CNI News

The 9-part CNI Digital Scholarship Planning webinar series has concluded and recordings of all presentations are available, linked from each session at

I wanted to share this very interesting call for proposals from the Library of Congress  with the CNI community. I hope that at some point in future we’ll be able to have a report on this work at a CNI meeting.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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LC Labs is excited to share the following opportunity to fund four researchers to work with Library digital collections at scale

Apply for funds to do big data research with Library of Congress materials by November 30th at noon eastern time! The Library of Congress has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) LCCIO20D0112 to find and recruit researchers as part of Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud, a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Library is seeking to award contracts to four researchers for experiments working with Library data at scale. Proposed budgets should not exceed $77,500. These experiments will take place between May 1, 2021 and January 31, 2022. See the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Interested Researchers <https://labs.loc.gov/static/labs/work/experiments/LCCIO20D0112-BAA-CCH-FAQ.pdf> for more information. See the full posting at < https://beta.sam.gov/opp/2d03f173c442494091487ce4565833ee/view>.

The Library will host two online sessions to share information about this opportunity and answer questions about the Announcement. These sessions (known as Industry Days) will be held on 10/28/2020 at 1:00 pm Eastern Time and 10/29/2020 at 4:00 pm Eastern Time on Webex. Please email Loc-BAA@loc.gov by 10/26/2020 at noon EDT to register.

Through experimentation, research, and collaboration, LC Labs works to realize the Library’s vision that “all Americans are connected to the Library of Congress” by enabling the Library’s Digital Strategy. LC Labs is home to the Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Program; has nurtured experiments in machine learning and the use of collections as data; and incubated the Library’s popular crowdsourced transcription program By the People. Learn more and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at <http://labs.loc.gov/>.

Today, Jane Radecki and Roger Schoenfeld of Ithaka S+R released a very interesting and wide-ranging study of the Impact of COVID-19 on the Research Enterprise. I’ve reproduced the Executive Summary below. This report echos many themes that we heard at our recent Executive Roundtables on Research Restart and Research Continuity (see https://www.cni.org/go/research-continuity-sept-2020-update) and goes into issues around funding and federal grants in depth. The report can be read online or downloaded as a PDF at:

https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-impacts-of-covid-19-on-the-research-enterprise/

Ithaka will discuss aspects of this work at the Fall CNI member meeting

My thanks to Ithaka for helping us to better understand these developments.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

In late September 2020 CNI conducted several follow-up virtual Executive Roundtable events to explore the state of restarting the research enterprise at our member institutions and discuss strategies and approaches for research continuity and resilience. This was a follow on from our April 2020 Roundtables on this topic and once again took a broad view of the research enterprise and how it is supported. The report from these September sessions is now available at

https://www.cni.org/go/research-continuity-sept-2020-update

I expect that there will be several sessions exploring aspects of this landscape as part of our Fall virtual CNI Membership meeting and we plan to convene another set  of Executive Roundtables on this topic in late Spring 2021 to summarize the 2020-2021 situation and examine thinking for the 2021-2022 Academic year and beyond.

I’d be grateful if CNI-announce readers would share this report widely within their institutions where appropriate, since I think the topic is of broad interest, beyond the established CNI community.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

I just learned of a very interesting virtual conference that’s taking place next week, under the auspices of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) and supported by the National Science Foundation. Registration is free. See the conference site for details:

http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Conferences/AcceleratedAINCSA/

The agenda is here:

http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Conferences/AcceleratedAINCSA/agenda.html

Here’s a brief summary of the conference focus, from the website:

“This conference will present an overview of recent efforts in multi-messenger astrophysics, high energy physics, and astronomy to harness innovation in artificial intelligence and large-scale computing to enable and accelerate scientific discovery in the big-data era, and will serve as a platform to create synergies between disparate communities that share similar computational challenges that may be addressed through innovative applications of artificial intelligence and extreme scale computing.”

The site is already pre-populated by links to a number of prerecorded videos; it’s not clear to me how much of the online meeting will be recorded and subsequently available.

Apologies for the late notice on this.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CN

The submission deadline for CNI’s fall 2020 virtual membership meeting is fast approaching! The meeting will take place online Nov. 10-Dec. 15.

Week 1 deadline is next Monday, October 19.
A limited number of project briefings are accepted.

Anyone may submit a proposal, including non-members.

For details, and to submit a proposal: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2020/project-briefing-proposals-f20

Theme descriptions and deadlines
 
Week 1: Developing and Managing Networked Information Content 
Proposals due Oct. 19
CNI has broad interests across all forms of digital content that can be used to support research and education. Some examples of potential topics within this theme would be strategies for the creation, management, presentation, accessibility, and preservation of digital collections, digital libraries, and federated services in support of digital content, or the reassessment of content and collections in light of current developments in diversity, inclusion and equity. Digital scholarship, institutional repositories, and digital preservation are popular issues in this area.

Week 2: Transforming Organizations, Professions, and Individuals
Proposals due Oct. 21
CNI seeks to highlight and promote organizational initiatives that facilitate cooperation across institutional units and professional cultures, particularly with respect to collaboration between librarians, information technologists, and other key players within the research and education ecosystem (offices of research, faculty, publishers, and instructional designers and technologists, for example). Currently, particular areas of focus within this theme include career paths and professionalization of roles for those who support data-intensive research, organizational structures to support digital scholarship, the acquisition and creation of instructional materials, and responding to and advancing changing scholarly research practices.

Week 3: Building Technology, Standards, and Infrastructure
Proposals due Oct. 23
This area of CNI’s focus comprises the key areas of standards and infrastructure development. Other examples of topics within this theme would include identifiers, digital books, metadata, distributed and federated network services, harvesting, recommender systems, personalization and other emerging technologies. Issues surrounding security and privacy would also fall under this theme.

Week 4: Emerging Issues and Developments Related to the Current Crisis
Proposals due Oct. 26
We will use the fourth week of our meeting to focus on challenges and strategies that have emerged or grown increasingly acute in recent months. Here we anticipate focus primarily to be on the impact of COVID-19 on campuses, instructional and research resilience, implications of coming disruptions such as climate change, or responses to other societal developments although we welcome proposals on other themes relevant to CNI’s program that have taken on particular urgency of late.

More information is at https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2020/project-briefing-proposals-f20. Follow along: #cni20f

-Diane Goldenberg-Hart, CNI

There was an exciting announcement today about a fall series of webinars that are being scheduled among a group of the major Data Science institutes at key research institutes — UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Stanford, Rice University, University of Washington and NYU (forgive me if I’v missed anyone). For one version of the announcement see

https://bids.berkeley.edu/news/data-science-coast-coast-seminars-launch-october-21

Not only is this an important development in its own right, as higher education tries to situate the emerging discipline of data science within its institutions, but it begins to suggest how the current pandemic and the shift to virtual venues is changing scholarly communication patterns. Events such as seminars and symposia that were historically institutionally based are moving to much broader (sometimes internationally based ) community participation, with implications that we have yet to understand. This demands closer examination and consideration than I’m aware is occurring, particularly in the context of the growing emergence of what might be called “scientific nationalism” driven by government policies.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

The US National Academies is hosting a virtual public workshop on November 5, 2020 from 11am-2pm EST on Developing a Toolkit for Fostering Open Science Practices, as part of its broader efforts to align incentives to advance open science. There is no charge, but you’ll need to register in advance. For full information see

https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/11-05-2020/developing-a-toolkit-for-fostering-open-science-practices-a-workshop

This promises to be an extremely interesting workshop.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

The Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) of the US National Academies is hosting a free online workshop on “Data in Motion” on October 14 and 15, 2020. I’ve included a short description of the workshop focus below. Advance registration is required to participate in the workshop. For more details, see

https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/10-14-2020/data-in-motion-new-approaches-to-advancing-scientific-engineering-and-medical-progress-a-workshop

It’s unclear whether video recordings of the session will be available after the sessions, but BRDI will issue a summary of the meeting.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI
(Disclosure: I am a former member and co-chair of BRDI)

Proposals are now being accepted for project briefings to be presented during CNI’s Fall 2020 Membership Meeting (virtual). The meeting will take place online Nov. 10-Dec. 15, 2020. Anyone may propose a project briefing, including groups/individuals from non-member institutions and organizations.

Project briefings are typically live, 30-minute or one-hour sessions that focus on a discussion of a timely topic, or on a specific institutional/organizational project related to digital information; they can also explore parallel developments across institutions. We are also accepting proposals for shorter, pre-recorded presentations. A limited number of project briefings will be accepted.

Four weeks will be devoted to project briefings: three weeks based on the three major themes of CNI’s Program Plan (https://www.cni.org/program), and the final week devoted to emerging issues and developments related to the current crisis. While there may be some overlap among themes, we ask presenters to choose what they believe to be the best fit for their proposal; conference organizers may request or suggest a different theme. A few presenters may be contacted in advance and invited to participate in a Monday summary session; participation is optional. We aim to notify presenters within one week of submission deadlines. Once accepted, presenters will have an opportunity to sign up for an available slot during the relevant week on a first-come basis.
 
Project briefing schedule is as follows:

Week 1: Developing and Managing Networked Information Content
Proposals due Oct. 19
CNI has broad interests across all forms of digital content that can be used to support research and education. Some examples of potential topics within this theme would be strategies for the creation, management, presentation, accessibility, and preservation of digital collections, digital libraries, and federated services in support of digital content, or the reassessment of content and collections in light of current developments in diversity, inclusion and equity. Digital scholarship, institutional repositories, and digital preservation are popular issues in this area.

Schedule
Nov. 10 – 1:00-5:00pm EST – Project Briefings
Nov. 11 – Veterans Day (no sessions)
Nov. 12-13 – 1:00-5:00pm EST – Project Briefings
Nov. 16 – 4:00-5:00pm EST – Summary Session

Week 2: Transforming Organizations, Professions, and Individuals
Proposals due Oct. 21
CNI seeks to highlight and promote organizational initiatives that facilitate cooperation across institutional units and professional cultures, particularly with respect to collaboration between librarians, information technologists, and other key players within the research and education ecosystem (offices of research, faculty, publishers, and instructional designers and technologists, for example). Currently, particular areas of focus within this theme include career paths and professionalization of roles for those who support data-intensive research, organizational structures to support digital scholarship, the acquisition and creation of instructional materials, and responding to and advancing changing scholarly research practices.
Schedule
Nov. 17-20 – 1:00-5:00pm EST – Project Briefings
Nov. 23 – 4:00-5:00pm EST – Summary Session

**—Nov. 24-30 – Thanksgiving Break (no sessions)—**

Week 3: Building Technology, Standards, and Infrastructure
Proposals due Oct. 23
This area of CNI’s focus comprises the key areas of standards and infrastructure development. Other examples of topics within this theme would include identifiers, digital books, metadata, distributed and federated network services, harvesting, recommender systems, personalization and other emerging technologies. Issues surrounding security and privacy would also fall under this theme.
Schedule
Dec. 1-4 – 1:00-5:00pm EST– Project Briefings
Dec. 7 – 4:00-5:00pm EST – Summary Session

Week 4: Emerging Issues and Developments Related to the Current Crisis
Proposals due Oct. 26
We will use the fourth week of our meeting to focus on challenges and strategies that have emerged or grown increasingly acute in recent months. Here we anticipate focus primarily to be on the impact of covid-19 on campuses, instructional and research resilience, implications of coming disruptions such as climate change, or responses to other societal developments although we welcome proposals on other themes relevant to CNI’s program that have taken on particular urgency of late.
Schedule
Dec. 8-9 – 1:00-5:00pm EST– Project Briefings
Dec. 10 – 1:00-3:00pm EST– Project Briefings
Dec. 11 – no sessions
NB: There will be no summary session for this week.

Proposals may be submitted via online form:
https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2020/project-briefing-proposals-f20

More information, including the complete event schedule-at-a-glance, is at https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2020.
Follow the meeting: #cni20f

-Diane Goldenberg-Hart, CNI