Joan K. Lippincott. “Where All Roads Lead: Keeping the User at the Center,” Opening plenary address given at Coalition for Networked Information Spring 2018 Membership Meeting (April 12, 2018).
Avalon Media System Update: Piloting Avalon in the Cloud
Evviva Weinraub
Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies
Northwestern University
John Herbert
Director of Digital Programs
Lyrasis
Carl Grant
Associate Dean, Knowledge Services & Chief Technology Officer
University of Oklahoma
Avalon Media System is an open source system, based on Fedora and Hydra repository technologies, that enables libraries and archives to more easily provide online access to digitized and born-digital audio and video collections for purposes of teaching, learning, and research. Now in its sixth major release, Avalon has been co-developed by the libraries at Indiana University Bloomington and Northwestern University, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. One of the deliverables of the recent Mellon grant was to make it possible to run Avalon as a subscription software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. As part of our most recent IMLS grant, we were able to partner with LYRASIS to run a pilot project with nine partner institutions that spanned a diverse range of use cases and institution types. The partner organizations included in the pilot were: Emerson College, Oberlin College, the University of Houston, the University of Oklahoma, the University of the Arts, DC Public Library, Houston Public Library, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. In addition, Northwestern University has been running its local instances of Avalon on Amazon Web Services since August 2017. This panel discussion will explore various aspects of the pilot, including an overview of pilot partner use cases, what went well and challenges encountered with pilot testing, and what is needed to make Avalon work for institutions interested in purchasing Avalon as a SaaS going forward. Additionally, the panel will discuss the lessons learned from the teams who have deployed the software both locally and in the cloud, share thoughts on how to organize the management of Avalon in the SaaS space, and summarize the real costs of running Avalon locally and in several cloud-based hosted environments.
DePaul Makes: Building the Maker Community at DePaul University and Beyond
Scott Walter
University Librarian
DePaul University
Megan Bernal
Associate University Librarian for Information Technology and Discovery Services
DePaul University
Janice Scurio
Information Technology Librarian
DePaul University
In 2017, DePaul University launched two maker spaces: the Idea Realization Lab in the College of Computing and Digital Media and the Maker Hub in the John T. Richardson Library. Initially planned and designed independently, maker spaces and services are increasingly coordinated through a community-centered approach toward “building the maker community at DePaul.” This presentation will include discussion of the challenges inherent in coordinating a campus-wide approach to the use of new technology in a decentralized campus IT environment, it will identify initial programs designed to bring maker space programs together across campus, including articulation of student learning outcomes, and the design of faculty development initiatives. It will also explore ways in which maker technology is growing into a component in community engagement initiatives in a city with a “maker across the lifespan” approach, including collaboration with K-12 schools, public libraries, and start-up centers.
Developing and Scaling Research Data Management and Curation
Timothy M. McGeary
Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Technology
Duke University
Claire Stewart
Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning
University of Minnesota
Sophia Lafferty-Hess
Research Data Management Consultant
Duke University
Jennifer Darragh
Research Data Management Consultant
Duke University
Academic libraries have been expanding their research data services in response to growing expectations that research data should be well managed, openly available, reproducible, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). This presentation will provide an overview of how the Duke University Libraries and the University of Minnesota Libraries have scaled up research data management and curation services to better serve our communities. Background on the foundations of Duke’s initiative through engagement with the Provost and faculty, funding and staffing models, current curation workflows, and lessons learned will be discussed. Next steps will also be presented including Duke’s plans to join the Data Curation Network (DCN), which enables academic libraries to collectively, and more effectively, curate a wider variety of data types (e.g., discipline, file format, etc.) that expands beyond what any single institution might offer alone. Minnesota’s research data services program initiation and growth will be discussed, along with an overview of the Data Curation Network’s genesis, goals, and first year activities. Supported by a planning grant from the Arthur P. Sloan foundation, the DCN conducted researcher engagement activities at each of the six original partner institutions and iteratively developed a model for distributed data curation. The Data Curation Network members are University of Minnesota (lead), Cornell University, Duke University, Dryad, Johns Hopkins University, Penn State University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, and Washington University-St. Louis.
The Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts: New Directions in Scholarship
Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel
Digital Scholarship Specialist
Johns Hopkins University
In this presentation, we will examine how the technological developments of the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (DLMM) are encouraging new kinds of research into the literature, art, and history of 14th and 15th-century France. Designed and implemented by the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, the DLMM incorporates digitized images and research materials related to some of the most important literary figures of medieval Europe. Further to our demonstration of the technology behind the DLMM, at the December 2017 CNI meeting, this presentation will focus on the scholarly outcomes enabled by that technology, showing how we have bridged between programming and research considerations to further the aims of our user community. Drawing on feedback and accounts from our network of stakeholders, we will show how the incorporation of an IIIF viewer has engendered different ways of posing scholarly questions, potentially leading us to a deeper understanding of the culture of that era.