SLIS News Feed

Bill Helling – Fulbright in Finland

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS alumnus William (Bill) Helling (MIS’98) is the recipient of the Fulbright-HAAGA-HELIA Scholar Award. This scholarship allows American scholars to teach at the HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland for three to ten months.

Bill is also the Assistant Director and Head of the Reference/Local History Department at the Crawfordsville District Public Library in Indiana. In an email interview, we asked him about the award. He wrote:

“I have been awarded the Fulbright-HAAGA-HELIA Scholar Award (August to December 2013) to lecture and research at the HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. I will assist with two undergraduate courses (Introduction to Programming and Introduction to Web Design), and possibly some graduate level courses. In addition, my contacts at HAAGA-HELIA have expressed interest in my information science and library background; they have suggested courses or workshops in information literacy skills, research and writing…”

As part of a feature story on SLIS generations, Bill and his son John Helling (MLS’06) are featured on page 8 in the Spring 2013 issue of the SLIS alumni magazine SLIS Network. John Helling also had a six month Fulbright grant in Helsinki to research Finland’s national public library policies.

Photo Credit: Helsinki by ninara
Some Rights Reserved

SLIS Student Receives Midwest Archives Conference Scholarship

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS student Brianna Marshall (MIS/MLS) will receive the Midwest Archives Conference Emeritus Scholarship for First Time Meeting Attendees. The scholarship helps defray conference expenses for a first time attendee who best expresses the importance of the event for his or her professional development.

In an email interview, we asked Brianna about the award. She wrote: “I am delighted to be a recipient of the MAC Emeritus Scholarship. Both the Midwest Archives Conference and the Society of Indiana Archivists have gone above and beyond in providing funding opportunities for graduate students to attend events and become involved in the profession. Their dedication to helping cultivate the next generation of archivists is very much appreciated!"

Ms. Marshall is currently President of the Society of American Archivists Student Chapter (SAA-SC) at Indiana University. The organization aims to bring together students with an interest in archives and to raise awareness about their importance to the university and community. The SAA-SC recently hosted their fifth annual student conference entitled “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: Archival Growth in the Modern Age”. The event covered topics in archives, rare books, and special collections through a wide array of presentations and workshops. SLIS alumna Dina Kellams is the SAA-SC sponsor. Kellams is also Associate Archivist at the Office of University Archives and Records Management, Indiana University, Bloomington.

About the Midwest Archives Conference:
• The Midwest Archives Conference is the nation's largest regional professional association for archivists. Founded in 1972, MAC now has approximately one thousand individual members. MAC's 177 institutional members include a variety of corporate, government, religious, and university archives, as well as historical societies and other manuscripts repositories and special collections. The MAC region is the 13 heartland states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. However, MAC has individual and institutional members from over 30 other states and five other nations, and more are always welcome.

Data Visualization Talk – Washington, DC

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

On Thursday, April 25 in Washington D.C., SLIS professor Katy Börner sat down with colleagues from the fields of psychology, fine art, and academic publishing to discuss the topic of data visualization as part of the 2013 DASER series hosted by the National Academy of Sciences. DASER (D.C. Art Science Evening Rendezvous) is a monthly forum bringing together scientists and artists to explore the vital connections between the two communities and to promote interdisciplinary work.

This month’s DASER talk focused on the ways in which data visualization can be a useful tool across a variety of disciplines and how the particular skills from each discipline can be employed to enhance the process of data visualization itself. As part of the evening’s proceedings, Dr. Börner discussed her recent Information Visualization MOOC, an online course that drew students from a number of intellectual fields, as well as the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit, the international exhibit of science maps from across the scholarly spectrum that Börner has curated for the past nine years.

The choice of Places & Spaces as a topic was especially fitting because this DASER forum amounted to a reunion of sorts of key figures in the exhibit story. Joining Börner and National Academies Press executive editor Stephen Mautner onstage were cognitive psychologist Gary Berg-Cross, a longtime Places & Spaces advisor whose passionate support of science mapping has been instrumental to the exhibit’s success, and New York-based artist Ward Shelley, creator of “History of Science Fiction,” one of the exhibit’s most popular works.

Those in attendance at DASER on April 25 enjoyed a lively discussion of data visualization conducted by some of the subject’s leading authorities. But in case you missed it, Thursday’s forum will be available on the Cultural Programs of the NAS YouTube channel in the near future.

Dr. Jingfeng Xia Promoted to Associate Professor

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

At their April 2013 meeting the Indiana University Board of Trustees voted to grant Dr. Jingfeng Xia tenure and promote him to the position of Associate Professor. Dr. Xia has been a SLIS-IUPUI faculty member since 2008.

Dr. Xia teaches courses on Reference, Social Science Information, Data Management, Introduction to Research, and Information Policy. He and students from his Information Policy class published "A Review of Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate Policies" in the January 2012 issue of portal: Libraries and the Academy.

Educated as an archaeologist as well as a librarian, Dr. Xia conducts research in the areas of data-driven scholarship, open access, ethnographic observation, geographic information systems for library management, and e-learning. His work has been published in leading journals, including Journal of Documentation, College & Research Libraries, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Journal of Scholarly Publishing. His forthcoming article in Qualitative & Quantitative Methods in Libraries, co-authored with Lydia Spotts, addresses ethnographic observation in library and information science.

Dr. John Walsh Promoted to Associate Professor

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

At their April 2013 meeting the Indiana University Board of Trustees voted to grant Dr. John A. Walsh tenure and promote him to the position of Associate Professor. Dr. Walsh has been a SLIS faculty member since 2006; he is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the IU Department of English.

Dr. Walsh oversees the SLIS specialization in digital libraries and teaches courses on Digital Humanities, Digital Libraries, Information Architecture for the Web, and XML: Electronic Publishing Standards and Systems.

His research in the area of digital humanities focuses on the nature of the document. He investigates: the representations of complex documents in digital space, relationships between visual and textual information within and among complex documents, and representations of intertextuality and bibliographic complexity in humanities texts.

Dr. Walsh's Swinburne Project, a digital collection devoted to the life and work of Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, is a federated website of NINES – Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, for which Dr. Walsh is technical editor, is a digital edition of Newton’s alchemical writings. It is federated with 18th Connect – Eighteenth Century Scholarship Online. Dr. Walsh has also developed Comic Book Markup Language (CBML), a TEI/XML-based vocabulary for encoding comics, comic books, and graphic novels.

MLS and MIS Programs – Looking Forward

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS alumni and employers of SLIS graduates are among the sources encouraging the school to keep the master’s degree programs up to date with changes in the profession. This spring SLIS Bloomington faculty members addressed such questions as:

What will students need to know to be successful in their careers? What challenges currently face the information profession? What new opportunities are on the horizon? In what new ways will people use technology to connect with the information they need?

The faculty approved changes in the MLS curriculum, added two specializations, and revised the MIS foundation course to provide an introduction for all master’s students:

An updated Master of Library Science Curriculum will be in place for students beginning in Fall 2013.
A Specialization in Information Architecture for both the Master of Information Science and the Master of Library Science programs has been approved by the faculty and routed to the Campus Curriculum Committee for final approval.
A Specialization in Data Science for both the Master of Information Science and the Master of Library Science has been approved by the faculty and routed to the Campus Curriculum Committee for final approval.
A new joint MIS/MLS foundation course (Z510) to be renamed Introduction to Information Studies will be taught for the first time in the Fall 2013 semester.

Ideas for improving SLIS programs come from conversations with alumni, the SLIS Alumni Board, the MLS and MIS Advisory Councils, ALA accreditors, and faculty from SLIS and our new partners in the School of Informatics and Computing. We are excited about the possibilities ahead, and about the creative new career paths that continue to open for SLIS graduates.

Kirsten Weaver Selected an a 2013 ALA Emerging Leader

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS alumna Kirsten Weaver (MLS’10) has been selected as a 2013 ALA (American Library Association) Emerging Leader. This "leadership development program enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in an leadership capacity." Each participant will have a sponsor. Kirsten’s is the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA.)

In an email interview, we asked Kirsten about her current job, and about being selected as an ALA Emerging Leader. She responded:

Current Job:
-Teen Services Librarian, Frankfort Community Public Library, Frankfort, Indiana

Main Job Duties:
-Teen Programming
-Collection Development
-In charge of the Friends Book Sale
-One on One Computer Lessons for all ages
-Tech Support

Favorite Job Duties:
-Definitely programming for the teens at my library. I love the interaction with them.

Tips for SLIS Students:
- Every experience you have had in your life comes in handy at some point in your library career.
- Don't stress out if you don't find a job right away.
- Take Every Opportunity you find to get library experience (internships, volunteering, etc...)
- Don't let yourself get too stressed. There's life after Grad school!

ALA Emerging Leader Project:ALA Emerging Leader Project:
The ALA Emerging leader project has been a wonderful opportunity so far. It has given me the opportunity to learn from and meet so many people.

ALA Emerging Leader Project:Anything Else:
There's a bit more info about me on the State Library's Indiana Librarians Leading in Diversity page. [Kirsten is in cohort one of this prestigious scholarship program.]

SLIS has a history of graduates chosen for the honor of being ALA Emerging Leaders. The list below is at least a partial roster. Please let us know if we need to add your name.

2012
Tahirah Akbar-Williams (MLS ’06)
Kathleen Burlingame (MLS ’07)
Kristin Henrich (MLS ’08)
Marcella McGowan (MLS’09)
Willie Miller (MLS ’10)

2011
Abby Johnson (MLS’06)
Jessica Sender (MLS’11)

2010
Arianne Hartsell-Gundy (MLS/MA’05)
Rachel Slough (MLS/MA’10)
Kristin Stout (MLS’07)

2009
Chanitra Bishop (MIS/MLS’08)
Latrice Booker (MLS’06)
David Dahl (MIS/MLS’08)
Kristen Kirk (MLS’05)
Amalia Monroe (MLS’07)
Emily Symonds (MIS/MLS’07)
Lisa Worrell (MLS’04)

2008
Miranda (Henry) Bennett (MLS’05)
Kimberly Brown-Harden (MLS’06)
Nicole Cavallaro (MLS’06)
Heather Cole (MLS’06)
Emily Ford (MLS’07)
Bethany Sewell (MLS’06)
Michael Witt (MLS’06)

2007
Jason Hatton (MLS’03)

National Library Week – article by Susan Akers, Executive Director, ILF

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

• “Libraries also serve as a ‘living room’ for democracy. Libraries further the convictions of our forefathers that a society flourishes when people have access to information.”
– Susan Akers

Susan Akers, the Executive Director of the Indiana Library Federation, wrote a terrific article in honor of National Library Week for Inside Indiana Business with Gerry Dick. The full-text article is available online:

• Are Libraries Relevant? Undoubtedly Yes!

Article Excerpts:

I heard someone ask the other day, "Are libraries still relevant with the advent of the internet and e-books?" Interesting timing as this week is National Library Week. Thousands of Hoosiers rely on libraries to search for jobs and receive homework and research assistance.

With 42 million annual visits to our state's libraries, Hoosiers of all ages are able to enjoy traditional books, e-books, computer classes, DVDs and CDs. Visitors research, read, share, learn, attend quality programs and use information for lifelong learning and leisure pursuits.

Additionally, libraries are an excellent economic investment:

-Public libraries provide almost 9,000 jobs in Indiana with more than 2,000 additional jobs in businesses that support libraries.

-Academic libraries in Indiana employ more than 2,200 people.

-Indiana communities received $2.38 in direct economic benefit for each dollar of cost.

-Libraries generate about $328 million in economic activity in Indiana (salaries and expenditures).

Are libraries relevant? I certainly believe so. Our country is made up of individual communities with its own needs that can be as unique as the communities themselves. In Indiana's 92 counties, there are 238 public libraries, and these trusted institutions understand and serve the needs in their respective communities. Libraries provide the space for diverse groups to come together for a common purpose to tackle local issues. Librarians work with elected officials, small business owners, students, seniors and the public at large to discover what their communities needs are and to meet them.

While the recession drove more people to visit their libraries, we need to recognize that libraries were already very busy places, attracting record numbers of visits. The library is - and has always been - a place that is open and welcoming to all regardless of one's socioeconomic position. It is the place where teens have discovered that the library is a cool place to go while at the same time scores of young parents engage in important childhood literacy programs.

Libraries also serve as a "living room" for democracy. Libraries further the convictions of our forefathers that a society flourishes when people have access to information.

With resources that serve business owners as well as the homeschooled and people with special needs, libraries are uniquely positioned to serve as vital community centers where people connect with others, get help from information professionals, and discover new worlds. Library directors and boards are innovative and resourceful - and they are committed to offering a combination of traditional services and new technologies…

Congratulations 2013 Graduates!

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The Indiana University Spring Graduate Commencement Ceremony will be held on Friday, May 3, 2013. The Ceremony is an elegant event - and a fun way to celebrate graduation. There is plenty of room for guests. No tickets are required - and parking is free.

1:00 p.m.	Assembly Hall doors open
1:30 p.m.	Candidates line up in the adjoining Gladstein Fieldhouse — (look for the SLIS Banner)
1:45 p.m.	Procession of Graduates into Assembly Hall
3:00 p.m.	Ceremony begins

Accessibility Needs: Guests who use wheelchairs and who contact (812)855-9260 or (ceassist@indiana.edu) in advance will be issued a special IU parking pass. This contact number can also assist with other needs.

The ceremony has wonderful music and speakers. SLIS graduates will process in together following the SLIS Banner. The inside of the hoods are red and white to represent Indiana University. SLIS Ph.D. graduates have royal blue trim (for the Doctor of Philosophy degree - regardless of academic field.)

As announced earlier by email, SLIS merges with the School of Informatics and Computing effective July 1, 2013. August graduates will be awarded their MLS or MIS degrees under our new school name. Dean Shaw and Dean Schnabel have agreed that all students receiving “SLIS” degrees in May, June, and August can participate together in the May ceremony. Dean Shaw will confer the degrees herself and on behalf of Dean Schnabel.

To Help Celebrate:

1. Please come by the SLIS Office any day from Friday, April 26 (the “last day of classes”) through exam week - to Friday, May 3. In recognition of your achievement, SLIS has a keepsake gift for those graduating. Stop by to pick it up.

2. Also, check out the SLIS Information Commons any time on Friday, April 26. We will set up a table with items to help celebrate both the end of the semester - and your graduation.

• SLIS Preparing to Graduate Tips

Ron Day receives the Jesse Fine Fellowship in Practical Ethics

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS faculty member, Dr. Ronald Day, has been awarded the Jesse Fine Fellowship in Practical Ethics through Indiana University’s Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions.

The award highlights the creativity of Dr. Day’s approach to this important area of study. Specifically, it supports his development and offering of a course on Library and Information Ethics. The notification letter stated, “Your course … is an excellent fit for the Fellowship’s purpose of fostering education in practical ethics and we are proud to support it.”

The course will be offered for the first time during the Summer II, 2013 session in a condensed format. Watch for S604: Topics in Library and Information Science - "Information Ethics Across Technologies, Media, Institutions, and Societies."

The Poynter Center’s fellowship award demonstrates a strong commitment of Indiana University and the School of Library and Information Science to develop coursework in this foundational area for information professionals.

In an email interview, we asked Dr. Day to comment on the proposed course. He wrote:

•Together with the SLIS courses in Intellectual Freedom and Information Policy, this course will address problems of agency, institutions, and society across a wide range of information technology settings. Whereas the Intellectual Freedom course develops from the point of view of expression and rights of expression, and Information Policy often develops from the point of view of legal and institutional devices and assemblages, such as laws and organizations, this course develops from the point of view of the rational and the social conditions by which choice is made and action produced, both directly by personal and social agents and indirectly through autonomous and semi-autonomous technical systems. These courses give a theoretical and practical foundation for students to engage in professional and everyday considerations of the relation of information and agency across various and overlapping media, computational, and documentary technologies and social assemblages.

About the Poynter Center:
The Poynter Center is an endowed ethics research center at Indiana University Bloomington. The Poynter Center is dedicated to studying a broad range of ethical issues in American public life. Interdisciplinary in aim, the center uses the full resources of Indiana University to initiate research and teaching across traditional academic boundaries.

The center was established in 1972 with funding from the late Nelson Poynter. An alumnus of Indiana University, Mr. Poynter was the chairman of the board of the Times Publishing Company, which publishes the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.

The Poynter Center directs it attention to the entire spectrum of American political and social institutions, drawing on the full resources of the university to carry out its work. The center's projects take a normative perspective. In recent years, the Poynter Center has focused on bioethics, religion, political ethics, research ethics, professional ethics, and technology.

About Jesse Fine:
Jesse David Fine was born July 20, 1907 in Evansville, Indiana. He received an AB degree from Indiana University in 1928 and received his law degree in 1930 from the Indiana University School of Law.

Fine practiced law in Evansville from 1930 to 1936. Fine and his two brothers owned Premier Theaters in Evansville, which at one time included nine theaters. By the late 1950s and early 1960s the brothers had sold or closed a number of the theaters, selling the last theaters around 1966. In 1953 the Fine brothers started WFIE television station in Evansville. They sold the station in 1956. They opened and later sold other stations in St. Joseph and Jefferson City, Missouri.

Fine married Dorothy Seegal in 1958 in Sarasota, Florida. Dorothy and Jesse retired to Florida in 1966. Once he arrived, Fine partnered with two other broadcasters and established a new radio station in Ft. Lauderdale, which was later sold. Fine played golf and did community and charitable work. He wrote the IU Alumni Association in 1978 that he and Dorothy traveled “quite a bit.”

Fine died Nov. 11, 1985 in Hollywood, Florida. Once Dorothy Fine became involved with Indiana University, she wanted to create a fellowship in practical and professional ethics in her husband’s name. She died in 2010. This fellowship is the result of her generosity.

Hamid Ekbia aims to assist stroke sufferers with video games

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The story below is reposted from…

Hamid Ekbia aims to assist stroke sufferers with video games
article by Juan Guzman

With support from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, Indiana University scientists are working to assist individuals suffering from stroke and other related injuries using a surprising technology – video games.

Hamid Ekbia, Ph.D., associate professor of information science at the IU School of Library and Information Science at IU Bloomington, is the recipient of an Indiana CTSI Research Invention and Scientific Commercialization Grant supporting work to modify existing video game systems - such as the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect - to provide in-home therapy to patients with stoke and other neurological ailments.

“There is a large gap between the science of rehabilitation and the practice of therapy,” Dr. Ekbia said. “Therapists do not have at their disposal the technical means to evaluate and treat patients in a way that can be easily documented, shared and coordinated with others. This platform we are developing will do exactly this. The system will automatically document, maintain and analyze data on patient performance and the efficacy of treatment according to their state and condition.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 795,000 people in the United States suffer from a stroke each year. Strokes are the leading cause of serious long-term disability in America, and the physical therapy required to rehabilitate individuals after a stroke is a long and rigorous process.

“The quality of life of patients depends greatly on the long-term exercise-based rehabilitation and support from therapists, family members, and other patients alike,” he added. “Unfortunately, issues of access, motivation, compliance and affordability have all hindered the outcomes for stroke and traumatic brain injury patients.”

By using motion tracking, gaming and cloud services, Ekbia said a rehabilitation program administered through a video game will allow physical therapists to gain information about individual patients and develop specific exercise plans based on a patient’s condition.

The approach combines two “schools of thought” on rehabilitation into one form of treatment, he added.

“There have recently been two major shifts in rehabilitation science,” Dr. Ekbia said, “a shift towards evidence-based medicine and a shift from neuro-development to neuroplasticity. This project leverages current technology to enable both shifts in therapy. It involves patentable innovations in key areas of patient-centered workflow development tools, collaborative stroke rehab processes and evidence-based therapy using data analysis techniques.”

The system under development by Dr. Ekbia aims to address a major barrier to rehabilitation in many stroke patients – insurance restrictions – with the ability to provide patients with personalized, adaptable rehabilitation exercises that may be carried out within a patient’s home.

“Most insurance policies allow patients to receive a maximum of 15 to 20 therapy sessions, which are frequently exhausted within a few weeks, after which patients are left to carry out exercises on their own,” he said. “This program will help keep patients on track with their rehabilitation, as well as provide new exercises based upon improvements in strength and mobility.”

These adjustments will be made using data collected by the game system, which will be analyzed by professional physical therapists. Despite being equipped with the sensors required to collect this data, Dr. Ekbia notes that in-home game systems – which have been used for several years to assist in rehabilitation -- have not yet successfully been used to collect this information. Nor have professional systems yet been made accessible to the average consumer.

“Unlike advanced robotic systems currently used by patients during physical therapy sessions, many patients can afford game system technology,” Dr. Ekbia said. “Almost everyone’s got a Wii or Kinect in their living room.”

He also notes that insurers are much more likely to provide several hundred dollars to purchase a game system for patients who lack the technology than thousands of dollars for expensive in-person physical therapy sessions.

The RISC grant award has enabled Dr. Ekbia and his colleagues to create a proof-of-concept video game program, which they have shared with clinical partners such as the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana, IU Health, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center and other long-term care facilities across the state. After receiving positive reviews from these partners, the project successfully garnered additional funding from the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Program, a set of programs that prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory. Dr. Ekbia added that the I-Corps Program shares many similar goals as the Indiana CTSI.

In addition, Indiana CTSI RISC grants aim to support research with strong potential to translate into novel therapies, commercialization projects or intellectual property. Along with Pete Grogg, MHA, Dr. Ekbia and team have established WellPlay Health, which will speed the technology’s translation into the health care marketplace in order to reach individuals suffering from stroke, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.

"Our initial goal is to create a prototype online tele-rehabilitation platform and rehabilitation game that demonstrates the type of data which may be captured from game play using a commercially available, home-based technologies, such as the Wii or Kinect," said Grogg, co-founder of WellPlay Health. "We really want to create a more engaging environment for patients to maximize their recovery."

The team is currently implementing a redesign for their prototype game software, and plans to launch a pilot version in late spring or early summer of 2013.

“We’ve attracted interest from organizations from across the state, and as far afield as Europe,” Dr. Ekbia said. “If the project meets with success, we'll have the opportunity for a true public-private partnership."

By Juan Guzman

See also: New York Times Feature, April 20, 2013 Specialists See Tools to Treat Pain in Video Games

Thinking About Data (JASIST, March 2013)

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS Professor Blaise Cronin’s recent editorial in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (volume 63, number 3) is titled “Thinking About Data.” It is available through the Wiley Online Library, and an excerpt is include here:

• “Data deluge,” “data revolution” — choose your cliché. We live in the era of data, big data; think petabytes and exabytes instead of mere terabytes. It is not just biologists, high-energy physicists, astronomers, and climatologists, to name but a few, who are struggling to gather, clean, curate, exploit, and share the ever-expanding mass of data. Humanists and social scientists of all stripes are faced with similar challenges relating to image collections, demographic statistics, economic time series data, literary corpora, social media usage metrics, etc.: To every field its data trove. All corners of the academy are being affected, albeit at differential rates. These developments have significant entailments for the scholarly communication system in general (including JASIST) and also for the public good. Authors, for instance, who draw on or in some way reuse data that have been made publicly available need to think carefully about issues pertaining to metadata, referencing, and attribution, as, indeed, do journal editors and publishers. Data are not simply addenda or second-order artifacts; rather, they are the heart of much of the narrative literature, the protean stuff that allows for inference, interpretation, theory building, innovation, and invention.

Dr. Cronin is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

Robotics Narratives and Networks: 2013 iConference Talk

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS and SoIC colleagues collaborated on a talk for this year’s iConference held from February 12-15, 2013 in Fort Worth, Texas. The theme of the conference was Scholarship in Action: Data, Innovation, Wisdom. SLIS faculty member Staša Milojević and SoIC faculty member Selma Sabanovic co-authored a paper. Dr. Milojević also presented a second paper at a workshop during the conference. See abstracts and details below.

•Milojević, S. & Sabanovic, S. (2013). Robotics narratives and networks: Conceptual foundations for a non-linear digital archive. Proceedings iConference, 2013.

Abstract:
This paper introduces the conceptual foundations and motivation for creating a digital archive to display developments in the field of robotics over the past 50 years. The archive is meant to represent robotics as an evolving “ecology of knowledge” (Akera, 2007b) and contains interviews with robotics researchers accompanied by other related documents. Rather than representing a unified and unilinear view of “the history” of robotics, the archive is designed to allow users to explore and navigate the available materials guided by their own interests, thereby constructing multiple narratives about robotics. We describe the project as involving multiple “memory practices” (Bowker, 2005): robotics “pioneers” narrating their lived experiences in the field, publications that inscribe the results and practices of scientific research, social scientists collecting and presenting these materials to further understand scientific practice, and users from the public navigating the archive to develop their own understandings of robotics over the years.

The paper presents the joint project on the history of robotics funded by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and NEH. Website of the project: http://roboticshistory.indiana.edu

• Milojević, S. (2013, February). Using title words to measure cognitive domains of disciplines. iConference 2013 Workshop: Computational Scientometrics: Theory and Applications (Short paper) - Fort Worth, TX.

The paper proposes a novel method for measuring the size and evolution of a cognitive domain of a scientific field or a discipline. The method is based on article title word counts, but employs two important corrections that allow the word count to be indicative of the underlying cognitive domain: it first corrects for the effects of changing sample size, and second for the presence of general, concept-free words.

Joel Silver Appointed Director of IU’s Lilly Library

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Joel Silver has long been an important mentor to SLIS students. He is the Director of the SLIS Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship Specialization, the instructor for several classes that inspire and encourage SLIS students, and a SLIS alumnus. It is with great pleasure that we post the following press release from the IU Libraries.

IU Libraries: News & Events
03/19/2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
• Joel Silver appointed Director of the Lilly Library

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries Brenda L. Johnson has announced the appointment of Joel Silver as the Director of the Lilly Library, effective April 1.

“Joel is known internationally within the academy for his impeccable credentials as a rare books curator, a prolific scholar, and brilliant professor,” Johnson said in announcing the decision. “Over the past decade that Joel has served as Associate Director and most recently as Interim Director, Joel has become known for his collaborative leadership style and diligent work ethic. I have full confidence that he will be an outstanding Director for the Lilly Library.”

An undergraduate English major at the University of California, Los Angeles, Silver went on to earn his J.D. from Whittier College School of Law and his M.L.S. here at Indiana University. He began his long-standing career with the Lilly Library in 1983 and has served in multiple capacities: Operations Manager, Curator of Books, Associate Director to former Lilly Director, Breon Mitchell, and Interim Director for two separate appointments. In addition, Silver is an Adjunct Associate Professor and Director of the Special Collections Specialization in the IU School of Library and Information Science and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English.

Known internationally for his impressive reputation as a rare books curator, Silver has also made significant academic contributions with his scores of published articles, multiple books, and numerous exhibition catalogs. He has a distinguished record as a lecturer and leader of rare books-related workshops, and he has curated many prestigious exhibitions at the Lilly Library, including ‘The Reign of Charles II;’ ‘J.K. Lilly, Jr. Bibliophile;’ ‘English Renaissance Prose;’ and ‘Five Centuries of Music.’ His most recent book, Dr. Rosenbach and Mr. Lilly: Book Collecting in a Golden Age, was published by Oak Knoll Press in 2011.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to serve as the Director of the Lilly Library, one of the greatest repositories of rare books and manuscripts in the world. The Lilly Library is known internationally for its broad and deep collections in many different subject areas, as well as for its commitment to serve all who wish to use them. I’m looking forward to continuing to build these collections, and to taking advantage of emerging technologies to help make them available to new audiences around the world.”

Consistently ranked among the nation’s top libraries for rare books, Indiana University’s Lilly Library contains more than 400,000 rare books, more than 150,000 pieces of sheet music, and more than 7.5 million manuscripts – pivotal works of literature, history and our shared culture.

The Lilly holds some of the university’s most important treasures, including the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible; the first printed edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; the First Folio of Shakespeare; John James Audubon’s The Birds of America; an extensive Abraham Lincoln collection; personal papers of Orson Welles and Sylvia Plath; and George Washington’s letter accepting the presidency.

The Lilly Library, located on Seventh Street on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus, is part of the IU Bloomington Libraries. Regular business hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information about the Lilly Library, visit: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/index.php.

The Vanishing “I” – Blaise Cronin Talk in London about Authorship

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

On March 17, 2013, SLIS Rudy Professor of Information Science, Blaise Cronin presented an invited talk at the School of Informatics, City University in London, England.

The talk abstract is included here:

• The Vanishing “I”
How Collaborative Practices in Science and in Art are Changing our Conception of Authorship

The lone scholar is something of an endangered species. In many disciplines co-authorship is the norm; sole authorship an anachronism. Such is the complexity, scale, capital intensity and competitiveness of much contemporary science, that collaboration, both formal and informal, has become the defining modus operandi. Scholarly papers routinely have dozens, scores, even hundreds of co-authors, which raises a number of questions: What exactly does it mean to be an author? How should credit be allocated to the various contributors? Who, ultimately, takes responsibility for the results being reported?

As in Big Science, so in Big Art—up to a point. The commonly held idea of an artist as being wholly and exclusively responsible for an artwork does not bear close scrutiny. There is a long tradition of delegation and co-production in the art world, from the Renaissance to the present day. Sometimes the hand of the master may be little in evidence, or completely absent. Today, conception matters as much as execution. Unlike in science, the contributions of the artist’s/artists’ nameless assistants are either erased or under-acknowledged. This raises a number of questions: What does it mean to be an artist? How should credit be allocated to co-workers, be they peers or minions? How do we deal with attribution issues?

SLIS Alumna’s Comic Book Research in The New York Times

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The February 19, 2013 issue of The New York Times included an article highlighting Carol Tilley’s recent research on Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist whose 1954 book The Seduction of the Innocent claimed that comic books corrupting the minds of young readers. Dr. Tilley is a SLIS alumna (Ph.D.’07).

Dave Itzkoff’s article, “Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics” noted:

• Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, reviewed Wertham’s papers, housed in the Library of Congress, starting at the end of 2010, shortly after they were made available to the public.

In a new article in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Dr. Tilley offers numerous examples in which she says Wertham “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence,” particularly in the interviews he conducted with his young subjects.

• Dr. Tilley said she planned to continue to look at Wertham’s papers for a larger project she is writing on the history of comic-book readers. She said there were broader lessons to be learned from Wertham’s case and the ways cultural panics recur.

“We need to be reasonable and realize that it could be that some of the research is flawed,” she said. “It could be that some people are choosing to preference their own personal beliefs or their own agenda above doing good research. I think this can be a cautionary reminder.”

Recent SLIS Research Published in Scientometrics – 94(3) and 95(1) - 2013

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

SLIS faculty members contributed articles to the March and April issues of Scientometrics – (a journal published by Springer.) SLIS Ph.D. student Chaoqun Ni and faculty members Cassidy Sugimoto and Blaise Cronin extended the framework for bibliometric analysis of scholarly communication. In the April issue, SLIS faculty member Staša Milojević and Loet Leydesdorff from the University of Amsterdam developed the idea of “information metrics” as the basis for understanding bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and webometrics.

Article abstracts are included below.

Ni. C., Sugimoto, C. R. & Cronin, B. (2013). Visualizing and comparing four facets of scholarly communication: Producers, artifacts, concepts, and gatekeepers. Scientometrics, 94(3), 2013, 1161-1173.

Abstract
This paper extends Borgman’s (Communication Research 16: 583, 1989) three-facet framework (artifacts, producers, concepts) for bibliometric analyses of scholarly communication by adding a fourth gatekeepers. The four-facet framework was applied to the field of Library and Information Science to test for variations in the networks produced using operationalizations of each of these four facets independently. Fifty-eight journals from the Information Science and Library Science category in the 2008 Journal Citation Report were studied and the network proximity of these journals based on Venue-Author-Coupling (producer), journal co-citation analysis (artifact), topic analysis (concept) and interlocking editorial board membership (gatekeeper) was measured. The resulting networks were examined for potential correlation using the Quadratic Assignment Procedure. The results indicate some consensus regarding core journals, but significant differences among some networks. Holistic measures of scholarly communication that take multiple facets into account are proposed. This work is relevant in an assessment-conscious and metrics-driven age.

Milojević, S., & Leydesdorff, L. (2013). Information metrics (iMetrics): A research specialty with a socio-cognitive identity? Scientometrics, 95(1), 141-157.

Abstract
“Bibliometrics”, “scientometrics”, “informetrics”, and “webometrics” can all be considered as manifestations of a single research area with similar objectives and methods, which we call “information metrics” or iMetrics. This study explores the cognitive and social distinctness of iMetrics with respect to the general information science (IS), focusing on a core of researchers, shared vocabulary and literature/knowledge base. Our analysis investigates the similarities and differences between four document sets. The document sets are drawn from three core journals for iMetrics research (Scientometrics, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Journal of Informetrics). We split JASIST into document sets containing iMetrics and general IS articles. The volume of publications in this representation of the specialty has increased rapidly during the last decade. A core of researchers that predominantly focus on iMetrics topics can thus be identified. This core group has developed a shared vocabulary as exhibited in high similarity of title words and one that shares a knowledge base. The research front of this field moves faster than the research front of information science in general, bringing it closer to Price’s dream.

Workshop on Exploiting Big Data Semantics for Translational Medicine - Public Events: 3/25/13

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

On March 25 and 26, Indiana University School of Library and Information Science and School of Informatics and Computing will host a workshop on Exploiting Big Data Semantics for Translational Medicine. This workshop brings together leading practitioners from around the world in the areas of semantic technologies, network science and visualization, and computational translational medicine to identify the most critical areas for collaboration between these fields to maximize impact on the next generation of disease treatments.

The event organizers announced two public events (see below.) SLIS students are welcome to attend.

We would like to invite you to two public events that will be held as part of this workshop:

Researcher Meet Time:
Indiana Memorial Union Persimmon Room, 10:00 - 11:30 a.m., March 25, 2013. This will be an opportunity for students, faculty and researchers to meet some of the workshop attendees. Feel free to bring laptops, flyers and other materials to this event to share information about your research.

Overview Talks:
Indiana Memorial Union Dogwood Room, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m., March 25, 2013. There will be three short overview talks open to the public, covering aspects of these fields:

New opportunities for biomedical science and drug discovery using semantic technologies Erik Schultes, Leiden University, and David Wild, Indiana University

Driving translational medicine through big data and ontologies
Mark Musen and Nigam Shah, Stanford University

Open Code and Open Education: The Information Visualization MOOC
Katy Börner, Indiana University

Faculty and Student Co-Author Paper for the iConference

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

“Scientific Referential Metadata Creation with Information Retrieval and Labeled Topic Modeling” was the title of a paper by SLIS faculty member Dr. Xiaozhong Liu and current SLIS Master of Information Science student Mr. Han Jia – (see abstract below.) The paper was presented at the iConference 2013 held February 12-15 in Fort Worth, Texas.

A full-text version of the paper is available through the IDEALS Repository.

Abstract:

The goal of this research is to propose an innovative method of creating scientific referential metadata for a cyberinfrastructure-enabled learning environment to enhance learning experiences and to help students and scholars obtain better understanding of scientific publications. By using information retrieval, topic modeling, and meta-search approaches, different types of resources, such as related Wikipedia Pages, Datasets, Source Code, Video Lectures, Presentation Slides, and (online) Tutorials, for an assortment of publications and scientific (labeled) topics will be automatically retrieved, associated, and ranked. In order to test our method of automatic cyberlearning referential metadata generation, we designed a user experiment for the quality of the metadata for each scientific keyword and publication and resource ranking algorithms. Evaluation results based on MAP, MRR, and NDCG show that the cyberlearning referential metadata retrieved via meta-search and statistical relevance ranking can effectively help students better understand the essence of scientific keywords and publications.

Spotlight on SLIS Student Organizations

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Student organizations continue to be a great way to get involved at SLIS. These groups provide opportunities for networking, résumé building, and professional development; as well as a chance to connect with fellow students.

2013 has already been a busy year for SLIS student organizations! On March 2nd and 3rd, the Society of American Archivists-Student Chapter hosted a conference for students and beginning professionals. “We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: Archival Growth in the Modern Age” is the fifth annual conference of SAA Student Chapter at SLIS. The event covered topics in archives, rare books, and special collections.

The Progressive Librarians Guild — Student Chapter recently launched their Library Job-Searching Project Website. The project is meant to help SLIS students throughout the job-seeking process by providing job listings, interview help, and advice from working librarians.

The American Society for Information Science & Technology-Student Chapter recently held a Game Night for students to socialize and relax.

The Children and Young Adult Services Student Group continues to host “C-YA at the Movies”, where students attend screenings of current films that have been adapted from children’s or young adult literature.