From my experience at Access 2007, I got the idea that Canadian academic libraries might be a little ahead of the curve in their incorporation of web technology, particularly open source solutions. This article (coming to me by way of the Frye listserv) reinforces this idea.
A number of institutions are looking at Evergreen, while there are some pretty cool digital collections systems put together from open source tools, especially the combination of Drupal/Fedora, which they are doing at UPI:
Friday, November 9, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
EDUCAUSE wrap-up
I've been meaning to post a wrap up on the other sessions I attended at EDUCAUSE in Seattle. I attended a couple that were sleepers and a few other interesting ones:
- one on a shared institutional repository for liberal arts colleges sponsored by NITLE. I observed that these institutions are having some of the same challenges surrounding "content recruitment" for an institutional repository as we are with our student thesis archive here at Lewis & Clark. It was clear that that these institutions had put a fair amount of thought and effort into this program, and it's too bad that they haven't had more luck filling up their repository. This makes me wonder, are institutional repositories a solution in search of a problem?
- a surprisingly entertaining and well attended session on where students use computers at a liberal arts college. the guy giving the program had some scripts setup to gather an impressive amount of stats on computer lab usage at Claremont McKenna College. The lesson: gather data to support decisions. Also, undergraduates still use computer labs even with laptops.
- a pretty cool demonstration of an interactive digital center in Kentucky; the guy showed off some impressive 3d visualization tools, mostly of machines and automobililes; it was all powered by EON software
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
cyberinfrastructure
I attended a "hot topics" session yesterday on cyberinfrastructure, largely to figure out the meaning of this somewhat fuzzy concept. It was introduced by the moderator as a somewhat rag tag group of computing functions: cluster computing, digital libraries, data visualization, high speed networks, etc.
Gradually, it became apparent that many folks in the higher ed IT world see this as a movement to play a higher profile in the academic missions of their institutions by bringing integrated high performance computing resources to a wide range of academic disciplines. There was a lot of talk about how IT departments, now, focus on mundane administrative systems, the "plumbing" of the institutions. This is seen as an effort to make IT more strategic, to move from "administrative dweebs" who put up barriers to research (firewalls) to folks who "get stuff done" for faculty. This has strange echos for me of conversations among academic librarians regarding ways to become more relevant, to get involved in a deeper way in research and teaching.
There wasn't as much talk as I expected on the role of extra-institutional systems in supporting this, including systems supported by the commercial sector. At least on the library side of things, we're seeing some of the most powerful, web scale digital library systems (Google Books) in the hands of a commercial vendor.
In my view, the cyberinfrastructure question, especially the adoption of high performance computing in the research process in disciplines that are less comfortable with computing, has a lot to do with raising expectations regarding what scholars expect from IT and what they expect from themselves in terms of research methodologies. I doubt we'll see philosophers clamoring for these things, but I'm sure our geologists, sociologists, and historians will be there soon.
Gradually, it became apparent that many folks in the higher ed IT world see this as a movement to play a higher profile in the academic missions of their institutions by bringing integrated high performance computing resources to a wide range of academic disciplines. There was a lot of talk about how IT departments, now, focus on mundane administrative systems, the "plumbing" of the institutions. This is seen as an effort to make IT more strategic, to move from "administrative dweebs" who put up barriers to research (firewalls) to folks who "get stuff done" for faculty. This has strange echos for me of conversations among academic librarians regarding ways to become more relevant, to get involved in a deeper way in research and teaching.
There wasn't as much talk as I expected on the role of extra-institutional systems in supporting this, including systems supported by the commercial sector. At least on the library side of things, we're seeing some of the most powerful, web scale digital library systems (Google Books) in the hands of a commercial vendor.
In my view, the cyberinfrastructure question, especially the adoption of high performance computing in the research process in disciplines that are less comfortable with computing, has a lot to do with raising expectations regarding what scholars expect from IT and what they expect from themselves in terms of research methodologies. I doubt we'll see philosophers clamoring for these things, but I'm sure our geologists, sociologists, and historians will be there soon.
U Penn Undergrad Research Journal
This is a different take on the institutional repository concept. Treat the content more as editorial content for a journal. Keep the quality high and use faculty and program chairs as an editorial board. Maybe we should take this tactic.
There's a similar workflow to our senior thesis software. And they have some of the same problems with seniors disappearing.
They use the creative commons license for submissions.
There's a similar workflow to our senior thesis software. And they have some of the same problems with seniors disappearing.
They use the creative commons license for submissions.
Xavier University's Web 2.0
In this presentation, they're showing off a kind of new student portal that borrows functionality from youtube, MySpace.
Xavier has a fairly radical organizational structure that completely sheds the "library" division. They have a discovery services department which seems to pick up some of the traditional library functions, as well as the content services division.
Interesting concept: inverted service pyramid...put the weight of staff into automated and self service services. Reserve in person services for specialized stuff.
People with young kids always put them in their presentations for a little comic relief; no exceptions here.
They also demonstrated a fairly traditional campus portal with library resources, people (librarian, advisor, dean), courses tailored to each student.
Xavier has a fairly radical organizational structure that completely sheds the "library" division. They have a discovery services department which seems to pick up some of the traditional library functions, as well as the content services division.
Interesting concept: inverted service pyramid...put the weight of staff into automated and self service services. Reserve in person services for specialized stuff.
People with young kids always put them in their presentations for a little comic relief; no exceptions here.
They also demonstrated a fairly traditional campus portal with library resources, people (librarian, advisor, dean), courses tailored to each student.
Educause 2007
Here I am up in Seattle, signing in for Educause 2007.
I flew up this morning from Portland to avoid the cost of a downtown hotel stay. This made for an early morning and missing the keynote session.
After getting signed in, I couldn't help but drift up the hill into the familiar Capitol Hill neighborhood, where I am currently situated in a coffee shop fueling up on a double Americano in preparation for the first of the regular sessions. I've spent a fair amount of time in this area of Seattle, especially back in the mid to late nineties. The divey Comet Tavern is close by, and I have a feeling I might be drawn there at some point.
Initial impressions of the conference are that it is huge and well-organized, leveraging IT in lots of ways.
One pet peeve of recent conferences attended: the ever present disposable tote bag. Out of principal, I am refusing to pick mine up this time. These things are worthless and serve only to advertise the vendor on the outside of the bag and fill up our landfills. Educause also is giving out free umbrellas...sort of a nice touch in Seattle. But they obviously don't realize that people in the Northwest hardly use them. We realize that a little water is pretty harmless.
Another environmental complaint: I've never received as much junk mail at work as after having signed up for this thing. Lots of garbage from software vendors and IT service providers. Some of them have even called so I've been using caller ID a lot.
As long as I'm on a roll, I notice that the official dress code for the conference is "business casual." For some reason, the whole business casual concept just ooozes a sense of blandness and mediocrity. I suppose I dress that way at work most of the time, but actually making this official recommendation for a conference somehow seems kind of lame. I prefer a more inclusive dress code--with everyone from jeans and t-shirts to Saville Row suits being okay. If we want cutting edge IT, we need to be open to a Googlely sort of dress code?
I flew up this morning from Portland to avoid the cost of a downtown hotel stay. This made for an early morning and missing the keynote session.
After getting signed in, I couldn't help but drift up the hill into the familiar Capitol Hill neighborhood, where I am currently situated in a coffee shop fueling up on a double Americano in preparation for the first of the regular sessions. I've spent a fair amount of time in this area of Seattle, especially back in the mid to late nineties. The divey Comet Tavern is close by, and I have a feeling I might be drawn there at some point.
Initial impressions of the conference are that it is huge and well-organized, leveraging IT in lots of ways.
One pet peeve of recent conferences attended: the ever present disposable tote bag. Out of principal, I am refusing to pick mine up this time. These things are worthless and serve only to advertise the vendor on the outside of the bag and fill up our landfills. Educause also is giving out free umbrellas...sort of a nice touch in Seattle. But they obviously don't realize that people in the Northwest hardly use them. We realize that a little water is pretty harmless.
Another environmental complaint: I've never received as much junk mail at work as after having signed up for this thing. Lots of garbage from software vendors and IT service providers. Some of them have even called so I've been using caller ID a lot.
As long as I'm on a roll, I notice that the official dress code for the conference is "business casual." For some reason, the whole business casual concept just ooozes a sense of blandness and mediocrity. I suppose I dress that way at work most of the time, but actually making this official recommendation for a conference somehow seems kind of lame. I prefer a more inclusive dress code--with everyone from jeans and t-shirts to Saville Row suits being okay. If we want cutting edge IT, we need to be open to a Googlely sort of dress code?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Access 2007
Reporting in here from Access 2007, the Canadian library technology conference.
Here are some of the major topics at the conference:
Here are some of the major topics at the conference:
- next generation OPACs
- the ILS marketplace
- cyberinfrastructure and large scale research computing
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