José-Marie Griffiths
Professor & Dean, School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina

Christopher R. Johnson
Director, Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute
University of Utah

In its recent report Computational Science:  Ensuring America’s Competitiveness, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) concluded that computational science has great potential to advance intellectual discovery in science, engineering, the humanities, and key areas such as national security and public health.  However, there are a number of obstacles to realizing this potential.  The organizational structures and incentive systems in both academia and the federal government inhibit the development of effective research and education in computational science.  Research and development efforts lack adequate coordination and a consistently supported infrastructure.  Technology investments are not focused on the most promising opportunities (e.g., unprecedented volume of data available for analysis) or the most urgent needs (e.g., crisis in software).  This project briefing focuses on policies and strategies that may help to overcome these impediments and foster more rapid progress in computational science.

http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/reports/20050609_computational/computational.pdf

Handout (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentations

Steven Wheatley
Vice President
American Council of Learned Societies

Scholars in the humanities and social sciences are transforming their practices of collaboration and communication with increasingly sophisticated and innovative uses of digital tools and technologies. New forms of scholarship, criticism, and creativity proliferate in arts and letters and in the social sciences, resulting in significant new works accessible and meaningful only in digital form. For their part, scientists and engineers no longer see digital technologies merely as tools enhancing established research methodologies, but as a force creating environments that enable the creation of new knowledge. The recent National Science Foundation report, “Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure,” argues for large-scale investments across all disciplines to develop the shared technology infrastructure that will support ever-greater capacities, including new tools, shared facilities, and expertise and assistance.

The needs of humanists and scientists converge in this emerging cyberinfrastructure. As the importance of technology-enabled innovation grows across all fields, scholars are increasingly dependent on sophisticated systems for the creation, curation, and preservation of information. They are also dependent on a policy, economic, and legal environment that encourages appropriate and unimpeded access to both digital information and digital tools. It is crucial for the humanities and the social sciences to join scientists and engineers in defining and building this infrastructure so that it meets the needs and incorporates the contributions of humanists and social scientists.

In 2004, ACLS convened a national commission to investigate and report on these issues. The Commission was charged to:
• Describe and analyze the current state of humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure
• Articulate the requirements and the potential contributions of the humanities and the social sciences in developing a cyberinfrastructure for information, teaching, and research
• Recommend areas of emphasis and coordination for the various agencies and institutions, public and private, that contribute to the development of this cyberinfrastructure

This Project Briefing will review the work of the Commission to date; summarize the major points and recommendations of the current draft of the report; and discuss the larger digital environment in which the final report (to be published in the spring of 2006) will appear.

http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm

Steven Wheatley
Vice President
American Council of Learned Societies

Peter B. Kaufman
Director, Strategic Initiatives
Intelligent Television

This is an open forum where participants are invited to discuss the work of the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences and its recently released draft report. A report on the Commission and its current status were provided during an earlier scheduled project briefing; attendance at the overview session is not required for attending this open discussion forum.

See also the ACLS Cyberinfrastructure Commission, Review & Status Project Briefing page.

http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm

Jody Combs
Director of the Digital Library
Vanderbilt University

John Burger
Executive Director
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries

Thomas Stuart Robertson
Assistant Director and Technical Manager, LOCKSS Program
Stanford University

The ASERL LOCKSS-ETD Initiative is a joint project between the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) Program at Stanford University and the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL). Participating in the project are the following ASERL Libraries: Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Kentucky, University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This group is utilizing the latest version of LOCKSS (1.10.5) to harvest electronic theses and dissertations from each institution using the OAI-PMH. The OAI-PMH is used to create a LOCKSS archival unit for collections such as ETDs which are continually updated. The LOCKSS caches at each institution allow for multiple copies of ETDs in geographically dispersed locations thus offering an additional layer of preservation for each ETD collection as well as a cooperative open-source model for organizations that support E-Scholarship publishing initiatives.

Handout (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentations

This session will provide a framework for developing an assessment strategy for new or renovated technology-enabled learning spaces. Institutions are spending large sums on renovation, additions, and new construction of learning spaces in order to incorporate technology and address new teaching and learning strategies. These spaces include classrooms, libraries, information commons, computer labs, cafes, student unions, and outdoor spaces. Work on assessment strategies should begin at the inception of a project, as a means of sharpening the goals of the learning space. A wide variety of goals for assessment of learning spaces will be explored and then various methods of assessment to collect data to address the goals will be described. Participants are encouraged to contribute examples of assessment of learning spaces at their institution and to engage in a discussion of the purposes and desired outcomes of assessment of learning spaces.

PowerPoint Presentations

Abby Smith
Independent Consultant

John L. Ober
Director, Policy, Planning and Outreach
University of California, Office of the President

The digital products of scholarship rapidly are becoming more numerous and more diverse, and represent an increasingly massive investment by faculty, instutitions, and funding agencies. Yet these assets generally remain unaccounted for and unmanaged. The University of California, at the request of its Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, is launching a preliminary investigation of the issues and institutional options involved in a systemwide program to capture and manage UC’s digital scholarly information assets, to comprehend: the various kinds of content produced by faculty, students and staff in digital form; the purposes for its production and its potential uses; the provenances of its production (e.g., whether sponsored research, instructional materials, etc.) and their implications; the economic and scholarly value of this content, and the risks to which UC might be exposed if it fails to effectively account for and manage these resources; and the major technological, administrative and political/policy issues, including privacy, copyright, and other restrictions, that might be entailed in a comprehensive UC strategy. The anticipated outcome of this inquiry is a planning framework for addressing these issues, incorporating consideration of the responsibilities of various UC constituencies in their roles as authors/compilers, users, and stewards of this content at various stages in its life-cycle. The presentation will provide an overview of the aims, audience, and proposed methodology for conducting the study, while exposing some of its guiding assumptions for review and discussion.

Handout (MS WORD)

As scholarly reliance upon source materials in digital form grows, the persistence of those materials becomes a matter of vital importance. To ensure that electronic journals, news, data sets, and other research content remain accessible and functional, rigorous auditing of digital repositories, and certification of their systems and underlying organizations are necessary. The Center for Research Libraries’ Auditing and Certification of Digital Archives project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, builds upon the work of the Digital Repository Certification Task Force led by RLG and the National Archives and Records Administration. The CRL project involves the auditing of three major digital repositories and development of certification processes and metrics.

http://www.crl.edu/content.asp?l1=13&l2=58&l3=142

Handout (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentations

This is a long term British Library infrastructure initiative designed to store and preserve any type of digital material in perpetuity, and also to provide access to this material to users with appropriate permissions.  The session will describe recent work on an operational, resilient, scaleable and distributed storage service that provides assurance regarding the authenticity of objects held in the store.  The session will also indicate current and future directions of the program.

http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/dom/homepage.html

Handout (MS Word)

Handout (PDF)

Intelligent Television has received support in 2005 from foundations, government agencies, and corporate underwriters to produce new “Open Production Initiatives” around unique sets of digital and analog resources in various repositories (the American Antiquarian Society, the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, the University of Virginia Libraries, ITN Archives – London, Egypt’s Library of Alexandria, and Columbia University Libraries) around the world.

Subject themes in development include the history of the 20th-century American South, the history of Harlem, the 1956 Suez crisis, the nature of memory, and the visualization of culture, among others.

This presentation explains the need to create an educational television studio, to make educational television productions in the digital age more systematic and cost-effective.

The presentation will describe the work Intelligent Television has been doing with its current partners and build on the research and reports that Intelligent Television has been completing on “Marketing Culture in the Digital Age” with the support of the Mellon Foundation and Ithaka and on “The Economics of Open Content” with the support of the Hewlett Foundation.

The presentation will deal broadly with the business and marketing issues surrounding online content and digitized audio-visual archival content for education in particular.

http://www.intelligenttelevision.com

Building collaborative partnerships in digital humanities research can help strengthen university ties, contribute to interdisciplinary inquiry, and enrich the scholarly work of faculty.  The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln began in 1998 as a cooperative endeavor of the University Libraries and the College of Arts and Sciences.  Today, the Center enjoys strong administrative commitment, a diversified financial portfolio, and increasing numbers of faculty and graduate students engaged in digital humanities projects.  Its varied activities exhibit a commitment to collaborative research approaches and to partnering with other institutions, agencies, and with the University of Nebraska Press.  Among federally-funded projects are ones such as the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online Edition (NEH), the Walt Whitman Archive (NEH, IMLS), and Omaha Indian Artifacts and Images (IMLS).  Recent developments include an agreement with the University of Nebraska Press to create a new digital, expanded edition of the Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather, and a new IMLS-funded award to study interoperability of metadata with Brown University and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia.  Collaborative projects such as these benefit all members of the research teams — from undergraduates to senior faculty — by offering opportunities for developing new skills and new perspectives.

http://cdrh.unl.edu

PowerPoint Presentations