CIRSS

CIRSS Researchers at iConference 2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:00:00 CST

CIRSS faculty, students and staff attended the 2012 iConference (http://www.ischools.org/iConference12/2012index/), an annual gathering information scholars, researchers and practitioners led by the iSchools consortium of information schools (http://www.ischools.org/site/about/). The 2012 iConference took place in Toronto, Ontario, February 6-10 2012.

Workshops, presentations and posters by CIRSS researchers include:

Blake, C. & Palmer, C. "Data Science and Analytics: What Is in It for iSchools?" [workshop]. Toronto, Canada. 7 Feb. 2012.

Chao, T. C. (2012). Exploring the Rhythms of Scientific Data Use. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 129-135). ACM. doi:10.1145/2132176.2132193

Sacchi, S., & McDonough, J. P. (2012). Significant Properties of Complex Digital Artifacts: Open Issues from a Video Game Case Study [poster]. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 572-573). ACM. doi:10.1145/2132176.2132293

Stanton, J., Palmer, C., Blake, C., Farmer, L., & Allard, S. "Brainstorming Data Science at iSchools" [workshop]. 2012 iConference. Toronto, Canada. 8 Feb. 2012.

Varvel, V. E., Bammerlin, E. J., & Palmer, C. L. (2012). Education for Data Professionals : A Study of Current Courses and Programs [poster]. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 10-12). doi:10.1145/2132176.2132275

Wickett, K. M., Urban, R. J., & Renear, A. H. (2012). Towards a Logical Form for Descriptive Metadata [poster]. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 574-575). ACM. doi:10.1145/2132176.2132294

Weber, N. M. (2012). Rainmakers , Space Mirrors and Atmospheric Vacuums : A Bibliometric Mapping of Geoengineering Research [poster]. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 639-640). ACM. doi:10.1145/2132176.2132320

CIRSS-affiliated faculty member Jerome McDonough receives Best Paper Award

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

CIRSS-affiliated faculty member Jerry McDonough has received the Best Paper award in the Digital Media: Content and Communication track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), held in Maui in January.

His paper, "Knee-Deep in Data: Practical Problems in Applying the OAIS Reference Model to the Preservation of Computer Games," examines the reference model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) through the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, in which McDonough and partners explored the application of the OAIS Reference Model for the preservation of computer games, video games and electronic literature within a research library setting. The paper identifies practical problems in determining the appropriate range of representation and context information needed to preserve computer games and discusses possible solutions to those problems.

The Preserving Virtual Worlds project, funded by the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), investigated what preservation issues arose with computer games and interactive fiction, and how existing metadata and packaging standards might be employed for the long-term preservation of these materials. McDonough is now principal investigator on Preserving Virtual Worlds II, funded by IMLS, which focuses on determining properties for a variety of educational games and game franchises in order to provide a set of best practices for preserving the materials through virtualization technologies and migration, as well as provide an analysis of how the preservation process is documented.

You can view the paper at http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_45/bp45/dm1.pdf.
More information on Preserving Virtual Worlds can be found athttp://www.lis.illinois.edu/people/faculty/jmcdonou.

CIRSS Undergraduate Is Member of Team to Win 2011 Startup Weekend

CIRSS — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:00:00 CST

CIRSS undergraduate worker Harsh Singh was on the winning team at the "Startup Weekend", which is a national multi-site competition for start-up technology innovation. "Stash Verify, a system for detecting counterfeit goods using QR codes, raised the bar with a stunning intersection of beautiful design, sharp business and excellent development work. All three facets came together into a compelling presentation and demo, to place them solidly in first place." http://champaign.startupweekend.org/2011/11/17/congratulations-to-our-winning-teams/.

Renear and Munoz present at 2011 DLF Forum: Towards a New Agenda for Humanities Data Curation

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS faculty member Allen Renear and CIRSS external affiliate Trevor Munoz, along with Katherine Walter from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, are leading a working session, Towards A New Agenda for Humanities in Data Curation, at this year's Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum, 31 Oct - 1 Nov 2011, in Baltimore MD.

This session builds on the activities of a Humanities Data Curation Summit held following the Digital Humanities conference in Paolo Alto CA in June 2011, which convened leading figures from the digital humanities, digital libraries, and funding agencies to reflect on their experiences facing data curation problems and undertaking strategic planning on data curation issues. Based on summit participants' identification of key activities that could substantially impact institutions, professions and scholarship, and on further analysis, the authors are developing specific recommendations for changes in workforce training and staffing, education, and institutional support, which will be presented in a white paper in Winter 2011.

Using key themes from the June 2011 Humanities Data Curation Summit as a springboard, this DLF working session continues the discussion began in Palo Alto, eliciting additional ideas and issues from from the digital library community as well as take steps toward refining and operationalizing community engagement with curation of humanities data.

The full session abstract follows below.

Towards A New Agenda for Humanities Data Curation
DLF Forum 2011 working session, Baltimore MD; 1 November 2011
Allen Renear (GSLIS, UIUC), Trevor Munoz (MITH, UMD), Katherine Walter (UNL Libraries)
http://www.diglib.org/forums/2011forum/schedule/towards-a-new-agenda-for-humanities-data-curation/

At the conclusion of the Digital Humanities 2011 Conference, the Data Curation Education Program for the Humanities (DCEP-H) and CenterNet convened a group of experts from the digital humanities, the digital library community, and major U.S. funding agencies to discuss strategies for improving the curation of digital humanities data. The timing of this summit reflected a belief that data curation, the active and on-going management of data from creation to re-use and long-term preservation, is now an emerging problem for the humanities, and that, more importantly, the convergence of digital library development and digital humanities research has created a unique opportunity to re-imagine divisions of labor, educational policies and practices, and the public role of the humanities.

Summit participants identified four key activities that could have a substantial even radical impact on the evolution of institutions, professions, and scholarship over the next decade:

* Make data curation a key form of public engagement and advocacy for the humanities.

* Integrate the training of prospective scholars and information professionals into an interdisciplinary curriculum on scholarly communication and data curation.

* Realign professional roles, responsibilities, and promotion/tenure criteria with changes in institutional needs as well as practices and tools for curating data.

* Re-analyze the content of data curation curricula to support involvement by information professionals at deeper levels and earlier stages in the data development process.

Building on these materials as well as further analysis, we are developing specific recommendations for changes in workforce training and staffing, education, and institutional support. A final version of a white paper presenting our results will be completed in Winter 2011.

Interested session participants can review the agenda and issues paper from the post-Digital Humanities 2011 Humanities Data Curation Summit at the summit website (http://cirssweb.lis.illinois.edu/paloalto/). Using key themes from the earlier meeting as a springboard, this session will continue the discussion began in Palo Alto, eliciting additional ideas and issues from from the digital library community as well as take steps toward refining and operationalizing community engagement with curation of humanities data.

DCEP-H is an IMLS-funded project hosted by the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

DLF/DCC DPLA Beta Sprint Effort Presented at DPLA Plenary

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS and the Council on Library and Information Resources’ DLF program presented their submission to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Beta Sprint at the DPLA Plenary meeting, October 21, 2011, in Washington, DC.

The project prototype leverages the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Digital Collections and Content (IMLS DCC) resource and DLF Aquifer content as a core collection for the DPLA. The IMLS DCC, launched in 2003, is an aggregation of digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives, supported by IMLS and developed through a collaboration between CIRSS and the University of Illinois Library.

The DPLA is envisioned as a large-scale digital library that will “make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all.” In May, the DPLA Steering Committee announced a “Beta Sprint” to solicit models, prototypes, tools, and interfaces that demonstrate how the DPLA might index and provide access to a wide range of broadly distributed content. In September, an independent review panel met to discuss the 38 Beta Sprint submissions and recommend six of the most promising projects to present at the October Plenary.

The Plenary Meeting, organized by the DPLA Secretariat at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and hosted by The National Archives, brought together a range of stakeholders in an open forum to present the vision for the DPLA effort, share the best ideas and models submitted to the Beta Sprint, and engage public participation.

“I am really proud of our beta sprint, as it highlights the investment made by IMLS, the DLF community, and hundreds of libraries, museums, and archives to produce digital collections,” said DLF Director Rachel Frick.

CIRSS Director Carole Palmer said, “The sprint was a great chance to experiment with the national aggregation model we developed in the IMLS DCC project. We extended the collections, made some technical advances, and reconceived the design for the DPLA community, learning a lot along the way.”

Efron, Organisciak and Fenlon win best paper award at ASIS&T 2011

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS faculty affiliate Miles Efron and CIRSS graduate students Peter Organisciak and Katrina Fenlon have won this year's best paper award at the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) annual meeting in New Orleans LA, October 9-12 2011. The three won for their joint paper "Building Topic Models in a Federated Digital Library Through Selective Document Exclusion."

Building Topic Models in a Federated Digital Library Through Selective Document Exclusion
Miles Efron, Peter Organisciak and Katrina Fenlon
Building topic models in federated digital collections presents numerous challenges due to metadata inconsistencies. The quality of topical metadata is difficult to ascertain and is interspersed with often irrelevant administrative metadata. In this study, we propose a way to improve topic modeling in large collections by identifying documents that convey only weak topical information. These documents are ignored when training topic models. Their topical associations are instead inferred model training. A method is outlined for identifying weakly topical documents by defining runs of similar documents in a collection. In preliminary evaluation using a corpus from the Institute of Museum and Library Services Digital Collections and Content aggregation, results show an increase in coherence among words in topics. In showing this, we demonstrate that it may be beneficial to induce topic models using less, higher-quality data.

CIRSS Participates in ASIS&T 2011, New Orleans

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS research activities were very well represented at this year's American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) annual meeting in New Orleans LA, October 9-12 2011. CIRSS faculty, affiliates, staff and students presented five papers (including this year's best paper winner), three panels, two posters, and a keynote workshop address.

PAPERS:

Disciplinary Reach: Investigating the Impact of Dataset Reuse in the Earth Sciences
Tiffany Chao
In the realm of scholarly communication, scientific datasets are becoming more widely recognized for their scholarly and reuse value. However, given the investment toward maintaining and storing research data for long-term access, there is no clear strategy or metric for determining the reuse of research datasets. This study proposes a novel approach to track use and measure the impact of publically accessible datasets in scholarly publications through disciplinary reach- the number of unique journals and related subject categorizations in which articles are published. Using affiliated publication(s), described by the author as the works identified by the dataset creator or curator related to a dataset, the principles underlying the bibliometric technique of citation analysis are leveraged and applied. Preliminary results show that affiliated publications are primarily in physical science and multidisciplinary journals, indicating these earth datasets may have an impact on a number of different research areas. Continued refinement of these approaches, measures, and the design will serve to broaden our understanding of the reuse potential of scientific data and their influence on advancing scholarship.

Best Paper Winner: Building Topic Models in a Federated Digital Library Through Selective Document Exclusion
Miles Efron, Peter Organisciak and Katrina Fenlon
Building topic models in federated digital collections presents numerous challenges due to metadata inconsistencies. The quality of topical metadata is difficult to ascertain and is interspersed with often irrelevant administrative metadata. In this study, we propose a way to improve topic modeling in large collections by identifying documents that convey only weak topical information. These documents are ignored when training topic models. Their topical associations are instead inferred model training. A method is outlined for identifying weakly topical documents by defining runs of similar documents in a collection. In preliminary evaluation using a corpus from the Institute of Museum and Library Services Digital Collections and Content aggregation, results show an increase in coherence among words in topics. In showing this, we demonstrate that it may be beneficial to induce topic models using less, higher-quality data.

The Analytic Potential of Scientific Data: Understanding Re-use Value
Carole L. Palmer, Nicholas M. Weber and Melissa H. Cragin
While problems related to the curation and preservation of scientific data are receiving considerable attention from the information science and digital repository communities, relatively little progress has been made on approaches for evaluating the value of data to inform investment in acquisition, curation, and preservation. Adapting Birger Hjorland's concept of the "epistemological potential" of documents, we assert that analytic potential, or the value of data for analysis beyond its original use, should guide development of data collections for repositories aimed at supporting research. Three key aspects of the analytic potential of data are identified and discussed: potential user communities, preservation readiness, and fit for purpose. Based on evidence from research from the Data Conservancy initiative, we demonstrate how the analytic potential of data can be determined and applied to build large-scale data collections suited for grand challenge science.

A Framework for Applying the Concept of Significant Properties to Datasets
Simone Sacchi, Karen M. Wickett, Allen H. Renear and David S. Dubin
The concept of significant properties, properties that must be identified and preserved in any successful digital object preservation, is now common in data curation. Although this notion has clearly demonstrated its usefulness in cultural heritage domains its application to the preservation of scientific datasets is not as well developed. One obstacle to this application is that the familiar preservation models are not sufficiently explicit to identify the relevant entities, properties, and relationships involved in dataset preservation. We present a logic-based formal framework of dataset concepts that provides the levels of abstraction necessary to identify and correctly assign significant properties to their appropriate entities. A unique feature of this model is that recognizes that a typed symbol structure is a unique requirement for datasets, but not for other information objects.

Are Collections Sets?
Karen M. Wickett, Allen H. Renear and Jonathan Furner
The concept of a collection plays key roles in library, museum, and archival practice, and is arguably fundamental to information organization systems in general. Locating collections concepts in a reasonably robust ontology should have a number of practical advantages, including revealing inferencing opportunities on the one hand, and supporting consistency and coherence in system design on the other. However, although practices involving collections have been studied empirically there has been surprisingly little attention given to the formal analysis of the concept itself, or related notions like collection membership. With this paper we hope to convene that discussion, beginning with the question: Are collections sets? We consider in detail the substantial arguments against collections being a kind of set, but recognize that at least one version of that claim, one based on considerations from Guarino and Welty's Ontology evaluation rules, cannot be ruled out. We recognize though that ontology decisions, whether practical or theoretical, ultimately come down to weighing competing considerations and not decisive formal arguments. Any conclusions therefore must await the development of alternative theories in subsequent papers. We invite the information science community to join us in this effort.

PANELS:

Shaking it Up: Embracing New Methods for Publishing, Finding, Discussing, and Measuring Our Research Output
Alex Garnett, Kim Holmberg, Christina Pikas, Heather Piwowar, Jason Priem and Nicholas Weber
The scholarly communication ecosystem is changing. Scholars produce and publish a wider range of products than ever before, and scholars and others increasingly interact with these diverse products in new ways within the online ecosystem. The widespread availability of research products and interaction paths is informing new methods for finding, discussing, measuring, and rewarding diverse types of research output. Some research fields are adopting these new methods faster than supporting tools, processes, and policies can keep up. In other fields the changes are happening very slowly - perhaps at the expense of accelerated progress and impact. We have assembled a panel of information science researchers who both study and implement many of these new ways of doing research. Together with attendees of the session (you!), we will consider several new methods of scholarly communication, highlight some of their strengths and drawbacks, and discuss how they play out today in the field of information science. The session will itself follow a nontraditional format. We will begin with an out-of-your-seat and into-the-action icebreaker to capture audience-driven opinions of several fundamental issues behind these changes. Panelists will then briefly highlight several of the new approaches, including motivation, evidence of benefit (or lack thereof), and how the new method is or could make a difference in information science research. We encourage audience members to document their thoughts on these points during the panelist presentations. Audience notes will be summarized in a poster within the Interactive Showcase later in the conference. We hope this panel will inspire conversation about the ways these new approaches may impact how we study scholarly communication, as well as how we participate in scholarly communication ourselves.

Sharing Data: Practices, Barriers, and Incentives
Carol Tenopir, Jeffrey van der Hoeven, Carole L. Palmer, Jim Malone and Priyanki Sinha
Bringing together a panel of researchers who have conducted surveys regarding current data sharing practices and scientific perceptions of it, this paper addresses findings from surveys including the PARSE Insight survey, DataONE survey, Data Conservancy/University of Illinois and Purdue interviews, as well as a survey and interviews of scientists in the Southeast US done for USGS. The paper analyzes the findings of these surveys and interviews and discusses the advantages of data sharing. It addresses the varying degrees of data sharing and data hoarding and insight regarding the sharing of data among respondents. It also touches on concerns of those who are reluctant to share data and the role the development of cyberinfrastructure will play in future data sharing. The surveys and in-depth interviews discussed in this panel will help information scientists and system designers understand the current practices, barriers to data sharing, and needs of scientists into the future. Inculcating a culture of data sharing and curation requires first understanding the motivations and concerns of the scientists who collect and use research data.

The Janus Panels: Looking Back in Order to Look Forward
Robert Williams and Kathryn LaBarre
This panel session consists of two parts: "I remember ADI/ASIS/ASIS&T" and "What I want ASIST to be in 2037." In the first part, selected ASIS&T members who have held membership for at least 25 years will briefly talk about their favorite/most memorable moments in ASIS&T. Former presidents and major award winners meeting the 25 years or more membership criterion will be given precedence for the short presentations. The following members with 25+ years who have agreed to present in this part are: Samantha Hastings, Trudi Hahn, Toni Carbo, Ralf Shaw, Michael Buckland, and Chuck Ben-Ami Lipetz. In the second part, selected ASIS&T members who have been members less than 5 years will briefly tell us what they want ASIS&T to be like, to do, to represent, etc. when it turns 100 in 2037.

WORKSHOP KEYNOTE ADDRESS:

Interdisciplinary information work: Concepts and practices
Palmer, Carole
Keynote address for workshop Where Your World Meets Mine: Information Used Across Domains (SIG USE)

POSTERS:

Semi-automated Collection Evaluation for Large-scale Aggregations
Katrina Fenlon, Peter Organisciak, Jacob Jett and Miles Efron
Library and museum digital collections are increasingly aggregated at various levels. Large-scale aggregations, often characterized by heterogeneous or messy metadata, pose unique and growing challenges to aggregation administrators not only in facilitating end-user discovery and access, but in performing basic administrative and curatorial tasks in a scalable way, such as finding messy data and determining the overall topical landscape of the aggregation. This poster describes early findings on using statistical text analysis techniques to improve the scalability of an aggregation development workflow for a large-scale aggregation. These techniques hold great promise for automating historically labor-intensive evaluative aspects of aggregation development and form the basis for the development of an aggregators dashboard. The aggregators dashboard is planned as a statistical text-analysis-driven tool for supporting large-scale aggregation development and maintenance, through multifaceted, automatic visualization of an aggregations metadata quality and topical coverage. The administrators dashboard will support principled yet scalable aggregation development.

Shaken and Stirred: ASIS&T 2011 Attendee Reactions to Shaking It Up: Embracing New Methods for Publishing, Finding, Discussing and Measuring Our Research Output
Alex Garnett, University of Victoria; Kim Holmberg, Abo Akademi University; Christina Pikas, University of Maryland; Heather Piwowar, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center; Jason Priem, University of North Carolina; and Nicholas Weber, University of Illinois
What does the Information Science community think about new, open methods for publishing, finding, discussing, and measuring our research output? This poster will summarize audience member participation and reaction to an ASIS&T 2011 panel discussing these issues. Reaction data will consist of several Likert-scale and open-ended responses. The data will be collected only a day or two before the poster is displayed: classification and visualization will be done openly to accomplish a rapid summary of the data. The tight timeline and attendees-as-data-source will heighten the relevance of these exploratory results. Likert-scale response distributions will be displayed in dot-plots to facilitate additional Write-On-The-Poster contributions from poster-viewers, further increasing engagement. Through this process we hope to raise awareness of these new open methods, discuss their strengths and weaknesses for the Information Science community, experiment with new methods for face-to-face group scholarly communication, and build community.

DLF/DCC participates in DPLA Beta Sprint

Elin Bammerlin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS is collaborating with CLIR/DLF on a Digital Public Library Data Sprint contribution. The project is being funded by the Mellon Foundation. See our video and press release.

Chao, Weber, and Sacchi Present at Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:00:00 CDT

CIRSS graduate students Tiffany Chao, Nicholas Weber, and Simone Sacchi presented posters at the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries this month, which took place in Ottawa, Canada, from June 13-June 17. The theme for this year's conference was "Digital Libraries: Bringing Together Scholars, Scholarship and Research Data."

Analytic Potential of Data: Assessing Reuse Value
Carole L. Palmer; Nicholas M. Weber; Melissa H. Cragin

This poster represents the first iteration of a concept for analyzing the potential of a data collection to be re-used. We initially discuss Birger Hjørland's notion of a document having an epistemological potential (a potential to inform the knowledge work of many varying user groups) and why this model is and is not applicable to data. We then introduce the additional analytic components that data require, in the form of a fit-for-purpose and preservation readiness evaluation. We conclude with a discussion of how we foresee these notions assisting curators in accurately forecasting the potential value of a collection across various user domains. This work was a result of the collection policy group in the Data Conservancy, and has been further fleshed out in a paper submitted to the 2011 ASIS&T annual conference.

Units of Evidence for Analyzing Subdisciplinary Difference in Data Practice Studies
Melissa H. Cragin, Tiffany C. Chao, Carole L. Palmer

Digital libraries (DLs) are adapting to include research materials generated upstream in the research-publication cycle. Managing these new content types – and creating services to support their use – spans the elements of DL development, revealing complicated technical requirements (e.g. exposing complex relationships amongst objects) and the need for additional human infrastructure. Building collections of scientific data also raises questions concerning data selection, policy development, collaboration, and outreach efforts and how to best align these with local, institutional initiatives for cyberinfrastructure, data-intensive research, and data stewardship. To facilitate data acquisition and purposeful user services, we require increased understanding of data-practice-curation service arrangements across small science research. We present a flexible methodological approach crafted to generate units of evidence to analyze these relationships and facilitate cross-disciplinary comparisons.

Annotation function categories: A semantic extension to the OAC Alpha3 Data Model
Simone Sacchi

Modeling annotation for sharing has been the topic of many studies and projects in the last decade. However, the developed models have focused on modeling annotations for what they are, rather what they are for. This poster suggests an extension of the Open Annotation Collaboration Alpha3 Data Model to support the sharing of function categories able to express the semantics of annotation with respect to the annotation body and the annotation target(s). This semantic enhancement is meant also to inform applications and tools on how to interpret annotation for the purpose of exposing new functionalities to the users. Part of the Semantic Web Technologies for Libraries and Readers workshop.

DCEP-H Project holds Advisory Board meeting

Kevin Trainor — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:00:00 CDT

The CIRSS DCEP-H Project will be holding a meeting of its Advisory Board in Palo Alto on June 23^rd following the Humanities Data Curation Summit. The Data Curation Education Program for the Humanities (DCEP-H) extends the GSLIS Data Curation Education Program (DCEP) to include training in the curation of humanities data. As a result of DCEP-H activities, more than half of the students who now participate in these GSLIS programs have a humanities background. The grant has also funded fellowships for 12 students. Five students have completed internships. In addition 23 LIS practitioners have participated in our Summer Institute for Humanities Data Curation and 20 leaders from the digital humanities will participate in our Humanities Data Curation Summit.