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Enhancing Research through Innovation and Collaboration: JSTOR’s Showcase and Data for Research Initiatives

April 1, 2009

John Burns
Director, Advanced Technology Research
JSTOR

Large-scale digital resources such as JSTOR are core elements of the academic community’s emerging 21st-century infrastructure. Used primarily for ensuring preservation and easy access to scholarly materials, these resources are now becoming springboards for technological innovation using text-mining and other techniques. In the past two years, portions of the JSTOR dataset have been used by researchers around the world as a base for projects like developing algorithms to generate topic maps spanning hundreds of years of scientific research and exploring how key descriptive terms in disciplines like astronomy have evolved from the mechanics of building telescopes to the analysis of stellar and galactic lifecycles.

 

JSTOR is bringing together many of its new advanced technology initiatives in a site called Showcase, which will encourage text mining and other innovative uses of the JSTOR dataset, preview resulting developments and applications to users, and create a cross-institutional community for sharing project information, software, and ideas. This presentation will include a preview of Showcase as well as Data for Research, a set of Web tools designed to allow for the visual exploration of large-scale datasets beginning with JSTOR. The session will also include a description of some of the uses being made of these resources by various partner institutions including Princeton, University of Liverpool, and University of Washington.

 

http://www.jstor.org/

http://dfr.jstor.org/

Handout (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, E-Journals, Information Access & Retrieval, Repositories
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EthicShare: A Model for Virtual Research Communities

April 1, 2009

Kate McCready
Ethic Share Project Director
University of Minnesota

John T. Butler
Associate University Librarian for Information Technology
University of Minnesota

Virtual research environments have the ability to facilitate new forms of collaboration, community engagement, and exchange for scholars. This presentation will include discussion of the endeavor to develop a virtual research community site for the field of bioethics, and other areas of applied ethics, called EthicShare. EthicShare, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, grew out of a 2004 Scholarly Communication Institute hosted at the Council on Library and Information Resources and sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.

 

EthicShare will make available quality electronic content (records for articles, books, news stories, etc.) and provide an innovative space for community exchange and engagement. Online social tools present opportunities to enable collaboration and, potentially, to advance new forms of, and new infrastructure for, scholarship. As this environment takes shape, there is potential to create functionally-complete online spaces in which scholars can explore, interact and conduct their work. Virtual research communities offer significant promise to meet scholars’ appetite for collaboration and to share resources on a global scale. The question of whether the capability for social tools and spaces are relevant in enabling collaborative research will be explored. While the technologies exist to create virtual communities, the gap between potential and reality is large. The challenge to sustaining the content and the community over time will also be examined. This challenge is, broadly, the economic question of which organizational and institutional models should be invested in to enable sustaining such communities. Additionally, the presentation will consider what role libraries should play in the development of virtual organizations, and what models should be used to facilitate their development.

http://www.ethicshare.org

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Cyberinfrastructure, Scholarly Communication, Social Media
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Future Leaders of Research Libraries: What Are They Thinking?

April 1, 2009

Kristin Antelman
Associate Director for the Digital Library
North Carolina State University

Kenning Arlitsch
Associate Director for IT Services
University of Utah

Krisellen Maloney
Dean of Libraries
University of Texas at San Antonio

John T. Butler
Associate University Librarian for Information Technology
University of Minnesota

Research libraries are facing a future that brings fundamental shifts in the information environment, including the ubiquity of digital content, new modes of scholarly practice and product, and rapidly changing needs and expectations of users. Coinciding with these significant environmental changes will be the retirement of nearly half of the current research library workforce within the next decade. The situation presents an urgent opportunity, which should not go unheeded. Reflected in the current Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) agenda and emergent discussions among key leaders of research libraries is the need for focus on organizational and professional transformation, forging of new relationships within and beyond campuses, and positioning the profession to develop leadership that can respond effectively to the seen and unseen challenges ahead.

 

In support of these discussions, a baseline study was conducted to deepen the understanding of the opinions and expectations of the expected next generation of library leaders. In fall 2008, we surveyed more than 240 individuals nominated by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) colleagues as “future leaders” who are making strong contributions to the organization’s visioning and strategic planning, demonstrate innovative practices, and who are in the earlier stages of their careers. The study asked respondents to:

• Gauge how effectively libraries are meeting the needs of users and responding to the changing environment

• Strategize on what libraries ought to be doing more of, and doing less of

• Contrast perceptions of existing library organizational cultures with preferred organizational cultures

• Contrast observed management styles with preferred management styles

• Indicate if they feel their library’s organizational structures and processes are limiting their impact or effectiveness

• Look ahead to their own futures in libraries, including prospects for assuming leadership roles

 

This presentation includes a report on the study’s findings as well as responses to some of the questions raised by the study.

Filed Under: Assessment, CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, User Services
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GENI: Global Environment for Network Innovations

April 1, 2009

Vicraj (Vic) Thomas
Scientific Director
GENI Project Office / BBN Technologies

The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) is a suite of network research infrastructure now in its design and prototyping phase. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation to support experimental research in network science and engineering. The GENI suite will support a wide range of experimental protocols, and data dissemination techniques running over facilities such as fiber optics with next-generation optical switches, novel high-speed routers, city-wide experimental urban radio networks, high-end computational clusters, and sensor grids. The GENI suite will be shared among a large number of individual, simultaneous experiments with extensive instrumentation that makes it easy to collect, analyze, and share real measurements.

 

http://www.geni.net

Handout (PDF)

 

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Cyberinfrastructure, E-Science
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Helping Researchers Manage Data: The Role of Research Libraries

April 1, 2009

MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries

Since 2006, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries have been building a program to help manage and curate the ever-expanding volume of research data produced by faculty, researchers and students at the Institute. The staff has developed Web guidelines, training sessions, infrastructure, and expertise in managing a variety of data types, in addition to both near-term practical strategies and a long-term vision for how the staff can support this new type of scholarship alongside the traditional forms. The session will cover what MIT Libraries are doing and what has been learned along the way.

http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data-management/index.html

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Cyberinfrastructure, Digital Curation
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Hidden Collections Panel

April 1, 2009

The panel will review the goals and rationale for the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives project. It will discuss the governance, oversight, and criteria for the successful requests for proposals, consider some changes to the project in the next four rounds, and offer an in-depth discussion with principals of three of the institutions awarded grants this year.

 

http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Information Access & Retrieval, Special Collections
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In Search of Shared Leadership for Transforming Information Technology Organizations

April 1, 2009

Steve Cawley
Associate Vice President and CIO
University of Minnesota

Bernard Gulachek
Senior Director, Strategy Management
University of Minnesota

Ann Hill Duin
Associate Vice President and Deputy CIO
University of Minnesota

Higher education and their information technology (IT) organizations must evolve from being seen as machines with leaders at the top to being seen as living, dynamic systems of interconnected relationships, ready to change in smart ways to meet and exceed new expectations and demands. Such dynamic systems require new models of leadership. These new models conceptualize leadership as a more relational process, with shared work occurring at different levels and dependent on social interactions and networks of influence. This presentation includes a case study of shared leadership across the University of Minnesota’s centeral Office of Information Technology (OIT) and across the University. The discussion will focus, in particular, on the balance of power, the development of shared purpose and goals, and specifics about cross-functional work on the immense complex issues surrounding higher education IT.

http://umn.edu/oit

http://www1.umn.edu/oit/planning/servicestatements/index.htm

 

 

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Economic Models
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In Sync: Reuniting Oral History’s Text and Audio in a Digital Environment

April 1, 2009

Eric Weig
Head, Digital Programs and
Kentucky Virtual Library’s Kentuckiana Digital Library
University of Kentucky

Doug Boyd
Director, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History
University of Kentucky

This session describes a follow-up to a 2006 session outlining the challenges and opportunities afforded by an in-house analog to digital audio pilot project centered on conversion of oral histories gathered by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. As the project has progressed past the pilot phase, the Nunn Center, in partnership with the Kentuckiana Digital Library, has designed an interface to more intelligently present oral histories online by enabling users to search at the word level and then to link to the moment in the audio where those words occur. This capability is made possible through a process of digital preparation of the interview in an interface designed to mimic a video game. This software is called OHMS and it will be discussed and demonstrated along with the online delivery of the time coded transcripts and audio files.

 

http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/b/bib/bib-idx?c=legohkuk&cc=legohkuk

http://kdl.kyvl.org

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Digital Humanities, Information Access & Retrieval
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IR Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Institutional Repository

April 1, 2009

Ricky Erway
Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research
OCLC

The program Research Information Management began with the problem of underpopulated institutional repositories (IRs) and quickly turned to the more constructive task of identifying services that could be provided to support researchers’ work (and in the process, populate IRs). The landscape was mapped out (from desktop support, to expert profiling, to research output assessment), identifying key providers and areas needing attention. A list of the support services that might be valued by researchers has been generated to be tested with early-career researchers. Areas for further attention are being pursued by representatives from a number of academic libraries. The formative information will be shared and the next steps will be discussed with hopes of getting additional input on ways libraries are strengthening their support for research.

http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/researchinfo/support/default.htm

Handout (MS Word)

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Repositories, User Services
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“Just in Time” in Difficult Times: Lessons to be Learned

April 1, 2009

Victoria Reich
Director, LOCKSS Program
Stanford University

David S.H. Rosenthal
Chief Scientist, LOCKSS Program
Stanford University

The worldwide economic implosion has economists questioning the wisdom of “just in time,” as opposed to “just in case,” business practices. Over the last decade, libraries have been abandoning just-in-case collections for just-in-time access. This practice has weakened global library networks and jeopardized librarians’ ability to provide long-term access to content. This session will expand upon the ideas presented in the short piece included as a handout, and it will also suggest lessons the community might learn from the economic environment.

 

Handout (PDF)

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2009 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation, Economic Models
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