The Research Heart

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Recently my father spent some time in the hospital and I had to enjoy the life of an Associate Dean from cell phones, Skype, email, and Twitter.  After a week away, I came back to College Park and the iSchool to find a community of colleagues who picked up extra tasks for me; left me cards, flowers, and chocolate; and even distracted me with the pleasure of intellectual discussion and work.  When I came back it seemed endless committee meetings seemed shorter.  Passionate discussions on college policies were surprisingly fascinating.  And research in the lab with even the grumpiest of children seemed a blessing.

My short time away reminded me of the importance of community. Colleagues that are not just smart and supportive, but colleagues that care deeply about the people they work, think, and change the world with.  In the scholarly literature we will many times call this the “sociability” of a community, but I it may go beyond that to the very heart of a community.  I believe how we share life’s challenges, and inspirations, can suggest how successfully we can weave new paths that truly matter in our research.  When problems are hard, resources are tight, and the only possibilities for success seem like miracles to achieve, the heart of a community cannot be overlooked.

With this in mind, over the last six months my iSchool colleagues and I created something we call “Research Communities.”  These are communities that cross disciplines, centers, and labs.  They are communities in our iSchool that bring together talented faculty, staff, and students with truly hard problems to solve—that cannot be undertaken without the research expertise and passion of many over an extended period of time. These communities include:

Seeing the Unseen: This Research Community looks to make knowledge creation, organization and management more transparent with visualization tools, large scale analysis through cloud computing, and by exploring government policies and implications.

The Future of the Past: This Research Community seeks to understand how library and archival materials and processes can suggest how we move forward in the future to preserve, organize, and prioritize what we know.

Co-Global Participation: This Research Community works to support the diverse and underserved populations by co-designing, developing, and integrating inclusive information, services, and new technologies.

The iLabSchool: This Research Community explores the future of education to promote systemic changes in learning, teaching, and assessment through the design of new technologies, learning experiences, and content materials.

For example initiatives in each of our research communities and which iSchool colleagues are involved, you can explore a recent presentation we gave.

iSchool-Research-Communities22711

One important characteristic of these research communities is that they are not only made up of colleagues here in the iSchool, but are made up of many and diverse organizations which include the Encyclopedia of Life, the U.S. Library of Congress, Google, Twitter, Prince George’s County & D.C. Public Schools, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Park Service and many more.

Another important aspect of these research communities is that they will evolve as the hard problems and people involved do.  The heart of these research communities are people with driving problems, inspiring ideas, and a passion to make change.  If you or your organization has this research heart come visit us, explore our research, and become a part of our communities.

The Research Stories of our College...

By: Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

My mother was an artist and my father a scientist. When I was young, I thought what they did for work was very different. My mother was a jeweler who spent countless hours in her studio bending tiny wires and melting layers of glass, somehow creating priceless enamel jewelry and goblets. My father was a chemical engineer who went off to work each day to “mix chemicals” and have meetings, somehow inventing plastics for everything from space suits to soda bottles. As I grew older, I came to realize that they shared one important aspect of their work. They both believed that the first step to making something special happen begins with finding an amazing idea. Therefore, for my mother the jeweler that meant envisioning the interchange between color and form, and then pursing what was possible with colored glass on metal. For my father the chemical engineer that meant imagining the kinds of plastics people needed in their lives.

Their respect for ideas and their excitement for envisioning new possibilities made quite an impression on me as a child who would later become the family professor. Today it makes sense that when I build new technologies for children, much of my research is not only focused on what I build, but how I build it. That path to finding those important first ideas fascinates me as much as the end technology.

As the iSchool’s new Associate Dean for Research, I’ve come to realize that this fascination with how ideas are born will serve me well as I highlight with this blog the new ideas and the important research of our faculty, staff, and students. These talented, curious, and innovative thinkers are leading the way in everything from understanding issues concerning social computing to exploring the future of libraries and archives.

What brings all of these thought leaders together is the goal to transform that connection people have with information. Whether it is looking at how people search for and manage information, or building a new digital archive, or even looking at the impact that this new technology can have on how it is adopted to how it affects public policy—these are all important ways our faculty, staff, and students look to transform the information landscape. With this new blog, I will tell the research stories of our college: how our new ideas are evolving, what impact is being felt from these ideas, and what might our future world look like because of this work.


Most importantly, I hope it will lead you to taking this research journey with us. Together we will explore the diverse and deep research initiatives spread across our many centers and labs. We will highlight the strong interdisciplinary collaborations our college has with industry, non-profit, and government partners. This blog will ask you to consider a diverse landscape of ideas that could inspire and challenge your thinking about the future.