Maryland's iSchool

Brian Butler: Seeing the Unseen through Online Social Systems

2012-01-21T08:15:00.000-08:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

With the start of a new spring semester, the iSchool not only welcomes our students back to campus, but we also get to welcome new faculty to our college. Next week Associate Professor Brian Butler joins the iSchool to lead research on policy formation and application in Wikipedia, technology use in local food systems, and the design of social networking systems for supporting health science research and healthcare provision. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the Katz Graduate School of Business at University of Pittsburgh.

I recently had the good fortune to enjoy some virtual interview time with Brian before this semester began.

Associate Professor, Brian Butler

[Allison] Since you just moved to Maryland, can you tell us what most surprises you about becoming a faculty member here?

[Brian] The high level of intellectual energy and activity. A lot is going on. People are engaged and proud of what they are doing. This is something I had hoped for, but I wasn't sure what to expect -- so it is a pleasant "surprise".

[Allison] What do you most look forward to doing when you are officially here at the University of Maryland full time?

[Brian] Driving less. More substantively, I'm looking forward to starting research projects, teaching courses, and developing programs that build on (and expand) my knowledge how organizations, technology, and information interact to shape individuals' experiences and opportunities. mmm... That sounds very pretentious -- I'm really looking forward to investigating complicated problems with smart people.

[Allison] As far as your research goes, can you tell me why you study people in Wikipedia?

[Brian] Well, first it's worth noting that I'm not particularly interested in the "people" in Wikipedia. What I find fascinating about Wikipedia is the way that policies, structures, and technology have evolved. What triggers change (and what doesn't)? When does conflict and debate result in useful improvements (and when does it result in a jumbled mess)? How does the highly distributed socio-technical system learn and adapt (and what are the limits of that adaptation)?

[Brian] More generally, Wikipedia and other online social systems are interesting to study because they allow us to see things about organizations and organizing which are often invisible (either because they are transient or deliberately hidden). Ironically, Wikipedia is a more "tangible" organization than most traditional organizations. This allows us to consider questions about how it works which would be almost impossible to consider in "real" organizations.

[Allison] How would you define what an "organization" is?

[Brian] Although it isn't a formal definition, I think about organizations as entities composed of resources, structures, processes, systems and symbols that we build to enable long-term, large-scale action. Organizations are like sustainable scaffolding. People create them, use them, adapt them, and destroy them. They can facilitate actions or constrain choices. How you see the world (and the organization itself) is often colored by where you sit in the ‘scaffolding’.

[Brian] While people are involved in many ways, organizations are legally, socially, and operationally distinct from the particular individuals involved -- so assuming that we can understand organizations just by studying individuals is rarely true.

[Brian] The same is true about organizations and networks. While much is being learned from studying networks, there is more to organizational infrastructure around us than can be captured by dyadic representations of relations. "Networks are neat...but networks aren't enough".

[Allison] How does your research explain why organizations change?

[Brian] Organizations are always changing -- like any organism; a static organization is by definition dead. What we tend to notice are ‘unexpected’ changes.

So the question isn't so much "explaining why they change" as it is explaining why organizations change in particular ways.

In my research I focus on fundamental forces that underlie organizational changes, but yet often fade into the background and are forgotten. Power and politics; selection and competition; communication costs; role structures and expectations; identity, identification and commitment -- these are all forces which have significant effects on how organizations develop and function and yet are often overlooked, dismissed, or underestimated.

[Allison] How can your research help us in making better organizations in the future?

[Brian] Most people underestimate the malleability of organizations -- except for technologists and managers who tend to overestimate it. By providing a better understanding of how organizations work, my research seeks to empower those who are accustomed to seeing organizations as immutable structures and to mitigate the significant damage done (to both organizations and the people dependent on them) by those who underestimate their intricacies and impact.

[Allison] Thanks Brian! Your research has much to teach us all!

Sparking Discussion and Questions on the Future of Information

2011-11-30T21:31:00.000-08:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Recently, The Future of Information Alliance (FIA) was launched with a week of events, meetings, and talks. Hundreds of participants from every College at the University of Maryland came together with three innovators we call “Visiting Future-ists” from Google, Microsoft and Twitter, which were joined by 10 faculty speakers with backgrounds ranging from theatre to computer science to business, and 10 Founding Partners which included, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the U.S. National Park Service, National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian, the Newseum, WAMU 88.5, and more! This equation offered energizing discussions and some important questions for the future. It’s been hard for me to share my thoughts about the Alliance, perhaps because I helped to launch this alliance (with Ira Chinoy, Journalism Associate Professor) and I’ve seen so much and so little of what happened.

However, without my asking or realizing it, many of our FIA participants were summarizing the many talks they experienced throughout the week in their own blog postings and tweets. One excellent summary comes from the iSchool’s Alexandra Moses, a part-time Master’s student in the School Library Media Program. As it happens before coming to the iSchool she was journalist for 15 years, 6 of which she worked for the Associate Press. She now works as a graduate assistant on Dr. Ann Week’s IMLS funded project which studies the current roles and responsibilities of district library supervision offices in U.S. school districts. She took time out of her busy research activities to be a part of the Future of Information Alliance Launch Week. Below is Alexandra’s summary in which she used Storyify to select a variety of tweets from the #FIAumd twitter feed:

Alexandra Moses:

UMD's iSchool and journalism school tackled the future of information, with prominent guests Dan Russell (Google), Marcy Czerwinski (Microsoft) and Abdur Chowdhury (formerly of Twitter). Turned out the future sparks a lot of debate.

Central to the week's discussions – which included privacy, access, transparency, politics and health – was the overarching theme of information literacy:

“RT @justgrimes: So good to hear someone from Google (@dmrussell) really hammer home the importance of "information literacy" #fiaumd

Tasha Bergson-Michel

“Improving Web search skills critical, information experts say... and interaction research group at Microsoft. But widespread adoption of those tools could be hindered by privacy concerns, she said. ...

Times-news

“Your best internet connection is a librarian" #DanRussell -- Can we get Google to engrave that in stone? #FIAumd

Leahkim Gannett

But information literacy is complicated and covers a lot of ground:

“Underlying search technology and content is constantly evolving; what you know now will go stale rapidly. #fiaumd

Kari Kraus

“Russell's point, I think, is that we're in the perpetual position of being novice users--what we know today is obsolete tomorrow. #fiaumd

Kari Kraus

“A troubling image of how little we know about the food that we consume. Faith in the industry or just lack of food-info literacy? #fiaumd

Dana Rotman <https://twitter.com/#!/danarotman>

“RT @alexandram: Global food chain is highly segmented & little information flows between the segments (Buchanan). Eek, that's scary. #FIAumd

Beth Cron

Of course, it's hard to get information if it's not there:

“Want your information out there? Start a blog, use social media says @Abdur #FIAumd

Madeline Marshall

Or is the problem really that there's too much information?

“"A major part of the problem is it's too easy to publish" says Google's Dan Russell on the quality of information on the web. #FIAumd

Madeline Marshall

Then there's those sticky issues of access...

“Jaeger emphasizing that access isn't just about selling the hard line, it involves literacy, power, bodies, and political context. #fiaumd

Daniel Greene

“RT @ebonsign: Lopsided participation/access ex.: 70% of Latinos who speak English use the Web. Only 30% who doNOT speak English use it. #FIAumd

PJ Rey

“RT @LibrariansFTW: RT @stineeckert: #FIAumd Just teaching digital literacy won't do if people don't have Internet access to begin with or can't afford it...

Vanessa Irvin Morris

“The 800 lbs gorilla is should we trust private corporations to provide "access. #PaulJaeger #FIAumd

PJ Rey

... and privacy:

“The futurists at #FIAumd are talking about educating the public about privacy issues -- how are we doing this with our kids in schools?

Mega Subramaniam

“RT @harveyonline: Czerwinski: Dark side of research: Corporations and governments know a lot about you! How will consumers protect their privacy? #FIAumd

Drew Grossman

“RT @pjrey: Dan Russell - Real anonymity requires high tech literacy. Ability to cloak IP, etc. #FIAumd

Sunny Moraine

“what are the privacy implications of using things like galvanic skin response sensors in the classroom environment? #fiaumd

karikraus

Transparency and neutrality of information and technology were hot topics. Some questioned whether they were really a goal:

“Dan Russell says Google and other companies try to provide as much transparency as possible. #eyeroll #FIAumd

PJ Rey

“Afraid that the folks who say tech=neutral come out on top, and say race doesn't matter, or pull yourself up by the damn bootstraps #fiaumd

Daniel Greene

“Information has value when it is controlled. Corporations have vest interest in controlling info as much as possible to max value. #FIAumd

PJ Rey

“Users should have more control over their user experiences online rather than corporations deciding what it should be. But how? #FIAumd

alexandram

“RT @dynamicsymmetry: We often talk about protesters/dissidents using tech while forgetting that tech is also tool of state power. Sometimes both at once. #FIAumd

Wyndeth Davis

And some also pondered technology's impact on information and culture:

“Does culture ever really 'die'? That seems to presuppose culture as an external construct beyond its own component people. #fiaumd

Nick Hirsch

“RT @LibrariansFTW: @dmrussell: School librarians under increased pressure to go away. Who's going to teach our kids abt tech & implications? #FIAumd

Sunny Moraine

“Abdur Chowdhury: Technology is not killing culture. It has no agenda. If culture is dying, it's people who are responsible. #FIAumd

Ted Knight

But most agreed that technology has powerful potential to change lives:

“Improving education, and alleviating poverty. What is the role of information and technology in this endeavor? #fiaUMD 50.usaid.gov/learning-out-...

ahnjune

“.@abdur last Q to audience: "how are we all working together to make the world a better place?" #FIAumd

Susan Moeller

“RT @FIAumd: #FIAumd @abdur Chowdhury mentions Foldit, game for the public to help figure out AIDS/HIV by University of Washington engr.washington.edu/news/t...

Meredith Stewart

“RT @ebonsign: .@abdur Asks us to think about ways to use our phones to bring human beings together. Humans are sensors + sharers. #FIAumd

Hart Rossman

“RT @LibrariansFTW: #PaulJaeger: Social media becoming central to political participation, central to human rights, education, voice, representation #FIAumd

Annie Seiler

It all came down to this: The future of information relies on the people who create, use it and rely on it.

“"If information is not indexed by anyone, then we're kinda stuck" -- even Google needs the "human element" says @dmrussell #FIAumd

Susan Moeller

“#FIAumd is excellent example of potential collaborators for school librarians, need to reevaluate perceptions of who our stakeholders are

Rebecca Oxley

“@abdur @dmrussell - How do we keep the love of learning? It's not about technology, but about the people. #fiaumd

Jason Yip

“ooooh. RT @james3neal A NodeXL event graph from #FIAumd (HT @adruin | @smilex3md). http://yfrog.com/nvzmmhkj #UMD

S. Bennett

Already, the conversation is exploding. So what next?

A Post-Script, Allison Druin:

It is apropos that the Future of Information Alliance was summarized by many people from many points of tweeting views. We know our technologies are supporting a future for users that is distributed yet collaborative. Therefore, let me thank the many tweeters that Alexandra points to: @researchwell, @lkexlibris, @danarotman, @bethcron, @Maddie_Marshall, @vanirvinmorris, @mmsubram, @DrewGrossman12, @dynamicsymmetry, @karikraus, @Greene_DM, @pjrey, @alexandram, @wyndeth, @faeshale, @tedknight85, @ahnjune, @mereastew, @HartDanger, @AnnieSeiler, @sdmoeller, @LibrariansFTW, @jasoncyip, @stephestellar

To continue to follow the Future of Information Alliance discussions, events, and activities, you can follow at #FIAumd

Researching Trust and Distrust

2011-10-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

This past week, Assistant Professor and HCIL Director, Jen Golbeck, received a best paper award from the 2011 IEEEInternational Conference on Social Computing (#socialcom). Her award-winning paper was co-authored with ThomasDuBois, University of Maryland computer science alumni and now a post-doc at Virginia Tech, and Aravind Srinivasan, a Professor in Computer Science and UMIACS. Their work focused on some important questions surrounding trust and distrust by examining social networks.

Assistant Professor and HCIL Director, Jen Golbeck,

Recently, I sat down with Jen for a “virtual interview” to better understand this important research area:

[Allison] When you study “trust” are you looking at how people trust each other on social networks or if they trust the social network?

[Jen] I'm looking at trust between people. There is work on people trusting systems (sometimes called trust in automation), but I'm more interested in finding ways to compute how much one person trusts another person.

[Allison] How can you make predictions about people from how much they trust each other?

[Jen] There are a lot of ways. Some of my earlier work looked at paths that connected people through the social network and the trust that their intermediate friends had for one another. More recently, I have been working on analyzing traits of each individual in the relationship and using that, along with structural social network features, to predict trust relationships. It's more exciting because it's more realistic - we don't often know how much all the intermediate friends trust each other, so working from more commonly available data is important.

[Allison] What’s the most surprising result you’ve found from your most recent work?

[Jen] Lately we have been trying to predict people's personality traits by analyzing their Facebook and Twitter profiles. It turns out we can do that quite accurately, even with very limited information from the users. We hope this is something we can eventually use to help understand people's relationships.

[Allison] Should people be concerned with what they put out on the web?

[Jen] Of course, always. A lot of that is independent of the work I'm doing. There is some very sophisticated data mining taking place on the web. That can be used to improve users' online experience, which is good, but we don't get to control who uses it and for what. If the idea of people analyzing you is bothersome, it is best to really turn up privacy settings. However, that doesn't necessarily protect your data. For example, on Facebook, if your friends install an app, that app can access some of your data, even if you don't consent to it. Thus, it's safe to assume that anything you share online is accessible to companies with any variety of intentions. If you don't want them to know something, it's better to keep it off the web.

[Allison] What’s next for you in this area of research?

[Jen] I'm going to be pushing in the direction of understanding users. The personality research has been very fruitful, but we are in the very early stages of that work. I hope to find more individual features to profile and new techniques to predict them.

[Allison] If doctoral students or new faculty are trying to get into this area of research what advice do you have for them?

[Jen] The most important thing is to try to find a problem in a space that is untouched. There is so much that can be done in studying social networks, analyzing users, and improving systems with that information. If you do the next steps on existing research, all of your results will be incremental and boring. Find a problem that has hardly been touched but where you see great potential. That sets you up to be the thought leader on an important problem, and it means you will have an exciting time discovering new things.

[Allison] Thanks, Jen.

Recognizing Records Management Research

2011-10-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

“… whether the government remains stuck in a print to paper paradigm for purposes of official record-keeping, or chooses to spend millions in adopting electronic record-keeping software that highly depends on end-users performing manual record keeping functions – those approaches are all a legacy of late 20th century thinking that we need to shake off and move away from. I am calling for workers of the world to unite (especially in the public sector), in opposing efforts to enslave them in record-keeping responsibilities when there are new and better automated ways to perform this vitally important function. Especially in a time of fiscal scarcity, it is all the more important that we be lean, smart and agile on the record-keeping front. We need to understand that there are the technological means to accomplish record-keeping in 2011, if institutions have the will to convert to them.”

These are the words of Mr. Jason R. Baron, Emmett Leahy Award Winner.

His call to action was shared just a few weeks ago at the Awards Ceremony in the Archivist's Reception Room in the Washington D.C. building of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). There is no higher honor in records management than to receive the Emmet Leahy Award, considered to be the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes of the profession. To understand how important Jason’s call to action is and the importance of his work, you need only to hear the words of John Phillips, the recipient of the 2001 Emmett Leahy Award and an Emmett Leahy Award Committee Member:

“The Profession of Records Management, or Records and Information Management as we often call it today, is in turmoil. Records Managers, their customers, IT professionals, legal counsels, and executive management are all overwhelmed with the volume and variety of information management dilemmas facing us today. Business models change daily. E-mail, Office documents, Web pages, digital images and incentives to use remotely hosted cloud based architectures can put business records, evidence for court proceedings and historical treasures at grave risk. Records Management is becoming a challenge for everyone… [for the complete awards presentations see: http://www.emmettleahyaward.org/uploads/Proceedings_2011.pdf ]

Given these challenging times, the Archivist of the United States,David S. Ferriero explained, “Jason R. Baron, an Adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, Maryland’s iSchool, has been named the 2011 recipient of the prestigious international Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions and Accomplishments in the Records and Information Management Profession. Mr. Baron, who serves as Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, is the first federal lawyer to receive the award. Established in 1967, the Emmett Leahy Award honors the spirit of innovation, dedication, and excellence in records and information management of Emmett Leahy, an icon in the development of the life cycle approach to managing records and information.

The award was presented to Mr. Baron based on his many outstanding achievements in the area of information law over three decades of public service, including his groundbreaking work on White House email litigation (Armstrong v Executive Office of thePresident) and his professional service as editor of various commentaries issued by The Sedona Conference®, a leading legal think tank. Notably, the Emmett Leahy Award committee specifically singled out two ongoing scholarly activities in which Mr. Baron has collaborated with Maryland iSchool Professor Douglas Oard founding the Legal Track of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Text Retrieval Conference, and creating a series of international workshops on the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information(DESI). Both efforts bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to help lawyers apply the most effective search and categorization techniques when seeking evidence in a litigation context…”

At the iSchool, we are always proud of the work our faculty and students do. And of course we are excited when this work is recognized at the highest levels of the profession. But what makes this honor so wonderful is that it recognizes the collaborative work of diverse professionals to bring about important and profound impact on some very difficult problems. As Jason himself noted in his acceptance speech, “…we all need to be more creative and interdisciplinary in our professional lives. My life and career has consisted of rowing between islands of excellence, including bringing “good news” from the world of information retrieval and artificial intelligence to the world of lawyers. I strongly believe that the legal community has been too insular in its approach to e-discovery, and needs to partner with academia and industry – including in insisting on optimization in e-discovery searches through the adoption of best practice standards, some of which may yet end up as recognized international standards…”

What is fascinating to consider is Jason’s first academic work, “I confess I couldn’t really have imagined what my professional career would consist of when in 1977 I wrote an honors thesis in college on the privacy implications of a vast electronic database maintained by the FBI and accessible by the international organization Interpol…” It is from those beginning academic experiences that brought Jason to the important work he does now. That is why it is so important to have him a part of the very fabric of our college. As Dean Preece has pointed out, “Mr. Baron's dynamic contributions to the intellectual life of our college have significantly enhanced both the education of our students and the breadth and depth of our research."

Perhaps someday there may be another Emmett Leahy Award Winner in our midst. Perhaps the future may show it to be a student of this year’s award winner.

When Research Matters

2011-09-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Ten years ago, I wrote an article questioning if doing my research was really all that critical to the world given the events of 9/11. I wrote, “…so much felt unimportant... All I could think about were my family and friends in New York City and at the Pentagon, my parents stuck in the Midwest without a plane ride home, and my graduate student…on his way back from Europe exactly at the moment this all happened.”

On that horrible day that will forever been known as 9/11, I wondered why I wasn’t a fire-fighter, an FBI agent, or even a school teacher who could explain to children what was happening to our world. Instead, I wrote papers, submitted grant proposals, gave talks, and graded my class’s papers. It took the words of a child in my lab to remind me research can make a difference. At the time we were working on our first designs of the International Children’s Digital Library. With books in languages from around the world, we were trying to tackle the question of why would kids care if there’s lots of languages of books online. Our 10-year old design partner said, “When there’s lots of languages there’s lots of people who understand (sic.).”

It dawned on me that if our research can help us understand one new thing in this world, then it can be more than just another academic paper. Helping people to understand their world or other people’s lives might lead to better new tools, better new methods for learning, and better relationships between diverse people. Research can matter.

Since 9/11/01, it’s been 10 years of research for me and my colleagues at the iSchool. This type of research which can lead to a social impact in the real world is not only the norm, but is the central part of our college’s values mission for research. Today Associate Professor Ken Fleischmann collaborates with Ph.D. student Clay Templeton and Assistant Professor Jordan Boyd-Graber on computational social science research using crowd-sourcing and techniques from natural language processing to detect the relationship between people’s values and their attitudes toward the Park51 project (which has also been described as the “Ground Zero mosque”).

In addition, today Professor Doug Oard does research which helps us access information no matter what the language. Then there’s Assistant Professors Paul Jaeger and Mega Subramaniam, and Professor John Bertot who (based on their center’s research) started a whole new concentration in our Masters of Library Science Program on“Diversity” so that we can truly support information users that are traditionally underserved and disadvantaged. There’s also our Dean, Jenny Preece whose passion (besides the iSchool) is creating new technologies that can support awareness and learning on issues concerning biodiversity.

As you can see, I can go on endlessly about our faculty (and usually do), but I’ll stop here to say, I’ve learned over the last 10 years that research too can be important in changing our world. I’m not so sure I would have made a great fire-fighter or FBI agent, but the lessons of 9/11 have taught me that it’s critical to do something that helps change our world for the better. After a decade I still work on the International Children’s Digital Library with Professor Ben Bederson and Associate Dean, Anne Weeks. Together, we have been creating an online library for the world’s children that we hope will promote tolerance and respect for diverse cultures through sharing the best of children’s literature.

That horrible day of 9/11 a decade ago helped me to see it’s important to keep questioning, to keep exploring ideas, and to keep sharing what is possible. That horrible day of 9/11 helped me to see that research really does matter.

Retreat, Reflect, and Research

2011-09-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

“I’m retreating.” So often when we hear these words it brings to mind someone giving up, leaving, or no longer pursuing their goals. Yet after four “retreats” in 15 days (and 2 other meetings that could be called this), “I’m retreating” brings to my mind a very different experience. It’s an important time for me to focus on some piece of my work. It can be a time to reconnect with busy colleagues who like me normally don’t have the luxury of spending a few consecutive hours together, let alone a day. I’ve found that it can be a time for me to re-energize and look forward to the academic year ahead.

I know for some, “retreating” may feel like valuable time spent that they don’t have. It may feel like we could instead be writing papers, focusing on grant proposals, or preparing to teach in the semester ahead. But for me, sitting in a room brainstorming in small groups, or doing a “group think” on a mission statement, or even spending some quiet time considering personal or team goals for the year, can be valuable time well spent.

With each successive retreat over the last few weeks, I found I’ve been more able to ignore the outside world of “To-Do lists” and endless emails. Instead I’ve been able to start connecting ideas from one retreat to the next. This was the case as I was listening to a discussion on building partnerships and leadership with my colleagues at the U.S. National Park Service. As the ideas emerged on strategic thinking, opportunities, and risk, I found myself drawing diagrams that made sense of the mentorship training I just had the week before at a retreat with my colleagues from the ADVANCE Program. I realized I’d been struggling with how to take the abstract good ideas we all have and make them real. I wanted to make these ideas a call to action, not just one more To-Do list. And yet as I was reflecting on one back to the other, my random scribbling began to make sense not just for the ADVANCE Program, but for my work with the National Park Service. It also began to fill gaps in my thinking about partnerships and leadership as I begin to brainstorm this coming week with our iSchool community at the University of Maryland.

So often we hear the words, “we need to build partnerships” but too often they seem like nice words for other people to do. We can assume that people and partnerships will find us if we just do good research. Or partners will come if I just write another grant proposal. Or partnering is for someone else to do that knows the special “secret.” But what I got from my days of retreating and reflecting was a realization that it’s a path we all can take when we take a moment not to run as fast as we can, but to take a deep breath to become aware of our research work, both from inside the university, but externally in the wider research landscape of other universities, companies, and government agencies.

Many times it’s easy to look at our research and assess what matters, what is valuable, and what needs to be moved forward. But often we don’t take the time to consider who in our external research environment could be colleagues to collaborate with, who might be competing for the same resources, who might need what we do, and who could help us. We need to ask ourselves what are the risks and opportunities in starting something new, in stopping what we’re doing, or in continuing what we have been doing. The risks in starting something new can be as simple as, I might not receive the funding or as complex as this new research activity might compete too much with what I’m already doing. The opportunities if I succeed may seem overly obvious—I’ve started a new partnership that can expand my research direction, can lead to new resources and/or publications. In exploring these risks and opportunities more explicitly for starting, stopping, or continuing our activities, I’ve begun to see how I can take what I value as my goals, or my college’s goals and begin to plan my actions.

As we walk into our new school year, our iSchool will soon be gathering as a faculty to talk about moving from our shared values to taking action. Thanks to last year’s shared work, our iSchool has agreed that we value research:

that has a social impact on the real world which can benefit an individual or the larger society
which is a foundation for future research that can shape our profession, organizations, public policy and more

This coming week our iSchool community will be asking ourselves: How do we communicate our research and how do we build resources? We’ll attempt to answer those questions by asking ourselves what I learned in retreating--what are the risks and opportunities in starting something new, in stopping what we’re doing, or in continuing what we have been doing? We’ll explore these questions both from what makes sense within the university but also in the wider external research community.

To some who do strategic planning or leadership training for a living, this may not sound so earth-shattering. But for me, “retreating” was the only way I could find my way there. So for all of you who are wrestling with the “what if’s” and the “will I ever’s…” let me suggest- try retreating! It’s a great first step to reflecting and researching in the days to come.

A Quiet Time for Research

2011-08-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

There is a quiet time for research. It’s the quiet of night- when some of our best writing seems to emerge. It’s the morning hours when an idea can finally come to you even when the birds still seem asleep. It’s the summer months when it seems so hot the pavement will melt, but there is sanctuary on campus in the life-saving air-conditioned buildings. It’s that important quiet time that let us ponder, write, take time for conferences, explore new ideas in the lab, and enjoy the time for research.

These quiet research moments are just as important to the research process as the busy louder times when there are endless campus visitors, energetic classes to teach, and the steady rhythm of campus meetings. It’s during those in between moments that here in the iSchool our research is covered by the Washington Post to Fox5 News which was the case for Assistant Professor & new HCIL Director, Jen Golbeck for her work on social network analysis of FaceBook. It’s during these quiets moments that Assistant Professor Kari Kraus published an op-ed piece in the NewYork Times discussing her ideas and research on digital preservation . It’s during these quiet times when we can find out that we received new grant funding like Assistant Professor Bo Xie did when she recently received an NIH grant for her work on understanding older adults’ e-health literacy. It’s during those times we can give keynote talks at international conferences, like Associate Professor Jimmy Lin did at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

It’s also during those times that we can make progress exploring our research with colleagues near and far. This is what Bruce Ambacher did, a Visiting Professor here at the iSchool where he coordinates and teaches in the archives specialization of the MLS program. What follows is an update on his work during that quiet time for research:

In April I blogged about the summer that lay ahead for my work with a group of digital cultural heritage curators “field testing” the draft International Standards Organization Standard 16363 at three digital repositories in Europe and three in the United States. The round of tests proved to be just as busy, extensive, and illuminating as expected, although some of the results were somewhat unexpected.

At the heart of the decades long effort is a clear understanding that data is the lifeblood of information, whether that information is science, business, technology or culture. Stewardship of data so that they are available and useful to users both today and in the future is an ongoing challenge due to the rapidly changing technological landscape, the increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of users and their disciplines, and the uncertainty over the best preservation procedures .
The tests began on June 2^nd and concluded on July 7^th with breaks for travel, holidays and schedule gaps. The three European sites were the United Kingdom Data Archives (UKDA) focusing on social science data; National Computer Center for Higher Education (CINES) focusing on digitized theses and dissertations; and Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) focusing on statistical data. The European repositories benefitted from resources provided by the European Commission through the Alliance for Permanent Access. These resources were used to compensate for staff time used to analyze the metrics of the draft standard, accumulate the supporting documentation, complete the metrics document and host the audit team.

The three repositories in the United States that volunteered to participate were Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) a center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University that focuses on the interaction of social, natural and information sciences; the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), NASA's archive for space science mission data; and the digital archives component of the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives (KDLA). Because of funding limitations none of the U.S. repositories were compensated in any way for their efforts.

At each repository the audit focused on specific aspects of their digital data life-cycle operations that incorporated their long-term preservation and access functions. We did not attempt to audit the entire life-cycle operations of any repository.

The test audits were a “learning” experience for both the repositories and the auditors. The test audit teams in Europe generally numbered ten to twelve. In the United States the audit teams were smaller since only one European could schedule the time for those audits. A real audit situation would have only one to three auditors, depending on the complexity of the audit. The test audits also included much more informal interaction between the audit team and the repository staff to enhance the learning experience for both groups, to clarify the meaning of the standard’s metrics, and to expand on the answers given by the repository to a particular metric. One repository’s assessment of the test process was put online.

This interaction also extended to collegial meals and socializing which normally would not be part of an audit. But, heck, it was a test, and we pretty much knew each other, or knew of each other, beforehand. We even got to enjoy a few out of the ordinary sights including one leg of the Tour England bicycle race in Colchester and a highly choreographed demonstration against the austerity cuts sweeping Europe in Montpelier, France. There were nearly as many gendarmes as demonstrators and all went well until the demonstrators stepped outside of the apparently agreed upon path for the march when they were put back in place with speed and determination.

Even as test audits the process revealed extensive similarities and shortcomings among the six repositories. The most troubling observation is that long-term data stewardship is not yet guaranteed. We cannot yet be confident that our digital data will endure – in a usable and retrievable form – into the indefinite future. This should cause us all great concern.

This concern comes out of the following:

1. None of the repositories had yet achieved their full preservation potential. Their primary focus still was on current access. The fact that old data still existed was largely due to format stability. In the case of at least one repository it was still accepting, saving, and providing data in a format that had barely changed in more than four decades. Their insistence on accepting data only in that format is a major factor in the format’s stability.

2. Virtually all of the repositories made format stability a key component of long term preservation by specifying the format(s), and in some cases even the data elements and their metadata definitions, they would accept and by working to keep that format stable. This is not a realistic approach over the long term.

3. The heavy reliance upon “soft money” in the United States to initiate digital data curation, and the resulting scattershot nature of the repository’s data curation plans and activities. This creates a wide gap between goals and realities. A data program dependent upon grants, gifts and one-time allocations to fund certain aspects of a digital preservation program is an uneven program with too many foci and varying amounts of activity resulting in wide gaps with no activity between.

4. Official government repositories have not realized the full potential of using their records management authority to inventory and schedule agency data series and determine which should become long-term records under its control. Some government repositories also have an inspection authority that enables them to inspect the agencies that are part of their level of government to ensure compliance, e.g. transfer of digital data when it is scheduled.

5. Some repositories lacked a logical, well reasoned, end-to-end Content Information lifecycle that reflected the necessary communication and understanding between the data creator/provider and the repository staff, especially as it related to how the repository would meet its data preservation requirements. Unfortunately, this sometimes reflected the fact that the life-cycle process was often not well defined and not always applied consistently by the data creators/providers or the repositories.

6. A core issue in the digital information community is the relationship within the “Designated Community” of the creator/producer, the repository/custodian and the user. This concept extends to how much metadata and other explanatory documentation the producer and the repository must create and/or accumulate to enable the user to understand the data in the future. The more discipline specific knowledge the community expects the user to have, the less documentation and explanation necessary from the producer and repository to have the data remain understandable into the future. Unfortunately, what is considered common knowledge today, even within a narrowly defined Designated Community, may not be common knowledge in the future and the data may be misunderstood. Applying too narrow a definition of the user community can limit future use of the data. This concept is fully developed in the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, ISO 14721.

7. Some of the staff of some of the repositories used terms within the draft standard without clearly understanding the meaning of the term. It became apparent during some audits that staff did not understand the role of the repository in transforming the creator/producer’s Submission Information Package (SIP) into their Archival Information Package – the form of the data that they preserved into the indefinite future and that they used, possibly in part of in combination with other AIPs, to create the Dissemination Information Package (DIP). If they do not understand the terminology can we be sure they understand the concepts and practices embodied within that terminology?

8. The overwhelming focus of the repositories, even those that have been operating for more than four decades, is access. For too many, that means current access, not long-term access. While they would not take actions that would knowingly corrupt the digital bits or prevent future access, they see their primary role as providing access to their current users, not long-term data stewardship for the yet unborn user in the indefinite future.

All of the repositories viewed the test audit as a positive experience. More importantly, they viewed draft ISO 16363 as a necessary and beneficial international standard. The companion handbook for auditors, draft ISO 16919, Requirements for Bodies Providing Audit and Certification of Candidate Trustworthy Digital Repositories, has been approved as an ISO Standard. Following a few editorial changes and the incorporation of changes recommended from the first ballot, draft ISO 16363 will be submitted for final voting.

International efforts that can trace their roots back to 1996, through task force reports, international studies and recommendations, the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, Trusted Repository Audit and Control, and now Requirements for Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital repositories and its companion Requirements for Bodies Providing Audit and Certification of Candidate Trustworthy Digital Repositories have created the guidelines and standards. Will digital data curators who wish to provide for both long-term preservation and meaningful access to today’s digital heritage into the indefinite future use them? That is the preverbal sixty-four dollar question.

Traveling the Whole Sky with Research

2011-07-02T04:48:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

One night recently, I was reading an online book to my girls: Elinda who Danced in the Sky, an Estonian folktale about a sky goddess. Since I was unusually awake, I was especially enjoying the words of author, Lynn Moroney: “With me you will not remain fixed in one place, but come and go. You will not take a narrow path, but travel the whole sky."

Elinda Who Danced in the Sky which can be accessed in the International Children's Digital Library

I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I say that these words reminded me of how our iSchool faculty and students travel the whole sky with their research. Over the last few months the grant awards, books, articles, and more have not come from “one place” or a “narrow path” but seemingly the “whole sky.” For example, Associate Dean Ann Weeks received a research award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to lead a team to study the demographics and skills of district library supervisors, who have not been the subject of extensive research since the late 1960s. This research will explore the current roles and responsibilities of district library supervision offices in 100 largest and 100 mid-size school districts in the United States. Ann’s research team will include doctoral student, Jeff DiScala, newly appointed iSchool lecturer, Sheri Massey, and Special Assistant to the Dean, Diane Barlow

Another exciting part of the research sky has been taken by our iSchool’s Paul Jaeger who was just named co-editor (with Sandra Braman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) for a Policy Book Series published by MIT Press. The book series will cover significant information policy challenges in the context of laws, regulations, policies and decision-making principles that affect any form of information creation, processing, flows, access, and use. This interdisciplinary book series is already inviting manuscripts from authors in any field with an interest in the making, implementation, and effects of decision-making about information policy.

And another book project from the iSchool comes by way of Scott Paquette, who focuses on Knowledge Management (KM). Scott co-wrote with K. Desouza, a colleague from U of Washington, the book Knowledge Management: An Introduction published by Neal-Schuman Publishers. This book balances the theory and practice of KM by examining fundamental and emerging concepts. They consider the issues that organizations encounter in the global marketplace, and it is one of the first books to integrate social media and networking into KM practice.

Knowledge Management: An Introduction published by Neal-Schuman Publishers

In addition, iSchool faculty member Mega Subramaniam, (along with Ann Ryu Edwards from the College of Education) received a university ADVANCE seed grant for a one-year research project: Leveraging Technology for Mathematics: Exploring Instructional Collaboration between School Librarians and Mathematics Teacher. This ADVANCE grant will serve as a pilot study for the development and deployment of a collaboration model between math teachers and school librarians that helps underrepresented, disadvantaged and underserved youths in middle schools increase engagement and achievement in math.

Mega has also been busy working on a recently awarded seed grant with Paul Jaeger: The Museum Experience of Children with Autism and Their Families: Improving Access through Web and Electronic Resources. Jointly funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Maryland, Pino Monaco from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies and Beth Ziebarth from the Smithsonian Institution Accessibility Program (SIAP) will be working with Mega and Paul on this research. What is so exciting about this project is that it is one of the first concrete efforts to explore the integration of the web and other electronic resources as a means to promote greater inclusion of persons with disabilities in museums.

And still one more… the iSchool’s Trudi Bellardo Hahn has co-authored a very interesting summer article for the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. It asks the question: Has the revolution in scholarly communication lived up to its promise? In it the authors discuss Open Access channels of publishing and how they can support authors in transforming the traditional system of scholarly communication.

So when I think about traveling that research blue sky, I am certain the paths we’re taking at Maryland’s iSchool can eventually lead to a whole sky of possibilities.

Research Tweets

2011-05-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Yes, on May 25, 2011, #HCIL was “trending” in the Washington DC area on Twitter (see screen grab by Jen Golbeck below). What does this mean? Amazingly for the first time in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s (HCIL) 28 years, so many of us were tweeting about the Lab’s Symposium on Twitter, we were among the top ten items people were talking about online in the Washington-area. Why care? Because more people than ever can now be a part of a research event through social media.

#HCIL Trending on Twitter in the Washington DC area, May 25, 2011

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) is the oldest HCI lab in the country, possibly the world. The lab is incredibly interdisciplinary with faculty, staff, and students coming from 9 colleges and 2 institutes at the University of Maryland. The lab is jointly administered by the iSchool, Computer Science Department, and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. Until a few days ago, I had the honor of being the lab’s Director for 5 years (I’m happy to say iSchool Faculty member, Jen Golbeck has taken over as the HCIL’s 4^th director).

Each year at the end of the spring, the lab shares its work through an annual Symposium . This year we presented talks, demos, workshops, and tutorials on social network technologies, electronic health record informatics, interaction design and children, information visualization, consumer health informatics, and more. People presented the technologies they built, or discussed the empirical work they’d done and the lessons they’d learned, or talked about the design methods they used to make the new technologies. (See picture of demo session) This year at the Symposium we had over 300 HCI-interested professionals flying in from the UK, China, Indiana, or taking the metro from Washington DC and more. While this was one of the largest Symposiums we’ve ever hosted at the University, we also had the largest virtual presence of participants with many who followed the Symposium’s happenings and discussions through tweets.

Demonstrations during the HCIL Annual Symposium

One our favorite tweets of the two days was from someone outside of the lab, Brian Danielak (otherwise known as @Capbri) a second-year Ph.D. student in Science Education in the College of Education at the University of Maryland. He said in his 140 characters: "The #hcil has an astoundingly positive research culture. Why can't more academic research groups be like this?" This tweet prompted Erika Shehan Poole (@verbicidal) an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University to ask, “What are some of the #hcil best practices for fostering positivity in research culture? help other groups learn!” What was so wonderful about this exchange is that Erica is someone entirely outside of our University and did not even attend the symposium, but was able to be a part of the discussion!

Well, Ben Bederson (@bederson), one of the former Directors of the HCIL did respond with 6 more tweets offering his suggestions for best practices:

“Best practices for #HCIL: Start by reading @benbendc '93 article - http://bit.ly/lFzV0e”

“Second: *always* treat colleagues with respect. Their successes are your successes. #HCIL”

“Third: critique with grace. Be honest, but no one should *ever* leave a meeting crying. #HCIL”

“Fourth: Focus your work on what you love. Life is too short to do what you *should* do. #HCIL”

“Fifth: Only hire people you want to have lunch with every day. #HCIL”

“Sixth: Marry your colleagues :) Our Fourth CHIple is joining #HCIL next year.”

The only tweet that was questioned was the number of married couples in the lab ;) It turns out we will have 5 married couples as of January (Ben Bederson and I are one of those couples). If you want to see the some of the other backchannel tweeting, you can do so by searching for “#HCIL” on Twitter. There you’ll find everything from pointers to articles that reporters wrote about our talks: “@lintool: This Is What a Sabbatical at Twitter Looks Like - @chronicle article: http://bit.ly/ivgCNJ #HCIL” to short descriptions of what was happening: “@cydparr: Morning of demos at #hcil open house. Quick GUI help scripting using screenshots, spatial ability & mobile apps, citation snippets & more” to kind words from our participants: “@ieleta: I wished for a longer EventGraph presentation by @shakmatt, so interesting! #hcil symposium” (see an EventGraph image that Derek Hansen presented below)

A Twitter EventGraph created in NodeXL that shows part of the Twitter conversation about the HCIL symposium. See http://casci.umd.edu/HCIL2011 for details

All in all, it was a wonderful way to continue the research excitement, the exchange of ideas, and enjoy the 28^th Annual HCIL Symposium. See you next year (at UMD or tweeting)!

Growing Research Energy

2011-05-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

The other day, I received this one line email: “I’ve had two of the best Ph.D. days ever!” It was from iSchool doctoral student, Greg Walsh. He had just finished two days of being in the CHI2011 Doctoral Consortium. I knew when I suggested to Greg he apply months ago, he would love meeting students and faculty from around the world thinking about Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) issues. But what I didn’t expect was how much Greg would take away from his two days of mentorship at this Doctoral Consortium.

During this consortium, each doctoral student got a chance to present their in-progress dissertation research and then received feedback from a small group of culturally diverse, multi-disciplinary HCI graduate students and faculty. They suggested which research methods and design might be of use, how to best focus and present the work, and strategies to move the research forward. As Greg explained to me a few days ago, “It was awesome being able to see how far I’d come and how my work related to other doctoral students’ research. Maryland really prepared me in ways I wouldn’t have guessed with my research.” When we talked further, Greg explained, “Not a lot of people are thinking about design methods for creating new technologies. People may mention it as a part of their research in developing new technologies, but not as much about how to change design methods. I was psyched to see how different but useful my research is.”

Greg also explained to me that lately he’d not been feeling very excited about his research, but the doctoral consortium energized him in so many ways. The suggestions he received and the good interest in his work were extremely motivating. He also pointed out that meeting these graduate students and faculty made him feel much more connected to CHI conference community. It’s not every day that a graduate student can walk into an international conference of 2700 people and feel comfortable and welcomed.

The CHI2011 Conference (photo by: articpenguin)

The doctoral consortium is one of several CHI venues in which students can connect with colleagues. The CHI Student Design and Student Research Competitions afford undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to present their work to senior researchers as well as their peers. Beth Bonsignore, one of our iSchool doctoral students earned a spot in the Student Research Competition. Reflecting on her experience she shared: “All of the students in our competition received the undivided attention of experienced researchers for almost 3 hours. I learned a great deal about how to frame a compelling story about my work and had some great discussions about how I might extend it. I also had a chance to hear about the work of other students from all over the world, and share my thoughts about the worldwide use of mobile storytelling application designed for children. Where else can you get such an opportunity to connect with future collaborators?”

Beth Bonsignore & Jes Koepfler at the CHI2011 Conference (photo by: articpenguin)

This excitement and connectedness could also be found with our doctoral students who were “student volunteers” or as they’re affectionately called, “SVs.” This year three of our doctoral students were a part of this CHI conference program: Beth Bonsignore, Jes Koepfler, and Jason Yip. In exchange for 20 hours of volunteer time they were given free conference registration, all meals, and reduced hotel costs. While the conference could not exist without the 150 students that do this each year, the students get so much more out of the deal. They get a chance to network with HCI students from around the world, meet and help HCI researchers from companies, universities, and non-profit organizations they might never otherwise get a chance to.

For example, during one SV lunch, when Beth Bonsignore and Jes Koepfler learned about the “cooking competencies” research being done by a fellow SV at Michigan, they connected him with Jason Yip, who has been designing a “kitchen chemistry” curriculum. Jason discussed the potential for future collaboration with his new-found colleague and me. Through the SV network, a new research area in chemistry education, human-computer interaction, and social media was born. Jason was so excited, he shared, “This has been an amazing experience because of how I get a chance to interact, not only with educators in my field, but with programmers, technology designers, and other people that have a vested interest in education.” At least 5 fellow SVs told Jason, Jes, and Beth how they published papers with student colleagues they met at past conferences.

Jes Koepfler also an iSchool SV at CHI met people who broadened her thinking in exciting ways. Jes’s doctoral research is at the intersection of marginalized populations and social media. As a result of attending CHI she was able to attend the session on "Homeless Users" and introduce herself and her work to some of the leading thinkers in the HCI community on this topic (Jill Palzkill Woelfer of the University of Washington, and Chris Le Dantec of Georgia Tech).

The yearly CHI conference is not the only professional conference that can offer these important experiences for our students. But all too often when we think about what graduate students should be doing, conferences seem to fall to the bottom of the list. The CHI conference reminded us this past week that conferences should be on the top of our list when it comes to growing our research energy.

The Seeds of Research

2011-05-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

I had an hour the other day with a doctoral student in our program who reminded me why I love research. Clay (Eliezer) Templeton told me this incredible story of how he built an Adroid App for his synagogue’s Rabbi and a few weeks later he found himself being interviewed by CNN. It was an app to help people prepare for Passover, which had little to do with his doctoral research. And he happened to mention that while he had some programming experience, he hadn’t programmed an app until he just decided one day to help out. The funny thing is now that Clay’s gotten a taste of mobile application programming, he’s found out he really likes it! So I asked him, how he thought he could use this new-found-fun to add to his research? And then we started brainstorming about perhaps building an app that collects data or one that gets users more involved in the topic he cared about. After an hour, it was clear that the seeds of research were sown.

This well-spent hour reminded me that you just never know where you will find inspiration for your research. When starting a Ph.D. program, the one thing we do know is that doctoral students can never be sure what will inspire, excite, or interest them. When those seeds start to sprout it’s in the most amazing times and places!

Sometimes the seeds of research are sown for faculty when we get the chance to work with talented people outside of the university. This happened to two of our Assistant Professors, Paul Jaeger, and Mega Subramaniam and iSchool doctoral student, Lesley Langa. They came upon the chance to work with Pino Monaco from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies and Beth Ziebarth from the Smithsonian Institution Accessibility Program (SIAP). Together they were just informed a few weeks ago that they received a “Seed Grant” to begin to explore some very exciting research. Below they explain these research seeds:

Mega M Subramaniam, Paul T. Jaeger, and Lesley Langa:

We just found out that we have received a prestigious seed grant jointly funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Maryland to support our project “The Museum Experience of Children with Autism and Their Families: Improving Access through Web and Electronic Resources.” This project is one of the first concrete efforts to explore the integration of the web and other electronic resources as a means to promote greater inclusion of persons with disabilities in museums. This project will identify the ways in which the use of the web and other electronic resources by students with autism from Ivymount School in Rockville, MD and their families can help to make museums more inclusive and enhance the museum experience for persons with disabilities. In examining the museum experiences of the children with autism and their families, the study will focus on the roles of the various web and electronic resources and physical resources in the experience of the museum visit and the effect of the accessibility resources on the attitudes of the children and their families toward museum visits.

This project builds on a wide range of ongoing research at the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC) in the iSchool. A core part of the work at iPAC is finding ways to increase inclusion of disadvantaged, underserved, and underrepresented populations in information and information technology. This project will build on our previous research on access for persons with disabilities, much of which is detailed in the book Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide by Paul T. Jaeger that will be published in October by Lynne Reiner Publishers.

We are very excited about this study, as the findings will contribute to: increasing accessibility of museums to people with disabilities; illuminating the importance of the web and electronic resources in expanding a museum’s audience; and expanding research into the role of family learning with special needs children in museums.

The Entrepreneurship of Innovation

2011-04-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

So often people ask me, “How does research get out in the world?” When that question comes around, to me it means that someone is not asking how best to write her next academic paper. Rather, generally someone seems to be interested in how innovations can see the light of day in industry. On campus, we have a number of resources that students and faculty can take advantage of: the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship which bridges the academic and business world at the Robert H. Smith School of Business; the Maryland Industrial Partnership which funds partnerships with industry; the Technology Advancement Program which offers resources for developing companies.

Here in the iSchool, Dr. Ping Wang leads research in understanding the spread of IT innovation. His work ranges from analyzing the diffusion of Information Technology Concepts in the PopIT project to providing the much needed data and tools for analyzing innovations of all possible outcomes, included failed innovations in the STICK project. Ping works with teams of very talented faculty and students so I would encourage you to look at his research websites.

Ping also created and teaches a course on Managing IT Innovations in Organizations. Recently, he had a company CEO come to visit to talk to students and faculty about the entrepreneurship of innovation. What follows is a summary of this exciting class!

Ping Wang:

On March 10, 2011, Mr. Tien Wong, the CEO of Lore Systems, visited iSchool and gave a guest lecture on "Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation." He spoke to the iSchool students in "Managing IT Innovations in Organizations," a course created and taught by me with the support by the National Science Foundation (grant SBE-0915645).

In 1992, Mr. Wong founded Unitel (CyberRep) with his three friends, in recognition of quality gaps in the call center industry. Unitel grew exponentially and became a leading company in the industry. In early 2003, Wong sold Unitel to Affiliated Computer Services, a global leader in business process outsourcing. Then he bought Lore Systems, a company providing cloud computing services.

Relevant to IT innovation, the theme of the course, Mr. Wong shared with the students his insights on two specific innovations: digital recording technology and remote predictive dialing. As a career entrepreneur, Wong described entrepreneurship as more of art than science, and more of feeling than thinking. He suggested having “4Cs” as a basis for being an entrepreneur, namely confidence, cash, customer, and executive capability. Mr. Wong continued to talk about the best time to start a business, the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur, problems in expanding the business, and ways to attract investors and raise money. Finally, Mr. Wong offered some advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

The video of this talk is available in two parts: Part A and Part B. This event was made possible by the iSchool's collaboration with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The Future of the Past

2011-04-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

In my March 31 blog posting, I first described the Research Communities of our College. With this blog post, we will look at one example from one particular research community’s work: 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.

Dr. Bruce Ambacher is a member of this research community and a Visiting Professor at the iSchool where he coordinates and teaches in the archives specialization of the MLS program. Prior to joining the College in 2007 Bruce spent 31 years at the National Archives and Records Administration in a variety of positions relating to electronic records, digital preservation, standards and archival education. His work included the FBI appraisal project, coordinating the preservation of the Iran-Contra (PROFS) and Clinton Administration electronic records.
Bruce’s current research has been in helping to develop standards for “digital data curation” in collaboration with archivists, Librarians, data curators and scientists. Below Bruce describes where the work is going, and what he is looking forward to in the future.

Bruce Ambacher:
As information specialists we are interested in why and how information is created, why and how it is organized and preserved, and why and how it is used. Preservation, especially digital preservation is key to all of this. We know preservation is not just storing the ones and zeroes. Future users need to know what those ones and zeroes are, who created them, why, and how they are combined. In more formal terms digital preservation involves conveying to future users knowledge of the creator and the provenance, essential characteristics, content, fixity, and curatorial changes to the data over time. It also involves information specialists in developing and maintaining access systems for those future users.

The cultural heritage components of the information community have been seeking ways to ensure the long-term preservation of and access to digital information for more than two decades. The first effort emerged from the groundbreaking effort of the Commission on Preservation and Access, and the Research Libraries Group. Their 1996 report, Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving Digital Information. This seminal work led to a series of international task forces that developed the concepts of what the major components of a digital archives should be, the trustworthy digital repository, and the auditable requirements for various aspects of a digital repository. The first International Standard to emerge was the Open Archival Information System Reference Model, (ISO 14721). The model established a clear common language for a digital archives and a widely accepted standardized view of the structure and process of acquiring, processing, preserving, and providing access to digital information. OAIS became an ISO standard in 2002 just as archives, libraries and data repositories began facing the issue of digital preservation and long term access.

In 2003-2006 I served as NARA’s co-chair of the Research Libraries Group – National Archives and Records Administration international task force that developed Trustworthy Repositories: Audit and Certification Criteria and Checklist. TRAC, as it was widely known, quickly became a way to measure whether a digital repository could be “trusted” to preserve digital information. But the document had its limitations.

Under the auspices of the Digital Curation Centre in the United Kingdom, a new international task force was assembled to refine TRAC and develop it into an International Standard. That task force has worked since 2007 to develop Requirements for Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Repositories . RAC is now a draft International Standard (16363). RAC is a rules based document with clear statements of the criteria and of what information or document types could satisfy each criteria.

You can see why I think this June marks a major turning point in the decades long search for digital data curation standards. I will join a small international group of digital archivists, librarians, data curators and scientists to conduct test audits of draft ISO Standard 16363, The audits, funded by the Alliance for Permanent Access, will be conducted at six volunteer digital repositories in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. The results will be used to refine the draft standard before the ISO member bodies vote final adoption later in 2011.

I believe that in the future the digital curation community will look back on June 2011 as a major milestone on the path toward ensuring trustworthy data by establishing a standard whereby trustworthy digital repositories can be measured and appropriately identified.

Celebrating Research

2011-04-07T21:02:00.000-07:00

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Traditionally a university celebrates the good research of its faculty, staff, and students through promotions, granting tenure, or bestowing degrees. That road to celebration can include: publishing excellent papers in top journals; receiving grants from prestigious funding organizations; giving talks at important conferences and events; even having the national media highlight your research activities and outcomes.

But is that the only time to celebrate? Definitely not--over the past four years the University of Maryland has found ways to celebrate milestones along the way. For example, the Vice President for Research’s Office hosts a yearly university-wide celebration of research for all forms of merit. This year I’m happy to share with you those that will be highlighted from the iSchool:

Paul Jaeger, Cassandra Jones, Mega Subramaniam and John Bertot: Received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for research on access and diversity that supports the Information and Diverse Populations concentration in the Master of Library Science Program. Paul Jaeger and Cassandra Jones serve as concentration coordinators.

Derek Hansen: Co-Authored the highly recognized book on social network analysis: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World, by Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman, and Marc Smith.

Doug Oard was PI with Co-PIs David Kirsch, David Doermann received a grant from NSF for the "Development and Evaluation of Search Technology for Discovery of Evidence in Civil Litigation"

Ping Wang: Was given Best Published Paper Award (1st place) at 2010 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in the OCIS (Organizational Communications and Information Systems) Division for the paper he co-authored with Neil Ramiller entitled, "Community learning in information technology innovation" published in MIS Quarterly

Bo Xie: Was given a Best Paper Award at the 2011 iConference for the paper: Xie, B., Wang, M., & Feldman, R. (2011) “Preferences for health information and decision-making: development of the Health Information Wants (HIW) questionnaire.”

Jenny Preece: Was made a Fellow of the ACM’s Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Academy

Ann Weeks, Allison Druin, & Ben Bederson: Received the 2010 American Library Association President's Award for International Library Innovation for the “International Children's Digital Library” (ICDL)

But is that the only time we can celebrate research in the iSchool? The answer is no—for years, we have been recognizing the ongoing achievements of our community in many large and small ways. My predecessor as Associate Dean for Research, Doug Oard used to give at our college assemblies to each of our faculty a “gold star” made from spray-painted cardboard. Each of us that got grants, published papers, or had a research achievement now have these stars hanging in our offices. Our college has had “Research Review Days,” and this year we honored our doctoral students with a poster award competition. The winning posters included: Jes Koepfler’s work on the homeless, Beth Bonsignore’s work on mobile technologies for children, and Dana Rotman’s work on social computing.

In addition, our labs and centers regularly host research events for the public that highlight the good work of our iSchool community. Coming up soon will be the Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s Annual Symposium on May 25-26.

A more recent way we have begun to celebrate the research at the iSchool has been through tweeting! I thoroughly enjoyed when we discovered our Dean was going to be getting an award—there was a flood of tweets highlighting in 140 characters this wonderful achievement! Look for the #iUMD hashtag and you’ll see many of our iSchool students and faculty tweeting away!

Finally, the newest way we will be celebrating the good work of our community will be through this blog. Each week, I will be sharing news, ideas, activities, and energy of the college! Until next week…

The Research Heart

2011-03-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-03-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

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.