Following are summaries of the sessions I attended at the recent DLF Forum, including links to community Googledocs and abstracts for the papers. Videos of some of sessions are available here: http://www.diglib.org/archives/5244/
Opening Keynote by David Lankes
David focused his talk around the idea of the ‘mortal in the
portal’. He addressed the common sense notion that ‘libraries are good and necessary things’ and unpacked this notion
throughout his talk. He emphasized that when we say ‘libraries’, we really mean
‘librarians’ and that it is in fact rather odd to think about a building or an
institution as doing something when in fact it is the inhabitants who are
providing services and maintaining the function of an institution. He advocated
that a professional service is more than just a series of functions and that
the provider is an essential part of the service.
At the heart of his message was the idea that librarians
have a mission to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in
their communities. Being a librarian is more than helping people get to stuff,
as this ‘stuff’ can take a variety of formats including conversations,
arguments and training, and is not just books on shelves or websites. Further,
training people and imparting knowledge is not just about how to use the
library’s facilities, but teaching the norms of scholarly communication.
Turning from the first half of the sentence ‘libraries are good and necessary things’
to the second, he unpacked why libraries [librarians] can be considered good
and necessary things. He questioned who gets the benefit and why. In his
opinion the word ‘information’ means nothing – he prefers talking about
knowledge since this is fundamentally a human phenomenon and refers to what’s
in people’s heads. Libraries [librarians] are helping people to do something
that they couldn’t do before.
In essence ‘libraries
are good and necessary things’ under David’s examination mutates into ‘librarians improve society through
facilitating knowledge creation in their communities’, or, put more simply
‘librarians make the world a better place’.
One of the themes that ran alongside this unpacking of the initial thesis of
the speech was the idea that we need to stop worrying about saving libraries
and to concern ourselves, instead, with responding to the needs and dynamics of
the community in which the library is immersed.
He gave the whole talk via Skype as he was at home
recovering from chemo – what a fab dude!
Digital collections: if you build them, will anyone visit?
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_jFMhS_Ala8xZkRPJAoGcHZRZ-7vKteu6CdcRLFY3s/edit
In addition to being an excuse for a picture of Kevin
Costner, this session looked at how visible digital collections of newspapers
are in online searches. The choice to look at newspapers was on account of them
being particularly highly used, and therefore you would expect them to have
high visibility in a Google search or similar. However, this is rarely the
case. This was because, to quote the speakers, sites for digitized content
often “suck”. 89% of college students start their research with Google rather
than the library website, and are, therefore, in danger of missing resources.
The session discussed how digital collections might be marketed more
effectively and it was suggested that too much focus and money went on content
and not enough on publicity, presentation and SEO. There are some further
details in the community Googledoc.
Metadata First: Using Structured Data Markup and the Google Custom Search API to Outsource Your Digital Collection Search Index
Community notes googledoc: same as previous googledoc link –
the notes follow straight on from the Digital Collections discussion, and has
links to the slides, a demo and a download.
This talk was about creating indexable content and how
library resources need to be discoverable in other venues and systems (the
community notes contain a link to a video of Lorcan Dempsey talking about
this). They noted that while Solr and Blacklight were flexible, faceted and had
stable URLs, the development time was often prohibitive. It was suggested that
Google Custom Search might be an alternative as it was already optimized for
web search. One commentor noted that making a site more accessible for users
with disabilities would improve visability to search engines. There are further
notes and links in the community document.
Hunting for Best Practices in Digital Library Assessment
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-IHs5PJeGiC_cc5S370w5eJCC4Mj5ODDAXKJC2ILlWg/edit
This was a workshop session. It focused on the problem that
while research and cultural heritage institutions are creating more and more
digital resources, the funding for such institutions is being eroded. As such,
we need to hone our skills in being able to measure the value and impact of
these resources.
After breaking out into groups with different members of the
team presenting, we discussed what the challenges are in assessing digital
libraries. There are a large amount of community notes available on the
googledoc above, summarizing the thought from the various groups. However, one
point that I felt was particularly important was the suggestion that assessment
criteria can’t be an afterthought – they need to be built into a digital
resource from the outset. That is, we need in creating any kind of web-based
collection to determine from the outset what success would look like and how we
might measure it (this is often a requirement of grant agencies). This was a
huge topic and the conveners decided that we should continue the discussion, so
I’ve signed up to the mailing list.
Big Archival Data: Designing Workflows and Access to Large-Scale Digitized Collections
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gkk6s-QvLwiN4iUjP9OVHaANzM3jVAKzrLAsuIbrzbo/edit
There was a very cool musicological section to this
presentation. Tanya Clement discussed
the need to think about how researchers will use digitized audio. This is very
broad and can include things like psychoacoustics (understanding what sounds
mean to people) and creating spectrograms to analyze audio files visually. In
the latter case spectrograms can be used to show the machine what is meaningful
to you to search for. In one example she took a particular clip from a sound
file and asked the computer to look for things that were spectrographically
similar. This method turned up a bunch of examples that initially seemed to be
useless, however, they later discovered that although the computer had found
clips that contained different words and speakers, it transpired that the
speakers had the same accent and came from the same area. There were also
examples of how a person speaking two different languages appeared
spectrographically and how the computer could find the moments where the
speaker changed language. These methods can also be used to look at how
different speakers have approached the same content (combined with
psychoacoustics this could have all sorts of implications for giving speeches,
advertising, drama…).
Pathways to Stimulating Experiential Learning and Technological Innovation in Academic Libraries
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nTQ4-1frp-bRrMVCuMi5Q7Y-c-xMHJAz2eCg5rQMniY/edit
This presentation had some very nice examples from three
institutions about how students were being used to hack apps and gadgets for
their libraries. They made their
experiential learning programs a regular part of library life, and fought to
maintain the budget for this when it was under threat. Students gained an
insight into library workflows and policies, but at the same time were able to
bring their experience as users to the planning table. In most cases the
structure of the students’ working teams was non-hierarchical and seemed to allow
for some dynamic and creative brainstorming. The library benefitted from a
regular turnover of enthusiastic students working for them and giving their
perspective, while the students gained a lot of skills for the workplace (in
one example, the library provided a form the students could fill in with work
they had undertaken and what skills this developed listed – apparently the
students found this very helpful for designing their CVs and explaining the
usefulness of their experience in job interviews).
Determining Assessment Strategies for Digital Libraries and Institutional Repositories Using Statistics and Altmetrics
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WC2qlBLnvYG4T18Wf3Lk5LbQCuwYFSq1cBYQGs5pPuI/edit
This session had some similarities with the session on the
previous day that discussed assessment in digital libraries, although this one
focused specifically on metrics. It also had a workshop element and I joined
the group discussing qualitative vs quantitative metrics. The questions we
discussed have been summarized here: http://pad.okfn.org/p/XNzqegv4aH
Influence of Academic Rank on Faculty Members’ Attitudes Toward Research Data Management
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11IwzhQEGXqhgI5nCxlDRDV7Sz0JGICafU8lsQOE-5Ms/edit
Presented by Katherine Akers, a current CLIR fellow in her
second year. Katherine examined the ways in which humanities faculty differ
from members of other faculties in their approach to data curation, and how
different ranks within academia also differ within the humanities – see the
community notes above for the questions she asked and the responses she
collated. As a result of her findings, Katherine suggested some ways in which
libraries can better support humanities faculty and how. For example,
non-tenure staff tend to desire more outreach and training than senior faculty,
while humanities academics in general need better cloud storage since they tend
to travel more and some university systems can be very off-putting, slow, or
difficult to use. All ranks expressed a desire for more digitized materials to
be made available and easily accessible. See the community notes for more of
her suggestions and results.
Humanities Data Curation in the Library: The Preservation of Digital Humanities Research Now and To Come
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11IwzhQEGXqhgI5nCxlDRDV7Sz0JGICafU8lsQOE-5Ms/edit
Harriet Green explored 3 case studies that she felt represented
three tiers of data curation. The first was the Walt Whitman archive, which she
classified as ‘basic’ – it has xml, html, image and recording files stored on
optical discs with some basic backup of older iterations; they are beginning to
work with university archives. The second project representing the mid-tier was
the Victorian Women Writers project, which, in addition to xml files of texts,
has annotations and biographical summaries, html files workflow with a fedora
repository for storage and another one for creating and editing files [better
detail on this is available in the community googledoc]. It was suggested that
this project needed more staff to be sustainable. The third example was the
Valley of the Shadow and represented a high-level of data curation. As well as
having the kind of scope of the VWW project, this online resource had extensive
documentation regarding its structure/workflows/programs used etc. The subject
librarians were part of the project and costs for the project at each point
were clearly calculated and known by both the library staff and faculty.
Based on her analysis of these three projects, Harriet
recommended some principles for best practice and suggested that the UVa
Sustaining Digital Scholarship was very useful as it identified criteria for
defining levels of curation. She also suggested that libraries needed to
provide further education and training on digital project curation, and that
they needed an evaluation rubric and long term planning.
Her bibliography is available here: https://uofi.box.com/dlf2013papergreen
Services for Research Data and Open Access: Strategies and Toolkits Being Implemented at Virginia Tech, the University of California, and Duke
Community notes googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iFjjJsF8I7odycBlBycfiV9EowpBQYX5a0NPXOZOVW4/edit
This was a discussion of OA policies. UC recently moved to a
policy of required deposit from which people have to choose to opt out (rather
than choosing to opt in). One part that interested me was how they were
attempting to make it easier for faculty to use their repositories – often in
response to complaints from faculty about overly long and confusing deposit
forms. This prompted UC to create a new interface which simplified the process
(for example if an article has not yet been published, by clicking on that
option the request for publication details like ISBNs and issue numbers are
removed from the interface). Also they are refining their data harvesting tools
in order to make the process simpler. The harvesting program goes and hunts
down articles and collects all the metadata, it then adds these articles to a
staff member’s profile but in a pending status. The staff member, when they log
on to their repository profile can then just click a box to accept the article
with its metadata if it is correct (they can adjust this if needs be). The
article can be uploaded through a drag and drop mechanism. Alongside making the
process easier for staff education and outreach was needed from the office of
scholarly communication to dispel the enduring myths of OA! Generally they have
found that publishers have not put up resistance to the green OA offered by
institutional repositories.
Closing Keynote by Char Booth
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/charbooth/information-privilege-critical-approaches-to-access-and-advocacy
Watch the talk here: http://mediasite.engr.utexas.edu/UTMediasite/Play/15fef35f23364ca0bbe4f0ee5f04a3e71d
In some ways Char challenged
(respectfully and graciously) some of David’s remarks in the opening keynote.
She felt that libraries do need
saving, and in many respects have always
needed saving.
She expressed concern that those
who are creating tools and those who are disseminating the tools don’t continue
communicate with each other, and we need to maintain this dialogue in order for
our tools and for our libraries to be a success.
The idea that libraries don’t need
saving is an important point for those in the grassroots who are dealing with
budgets. Also for students whose local libraries have been closed down, their
first experience of libraries and librarians is at university level – this
makes our interaction with them and presentation of the institution to them a
crucial thing. Furthermore, Char argued that we represent something that is
fragile because our not-for-profit, OA ideals do not chime with those of
publishers and other for-profit organizations. She believes we are an activist
profession.
Char discussed the notion of
information privilege. She feels that we need to confront the ‘dark side’ of
information privilege, whereby society’s divides are exacerbated by access not
being universal. She also looked at what
motivates us to do what we do, and to think about our narratives. There are
narratives about libraries which are extremely negative – she mentions a
techcrunch article, which asks why libraries are needed when you can just
download things to your ipad (see above re ‘dark side’ of information
privilege), and ‘libraries in crisis’on Huffington Post.
In essence we need to work
together and be involved in the process all along the way. So: we need to
create great tools and resources, but then we need to communicate with those
who disseminate and those who use them (which, from my perspective, is part of the mission of a CLIR fellow), and also those who unexpectedly
come across our tools and resources. We need to follow through on the impact of
those tools and understand when and how and if they are being used. She
notes that making online resources disability friendly is a good way of
ensuring more general good practice in websites and other resources (this point
came up in some of the other sessions).
There’s lots more I could say,
but the whole speech is online, and she says it better than I do, so do take a
look, it will be an hour well spent.
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