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Laura J. Smart

@ljsmart.bsky.social

350 followers 310 following 520 posts

Secret agent smartypants. Original infodiva. Metadata maven. Foul mouthed. Opinions mine all mine. Baketigweyaang Deshkan Ziibi #ldnont photo alt text Laura J. Smart wearing hot pink computer glasses in their office @ UWO. Bookshelf in background

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · Sep 1

I was today years old when I learned MY NAME is on a urinalysis tool. (No, YOU’RE an analysis tool!)

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 5h

Dude. Yesterday I watched TWO cars turn left into the path of an ambulance. The entitlement abounds.

s. eek smith 👻 @sesmith.lol · 11h

There is a special place for people who don’t pull over for the ambulance and it is not a nice place!!

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 1d

Today in #metadata #librarian land: deciding if it’s a pro or con that meetings are the bulk of my Tuesdays, with the wee weekly catalogue maintenance task squeezed between . I’d rather be solving a knarly data cleaning problem and not all staff debriefing the SWATTING incident.

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 1d

Pondering a Qatari airbase being located in Idaho, a (barely) Canadian bordering state, near an oil rich province with separatist wannabes. Things that make you go hmmmm

Reposted by Laura J. Smart

Kirsten the Librarian @librarykirsten.bsky.social · 1d

For anyone who got a feedback request from Clarivate (Ex Libris) today - zine from Librarians & Archivists with Palestine

librarianswithpalestine.org

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 2d

I felt incredibly guilty about using so much power for what advanced experienced programmers would probably consider simple

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 2d

I used the Anaconda chat to jumpstart a coding project and it helped but it wouldn’t be useful if I hadn’t had a baseline to edit and refine it. It was a directory traversal and selective file transfer. As intermittent and beginner coder it helped me remember libraries & functions quicker than RTFM

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 6d

e) ethics - did we stick to our values as we did the work? f) FAIR data management - our discussions can clarify the data dictionary and paradata needed for our DMP and promote sharing the data with others.

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 6d

d) grounded research. New questions emerge as we gather data. We can do a 2nd review of the raw data to answer those questions if it exists. We can design a new study if it doesn't and build upon it. e) theory building - our chats may show ways to frame new topics 🧵/3

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 6d

a) inter-reviewer consistency. We discussed how we interpreted our data gathering rubric when questions arose or outliers appeared. b) data handling. Raw data needs review and normalization. c) methods. Reflexivity can help us see our biases and we can include this in results/discussion. 🧵/2

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 6d

Research lead pro tip: use a chat client that allows you to export transcripts easily if your team uses DM for comms. Today in #metadata #librarian land - spending WAY too long working around MS Teams. I want to content analyse it for themes for many reasons pertaining to research validity 🧵/1

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 6d

Lack of transparency from vendors is a big problem, among other big problems with transparency in AI metadata. I'm 3/4 through leading a research project evaluating the enhanced eBook Central records which should be getting submitted for pub in early Dec. I'll post when it's available.

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

This is amazing work. Added to my Zotero library on the topic. Many thanks to the folks who have put in so much effort for this group and to the shoulders of giants in info retrieval research upon which we demonstrate utility for searchers.

Violet Fox 🦊 @violetbfox.bsky.social · Apr 3

Could you use help explaining the value of #cataloging & good metadata to your admin, coworkers, #MLIS students, etc.? Happy to share this set of resources put together by an ALA working group chaired by @magsjoy.bsky.social. All of these & more are available at hdl.handle.net/11213/22872. 📚

A flyer for a set of documents "Demonstrating the value of cataloging". Six folders are labeled "talking points for administrators, top 5 reasons why you need a cataloger, annotated bibliography, resources list & acronym cheat sheet, side-by-side comparisons of good administrators bad metadata, and introduction to metadata zine. At the bottom text reads you can find these resources at the link in the post, and they were created by the ALA SAC Devaluation of Cataloging Working Group, 2025.

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

I very much wish I had known how much IUD insertion hurt before I had it done with only “take some ibuprofen before your appointment.” The need for this is screamingly obvious. Kudos to LHSC

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

There has been AI generated metadata in eBook Central MARC records within Clarivate Alma’s central shared records zone for over a year already. I’m assuming the announcement is pertaining to a service sharing records outside of Alma.

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

Tasty and a good pun. I am here for it.

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

This is what we call being viciously polite. Read carefully. Transformative? Yes! Transforming the US to a fascist authoritarian state. He might be an oligarch but Carney is no ass kisser. Elbows up mofos!

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 7d

"You are a transformative president" -- I regret to inform you that Mark Carney is kissing Trump's ass

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

today in #metadata #librarian land: managing e-resource maintenance tasks for Ontario Council of University Libraries, weekly authority jobs, and leading research team meeting

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

this is Western Research’s bibliometrics baby and the Libraries handle via our IT and Joanne Patterson in our schol comms unit

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 7d

yeah, the common acronym for this is worth a giggle from our inner 12 year old. :-) Very glad I have little to do with it beyond push/pull of data with the library platforms.

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Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 9d

“ kiss my shiny metal ass” — Bender, Futurama

bender from futurama is standing in a room with his arms outstretched

Alt: bender from futurama is standing in a room with his arms outstretched

media.tenor.com

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 11d

A very long letter for my U.S. friends posted at www.infodiva.com/RCF . Nothing new if you're following me here but I'm still trying to keep my friends still on that Zuke platform updated. It's a voice crying into the ether, barely read, but I'm a diarist at the core, it soothes me in hard times

Report from the Canadian Front

Observations from Baketigweyaang, Deshkan Ziibi

www.infodiva.com

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 11d

today in #metadata #librarian land: I spent it all in xslt land. DSpace output is kind of crap. Alma transforms are crap. MarcEdit helps a lot but can only do so much when things like dc:contributor AREN'T INCLUDED in the MODS output. It's Friday eob and I'm calling it beer o'clock.

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 12d

PSA Canadian teachers and faculty. Beware of vendors asking you to pay for book chapters to put on course readings. Under Canadian law "fair dealing" you're allowed to use content like that for educational purposes.
www.carl-abrc.ca/influencing-...

CARL Statement on Chapter Course Readings Services and Copyright - Canadian Association of Research Libraries

This statement is also available in PDF and EPUB formats Recently, a company representing a consortium of Canadian academic publishers has been contacting libraries and instructors to promote an on-de...

www.carl-abrc.ca

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 13d

My sweetie runs ribbon printing presses for an awards company. We now refer to anything shitty as “8th place” (typically those ribbons are brown)

Laura J. Smart @ljsmart.bsky.social · 13d

And publishers insist the value they bring to the scholarly community life cycle justifies the astronomical subscription fees

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