CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

Applying Technology to Humanities Resources and Communication: The Cases of IATH and STG

Elli Mylonas
Associate Director, STG, Computing and Information Services
Brown University

Daniel Pitti
Interim Co-Director, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
University of Virginia

The Scholarly Technology Group (STG) is part of Computing and Information Services at Brown University founded in 1994. In the last two years STG has developed a greater emphasis on advanced consulting within Brown University, working with faculty who want to learn about and use technology in their research and publication. STG relies on an annual grants program to determine how it will apportion the majority of its time and efforts among the faculty. Successful applicants receive project management, consulting and implementation from STG staff. One of our chief challenges is designing projects that are portable and can be maintained over the long term. Our other significant challenge as STG’s structure evolves is the question of how to sustain our own research into humanities computing methodologies so that we can provide cutting-edge consulting to faculty for whom this is not their area of specialization.

The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia (IATH) has become an international leader in the innovative application of advanced technologies to humanities research and publication. Annually, the Institute awards a two-year fellowship to a humanities scholar at the University of Virginia to work collaboratively with Institute faculty and staff in designing and developing projects that facilitate computer-assisted research and analysis of the human record, and the publication and dissemination of findings and results. In its second decade, IATH looks forward to expanding its mission to include national and perhaps international fellowships in arts and humanities research and scholarly communication.

This briefing will explain how IATH and STG are structured, what we have learned about supporting successful humanities research projects, and what directions we see for groups like these in the future.

http://www.stg.brown.edu
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu

ARTstor: A Project Update

Max Marmor
Director of Collection Development, ARTstor
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

ARTstor is a digital library initiative launched by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its mission is to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields. As part of a community-wide effort to further this goal, ARTstor will build, continually develop, and distribute a library of digital images and related information to serve the needs of researchers, teachers, and students. ARTstor will work closely with both providers and users of content from educational and cultural institutions around the world to construct a not-for-profit, public utility. This project briefing will provide an update on the development of ARTstor, the “testing” process, and eventual rollout.

http://www.artstor.org

Chandler: A Collaborative Open Source Initiative for Higher Education

Jack McCredie
Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Systems & Technology
University of California, Berkeley

Oren Sreebny
Assistant Director, Computing & Communications
University of Washington

Pieter Hartsook
Marketing Specialist
Open Source Applications Foundation

Chandler is an open source personal information manager being developed by the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) to enable users to manage their e-mail, calendars, contacts, tasks, and free-form items for easy sharing and collaboration. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the 25 member universities of the Common Solutions Group are working with OSAF to extend the capabilities of Chandler so that it will be of significant value to higher education.

Web Pages:
http://www.osafoundation.org/OSAF_Our_Vision.htm
http://www.osafoundation.org/Chandler_in_higher_ed_TOC_3002_05_13.htm

Presentation:
Pieter Hartsook, Chandler (PowerPoint)
Oren Sreebny, Chandler: What’s In It for My University (PowerPoint)

Collaborative Filtering: Possibilities for Digital Libraries

Janet Webster
Associate Professor, Head Librarian-Guin Library
Oregon State University

Jon Herlocker
Assistant Professor
Oregon State University

Seikyung Jung
Doctoral candidate
Oregon State University

At Oregon State University (OSU), the OSU Libraries and the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are collaborating on a project to improve the effectiveness and accessibility of digital collections and Web information portals. The project goal is to make digital resources more accessible through an innovative search interface that incorporates collaborative filtering (CF).

Large digital collections and federated portals such as the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) bring enormous quantities of diverse information to users via the Web. New approaches to search interfaces are needed to make the wealth of online content more accessible and useful. We utilize CF–a process whereby each user of the information benefits from the experience of previous users. Users queries are matched against previous questions asked by other users. Then, the system recommends documents, pages, or resources that these other users found useful. The portal ‘learns’ what resources are valuable for which questions by observing the users’ behavior and recording the recommendations. This powerful approach, developed and implemented in entertainment (e.g., MovieLens.org) and commercial settings (e.g., Amazon.com), incorporates the results of human analysis of content on a massive scale. We are testing a search and recommendation interface for the OSU Libraries’ extensive Web site in a way that enlists users to recommend pages and/or databases and e-journals to others asking similar questions of the site.

This briefing will examine the challenges of developing and testing the merits of a recommendation system in this diverse setting, including resolving issues of integration with existing library systems and library tradition; dealing with noisy and untrustworthy data; computation, display and explanation of recommendations; and inferring recommendations from user behavior.

Web Site:
http://dl.nacse.org/osu (test site)

Presentation:
Collaborative Filtering: Possibilities for Digital Libraries (PPT)

Cornell’s DCAPS: A New Model for Delivery and Support of Digital Services

H. Thomas Hickerson
Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies and Special Collections
Cornell University

Digital Consulting and Production Services (DCAPS) at Cornell University provides a unified framework for developing and managing a suite of services necessary to support the life cycle of digital information. Now nearing a year in operation, DCAPS incorporates a growing array of services to provide clients with a single integrated solution to the needs of libraries, faculty, publishers, and others. Presently including digitization, metadata, technology support, electronic publishing, and copyright services, DCAPS is innovative in its managerial, operational, and marketing approaches and in its economic model. While challenging conventional patterns of library organization and financing, the model is being developed to enable further partnerships with other campus service providers.

Web Page:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/dcaps/

Presentation:
Cornell’s DCAPS (PowerPoint–large file)

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