android Note 4 + Nexus 7 (2013). A few months back in Oct I got a Moto 360 v1 at a fairly cheap price to try out the Android wear smartwatch.

Devices and workflow - A mini review of Moto 360

A quick review of Moto 360 v1.0

I am always trying out new tools to organize and improve my work and my current workflow involves the use of Google Keep , Dropbox and Google Now reminders (having moved away from Google tasks).

Libraries and Trello - How are librarians using it?

I've recently been involved in analysing LibQual+ Survey at my new institution and one of the things recommended nowadays when doing LIBQUAL analysis is to do a plot of performance of various items versus how important those items are to users.

Making electronic resources accessible from my home or office - some improvements

After over 7 years of working at NUS, I am finally moving on.  I am very grateful for the opportunities given to me here and I have changed and grown far beyond I expected. This period has been by far the most eventful period in my life, I've changed so much I wager the newbie librarian who first stepped into NUS in 2007 could hardly recognise the person I am in 2015.

After over 7 years of working at NUS, I am finally moving on.

[Personal] Moving on from my first library job

I recently signed up to a "research methods" class whose aim was to help practitioners like me produce high quality LIS papers.

[Research question] What percentage of citations made by our researchers is to freely available content?

I was recently invited to give a talk at the Swedish Summon User Group meeting and I presented about possible scenarios for the future of web scale discovery.

Four possible Web Scale Discovery Future Scenarios

At library school, I was taught the concept of nested boolean.

Why Nested Boolean search statements may not work as well as they did

I have been recently thinking of the types of expertise academic librarians have and how recent trends in academic librarianship have made things harder.

Types of librarian expertise - are they getting easier to acquire for non-librarians?

Is known item searching really a big issue in Web Scale discovery?

Is known item searching *really* an issue for web scale discovery?

I blogged 8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013 , an attempt to summarize the current consensus after 4 years of web scale discovery service use in libraries and hundreds of research papers and presentation.

6 things I am wondering about discovery

A tongue in a cheek, thought experiment or perhaps precautionary tale of the ultimate fate of library discovery services in 2035.

The day library discovery died - 2035

Since we implemented our discovery service, I noticed that increasingly we are asked by users if there was a way to use Summon to browse , clearly users new to a topic were overwhelmed by the number of results they were getting and besides recommender systems

A survey of Library Virtual Shelves - 8 examples

Surveys of both phd students in the UK as well as researchers in US not to mention ordinary users has shown that increasingly, the academic library site is declining in importance as a starting point for searching.

4 ways to bring users to your library resources from Wikipedia

Web scale discovery systems as a class of product has existed for over 4 years, and there has been rapid adoption by academic libraries around the world.

8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013

I was talking to a couple of students from my university in a online chatroom* and one mentioned that he was doing his literature review for his final year thesis**.

Signal from the noise

Brian Matthew's A white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism [pdf] is probably one of the most thought provoking pieces on academic librarianship I have read this year so far.

"We’re a copy-and-paste profession"

If you have any familiarity with blogging you will know for some unknown reason "list posts" tend to be more successful at grabbing attention.

A different style of blogging to try

Roughly a year ago in Unfinished blog posts - which ones would you like to see? , I solicited feedback on which of my unfinished drafts that you would like to see.

Unfinished blog posts (II) - which ones would you like to see?

Steve Jobs first pitched for the iPhone at MacWorld 9 Jan 2007. Here is the original transcript and below is the video of the master at work.

What would Steve Jobs say? Reinventing the library catalogue

I suppose by now many of you have heard, I was named as a Library Journal Mover &amp; Shaker 2011!

I'm a Library Journal Mover &amp; Shaker 2011!

I had a recent online conversation on Twitter with someone and she mentioned that she was very excited to have the opportunity to meet someone who was (and still is) her library hero from young (being a librarian was her childhood dream).

Giving thanks - Librarians who I have never met and yet learnt from

I'm trying a little social experiment with the new FaceBook group feature.

A little social experiment - Add yourself to my library Facebook group

As you can probably tell from the blog name "Musings about librarianship", I clearly didn't give much thought to what I would be blogging about when I first started blogging in March 09 as the title is generic enough to cover almost anything about librarianship.

A mixed bag of ideas

Musings about librarianship (this blog!) has being nominated for the Salem Press Library Blog Award !

Nominated for Library Blog Award

Okay, I'm a big fan of RSS feeds, many of the posts here involve manipulating or consuming RSS feeds in some form, and social media is essentially tied to RSS.

Using RSS feeds to distribute library news - 6 ways

Everyone knows mobile is hot now, and many libraries are scrambling to add mobile friendly pages.

What are mobile friendly library sites offering? A survey.

QR code stands for "quick response", it's basically a 2D barcode that can be used to store urls, text etc.

QR codes for libraries - some thoughts

Reference desk duty is probably the most interesting part of my day, as I get to interact with users.

The Librarian at the reference desk. How do you manage your workflow at the reference desk?

In case you were wondering, the answer is No. I'm not. Still, I was looking through my google analytics account and noticed a couple of hits from an unfamiliar site. Clicking on it and I saw this   Yes, I made it to a blog "Top 100 list"! Not too shabby considering that there were at least 600 library related blogs in 2008 and should be over 1,000 by now according to this comment by Walt crawford.

In case you were wondering, the answer is No.

Am I a librarian blog star?

Technical services in libraries which encompasses back-room work like acquisitions, document delivery and cataloging are often deemed as the less 'sexy' part of librarianship.

Using library 2.0 tools for technical services

I've being a librarian for 2 years now, and it seems a good point as ever to look back at my career so far.

Will my interest in Library 2.0/social media hurt me?

Summary


 Classification of Academic Search Tools by Skill and Performance

: This post explores a framework for categorizing academic search tools based on their skill cap (the expertise needed to use them effectively) and performance cap (the potential quality of results they can yield), drawing parallels to gaming strategies.

Are the current AI search tools that are enhanced with transformer-based models, the unicorn - low skill cap, high performance tools we are looking for?

As an academic librarian, I’m often asked: “Which AI search tool should I use?” With a flood of new tools powered by large language models (LLMs) entering the academic search space, answering that question is increasingly complex.

Ai2 Paper Finder and Futurehouse PaperQA2: More transparent Deep Search for Scholars?

I've spent a large part of my career as an academic librarian studying the question of discovery from many angles.

How learning evidence synthesis (systematic reviews etc) changed the way I search and some thoughts about semantic search as a complement search technique

A decade ago in 2012, I observed how the dominance of Google had slowly affected how Academic databases and OPACs/ catalogues (now discovery services) work.

JSTOR generative AI pilot - Or is Semantic Search coming for academic databases?

I was recently asked a question - how do you find seminal papers/work/research?

Identifying seminal papers - some methods -scite citation statement search, Q&amp;A systems, Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS)

As I write this, OpenAI has just unleashed ChatGPT - their GPT3.5 Large Language Model(LLMs) for about a month, and the online world is equal parts hype and confusion.

Do Automated citation recommendation tools encourage questionable citations? Some thoughts on latest tools like Large Language Models and Q&amp;A academic systems

Since I started blogging about GPT-3 and language models, interest in this area has continued to increase.

Aaron Tay's Musings about librarianship