Since 1982, the Bibliographic Committee of the Alabama Library Association has compiled brief biographical bibliographic information on authors with a connection to the state of Alabama to support research and interest in Alabamiana. Originally, the compiled work was a printed document, later it was entered into a computer file, and then eventually placed on the Web as individual HTML files hosted by Auburn University. In mid-2007, with staffing changes, a desire to update the look, and the need to streamline site management, the Bibliographic Committee sought to find a new host for the service. The University of Alabama Libraries proposed to host the site using blog technology to manage and deliver the service. On January 31, 2008 the new site went public offering a new design and a variety of features that make it more usable and more easily maintained by the Committee. This presentation will provide an overview of the process undertaken, the decisions made to affect the change, and possible future developments.

http://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/

Presentation (PDF)

How does a campus support research computing and its demands for large-scale computation, storage, and data transfer capacity? How might it best align infrastructure and expertise to support start-up and incubation, scale-up to full operations, and readiness for global utilization over the long term? What do existing practices at the research center and collegiate levels offer in modeling support at the institutional level? At the University of Minnesota, four in-depth interviews were conducted as a baseline assessment for the Research Cyberinfrastructure Alliance sponsored by the Office of Information Technology, University Libraries, and the Office of the Vice President for Research. These interviews reveal researchers eager to work with campus partners to relieve themselves of the day-to-day burden of administering data management solutions. Furthermore, researchers need access to development and engineering resources from time-to-time, but not regularly enough to justify hiring dedicated full-time staff. Core needs of data storage and expert assistance are similar enough that a common solution may be feasible, especially if it is layered in a way that encourages the development of some domain expertise and long term relationships between researchers and those supporting their work.

Handout (PDF)

Presentation (PDF)

In February, CNI held a workshop to explore and, where appropriate, begin efforts to coordinate a range of developments in historically independent spheres that relate to the management of authorial identity in the new digital scholarly communications environment. It brought together individuals from scholarly publishing, indexing and abstracting services, identity and authorization management projects, authority control library operations, international standards organizations, and university institutional repository projects. This session will provide an overview of the key issues surfaced in the workshop and some proposed first steps for addressing the opportunities in this arena.

Handout (MS Word)

Bamboo is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and inter-organizational effort to bring together researchers in arts and humanities, computer and information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists to collectively tackle this question:

How can we enhance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?

This presentation will introduce the Bamboo Planning Project, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded planning and community design program where, through a series of conversations and workshops over 18 months, participants will map out scholarly practices and common technology challenges across and among disciplines, and discover where a coordinated, cross-disciplinary development effort can best foster academic innovation.

Liaison librarians at McMaster University Library are actively collaborating with faculty members to incorporate emerging technologies into their classes. This session will describe three recent projects to incorporate wiki technology. The librarians played key roles to incorporate this Web 2.0 application into the curriculum of existing courses and into the requirements of a new course. The wiki initiatives strengthened partnerships with those faculty who were early adopters. Student reactions were varied and sometimes surprising. Faculty assessed student engagement and the quality of deliverables as much higher in quality than expected, suggesting that wiki use had a positive effect on learning. This session will share lessons learned and next steps for McMaster University Libraries in the harnessing of emerging technologies to the institution’s teaching mission.

Presentation (PPT)

The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) initiative is the most ambitious and comprehensive effort to date to deliver educational content on the Civil Rights Movement via the Web. The CRDL promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement trough its three principal components:

1) a digital video archive delivering 30 hours of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement
2) a civil rights portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Movement by aggregating metadata from 76 libraries and allied organizations from across the nation
3) curricular support materials to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process

The project briefing will explore CRDL’s innovative use of digital technology, interdisciplinary approaches, and cross-institutional partnerships to advance the educational mission of libraries and allied organizations. CRDL participants include digital library and information technology professionals, archivists, academic scholars and graduate students, university publishers, educators, and public broadcasters who, collectively, possess the diverse knowledge base required to build a seamless virtual library on the Movement. The Civil Rights Digital Library receives support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Public launch is scheduled for May 2008.

http://crdl.usg.edu

http://www.usg.edu/galileo/about/planning/projects/crdl

Handout (PDF)

The Persepolis Fortification Archive consists of tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments, as well as administrative documents made in about 500 B.C., and excavated in Iran in 1933. The tablets and fragments bear cuneiform texts, Aramaic texts, and impressions of seals. The Persepolis Fortification Archive Project at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, responding to a legal threat to the tablets, is making and distributing electronic records of the documents, including very high-resolution digital scans, Polynomial Texture Mapping images, conventional digital photography, and low-resolution/high volume flatbed scans; along with cataloging and editorial metadata; all to be distributed on a rolling basis via at least four Websites, based at the University of Chicago, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Collège de France (Paris).

http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/pfa/

http://persepolistablets.blogspot.com/

http://ochre.lib.uchicago.edu/

In a decentralized culture, how did six university units find their way to selecting one solution for management of the content for all of their Websites? It began with a partnership between the administrative staff at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries and staff in University Communications and has developed into a grassroots partnership that also includes Administrative Computing, UCI Healthcare, Student Affairs, and Advancement. This presentation will review the process, what was learned, what is planned to do next to expand the partnership across campus, and what others may learn for their own campuses.

Handout (MS Word)

As more students own their own laptops and other devices, will there continue to be the need for traditional computer labs? As institutions do away with branch libraries, are they replacing them with faculty offices or classrooms, or are they creating new types of informal learning spaces? This session will explore the continuing rationale for the availability of technology-enabled, informal learning spaces on campus. Some model projects will be described and some features and principles will be explored. Participants will be encouraged to contribute their institutional experience with campus-wide planning initiatives for computer and/or library facilities, their innovative facilities projects, and their thoughts on the future of technology-enabled spaces on campuses.

PPT Presentation

The Internet2 community has announced a very aggressive process for developing a new strategic vision for national networking in support of the broad academic mission– research, teaching, engagement, and economic development. The group’s vision is of a community-driven organization working in close partnership with regionals, universities, vendors, and other innovators. As part of this process, the new Internet2 advisory councils are meeting with various community segments to get their perspectives both on the national vision broadly and on the critical priorities for each of the community segments. This session will start with an overview of the strategic planning process and the vision for a community-driven process and identify what is being said by the community thus far about key goals and the developing mission. The bulk of the session will be set aside for a dialog with the attendees, both critiquing and commenting on what is presented and identifying unique or special needs of the CNI community.

http://www.internet2.edu/strategicplanning/

Presentation (PPT)