Webwise 2011-posted by Isabelle Kargon.

I was at Webwise 2011, March 9-11. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in Education, Learning and Research (http://webwise2011.library.du.edu/index.php ).

It was held at the Renaissance Harborplace in Baltimore. I attended the main conferences on Thursday and Friday.

The first keynote presentation was given by Joshua Greenberg, Director of the A. P. Sloan Foundation’s Digital Information. He talked about the main topic of this information age: data, and how to store them. He mentioned several projects of interest, among them MoBeDAC (http://mobedac.org/ ), a microbiome of the built environment data management site. He mentioned Google’s N-Gram viewer (http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/ ) that allows a keyword search through 2 or 3 characters chunks from a full-text corpus over centuries.

The main problem, though, is that while creating data is easier and easier, many institutions have insufficient funding for proper data storage and curation, one big difficulty being computation. Solutions reside in the facilitation of data sharing and of interoperability. There is a need to train the workforce in information technology and to create a broader collaboration between institutions, with more roles given to data-oriented professions. Libraries and museums need to network their data between institutions, that is expose data in common formats. In the 19^th century, items were the data. Nowadays they are artifacts and digital books are data. For small institutions, data curation is important to help communities to figure out what to do with their data.

More examples of common data services and data sharing websites were given: Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org/), the Zooniverse Project (http://www.zooniverse.org/home ) which uses the participation of non-professional citizens in science projects, and Wikipedia.

There were many projects presentations, among which I noticed especially Connecting Content by the California Academy of Sciences: a collaboration to link field notes to specimens and published literature. The Macaulay Library in Cornell University had the project The NPR/NGS Radio Expeditions Sounds Collection. The National Building Museum in Washington, D. C. presented Information Technology and Online Services Initiative, etc…

The first panel session was on Perfecting STEM Partnerships: Libraries, Museums and Formal Education. The stress was on developing 21^st century skills in collaboration with formal education partners.

Marcia Mardis (Florida State U.) spoke of the project DL2SL (Digital Library to School Library). Its goals are the creation of tools for rapid creation and export of MARC records for Web objects. Metadata creation tools would increase the “findability” of digital content.

Susie Allard (U. of Tennessee)’s talk was Environmental Science Librarians, Oh! My! She talked of new paradigms involving the Web 2.0 and user-generated content. She stressed also the importance of collaboration and data sharing. She gave, among others, the example of DataONE (http://www.dataone.org/ ), a collaboration project that presents a “sustainable cyber-infrastructure that meets the needs of science and society for open, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and easily discovered Earth observational data.” M. Mardis talked of the necessity of developing shared curricula for research centers, strengthening institutional and research ties, revitalizing traditional skills and developing new ones towards a new frontier of information creation, organization, and dissemination. Institutions should develop new knowledge sets and consider a dynamic content for diverse user skills, such as what is found with blogs, Wiki spaces, Flickr, etc.

Kwasi Asare, from the U. S. Dept. of Education, talked of learning powered by technology. He mentioned the need for interaction in learning, the importance of digital content. The goals to consider in education are learning in an engaging way, assessment for continuous improvement, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. Currently the investment in education produces a bad ROI (return on investment). There is a need for a more efficient use of time, money and staff. The challenges facing educators are in the management of print material going to digital material, and access to resources for teachers.

This talk elicited questions about the engagement of school libraries in collaboration, and on the way school assessment is conducted through tests leading to a teaching oriented mostly towards tests results.

The second session, moderated by Erika Shugart (National Academy of Science) was on STEM and the Participatory Web: Everyone is Invited! It presented projects generating meaningful audience participation.

Bridget Butler (conservation education specialist, Echo Lake Aquarium at Lake Champlain, and environmental reporter for NBC affiliate News Channel 5) presented Voices for the Lake. The project encourages online and on site engagement from the public, with the goal of contributing stories and connecting with the community around Lake Champlain.

Seth Cooper (U. of Washington) talked about the scientific video-game Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/ ) that allows people to play while contributing to predict three-dimensional protein structures—the way protein molecules fold in space. The users participate in chats and forums, they created a Wiki. When a user-generated model is used in a published paper, the users who helped finding the protein configuration are quoted as co-authors of the paper. The nest step will be users helping to design entirely new proteins.

Jeff Grabill (Michigan State U.) and Kirsten Ellenbogen (Science Museum of Minnesota) talked about Science Buzz (http://www.sciencebuzz.org/ ): a community of people caring about science and society.

More projects presentations included the Walters Art Museum’s Integrating the Art: China, an interactive resource integrating non-art disciplines (social studies, mathematics, science, …) with works of art. There was a fascinating project from University of California, Berkeley, presented by Carl Haber, on Advancing Optical Scanning of Mechanical Sound Carriers: Connecting to Collections and Collaboration (http://irene.lbl.gov ). The principle is to acquire digital maps of the surface of the media (old mechanical recordings), without contact, and then apply image analysis methods to recover the audio data and reduce noise. Sound from old records, wax cylinders, etc. can be recovered. This way the earliest sound recorded in history was restored: it was the phonautograph paper from Edouard-Léon Scott from 1857. A partner for this project is the Library of Congress.

The third session, moderated by Ken Wiggin, was Tapping into Science: Promotign Collections for Use in Teaching, about the creation of digital collections by libraries and museums to provide greater access to their primary and secondary sources.

Kaye Howe (Director of the National Science Digital Library Resource Center) talked—without any notes or any PowerPoint slides) about the educational needs of today’s youth. For today’s young people, learning is linked to technology and to networking. They need textbooks about experimental learning, but these books are scarce. The digital world allows remote people to access networks and resources. There is a need to understand who libraries and museums are making these resources for. Digital data need the same work of contextualization as traditional data. Here are a few quotes given by Kay Howe: “Know who you are talking to” (Aristotle). “We thought it was a problem, and it was a mystery” (Gabriel Marcel). "Paintin' is a lot harder than pickin' cotton. Cotton's right there for you to pull off the stalk, but to paint, you got to sweat your mind" (Clementine Hunter, artist).

Kenning Arlitsch (Willard Marriottt Library, U. of Utah), presented the Western Soundscape Archive (http://westernsoundscape.org/ ), the largest free online archive about natural sounds in Western U.S.

Rebecca Morin (California Academy of Sciences) talked about the Biodiversity Heritage Library (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ ), a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries in the U.S. and 2 in the U. K. They try to give access to their collections as well as to primary sources through the Field Book Project.

Francine Berman (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) gave the second day keynote presentation: Got Data? The Role of Digital Information in 21^st Century Research.

Data-driven research leads to research by professional experts as well as by the community. Data-driven discovery is illustrated by the model of the Milky Way obtained through spectroscopic surveys, or the earthquake model for the San Andreas fault obtained through supercomputation. The PBD (Protein Data Bank) is a worldwide repository made through processing and distributing data on the 3D structure of proteins. To support the life-cycle of data is to ensure their capture from various sources, to edit them (i.e. organize, annotate, etc.), to use/reuse them for modeling, visualization, etc., to publish them, to preserve or destroy them. However data corruption can occur. Data storage is growing as well as its cost. Libraries and museums are good at collaboration and curation and should work with the research world. Data sharing can give a good competitive advantage and help to create a national research data infrastructure.

The fourth session was moderated by Tom Scheinfeldt (George Mason U.) It presented examples of crossover projects that brought disciplines together.

Chris Wildrick (Syracuse U.) talked about Dinosaurs Aesthetics. He is a conceptual artist using dinosaurs imagery and statistics for educational projects.

Fred Gibbs (George Mason U.) presented History and Data. Interested in digging into data on poisoning and criminal intent, he talked about the Proceedings of Old Bailey, the records of felony trials held at Old Bailey (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ ). He also mentioned The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 by Walter E. Houghton, and projects such as mapping plants at JStor which allows experts to edit inaccurate maps. In conclusion he mentioned the need for flexible ways to get data, the fact that tools impose their own limits, and the need to consider the life cycle of data. Is scientific literacy data literacy? Data are the middle ground of sciences and humanities.

Michael Benson (Kineticon Pictures) talked about the history of data mining, from Assyrian sky charts, the compactly stored Babylonian astronomical data, to the Nasa archives mined for robotic search, curation, and exhibition making.

The fifth session was moderated by Greg Colati (U. of Denver). It was about Reuse and Recycle: Tools and Services for Managing, Preserving and Presenting Data for Sharing.

Sayeed Choudhuri (from our own JHU Digital Research and Curation Center) talked about data conservancy (http://dataconservancy.org/about). He mentioned the problems of access to data and of the time consuming character of curating data on a large scale.A tool to organize data and data conservancy would be an Open Archival Information System (OAIS). He gave some examples of pilot projects illustrating prototyping as strategy: the Proof of Concept based on ice road development, arXiv (http://arxiv.org/ ), an open access project making data connected to publications, IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance), Sakai, an open source integration site, NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center), the Dry Valley Visualization Project that uses a Google Earth interface, and the Coastal Bay Visualization Project.

Leah Melber (Lincoln Park Zoo) talked about Ethograms For Everyone. The Ethosearch project (www.ethosearch.org ) is a database of ethograms, or animal behaviors. They are sorted by vocalization, localization, feeding and foraging, resting, etc. The users are researchers, biologists, professors, students, animal care professionals, K-12 children.

Aaron Presnall (Jefferson Institute) talked about visualization of data through the Vidi Project (http://www.dataviz.org/ ). The concept is about empowerment through visualization of data. Data need a narrative for visualization. Bringing information will bring empowerment. Examples of projects were the Lewis and Clark journey and military data from the National Archives of Serbia.

In all, this was a very informative conference. Libraries and museums do have a role to play in education, and many creative projects are making use of the possibilities offered by the fast evolving digital technologies every institution has to be aware of.

Global Mission Driven Performance Institute

I attended and presented at the 3rd Annual Global Mission Driven Performance Institute, March 8-10, 2011 in Washington DC. The other presenters include Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the founders of the balanced scorecard approach to strategic planning; Tom Harrington, Associate Deputy Director of the FBI; Ellen Liston, Deputy City Manager, City of Coral Springs, Florida, Monica Niemi, Development Manager of Folkhalsan of Finland; and more.

Several things really hit home for me.

1. Using the balanced scorecard has deeply changed the way many organizations approached both their strategic planning AND the implementation of that plan.
   
2. Those organizations that have regular measurement meetings and whose leadership regularly talk about strategy are more effective in achieving their mission.
   
3. Leadership is key - if you leave your strategy management to middle management it is a long development process and becomes too operationally focused.
   
4. Drive execution of the strategy plan through communication.
5. Communication - 7 times 7 ways this was a mantra repeated over and over in the presentations
6. Motto from the FBI - We do, we learn, we do better, we learn more. (I love this!!)
7. There is tremendous power in clear choices and focus.
   
8. Great leadership spends 30% of their time EACH DAY on strategy.
9. Organizational change and transformation requires consistent change and communication over the course of 5-10 years.
10. Measurement is extremely important in non-profits because it creates accountability that is often lacking.
    
11. Recognize that outcome measures for social change are hard, not impossible, but hard.
12. Each year the FBI picks 10 key initiatives and those initiatives are fully funded; their strategy runs the budget - the budget does not run the strategy.
    

Dr. Kaplan delivered a talk on the six step strategy execution closed loop system.

1. Develop strategy based on your mission, vision, and values - should be 10-15 years out for non-profits with measurable objectives. This should not be about what you do but what you want to accomplish. Do some AS IS modeling: we're here what do we have to do to become XYZ.
   
2. Plan your strategy map - executive committee has to create clarity, consensus, and commitment. Then create alignment, educate and communicate, develop feedback loops, and create real accountability.
3. Align Organization - it is not important if you have 8 great units if you don't have 8 great units that work together well. Leadership aligns and synchronizes the organization.
4. Plan your operations - map your key processes in detail to drive real results
5. Improve operationally - monitor and learn. Review your operational dashboards, ask questions (don't blame), separate operation meetings from strategy meetings. Measures should only be questioned one time per year, agree on them, then use them, once you have the measures discuss the data from them. Make it safe for people to report problems
6. Test and adapt - keep asking, how will we know when we are successful.

It is extremely important to understand the diagnostic piece of the puzzle before getting to the design and deliver piece. This is where I think we often fail as an organization - we are so hot to develop a solution we don'ttake the time to understand the problem we are trying to solve.

This conference continues to be an inspiring conference for understanding the power of the balanced scorecard to create meaningful strategic results.

Code4Lib 2011

In February, I attended the 2011 Code4Lib Conference.

"Code4Lib" isn't an organization or business or initiative. It's just a name a bunch of people use informally for a community. It has recently occurred to me that it could be described by the academic notion of "community of practice": "It is through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group that the members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally."

The Code4Lib community is composed of library software developers and other technology workers. The participants are characterized by a strong desire to innovate and make things easier for our users -- but also by a focus on practical solutions that can be implemented quickly today, in our actually existing messy environment. This contrasts with other library organizations or communities more focused on more long-term or "blue sky" research. This priority put on solutions with immediate 'bang for the buck' springs, in part, from most participants positions in their library organizations: Not in resource-rich grant-funded departments, but in departments working with legacy systems, without explicit R&D budgets, but still with a passion to make our often challenging systems work better for users.

This context makes the 'community of practice' all the more important, becuase such developers are often more or less working solo on projects at their own institutions, without local technical peers. But in order to do what we do well, it's absolutely vital to have peers in a 'community of practice' to exchange ideas with, get advice and tips from, or mentor and be mentored by.

The annual conference, of which this year's was the 6th, seems to me to actually be one of the most powerful ways this community forms itself as an actual community, with shared knowledge, experiences, and social networks. In-person meeting can develop professional collaborative and information-sharing relationships and trust quicker and better than many megabytes of online interaction. This always ends up being the most useful aspect of the conference for me, more than the concrete information in any particular presentation.

On reflection, some aspects of how the conference is run seem nearly ideal for community-building, through some combination of intention and accident. The conference is single-tracked, with all participants seeing the same presentations: This builds the shared knowledge upon which a community of practice is based; and putting us all on the same page gives us lots of things to talk more about in late night hanging out in the conference hospitality suite, developing our shared understanding yet further. Presentations are only 20 minutes long, and supplemented by 5 minute "lightning talks" which can be given by anyone who wants to sign up during the conference itself: One goal is to maximize the number of audience members who are also up in front presenting, and a kind of egalitarianism that hopefully makes it easier for newcomers to integrate themselves into the community.

One trend I noticed at this year's conference were attempts on building software packages by assembling pre-existing mature components, and generally build software based on individual separate components.

This is, I think, a reaction to many previous efforts to build homegrown monolithic solutions, which ended up revealing our lack of capacity to succesfully build such things in a sustainable way. If we can re-use mature open source components from non-library communities, with their own community of developers, we can take advantage of that work, focusing on our own unique needs on top of that, maximizing our efforts. Likewise, if we can break up our own software projects into individual somewhat independent components, one of those individual components can meet the needs of a wider community, in a way that a more focused monolithic project can't. And by meeting the needs of a wider community, there are more potential collaborators to help on that component.

One example in a presentation at the conference, would be UPenn's efforts to build software to compile, manage, and analyze usage data from library software. A few years ago they were engaged in an effort they called the "data farm". We at Hopkins were at one point considering trying to use their software for our own needs, but ended up not having the time or resources to fully investigate. However, in a presentation at the conference, Tom Barker from UPenn revealed that they themselves had come to realize their first effort at this was not creating efficiently sustainable software, it was taking them too much development time to adapt to new data sources, and was ending up too customized for other institutions to easily adopt or collaborate. They switched gears, and have developed new software they currently call MetriDoc, which is based on several pre-existing mature open source components for transforming and storing data.

There are of course downsides to trying to build from several pre-existing powerful components, just different downsides from trying to build your own thing mostly from scratch (or much smaller pre-existing components). More components means more things the developer has to learn how to use, and more places to debug when something isn't going right. A component written for a more general purpose might not do exactly what you need. If you were counting on an open source component being maintained by an external community of developers, and it gets abandoned, it can be disastrous for your project.

But all approaches have risks, by being aware of the risks you can choose your components (and your approaches in general) to minimize them. The more I write software, the more I realize building complicated software such that it is flexible, sustainable, and expandable is actually difficult, taking skill, experience, time, and a bit of luck. It's not in fact -- despite the self-confidence of youth -- something that is obvious if you are just smart enough and know a couple guidelines.

Hopefully the Code4Lib community can continue to help library developers build their personal skill and experience at developing quality software in a sustainable and efficient way, in order to on aggregate increase the library communities capacity at sustainable technological innovation. I know my participation in the community -- in listservs, at the conferences, on IRC, and through the Code4Lib Journal -- has increased my own capacity immeasurably.

THATCamp Virginia December 2010

Last December, I attended THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) which was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is a small informal gathering of humanities scholars, graduate students, librarians, archivists, programmers, developers and others (those interested in digital humanities) where attendees discussed and shared ideas about their projects, particularly with regard to the application of technology to the field of humanities. The fun part of attending this camp is that everyone gets an opportunity to participate and there were around 75 participants.

As THATCamp comprises of humanities scholars and graduate students, it is an excellent chance for librarians and archivists to learn about these projects and also to find out ways in which they can effectively serve user needs. There were several interesting sessions and information about these are available at http://virginia2010.thatcamp.org

There was also a session on the use of Omeka and worpdress for digital history projects that was very interesting. Links to some of the digital history projects are available on Dr. Jeffrey McClurken's website. He also wrote an article about teaching with Omeka in the Chronicle last August.

- Chella Vaidyanathan

ALA Midwinter Meeting 2011, San Diego

ALA Midwinter Meeting 2011, San Diego
Mark Cyzyk

So I went into a shop the evening of my arrival to buy a postcard to send my Girls and the cashier suddenly exclaimed, "Ya know, we have some Specials this week for librarians." "That's nice," I thought, "how in the world does he know I'm a librarian?!" -- aside from the fact that I'm in San Diego wearing a dark green corduroy jacket. (You should have seen the reaction in Hawaii to my tweed coat.) [Just kidding.]

This was my first ALA conference.

The reason I went was to attend the bi-annual meeting of the editorial board of Information Technology and Libraries, of which I am a member. This I did.

Insofar as I'm a board newby, I was looking forward to meeting the other members, and I was really looking forward to meeting our editor, Marc Truitt of the University of Alberta. He's the guy who appointed me, he strikes me as a very wise editor, and my email exchanges with him have led me to believe he's an all around great guy. I had a nice chat with him before the meeting about a paper I'm reviewing, then the meeting began. I'm not at liberty to disclose, etc. etc.

However, at the end of the meeting Marc announced that he's stepping down. Wha? I literally just met him. "Was it something I said?!" (He's stepping down for reasons other than anti-Cyziqueian....) [Is that a Carly Simon song I hear?] He will be missed. I have to say, I've only been reviewing papers for ITAL for a matter of months and I've always felt his wise and guiding and supportive presence.

Meeting adjourned, I was then free to jaunt over to the Convention Center and spend the day at the Exhibits.

Wow. Not having attended ALA before I was astounded at the enormity of the Exhibits. I was astounded at the sheer size and complexity of some of the "booths". I took a quick run around the perimeter, then circled back to systematically pace the place. Highlights for me included some things that are really not directly related to my job as a tech guy in an academic library. Nevertheless, one of the most impressive things I saw was a display by M. Moleiro of Barcelona, Spain. This firm creates fine reproductions of manuscripts and illuminated books. I sort of wandered by their booth, their wares caught my eye, and yet I wandered on. At the end of the row, though, I whirled and returned. Their reproductions are incredibly beautiful.

I marveled at the similarly beautiful and stylish library furniture by vendors throughout the Exhibits. Likewise the variety of scanning and digitization equipment there. Likewise more mundane tools like book drops.

I am generally interested in Web-based language learning systems (similar to Rosetta Stone, but Web-based). I was happy to find three vendors present at the Exhibits, so made sure to pick up their materials.

Amazon is in the print-on-demand publishing business, and I had a chat with the guy at their booth because I actually had one of their titles in my backpack that very moment. (A buddy of mine wants me to hike the Maryland portion of the Appalachian Trail with him this spring and bought me a copy of the compelling AWOL On The Appalachian Trail by David Miller, AmazonEncore publisher.) Amazon is targeting smaller markets with important works that might not otherwise be viable in traditional publishing venues. In addition to AmazonEncore they've founded another imprint that publishes little-known foreign works. Interesting, and important. Maybe micropublishing will blossom like the microbrewing industry has in this country the past 20 years?

About 15 years ago, when I worked in the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson University, I put images of our floor plans up on the library Website. At that time I had an idea: Wouldn't it be cool if the actual locations of books were dynamically mapped to these floor plans? Well, browsing the exhibits I ran into just such a product -- StackMap.com -- the idea I had at Cook Library, realized. Cool stuff.

I had a pleasant dinner with my friends, Susan [Mower] and Stewart Burke. Susan is a friend and colleague from my days in the Cook Library. She is a retired GovDocs Librarian and now a synagogue-library-automating-librarian extraordinaire. It was great to catch up with Sue and Stew, who have long lived in the San Diego metro area.

And how did I like San Diego?

An anecdote: At age 23 I circumnavigated the northern hemisphere of this globe, first studying Mandarin for a semester in China, then returning home on the Trans-Siberian railway, through Europe, then driving that summer across the U.S. from L.A. to Baltimore, the southern route. I was privileged to visit some of the greatest cities in the world that year: Beijing, Xian, West Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco. That was half my lifetime ago and I haven't really traveled much since, but of the cities I have lived in or visited, Philadelphia, Phoenix/Scottsdale, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Montreal, I would say that Montreal and now San Diego rank, in my opinion, as the top two most beautiful. Can Vancouver beat this???

What did I learn?

I learned that serving on the editorial board of a fine journal is a pride-inducing activity. I learned that I'm excited to participate in the full duties of members of the board. (Watch for my editorial in the upcoming June 2011 issue of ITAL.) I learned that when ALA calls it a midwinter "meeting", they mean just that: lots of meetings scheduled. I learned that the conference basically starts shutting down the day before the officially published end date. I learned that American Airlines charges twenty-five bucks just to check a bag. I learned that Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen" is a really good mnemonic if the gate of your connecting flight happens to be A19. I learned that even the far south Dallas/Ft. Worth airport has de-icing equipment at the ready. I learned that an early morning stroll on the Embarcadero listening to a random mix of the last five Bob Dylan CDs is something I hope to one day do again. I learned that drivers in San Diego stop and wait for you to cross. This threw me every time. I learned that 50 degrees in San Diego does not feel like 50 degrees in Baltimore. (I'm tempted to make the stronger claim that 50 degrees in San Diego is actually warmer than 50 degrees in Baltimore, but will refrain....)

I learned that my knees are shot.

Maybe I should rethink this Appalachian Trail thing?

Modern Language Association in Los Angeles

The MLA annual convention has moved from its habitual, dreadful time of Dec 26-29 to the first week in January! Hooray! The date change was accompanied by some other much-needed shifts in the culture of this convention: wifi throughout the conference site, lots of tweeting and blogging, and a special day of sessions devoted to the theme of "The Academy in Hard Times."

I organized a round-table for this special session, aimed at bringing to the attention of language and literature faculty and grad students some of the library issues that impact them (whether they know it or not). Our round-table was called "Meeting in the Library: Academic Labor at the Interface." Five presenters gave "lightning talks" followed by 30-40 minutes of conversation. Our presenters covered a range of interesting topics: what faculty can do to support humanities monograph acquisitions in their libraries through the design of their classroom activities and assignments; what kinds of data humanities faculty produce that they need to think about preserving--and how working with a digital collections curator can help; what kinds of skills librarians need to develop to support the new library spaces that are being designed around changing faculty and student research needs and habits; how teaching with rare books revitalizes literature pedagogy (that was me); what it is like to be involved in a college-wide curriculum renovation project as a CLIR post-doc based in the library. During the discussion (in an audience composed of faculty, grad students, librarians, "alt-ac" folks and digital humanists), two salient points emerged: 1) some (many?) humanities faculty still do not understand the basics about the costs of scholarly communications and need to be educated about this issue in ways that speak specifically to their situations; 2) if librarians want to know what humanities faculty need as researchers and teachers, they should work with faculty as faculty, ie, teach in departments.

I also attended the inaugural meeting of a brand-new MLA discussion group, "The Library and Literary Research." After appointing an executive committee, we will be able to propose sessions at future MLA meetings and have an official voice in the organization. This group thus provides one avenue for continuing the conversation on the topics that our session raised.

In addition to attending quite a few MLA panels and talks, learning what literature scholars are thinking about these days, I was invited to participate in a day-long meeting about collaboration in the digital humanities, which was convened by a group of about 20 faculty, librarians and technology specialists from across the country. It is increasingly clear that faculty involved in the digital humanities view librarians as their best allies, but that everyone finds it difficult to pursue common goals because of traditional role restrictions that have been exacerbated by economic hard times.

SPARC Digital Repositories 2010

I attended the SPARC Repositories 2010 meeting in Baltimore on Nov. 8,9, so I am posting a few notes for your enjoyment. This is the third (I think) of these meetings--co-sponsored by SPARC, SPARC Europe, and SPARC Japan--that are designed to promote all types of digital repositories including institutional and disciplinary repositories.

Keynote (Michael Nielsen)
Nielsen, a physicist, talked about the power of group work and "extreme openness" of data in advancing scientific understanding. He described two projects that have been extremely successful and couple that were not. The successful projects were Polymath Projects and Galaxy Zoo.

In the Polymath Projects, very difficult math proofs were solved by a group (37) of mathematicians on a blog. Contributions were made as comments on the blog. Gowers (the organizer) said it was the most exciting thing he had ever done. "Massively Collaborative Mathematics" in Nature is one of the articles about it. Results were published in journals under the collective author name "D.H.J. Polymath" rather than under individual authors. This approach offers a great opportunity for collaborative, open science. How do you preserve all of this collaborative work done on a blog? Currently it is not being preserved, but this poses a real challenge to the digital repository community.

In the Galaxy Zoo project, citizen/scientists have offered their services to classify hundreds of thousands of galaxies drawn from the Hubble Space Telescope archive. More than 250,000 people have taken part in Galaxy Zoo so far, producing a wealth of valuable data and sending telescopes on Earth and in space chasing after their discoveries. Their have been 22 scientific papers based on this work. Some discoveries have been made by "non-scientists", for example, a stay-at-home mom. This type of project broadens the notion of who is a scientist. Citizen science projects bridges the gap between the "scientific community" and society as a whole
Although these two projects have been wildly successful, other scientific social networks have largely failed. Why would a scientist share knowledge on a wiki when:

• they are not very good
• this knowledge might help your competitor
• you won't get any academic credit for it

Successful projects like Polymath and Galaxy Zoo end up with conventional scientific papers. Otherwise there is no academic incentive. It is ironic that scientists are being so timid about this process. We need to strive for "extreme openness", that is, put EVERYTHING out on the web for people to work with. Grant agencies need to mandate certain types sharing and encourage other types. Digital repository folks need to lobby for open access mandates and work with scientists to sustain and preserve their data and develop new tools to utilize them.