Researching Trust and Distrust

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

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

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

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:

1. that has a social impact on the real world which can benefit an individual or the larger society 
2. 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

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

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.