Christina's LIS Rant
Thursday, October 25, 2007
ASIST2007: Notes from our Panel
I moderated a panel on corporate blogs and wikis and I think it went really well. I took notes when the speakers were talking so I could ask questions later, but then I was so eager to learn the answers to my questions that I made the audience wait while I got my answers first! (it's good to be the king, er um, I mean moderator :) )
Jessica Baumgart-
J started out by asking the audience to answer some questions about what they did with blogs and wikis (do you have a blog, do you blog for work, do you read corporate blogs... and so on with wikis). Unsurprisingly, it seemed that more people worked with wikis than blogs.
She then reported on a survey that found that 5% of companies in the UK blog and 8% of the Fortune 500 in the U.S. do. We've passed the early adopter stage and they're more mainstream. At her organization, they decided to have a public facing blog in part because their competitors do and because it's expected, and in part to just communicate about their products and their company.
I think she was talking about her internal wiki when she mentioned that they put meeting notes on it and bugs and things that they're working on... but I'm pretty hazy at this point.
Jack Vinson
Jack talked about how communities are formed. Usually they are formed around a thing, a or around shared values or a common interest. He also talked about why they stay together and why they sometimes disband. (interesting thing here, it really hit home why some communities get so very upset when their branch library is moved -- even if only a few blocks). He talked about how even though blogs are about me, my point of view, etc., they are connected with the world through commentary on news stories and links as well as through comments and blogrolls (still used heavily in some circles). Blogs are also used for requests for help. Bloggers have a sense of audience when they compose their posts.
Jack talked about how there is evidence of community in blogs -- one way is through co-citation (blogs that all reference x have something in common). Also through the typical tools to find things linking in, etc. He ended with discussions of how/if organizations can engineer these communities.
Jordan Frank
Jordan disputed the 5-8%, or at least said that might be true for customer-facing blogs. He has found that 68% of pharmaceutical companies have internal blogs, which are much easier. User cases in corporations are much different from what we think of with blogs on the internet or
wikipedia. He emphasized the importance of time, specifically milestones, in all information in the corporation. He found three main categories of wiki use cases:
Questions (ok, so I'm writing this on Friday so if anyone remembers differently, feel free to comment):
from me: Jessica, you have been blogging on your own blog for a while and recently started to blog on a customer-facing corporate blog. Can you tell us how that differs and what it was like to change over?
Jessica: it's racier (!)
from me: Jack, you mentioned tools to follow conversations on/between blogs. These don't apply to blogs on the intranet. (and I would have like to have phrased it as how do you view community growth or what impact does this have on community growth, etc). How do you follow distributed conversations on internal corporate blogs?
Jack: There are some tools to do this, and you can search (I'm sure he said more but ...)
from me: Jordan, many of the uses you mentioned for wikis and blogs are currently being done by commercial products for project management and bug tracking. What advantage does a wiki give over these products?
Jordan: (a very good answer that made it all clear for me) (ack, hey Jordan, if you read this can you fill in some details?)
from audience: gaining participation?
make it *the* place to go for information on something important. community leaders
from audience: what not to do?
make sure to pick the right tool for the task. have backups. carefully plan what you want to do and how you want to do it. have a graphical user interface.
... I'm actually going to stop here, because I'm going home for the weekend, but I will add more if something occurs to me.
Jessica Baumgart-
J started out by asking the audience to answer some questions about what they did with blogs and wikis (do you have a blog, do you blog for work, do you read corporate blogs... and so on with wikis). Unsurprisingly, it seemed that more people worked with wikis than blogs.
She then reported on a survey that found that 5% of companies in the UK blog and 8% of the Fortune 500 in the U.S. do. We've passed the early adopter stage and they're more mainstream. At her organization, they decided to have a public facing blog in part because their competitors do and because it's expected, and in part to just communicate about their products and their company.
I think she was talking about her internal wiki when she mentioned that they put meeting notes on it and bugs and things that they're working on... but I'm pretty hazy at this point.
Jack Vinson
Jack talked about how communities are formed. Usually they are formed around a thing, a or around shared values or a common interest. He also talked about why they stay together and why they sometimes disband. (interesting thing here, it really hit home why some communities get so very upset when their branch library is moved -- even if only a few blocks). He talked about how even though blogs are about me, my point of view, etc., they are connected with the world through commentary on news stories and links as well as through comments and blogrolls (still used heavily in some circles). Blogs are also used for requests for help. Bloggers have a sense of audience when they compose their posts.
Jack talked about how there is evidence of community in blogs -- one way is through co-citation (blogs that all reference x have something in common). Also through the typical tools to find things linking in, etc. He ended with discussions of how/if organizations can engineer these communities.
Jordan Frank
Jordan disputed the 5-8%, or at least said that might be true for customer-facing blogs. He has found that 68% of pharmaceutical companies have internal blogs, which are much easier. User cases in corporations are much different from what we think of with blogs on the internet or
wikipedia. He emphasized the importance of time, specifically milestones, in all information in the corporation. He found three main categories of wiki use cases:
- unordered
- ordered (like a book), an array
- project team collaboration
- including "wiki" content
- including blogs for meeting notes, etc.
- content type
- importance
- status (to-do)
- assignment (this is interesting - like for:person in del.icio.us)
- category (subject)
Questions (ok, so I'm writing this on Friday so if anyone remembers differently, feel free to comment):
from me: Jessica, you have been blogging on your own blog for a while and recently started to blog on a customer-facing corporate blog. Can you tell us how that differs and what it was like to change over?
Jessica: it's racier (!)
from me: Jack, you mentioned tools to follow conversations on/between blogs. These don't apply to blogs on the intranet. (and I would have like to have phrased it as how do you view community growth or what impact does this have on community growth, etc). How do you follow distributed conversations on internal corporate blogs?
Jack: There are some tools to do this, and you can search (I'm sure he said more but ...)
from me: Jordan, many of the uses you mentioned for wikis and blogs are currently being done by commercial products for project management and bug tracking. What advantage does a wiki give over these products?
Jordan: (a very good answer that made it all clear for me) (ack, hey Jordan, if you read this can you fill in some details?)
from audience: gaining participation?
make it *the* place to go for information on something important. community leaders
from audience: what not to do?
make sure to pick the right tool for the task. have backups. carefully plan what you want to do and how you want to do it. have a graphical user interface.
... I'm actually going to stop here, because I'm going home for the weekend, but I will add more if something occurs to me.
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 5:49 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
ASIST2007: Student Paper Awards
MAPPING SCHOLARS’ DECISION PROCESSES AND FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE
HOW THEY PUBLISH AND DISTRIBUTE THEIR WORK
Phillip M. Edwards
http://sils.unc.edu/~wildem/ASIST2007/Edwards_proposal.pdf
scholarly communication (includes informal scholarly comms and formal)
NT scholarly publishing (journal)
NT open access
NT formal writing & supplements (pre prints, working papers, etc)
NT Open access
- how do scholars decide where to publish their work
- how are these decisions influenced by priorities of publishers , libraries, institutions (maybe also community norms and social ?)
- how can these institutions better support “good” decisions by scholars?
ill-defined decision processes
Rules a la Merton, Hagstrom
Forms a la Garvey et al
Modes of access
lit on ill-defined decision processes (mintzberg, raisinghani theoret 1976)
- unstructured, strategic decision processes
- decision stimuli
- solution types
- identification phase (decision recognition routine, diagnosis routine)
- attribution theory (tetlock and levi, 1982)
- kelley’s vs. weiner’s dimensions of attribution theories
- from LIS literature many sources of influence on publishing decisions
- how do scholars traverse the landscape (make decisions related to their own productivity and impacts of potential outcomes)
rq1: at what stage of the research do they think of venues?
rq2: decision making routines, during the publishing lifetimes of a scholarly project?
rq3: how do scholars explain their publishing/distribution behaviors?
2 dept in one institution
- access to OA in their discipline
- their discipline doesn’t default to oa (physics I guess?)
(he’s picked one social science and one science)
critical decision interview method (like critical incident method but for decisions)
(by doing it after, what is lost?)
sils.unc.edu/~wildem/ASIST2007/Edwards_proposal.pdf
q audience: senior vs. junior
will look at and see how that matters
q audience: which disciplines?
bio and comms
q audience: maybe vertical with multiple
HOW THEY PUBLISH AND DISTRIBUTE THEIR WORK
Phillip M. Edwards
http://sils.unc.edu/~wildem/ASIST2007/Edwards_proposal.pdf
scholarly communication (includes informal scholarly comms and formal)
NT scholarly publishing (journal)
NT open access
NT formal writing & supplements (pre prints, working papers, etc)
NT Open access
- how do scholars decide where to publish their work
- how are these decisions influenced by priorities of publishers , libraries, institutions (maybe also community norms and social ?)
- how can these institutions better support “good” decisions by scholars?
ill-defined decision processes
Rules a la Merton, Hagstrom
Forms a la Garvey et al
Modes of access
lit on ill-defined decision processes (mintzberg, raisinghani theoret 1976)
- unstructured, strategic decision processes
- decision stimuli
- solution types
- identification phase (decision recognition routine, diagnosis routine)
- attribution theory (tetlock and levi, 1982)
- kelley’s vs. weiner’s dimensions of attribution theories
- from LIS literature many sources of influence on publishing decisions
- how do scholars traverse the landscape (make decisions related to their own productivity and impacts of potential outcomes)
rq1: at what stage of the research do they think of venues?
rq2: decision making routines, during the publishing lifetimes of a scholarly project?
rq3: how do scholars explain their publishing/distribution behaviors?
2 dept in one institution
- access to OA in their discipline
- their discipline doesn’t default to oa (physics I guess?)
(he’s picked one social science and one science)
critical decision interview method (like critical incident method but for decisions)
(by doing it after, what is lost?)
sils.unc.edu/~wildem/ASIST2007/Edwards_proposal.pdf
q audience: senior vs. junior
will look at and see how that matters
q audience: which disciplines?
bio and comms
q audience: maybe vertical with multiple
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 4:51 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
ASIST2007: Opening Science to All
Opening Science for All
Phil Edwards (moderator)
Bora Zivkovic, PLOS One Community Manager, doctoral student at UNC (chronobiology), biology adjunct NC Wesleyan, Blog Around the Clock.
• what is a science blog? a blog written about science? a blog written by a scientist or both?
• functions
o public communication of science
o media watchdog for how media portrays science (mismatch btwn media and real article and what it really says)
o blogs in the classroom
o combating pseudoscience, and also trying to get higher in results
o affecting policy
o publish data or research reports (smaller than the “least publishable unit”)
• topics
o humorous takes
o history/philosophy/sociology of science
o science
• blog carnivals
• magazine/journal/publisher blogs (SciAm, Seed, Nature, PLOS, etc)
(Info about PLOSone, all areas of science, not selective, peer reviewed for writing and general stuff, and then it’s possible to annotate, comment, trackback, etc.)
science bloggers write comments very differently than do non-blogging scientist. Science bloggers write very short blunt comments while other scientist write diplomatic letters to the editor with citations and everything
Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Drexel, Useful Chem project, Open Notebook science
continuum
• traditional model with only the scientist and her supervisor seeing the lab notebook, you’ll still miss a lot of good science that will never make it to the journal literature
• traditional journal articles, you can get from your library
• open access journals that are available to all but are still finished works and require authors to pay
• increasing automation of science, moving to human system of computer agents and machines
• agents read/write with zero cost (whether the agents be human or computer)
• selected malaria – neglected, very much needed, and pharma companies are not actively trying to commercialize
• a blog about the project
• a blog about the molecules
• a blog about the experiments
• found that the blog wasn’t good for organizing things so started a wiki
• reports things that didn’t work
• records changes, each experiment one page, can attribute changes
• 3rd party time stamps on experiment versions
• it’s indexed and there’s proof of priority so actually probably safer than keeping quiet (as far as “are you afraid of being scooped”
• tag using InChI, which google can index
• raw data through JSpecView – allows you to zoom in and see the details, reviewers and readers can’t judge accuracy of reported results in the literature bcs can’t see the data. This allows you to see the details
• ChemSpider crawls, and allows you to do substructure searching
• his goal is not to have a server at all
• has made connections with scientists who do related research both docking studies and efficacy against malarial enzymes (forgive the scientific inaccuracy, the fault is mine)
• mailing lists, too
• posters in second life, see: scifooliveson.wikispaces.com
question from audience: in a gov’t lab, trying to sell to scientific directors
J-C B – you won’t really be able to convince people, so you have to talk to the people who are willing and work with them. It doesn’t happen in a day, it took a lot of work
q: how hard is it to handle the graphics?
J-C B – open source software and it works really well, and you can just drag it across
Janet Stemwedel, Philosophy, San Jose State, Adventures in Ethics and Science
Social and Scientific Implications of Science Blogs
Why the web 2.0 tools might help scientist on their own rights (without considerations of social implications to the community)
Science – build scientific knowledge
scientific communication
- sharing results
- training new scientists
scientific communication
- asking non-scientists for resources
- sharing vital info with the public
traditional methods
journal article – long timescale, incentive to be secretive (about methods and findings – maybe accidentally leave out important details), competing interests of reviewers
conference presentations – shorter timescale, ephemeral, you have to be there to participate
press releases, popular presentations – no real back and forth (scientist proclaims, audience tries to understand), at the mercy of journalists, challenges of communicating and translating to a lay audience
knowledge building requires good communication
- see Longino, Science as Social Knowledge [excellent book, i agree]
- objectivity achieved by comparing results/interpretations
- interdisciplinary
- avoiding duplication and dead-ends (replication good, duplication bad, how do you tell the difference)
Worries about the traditional channels
- after work is complete, less back and forth, less input while you’re at it
- amount of information that isn’t reported, what didn’t work
Promising features of blogs
- very short
- less ephemeral, asynchronous, over other blogs
- can involve people from various backgrounds
- free of some of the pitfalls of peer review (conservative)
but
- quality control
- perhaps peer review isn’t as good as it could be, and there’s not a whole lot of reward for scientist to do peer review, it’s squeezed in
- window into knowledge building stages, science as an on-going process
Community within science
- training in apprenticeship and mentorship in how to engage in the community (socialization to a certain extent)
- talking explicitly about how science works
- is there anyone else like me?
- build a virtual community
audience of the willing
- will anyone read this?
- anyone will read this!
- protecting anonymity, but at the risk of lessening authority
- can we shift the culture: more cooperation, more mentoring, better discussions of community norms and discussions
- transparency
- scientists as humans with lives
--- drawing ---
question: publication after posting
J-CB this is a really big concern if you’re interested in IP. We’re not, but I do have patents so I know about that. If you are interested, you shouldn’t do open notebook science. You can do a provisional patent, but that’s a lot of work.
question: talking about scientists standing alone, but what’s the role of the institution?
JS universities are resistant to change, part of the problem comes from judging productivity, etc., by counting number of publications and grant money won. But this can’t change until people who agree there’s a problem move on to the other side of the line.
questions: if you had to a key research question or area that you think is important to investigate what would it be? in terms of the research on how to use blogs and wikis to support science (from JP from Maryland)
JS one of the issues, where do scientists learn how to be a good scientist, how do they learn about ethics and being part of the community. How can blog enable discussions about what it is to be a good scientists
J-CB one of the byproducts of open notebook is to see how science is done. One of the things I’m learning, when others try this, about the assumptions I made about how to do science, that science is done differently elsewhere.
BZ it is a software, publication of a scientific paper is not the end, but it has a life, post-publication peer review.
question from the audience (K.S. from Indiana): a lot of ethics lapses around record keeping, people were talking about electronic lab notebooks, but they haven’t caught on in academy for various reasons. One thought was that blogs could help train new scientists in records can you speak to this
J-CB blogs enable me to mentor the student several times a day because it’s all online. It is what it is, from an undergraduate. Anyone in the world can mentor the student who has competence in that area
JS from cold hearted experience in the lab, electronic lab notebooks are scary because disks can get clobbered, but something on the network is backed up and stable
J-CB can also back up by zip with a button for the wiki
question: archival issues, assignment of credit and assignment of authority, his reviewers for a paper rejected a citation to Shirky’s Ontology article (bleh)
BZ well not every scientific paper is worth the paper its typed on. New guidance on how to cite blog posts in medical papers (from NLM, probably?). Comments for PLOS get DOIs, so you can cite them. What is a unit in scientific literature is getting more ambitious.
J-CB so if you keep your copyright, then you can submit things to Nature Preceedings and get a DOI and it doesn’t have peer review, but it does have editorial review
JS we have to keep making the argument
question: a couple of decades ago, we thought that maybe the internet would help scientists on the periphery. Has this reinforced the stratification. J-C have you been able to expand the network farther?
J-CB I’m willing to work with anyone who is willing to share data, but it might be only bigger institutions that might have
JS huge portion of blogosphere about women scientists blogging anonymously, talking about how to stay in and deal with issues. These women are getting support they wouldn’t have been
-- but if all that counts is the discovery
JS but if the women all decide to give up and leave, then… what women need is not help with the science, but help dealing with the problems and issues with being a woman in a male-dominated field.
BZ open access publishing is essential for globalization of science . PLOS’s latest journal is Neglected Tropical Diseases.
(so sorry I forgot this was PLOS - I told someone it was BioMed Central, oops!)
UPDATE: Links Bora showed are listed at: http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/10/opening_science_to_all_at_asis.php
Phil Edwards (moderator)
Bora Zivkovic, PLOS One Community Manager, doctoral student at UNC (chronobiology), biology adjunct NC Wesleyan, Blog Around the Clock.
• what is a science blog? a blog written about science? a blog written by a scientist or both?
• functions
o public communication of science
o media watchdog for how media portrays science (mismatch btwn media and real article and what it really says)
o blogs in the classroom
o combating pseudoscience, and also trying to get higher in results
o affecting policy
o publish data or research reports (smaller than the “least publishable unit”)
• topics
o humorous takes
o history/philosophy/sociology of science
o science
• blog carnivals
• magazine/journal/publisher blogs (SciAm, Seed, Nature, PLOS, etc)
(Info about PLOSone, all areas of science, not selective, peer reviewed for writing and general stuff, and then it’s possible to annotate, comment, trackback, etc.)
science bloggers write comments very differently than do non-blogging scientist. Science bloggers write very short blunt comments while other scientist write diplomatic letters to the editor with citations and everything
Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Drexel, Useful Chem project, Open Notebook science
continuum
• traditional model with only the scientist and her supervisor seeing the lab notebook, you’ll still miss a lot of good science that will never make it to the journal literature
• traditional journal articles, you can get from your library
• open access journals that are available to all but are still finished works and require authors to pay
• increasing automation of science, moving to human system of computer agents and machines
• agents read/write with zero cost (whether the agents be human or computer)
• selected malaria – neglected, very much needed, and pharma companies are not actively trying to commercialize
• a blog about the project
• a blog about the molecules
• a blog about the experiments
• found that the blog wasn’t good for organizing things so started a wiki
• reports things that didn’t work
• records changes, each experiment one page, can attribute changes
• 3rd party time stamps on experiment versions
• it’s indexed and there’s proof of priority so actually probably safer than keeping quiet (as far as “are you afraid of being scooped”
• tag using InChI, which google can index
• raw data through JSpecView – allows you to zoom in and see the details, reviewers and readers can’t judge accuracy of reported results in the literature bcs can’t see the data. This allows you to see the details
• ChemSpider crawls, and allows you to do substructure searching
• his goal is not to have a server at all
• has made connections with scientists who do related research both docking studies and efficacy against malarial enzymes (forgive the scientific inaccuracy, the fault is mine)
• mailing lists, too
• posters in second life, see: scifooliveson.wikispaces.com
question from audience: in a gov’t lab, trying to sell to scientific directors
J-C B – you won’t really be able to convince people, so you have to talk to the people who are willing and work with them. It doesn’t happen in a day, it took a lot of work
q: how hard is it to handle the graphics?
J-C B – open source software and it works really well, and you can just drag it across
Janet Stemwedel, Philosophy, San Jose State, Adventures in Ethics and Science
Social and Scientific Implications of Science Blogs
Why the web 2.0 tools might help scientist on their own rights (without considerations of social implications to the community)
Science – build scientific knowledge
scientific communication
- sharing results
- training new scientists
scientific communication
- asking non-scientists for resources
- sharing vital info with the public
traditional methods
journal article – long timescale, incentive to be secretive (about methods and findings – maybe accidentally leave out important details), competing interests of reviewers
conference presentations – shorter timescale, ephemeral, you have to be there to participate
press releases, popular presentations – no real back and forth (scientist proclaims, audience tries to understand), at the mercy of journalists, challenges of communicating and translating to a lay audience
knowledge building requires good communication
- see Longino, Science as Social Knowledge [excellent book, i agree]
- objectivity achieved by comparing results/interpretations
- interdisciplinary
- avoiding duplication and dead-ends (replication good, duplication bad, how do you tell the difference)
Worries about the traditional channels
- after work is complete, less back and forth, less input while you’re at it
- amount of information that isn’t reported, what didn’t work
Promising features of blogs
- very short
- less ephemeral, asynchronous, over other blogs
- can involve people from various backgrounds
- free of some of the pitfalls of peer review (conservative)
but
- quality control
- perhaps peer review isn’t as good as it could be, and there’s not a whole lot of reward for scientist to do peer review, it’s squeezed in
- window into knowledge building stages, science as an on-going process
Community within science
- training in apprenticeship and mentorship in how to engage in the community (socialization to a certain extent)
- talking explicitly about how science works
- is there anyone else like me?
- build a virtual community
audience of the willing
- will anyone read this?
- anyone will read this!
- protecting anonymity, but at the risk of lessening authority
- can we shift the culture: more cooperation, more mentoring, better discussions of community norms and discussions
- transparency
- scientists as humans with lives
--- drawing ---
question: publication after posting
J-CB this is a really big concern if you’re interested in IP. We’re not, but I do have patents so I know about that. If you are interested, you shouldn’t do open notebook science. You can do a provisional patent, but that’s a lot of work.
question: talking about scientists standing alone, but what’s the role of the institution?
JS universities are resistant to change, part of the problem comes from judging productivity, etc., by counting number of publications and grant money won. But this can’t change until people who agree there’s a problem move on to the other side of the line.
questions: if you had to a key research question or area that you think is important to investigate what would it be? in terms of the research on how to use blogs and wikis to support science (from JP from Maryland)
JS one of the issues, where do scientists learn how to be a good scientist, how do they learn about ethics and being part of the community. How can blog enable discussions about what it is to be a good scientists
J-CB one of the byproducts of open notebook is to see how science is done. One of the things I’m learning, when others try this, about the assumptions I made about how to do science, that science is done differently elsewhere.
BZ it is a software, publication of a scientific paper is not the end, but it has a life, post-publication peer review.
question from the audience (K.S. from Indiana): a lot of ethics lapses around record keeping, people were talking about electronic lab notebooks, but they haven’t caught on in academy for various reasons. One thought was that blogs could help train new scientists in records can you speak to this
J-CB blogs enable me to mentor the student several times a day because it’s all online. It is what it is, from an undergraduate. Anyone in the world can mentor the student who has competence in that area
JS from cold hearted experience in the lab, electronic lab notebooks are scary because disks can get clobbered, but something on the network is backed up and stable
J-CB can also back up by zip with a button for the wiki
question: archival issues, assignment of credit and assignment of authority, his reviewers for a paper rejected a citation to Shirky’s Ontology article (bleh)
BZ well not every scientific paper is worth the paper its typed on. New guidance on how to cite blog posts in medical papers (from NLM, probably?). Comments for PLOS get DOIs, so you can cite them. What is a unit in scientific literature is getting more ambitious.
J-CB so if you keep your copyright, then you can submit things to Nature Preceedings and get a DOI and it doesn’t have peer review, but it does have editorial review
JS we have to keep making the argument
question: a couple of decades ago, we thought that maybe the internet would help scientists on the periphery. Has this reinforced the stratification. J-C have you been able to expand the network farther?
J-CB I’m willing to work with anyone who is willing to share data, but it might be only bigger institutions that might have
JS huge portion of blogosphere about women scientists blogging anonymously, talking about how to stay in and deal with issues. These women are getting support they wouldn’t have been
-- but if all that counts is the discovery
JS but if the women all decide to give up and leave, then… what women need is not help with the science, but help dealing with the problems and issues with being a woman in a male-dominated field.
BZ open access publishing is essential for globalization of science . PLOS’s latest journal is Neglected Tropical Diseases.
(so sorry I forgot this was PLOS - I told someone it was BioMed Central, oops!)
UPDATE: Links Bora showed are listed at: http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/10/opening_science_to_all_at_asis.php
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 11:48 AM| (1) comments |cites (technorati) |
ASIST2007: Notes from Monday
I didn't live blog Monday's events because I was a bit nervous about my session and wanted to make sure my computer was charged (heh, well that turned out well!). So here are some retrospective thoughts about the sessions.
Future of Institutional Repositories (ok, I did blog this one)
Speed Meeting (SIGs KM, BWP, MGT) -- this was really interesting. I met a lot of people I probably wouldn't have met if not for this session. I did here that we really disturbed the room next door which is too bad.
Wiki a la Carte: Understanding Participation Behaviors (SIGs SI, BWP), Pnina Shachaf, Noriko Hara, Curt Bonk, Thomas Mackey, Bradley Hemminger, Besiki Stvilia
Access & Information Seeking
Decision-Making Framework for Thinking about Information-Seeking Behavior, Irene (?) presented by Nick Belkin
Does Free-Access to Scholarly Articles Increase Readership and Citation Impact? A Randomized Controlled, Multi-publisher, Multi-Journal Study, Phillip M. Davis
Future of Institutional Repositories (ok, I did blog this one)
Speed Meeting (SIGs KM, BWP, MGT) -- this was really interesting. I met a lot of people I probably wouldn't have met if not for this session. I did here that we really disturbed the room next door which is too bad.
Wiki a la Carte: Understanding Participation Behaviors (SIGs SI, BWP), Pnina Shachaf, Noriko Hara, Curt Bonk, Thomas Mackey, Bradley Hemminger, Besiki Stvilia
- Shachaf and Hara's continuing work on community and Wikipedia is very interesting and worth reading the whole article for. I think Shachaf must have thought she had a lot more time because she spent all of her time reviewing the previous work and almost didn't even get to her results. This particular paper was about the talk pages that go with user pages, content pages (and maybe category or disambiguation pages? my memory is fuzzy) I was very disappointed to have a totally irrelevant question from the audience about what to name an internal corporate wiki. Come on guys, wise up!
- Bonk's talk was also abbreviated, but about co-writing and it's interesting that he found that the honors college students basically write offline and then copy their stuff into the class wiki. We sort of wondered if this had to do with grading an attibution and if maybe the honors students are more grade driven. He also talked about the wikibooks - authors are mainly 18-25 years old...
- Mackey's talk... oops, I think the bit about the honors students came from him, not Bonk.
- Hemminger - sort of an overview of conference wikis. People who are likely to read this blog probably have participated in these so...
Access & Information Seeking
Decision-Making Framework for Thinking about Information-Seeking Behavior, Irene (?) presented by Nick Belkin
- I think this is an interesting approach to the problem of making practical use of the decades of information use/behavior research we have; however, I'm not sure, in practical terms, how much we can quantify the multipliers required for each of the decision states. I like the idea of a Bayesian model, too.
Does Free-Access to Scholarly Articles Increase Readership and Citation Impact? A Randomized Controlled, Multi-publisher, Multi-Journal Study, Phillip M. Davis
- Great study, well presented, with a very strong methods and justification. I'm excited to see his final results and read his paper in more detail
- essentially, there are things that correlate more strongly with citation and use than access such as being a review article, being on the cover, etc.
- Seems like this should have been part of my panel instead of the one it was on. How strange. It was also quite strange about the management courses in library schools presentation was on my panel.
- She's actually done web searching to find instances where people were looking for information that they had found in the past. She then coded the surrounding information using Nvivo and had some interesting findings.
- Future work will include more server log analysis, etc.
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 12:23 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Monday, October 22, 2007
ASIST2007: My slides
From: cpikas, 11 minutes ago
Paper presentation given at ASIST2007. Paper itself available 01/22/2008 or via e-mail to first 10 requesters.
SlideShare Link
Somehow the title isn't showing up right now but hopefully it will appear. It's on the Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics of Senior Engineers. These are the final slides (not the ones I showed!) I would be happy to answer questions here or via e-mail.
Update 1/25/08: Paper archived at d-List ¶ 11:24 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
From: cpikas, 11 minutes ago
Paper presentation given at ASIST2007. Paper itself available 01/22/2008 or via e-mail to first 10 requesters.
SlideShare Link
Somehow the title isn't showing up right now but hopefully it will appear. It's on the Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics of Senior Engineers. These are the final slides (not the ones I showed!) I would be happy to answer questions here or via e-mail.
Update 1/25/08: Paper archived at d-List ¶ 11:24 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
ASIST2007: The Future of Institutional Repositories
The Future of Institutional Repositories: The experts and audience debate
Sunday, October 21, 2007, 1pm
Robin Peek, Simmons
Dorothea Salo, MINES at UW
Sarah Shreeves, IDEALs at UIUC
Leslie Chan, Toronto, T-Space
(maybe Michael Leach, his plane is late)
Soo Young Rieh – MIRACLE project
R.P – OA the drama of it all.{PRISM’s motto could be all will be ok if you make oa go away}
Appropriations bill through the House for NIH to require open access. Last week, statement from White House threatening to veto this bill (not for oa reasons).
D.S. – 2 scenarios for how OAs will be in 10 years. Rosy view – OAs hitch their wagons to cyberinfrastructure, data curation, escience movements and support this work and integrate into this movement. Pessimistic scenario – OAs happy talk themselves out of existence, not understood, not resourced, running on poor platforms, Eclectic collections are a strength. Repositories are better placed to make the changes in scholarly communication work for libraries.
S.S. – 10 years is a really long time. Most research universities will have IRs. IRs will go in several different directions: historical collections and records, on piece of a suite of services in scholarly communication, a focus on both. Increasing number of institutions who abandon their IRs – but this is problematic due to promises made upon start up. More consortia to save resources. Reliant on colleague librarians be part of the IR project, are educated in scholarly communication, and are active in outreach efforts to faculty.
audience q: do you think one of the reasons IRs haven’t been successful is that they’re in the library, or are library-based instead of community based.
L.C. -- the more successful IRs are those that have a clear mandate, not the ones who are keeping up with the Joneses. Mandates can make a huge difference. Specialized vs. distributed repositories (PubMed Central vs. a diversity of smaller ones such as molecular biology and astro ones). Scholarly societies should view IRs as opportunities rather than threats. In the case of anthro – very mobile, and may not be affiliated with a large institution so this is more important to have a place to archive data, publications, etc. Why couldn’t AAA develop a harvester to grab things from IRs, from museums, from NIH, and from subscription info to make a better resource. Green and Gold, but also capturing the gray literature.
D.S. – community based is great, but need the library colleagues to get the conversation started.
S.S. – they tried at UIUC to make researcher pages where faculty could make portfolios and link to work both in and outside the repository but these haven’t been heavily used. This has only worked when she has done the deposit for the faculty member. She also has support from the office of the provost. Subject liaisons are so critical to making those connections
q from the audience: is the reason the faculty isn’t depositing things themselves related to the non-usability of the software
SS – we’ve done a lot to try to make it easier. Faculty are uploading things to their disciplinary repositories. Working on trying to get citations off of annual reports, but that’s complicated.
RP – I find it difficult for myself to remember about pre-prints, post-prints, permissions
L.C. – mandates are happening more and more. In Europe and the UK there are more policies to require. Scholarly societies.
SR – I’m on the board of d-list, but I find it difficult to put information there. If you put things in and IR what value are you adding? What is the service model? Shift from getting content to providing a service.
SS – so shift to a model where services are offered, depositing to disciplinary, doing this consulting service, doing data curation, etc.
SR – colleges are emphasizing teaching materials and students work which seems valuable
Audience comment – supports projects on Wisconsin Center for (?), he ingests about 15k digital objects a month, all types of items. He is central to all of the information services, he deals with copyright, he can surface whatever information is necessary, it relies on how it supports the work.
RP – it can’t interfere with my work. We’ve missed something by considering IRs as something different. We are different but we can still learn from electronic publishing or digital libraries research. We’re not taking lessons that came before us, we’re siloed.
Audience – this seems like a lot of what was coming out of the Rochester study, that the faculty wanted a collaborative effort
question on developing countries
LC – moral obligation to create, share, disseminate knowledge. A lot of research is being published in journals that aren’t accessible.
my question: wouldn’t it be better to increase participation in publisher’s access to developing countries for better quality access.
LC – missing research that is relevant to health concerns in the southern countries. quality is building, getting people together to control quality and vet materials. Relevance has to be addressed.
Comment from audience – are these publisher systems sustainable? the coverage isn’t complete.
{as both KT and I wanted to point out immediately – this whole relevance thing is baloney. If that’s all we’re publishing, then that’s all that will go in our IRs as well as our journals. New journal from BioMed Central (I think) on neglected diseases}
LC – there won’t be any access to backfiles
SS – personal experience in Kampala Uganda. They have and IR that was set up for them by Bergen. They are excited about sharing results. Dspace is unreliable for them, they don’t have the expertise to maintain it, bandwidth is sorely lacking. They’ve decided to use it for internal knowledge sharing. Still having issues getting faculty to deposit. We’re not helping the bandwidth, it can take the better part of a day to download a pdf.
LC – a pdf isn’t free if you have to pay for an hour to download it. Try to band together and create a consortium for infrastructure. Program in Brazil where they can give a server with all of the software pre-installed and then the central university technical office can support.
audience – are there attitudes on the behalf of the faculty?
RP – “I have everything I need, there’s nothing in my world I can’t get”. It’s hard to get researchers at top schools to buy in because it’s additional effort. Estimates that it takes 5-10 minutes are way underestimating what it takes someone who doesn’t understand metadata, copyright rules, etc.
Funding sustainability – how will IRs be funded in the long run
DS – DASER, Stevan Harnad said if libraries drop the ball, where is open access going to find another sucker? Could cyberinfrastructure go to OAs and that’s a model. Consortia – yes, to a certain extent, but a lot of the marketing, training, etc., has to be done on a local level. You still have to allocate resources for staff, etc.
RP – not reasonable to have an IR for every institution. There are so many other things to do with IT on campuses.
LC – consortia, senior policy makers understand that it’s a fundamental thing for scholarly research.
SS – if we can present IRs as a set of services…don’t advertise the IR as IR, but as a service
S.R. – in their survey, where did your funding come from. Most time, did it without any resource planning (oh, it’s open source). ARL directors started this and use dspace. Smaller universities use ProQuest and other packages because they can’t support the programming. They didn’t have a long term funding model and they didn’t think it would be that costly.
question from audience – what about outsourcing? how would that make you feel if it were a purchased service so the technical part was outsourced.
SS – there is outsourcing going on. The digital commons software (was ProQuest but is now back to bepress?). With outsourcing what commitments are you making when outsourcing? Not saying I wouldn’t trust a vendor, but you’ve got to look at the agreement. (trustworthy repository checklist?)
DS – technical work is the least of it, it’s everything else that takes the work.
Parting shots:
LC – google is the elephant in the room, offering to digitize our materials but keep the copies. our students might put their stuff everywhere, like youtube, etc., but not in the IR.
SS – services. do a better job of respecting disciplinary differences when talking to faculty (see history faculty). easier to convince a department head than an individual faculty member. Promotion of the college. An area ripe for discussion is the place for IRs in supporting small science and interdisciplinary scientists. Long term planning is required, these are infrastructure.
DS – IRs are in trouble. Original paradigm in trouble – view of donations by voluntary faculty who would push buttons on their own. We need to find better approaches to content recruitment. How can we invent workflows to get content. Capture deposits to SSRN and Arxiv. Capture publications made in IEEE journals that allow self archiving.
RP – IR model was a good experiment. Some things we try will fail, but that’s how we’ll learn.
audience question: IR is an alternate publishing model, can we learn from what publishers have done, it will cost us a lot more to add these additional services on.
RP – mistake #1, should never have given the impression that it would be free. We don’t teach people how to be publishers.
LC – new systems for quality and peer review. PLOSone.
SS – report on university presses had some interesting suggestions for how libraries could partner with them
audience q – is anyone doing anything at fedora.
DS – fedora is difficult to support technically. So much has to be built from the ground up. There are many unique installations that we can’t learn from each other.
SS – it’s very programmer intensive You wouldn’t want to do it just for the IR but for a whole set of library services.
LC – new Mellon Foundation and Moore Foundation grants to help with interface and with usability.
[my comments: we have to understand why scholars publish. Not really altruistic, but for recognition and advancement. Even for large departments, there may not be that many people who really publish in the same exact area. Putting stuff in a collection bound by affiliation instead of bound by subject or equipment use, or whatever, will not make it findable, because it won’t be with similar works, and people won’t find things. There’s a lot of chaining and browsing instead of searching. That’s why the disciplinary repositories are more attractive. It’s only the bosses who will profit from the increased social capital of the organization. Libraries should capture and load things from the disciplinary archives.]
Sunday, October 21, 2007, 1pm
Robin Peek, Simmons
Dorothea Salo, MINES at UW
Sarah Shreeves, IDEALs at UIUC
Leslie Chan, Toronto, T-Space
(maybe Michael Leach, his plane is late)
Soo Young Rieh – MIRACLE project
R.P – OA the drama of it all.{PRISM’s motto could be all will be ok if you make oa go away}
Appropriations bill through the House for NIH to require open access. Last week, statement from White House threatening to veto this bill (not for oa reasons).
D.S. – 2 scenarios for how OAs will be in 10 years. Rosy view – OAs hitch their wagons to cyberinfrastructure, data curation, escience movements and support this work and integrate into this movement. Pessimistic scenario – OAs happy talk themselves out of existence, not understood, not resourced, running on poor platforms, Eclectic collections are a strength. Repositories are better placed to make the changes in scholarly communication work for libraries.
S.S. – 10 years is a really long time. Most research universities will have IRs. IRs will go in several different directions: historical collections and records, on piece of a suite of services in scholarly communication, a focus on both. Increasing number of institutions who abandon their IRs – but this is problematic due to promises made upon start up. More consortia to save resources. Reliant on colleague librarians be part of the IR project, are educated in scholarly communication, and are active in outreach efforts to faculty.
audience q: do you think one of the reasons IRs haven’t been successful is that they’re in the library, or are library-based instead of community based.
L.C. -- the more successful IRs are those that have a clear mandate, not the ones who are keeping up with the Joneses. Mandates can make a huge difference. Specialized vs. distributed repositories (PubMed Central vs. a diversity of smaller ones such as molecular biology and astro ones). Scholarly societies should view IRs as opportunities rather than threats. In the case of anthro – very mobile, and may not be affiliated with a large institution so this is more important to have a place to archive data, publications, etc. Why couldn’t AAA develop a harvester to grab things from IRs, from museums, from NIH, and from subscription info to make a better resource. Green and Gold, but also capturing the gray literature.
D.S. – community based is great, but need the library colleagues to get the conversation started.
S.S. – they tried at UIUC to make researcher pages where faculty could make portfolios and link to work both in and outside the repository but these haven’t been heavily used. This has only worked when she has done the deposit for the faculty member. She also has support from the office of the provost. Subject liaisons are so critical to making those connections
q from the audience: is the reason the faculty isn’t depositing things themselves related to the non-usability of the software
SS – we’ve done a lot to try to make it easier. Faculty are uploading things to their disciplinary repositories. Working on trying to get citations off of annual reports, but that’s complicated.
RP – I find it difficult for myself to remember about pre-prints, post-prints, permissions
L.C. – mandates are happening more and more. In Europe and the UK there are more policies to require. Scholarly societies.
SR – I’m on the board of d-list, but I find it difficult to put information there. If you put things in and IR what value are you adding? What is the service model? Shift from getting content to providing a service.
SS – so shift to a model where services are offered, depositing to disciplinary, doing this consulting service, doing data curation, etc.
SR – colleges are emphasizing teaching materials and students work which seems valuable
Audience comment – supports projects on Wisconsin Center for (?), he ingests about 15k digital objects a month, all types of items. He is central to all of the information services, he deals with copyright, he can surface whatever information is necessary, it relies on how it supports the work.
RP – it can’t interfere with my work. We’ve missed something by considering IRs as something different. We are different but we can still learn from electronic publishing or digital libraries research. We’re not taking lessons that came before us, we’re siloed.
Audience – this seems like a lot of what was coming out of the Rochester study, that the faculty wanted a collaborative effort
question on developing countries
LC – moral obligation to create, share, disseminate knowledge. A lot of research is being published in journals that aren’t accessible.
my question: wouldn’t it be better to increase participation in publisher’s access to developing countries for better quality access.
LC – missing research that is relevant to health concerns in the southern countries. quality is building, getting people together to control quality and vet materials. Relevance has to be addressed.
Comment from audience – are these publisher systems sustainable? the coverage isn’t complete.
{as both KT and I wanted to point out immediately – this whole relevance thing is baloney. If that’s all we’re publishing, then that’s all that will go in our IRs as well as our journals. New journal from BioMed Central (I think) on neglected diseases}
LC – there won’t be any access to backfiles
SS – personal experience in Kampala Uganda. They have and IR that was set up for them by Bergen. They are excited about sharing results. Dspace is unreliable for them, they don’t have the expertise to maintain it, bandwidth is sorely lacking. They’ve decided to use it for internal knowledge sharing. Still having issues getting faculty to deposit. We’re not helping the bandwidth, it can take the better part of a day to download a pdf.
LC – a pdf isn’t free if you have to pay for an hour to download it. Try to band together and create a consortium for infrastructure. Program in Brazil where they can give a server with all of the software pre-installed and then the central university technical office can support.
audience – are there attitudes on the behalf of the faculty?
RP – “I have everything I need, there’s nothing in my world I can’t get”. It’s hard to get researchers at top schools to buy in because it’s additional effort. Estimates that it takes 5-10 minutes are way underestimating what it takes someone who doesn’t understand metadata, copyright rules, etc.
Funding sustainability – how will IRs be funded in the long run
DS – DASER, Stevan Harnad said if libraries drop the ball, where is open access going to find another sucker? Could cyberinfrastructure go to OAs and that’s a model. Consortia – yes, to a certain extent, but a lot of the marketing, training, etc., has to be done on a local level. You still have to allocate resources for staff, etc.
RP – not reasonable to have an IR for every institution. There are so many other things to do with IT on campuses.
LC – consortia, senior policy makers understand that it’s a fundamental thing for scholarly research.
SS – if we can present IRs as a set of services…don’t advertise the IR as IR, but as a service
S.R. – in their survey, where did your funding come from. Most time, did it without any resource planning (oh, it’s open source). ARL directors started this and use dspace. Smaller universities use ProQuest and other packages because they can’t support the programming. They didn’t have a long term funding model and they didn’t think it would be that costly.
question from audience – what about outsourcing? how would that make you feel if it were a purchased service so the technical part was outsourced.
SS – there is outsourcing going on. The digital commons software (was ProQuest but is now back to bepress?). With outsourcing what commitments are you making when outsourcing? Not saying I wouldn’t trust a vendor, but you’ve got to look at the agreement. (trustworthy repository checklist?)
DS – technical work is the least of it, it’s everything else that takes the work.
Parting shots:
LC – google is the elephant in the room, offering to digitize our materials but keep the copies. our students might put their stuff everywhere, like youtube, etc., but not in the IR.
SS – services. do a better job of respecting disciplinary differences when talking to faculty (see history faculty). easier to convince a department head than an individual faculty member. Promotion of the college. An area ripe for discussion is the place for IRs in supporting small science and interdisciplinary scientists. Long term planning is required, these are infrastructure.
DS – IRs are in trouble. Original paradigm in trouble – view of donations by voluntary faculty who would push buttons on their own. We need to find better approaches to content recruitment. How can we invent workflows to get content. Capture deposits to SSRN and Arxiv. Capture publications made in IEEE journals that allow self archiving.
RP – IR model was a good experiment. Some things we try will fail, but that’s how we’ll learn.
audience question: IR is an alternate publishing model, can we learn from what publishers have done, it will cost us a lot more to add these additional services on.
RP – mistake #1, should never have given the impression that it would be free. We don’t teach people how to be publishers.
LC – new systems for quality and peer review. PLOSone.
SS – report on university presses had some interesting suggestions for how libraries could partner with them
audience q – is anyone doing anything at fedora.
DS – fedora is difficult to support technically. So much has to be built from the ground up. There are many unique installations that we can’t learn from each other.
SS – it’s very programmer intensive You wouldn’t want to do it just for the IR but for a whole set of library services.
LC – new Mellon Foundation and Moore Foundation grants to help with interface and with usability.
[my comments: we have to understand why scholars publish. Not really altruistic, but for recognition and advancement. Even for large departments, there may not be that many people who really publish in the same exact area. Putting stuff in a collection bound by affiliation instead of bound by subject or equipment use, or whatever, will not make it findable, because it won’t be with similar works, and people won’t find things. There’s a lot of chaining and browsing instead of searching. That’s why the disciplinary repositories are more attractive. It’s only the bosses who will profit from the increased social capital of the organization. Libraries should capture and load things from the disciplinary archives.]
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 11:31 AM| (2) comments |cites (technorati) |
OT: Copley Movie Premiere
My brother in law, Alex Pikas' movie is premiering in Bethesda, Maryland on the 25th at 7:30. There's a trailer and stuff at: http://www.copleymovie.com/index2.html. I've seen a semi-final version and it's pretty scary/creepy -- perfect for Halloween. You can buy tickets to the premiere at the url linked from the title. I'm looking forward to the premiere although I don't have a high tolerance for scary.
Update: The premiere was great. Alex polished the movie since last time I saw it and it was even more suspenseful and scary (without being gory). Gotta send some link love for the family :)
Update: The premiere was great. Alex polished the movie since last time I saw it and it was even more suspenseful and scary (without being gory). Gotta send some link love for the family :)
- blogged by a local tv station: http://www.wusa9.com/news/columnist/blogs/2007/10/american-fairytale.html
- the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0984183/
- the trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHorhKddquY
Saturday, October 20, 2007
My ASIST Schedule
Is on google calendar as I figure out where I'll be.
BTW - I can't communicate with the Potomac Valley Chapter - my e-mails are blocked because of a suspicious header and I can't edit the wiki because the hotel wireless IP range has been blacklisted by the wiki software, sigh. Anyway, I am indeed a member of PVC even though they keep leaving me off lists. I'm paid up - I checked!
My sessions are #28 in Lakeshore on Monday at 3:30 and #55 in Regency A on Wednesday at 8:30.
Update 10/21: I mentioned to KT that we were blocked from the wiki and now Brad has left a comment that that hotel's IP range has been whitelisted. I've updated the PVC page to show my sessions. Thanks guys!
Update 10/29: The PVC Chapter leadership, in particular Jeff, has apologized profusely for inadvertently leaving me off the wiki. They in no way intended any slight by it -- they just browsed the program quickly and pulled off familiar names. I haven't been active in my local chapter(s) so it's entirely understandable that my name wouldn't jump out to them. I was very frustrated when I wrote this post, but I really do appreciate all of the hard work the local folks put into keeping the local chapter running.
BTW - I can't communicate with the Potomac Valley Chapter - my e-mails are blocked because of a suspicious header and I can't edit the wiki because the hotel wireless IP range has been blacklisted by the wiki software, sigh. Anyway, I am indeed a member of PVC even though they keep leaving me off lists. I'm paid up - I checked!
My sessions are #28 in Lakeshore on Monday at 3:30 and #55 in Regency A on Wednesday at 8:30.
Update 10/21: I mentioned to KT that we were blocked from the wiki and now Brad has left a comment that that hotel's IP range has been whitelisted. I've updated the PVC page to show my sessions. Thanks guys!
Update 10/29: The PVC Chapter leadership, in particular Jeff, has apologized profusely for inadvertently leaving me off the wiki. They in no way intended any slight by it -- they just browsed the program quickly and pulled off familiar names. I haven't been active in my local chapter(s) so it's entirely understandable that my name wouldn't jump out to them. I was very frustrated when I wrote this post, but I really do appreciate all of the hard work the local folks put into keeping the local chapter running.
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 1:40 PM| (1) comments |cites (technorati) |
Friday, October 19, 2007
ASIST2007: Making Dspace Your Own
These are pretty stream-of-consciousness... but here they are, my notes from this morning's class. Dorothea and Tim were awesome, as expected. Now someone just needs to let me at an installation so I can play ;)
Make DSpace Your Own
DSpace 1.4.2
Why?
Branding – part of your institution, sponsored by the library
Markup quality and accessibility
ex: browse by title is an ugly table with the first column being date
User interface improvements
Institutional needs
ex: dissertations, submission form doesn’t have a field for advisor
Version 1.4.2 is stable
Have a test server and roll out changes there first, not on the production server
version control for local changes (subversion is probably better for this than cvs; eclipse will make your life easier, see easyeclipse.org, the one for a java server environment)
Java basics for Dspace
JSP (java server pages) create the html, we could edit the html around the java without too much trouble
jsp tags – jsp: (maybe sort of like macros?)
java servlets – takes user requests made through the UI and returns the JSP which displays the html page to the user
What pieces are relevant to people customizing?
folders:
config
etc
jsp
src
source folder, and folder with compiled dspce
(q: can we have multiple licenses. Custom for each collection, but not community right now.)
(q: can we have different access rights? either manually or just really plan on doing it at the collection level – when something is submitted it gets the access level for that collection and if you go back and change the collection policies, it doesn’t propagate to things already in the collection, you have to do that manually. This is a known issue)
(q: can we lock down the metadata as well as the full text? uh, that’s a known issue, and the answer is no. You could set up another instance, one that’s completely locked down. Cambridge is looking at having an embargo instance.)
(q: is there a way to handle embargos? uh, no, but there is a database hack out there. Tim is building it into the configurable submission system so that you could say show this item after x long or so that you could say limit to x community, but not yet)
config > input-forms.xml
type of content, languages, website (as a type of content), metadata input screens
config > messages.properties
ex: all messages talk about dspace but you would want to talk about [jscholarship]
etc>dspace-web.xml
ex: maps url to servlet, she did it to have about pages
jsp>local
(she sets jsp folder to read only so she doesn’t accidentally change something there only use local folder) it uses the local folder first, make sure to keep the folder structure the same in local as in jsp, if you upgrade dspace it will never write over the local folder. if there’s a new feature jsp, then your local folder will override that.
src>org>dspace>app>webui
Basic text customizations
messages.properties
jsp.community-home.heading1 = Community Home Page
view source on page, then go and look for
fmt:message key=’jsp….
then you can go and change it
stay out of the <% %> but XHTML can be customized (in jsp local)
CSS are in the /jsp/styles.css.jsp (can make css not jsps, but either way), move it to local
Header and footer
/jsp/layout
you can have more than one set of headers and footers in dspace (like if you’re a consortium)
dspace:layout style=”mystyle”…
header-myStyle.jsp
so for a different one you would use dspace:layout style=”anotherstyle”
header-anotherstyle.jsp
Metadata schema
- it doesn’t do hierarchical
- it will do etdms
- add another schema from the admin gui http://mydspace/dspace-admi
- web form to add another field to an existing thing or move fields between schemas
- item display
/config/dspace.cfg
and /config/language/messages.properties (to add a label)
webui.itemdisplay.default = dc.title \ ….
messages.properties and add
metadata.dc.x
then rebuild
add a browse index
ex: advisors
Search options
/config/dspace.cfg
and /jsp/search/advanced.jsp
search.index.1 = author.contributor.*
(key and then what you would be indexing for that search)
(IdEALS limits are just more search fields)
Full text indexing options
- add filters for different file types
- not completely full text, but you can change how much is indexed (max field length, can change to a -1 for it to be everything – they’ve done -1 and haven’t had any problems, but they really don’t have a lot of huge files; also people are using Google to find their stuff- like 90%)
- for images (jpg or png) it makes thumbnails, 80x80 is default
ex: dspace.cfg; webui.browse.thumbnail.show = false
whether it shows up in various views (see Swinburne example), if the thumbnail links to the item page or to the actual file
Image previews – like watermarking at the bottom of the image, actually embedded in the image
Controlled vocabulary
config/controlled-vocabularies/
xml files with nodes, is composed by
- a few come with because the rights aren’t available
- you can add your own
- copy an existing one and replace the terms
- see Bergen
- get a screen in the submission process
(q: can user suggest or add terms to cv in the submission project, does add higher level terms when you select a child term)
- have to do a transform to get a file from the xml to the dspace format
- see on the dspace mailing lists to see if someone has done this transform (for MeSH someone probably has)
Customize input form fields for type of record
- pages
- vocabularly>srsc
RSS feeds
- what shows in them
- at community or collection level (better if you have a very active site)
Stats
- sort of a hassle to set up
- not very useful
- it’s been requested, and people have been working toward it (thanks to funding from Google summer of code)
- doesn’t filter out the search engines and robots
Checksum checker
- to make sure your files are all the same as they were, sets off alarms if something changes
Part II: Dspace 1.5 and Manakin
1.5 will still have all of the customizing things shown for 1.4.2
To be released Early 2008
Configurable submission (Tim’s contribution)
(btw: IDEALS has the license first)
can now change the order of steps
upload before describe so that you can take information from the file to customize the describe fields provided
http://test.ideals.uiuc.edu – can see, can ask and get permission to see the submission process and submit to a test collection
access step
- access and privacy settings
- default public
- options – only uiuc for 12 months, only uiuc, or only a small group (staff will ask you
(q: how does it know you’re uiuc, directory login or IP range
they did it where faculty, staff, graduate students can submit to a generic uncategorized collection directly just by login with their net directory login, removes a barrier, )
(they use genre as checkboxes not dropdown)
(most of the content comes from a dept as a whole instead of from individual users)
wait for 1.5 to make it more stable
/config/item-submission.xml
can make different submission processes for different collections
looking at figuring out a place to put custom steps, etc., for people to share
Manakin 1.1
will come with 1.5
new interface for dspace, more modular, tiered, extendable
branding of repository, community, collection, item
(this would be great for the divisions of mpow)
see jobim archive – very cool image display
with 1.5 you can still use jsp-ui or can use manakin
for manakin, you’ll do better with some knowledge of xslt
tiered development
- style tier, simple themes using xhtml + css
- theme tier, complex themes using xsl + xhtml + css
- aspect, add features using cocoon + java
apache cocoon
see slide 35
manakin version
see slide 36
DRI (“dry”)- digital repository interface
(for any mankin site can put ?XML at the end of url to see the XML w/out transformation, so you can see what’s going on.
an aspect works across a site
core
- artifact browser
- e-person
- submission
- administration
themes
self contained
can have multiple themes for a page
example of an aspect might be to have a third party submitter but the license being e-mailed off to the copyright holder for approval
Manakin could potentially work with fedora or e-prints if you updated the communications
(a number of institutions are thinking about running both, Indiana is really working on trying to do both together, theoretically manakin could go over both dspace and fedora)
(q: can we develop manakin now and then upgrade? can develop themes and everything now and wouldn’t lose that when you upgrade to 1.5)
Metadata handlers
dspace.cfg
different for items, collections, communities
4 “display types”
in manakin messages.xml file spell check!
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/tdonohue/www/asist2007 (slides)
(or google dspace how-to)
Make DSpace Your Own
DSpace 1.4.2
Why?
Branding – part of your institution, sponsored by the library
Markup quality and accessibility
ex: browse by title is an ugly table with the first column being date
User interface improvements
Institutional needs
ex: dissertations, submission form doesn’t have a field for advisor
Version 1.4.2 is stable
Have a test server and roll out changes there first, not on the production server
version control for local changes (subversion is probably better for this than cvs; eclipse will make your life easier, see easyeclipse.org, the one for a java server environment)
Java basics for Dspace
JSP (java server pages) create the html, we could edit the html around the java without too much trouble
jsp tags – jsp: (maybe sort of like macros?)
java servlets – takes user requests made through the UI and returns the JSP which displays the html page to the user
What pieces are relevant to people customizing?
folders:
config
etc
jsp
src
source folder, and folder with compiled dspce
(q: can we have multiple licenses. Custom for each collection, but not community right now.)
(q: can we have different access rights? either manually or just really plan on doing it at the collection level – when something is submitted it gets the access level for that collection and if you go back and change the collection policies, it doesn’t propagate to things already in the collection, you have to do that manually. This is a known issue)
(q: can we lock down the metadata as well as the full text? uh, that’s a known issue, and the answer is no. You could set up another instance, one that’s completely locked down. Cambridge is looking at having an embargo instance.)
(q: is there a way to handle embargos? uh, no, but there is a database hack out there. Tim is building it into the configurable submission system so that you could say show this item after x long or so that you could say limit to x community, but not yet)
config > input-forms.xml
type of content, languages, website (as a type of content), metadata input screens
config > messages.properties
ex: all messages talk about dspace but you would want to talk about [jscholarship]
etc>dspace-web.xml
ex: maps url to servlet, she did it to have about pages
jsp>local
(she sets jsp folder to read only so she doesn’t accidentally change something there only use local folder) it uses the local folder first, make sure to keep the folder structure the same in local as in jsp, if you upgrade dspace it will never write over the local folder. if there’s a new feature jsp, then your local folder will override that.
src>org>dspace>app>webui
Basic text customizations
messages.properties
jsp.community-home.heading1 = Community Home Page
view source on page, then go and look for
fmt:message key=’jsp….
then you can go and change it
stay out of the <% %> but XHTML can be customized (in jsp local)
CSS are in the /jsp/styles.css.jsp (can make css not jsps, but either way), move it to local
Header and footer
/jsp/layout
you can have more than one set of headers and footers in dspace (like if you’re a consortium)
dspace:layout style=”mystyle”…
header-myStyle.jsp
so for a different one you would use dspace:layout style=”anotherstyle”
header-anotherstyle.jsp
Metadata schema
- it doesn’t do hierarchical
- it will do etdms
- add another schema from the admin gui http://mydspace/dspace-admi
- web form to add another field to an existing thing or move fields between schemas
- item display
/config/dspace.cfg
and /config/language/messages.properties (to add a label)
webui.itemdisplay.default = dc.title \ ….
messages.properties and add
metadata.dc.x
then rebuild
add a browse index
ex: advisors
Search options
/config/dspace.cfg
and /jsp/search/advanced.jsp
search.index.1 = author.contributor.*
(key and then what you would be indexing for that search)
(IdEALS limits are just more search fields)
Full text indexing options
- add filters for different file types
- not completely full text, but you can change how much is indexed (max field length, can change to a -1 for it to be everything – they’ve done -1 and haven’t had any problems, but they really don’t have a lot of huge files; also people are using Google to find their stuff- like 90%)
- for images (jpg or png) it makes thumbnails, 80x80 is default
ex: dspace.cfg; webui.browse.thumbnail.show = false
whether it shows up in various views (see Swinburne example), if the thumbnail links to the item page or to the actual file
Image previews – like watermarking at the bottom of the image, actually embedded in the image
Controlled vocabulary
config/controlled-vocabularies/
xml files with nodes, is composed by
- a few come with because the rights aren’t available
- you can add your own
- copy an existing one and replace the terms
- see Bergen
- get a screen in the submission process
(q: can user suggest or add terms to cv in the submission project, does add higher level terms when you select a child term)
- have to do a transform to get a file from the xml to the dspace format
- see on the dspace mailing lists to see if someone has done this transform (for MeSH someone probably has)
Customize input form fields for type of record
- pages
- vocabularly>srsc
RSS feeds
- what shows in them
- at community or collection level (better if you have a very active site)
Stats
- sort of a hassle to set up
- not very useful
- it’s been requested, and people have been working toward it (thanks to funding from Google summer of code)
- doesn’t filter out the search engines and robots
Checksum checker
- to make sure your files are all the same as they were, sets off alarms if something changes
Part II: Dspace 1.5 and Manakin
1.5 will still have all of the customizing things shown for 1.4.2
To be released Early 2008
Configurable submission (Tim’s contribution)
(btw: IDEALS has the license first)
can now change the order of steps
upload before describe so that you can take information from the file to customize the describe fields provided
http://test.ideals.uiuc.edu – can see, can ask and get permission to see the submission process and submit to a test collection
access step
- access and privacy settings
- default public
- options – only uiuc for 12 months, only uiuc, or only a small group (staff will ask you
(q: how does it know you’re uiuc, directory login or IP range
they did it where faculty, staff, graduate students can submit to a generic uncategorized collection directly just by login with their net directory login, removes a barrier, )
(they use genre as checkboxes not dropdown)
(most of the content comes from a dept as a whole instead of from individual users)
wait for 1.5 to make it more stable
/config/item-submission.xml
can make different submission processes for different collections
looking at figuring out a place to put custom steps, etc., for people to share
Manakin 1.1
will come with 1.5
new interface for dspace, more modular, tiered, extendable
branding of repository, community, collection, item
(this would be great for the divisions of mpow)
see jobim archive – very cool image display
with 1.5 you can still use jsp-ui or can use manakin
for manakin, you’ll do better with some knowledge of xslt
tiered development
- style tier, simple themes using xhtml + css
- theme tier, complex themes using xsl + xhtml + css
- aspect, add features using cocoon + java
apache cocoon
see slide 35
manakin version
see slide 36
DRI (“dry”)- digital repository interface
(for any mankin site can put ?XML at the end of url to see the XML w/out transformation, so you can see what’s going on.
an aspect works across a site
core
- artifact browser
- e-person
- submission
- administration
themes
self contained
can have multiple themes for a page
example of an aspect might be to have a third party submitter but the license being e-mailed off to the copyright holder for approval
Manakin could potentially work with fedora or e-prints if you updated the communications
(a number of institutions are thinking about running both, Indiana is really working on trying to do both together, theoretically manakin could go over both dspace and fedora)
(q: can we develop manakin now and then upgrade? can develop themes and everything now and wouldn’t lose that when you upgrade to 1.5)
Metadata handlers
dspace.cfg
different for items, collections, communities
4 “display types”
in manakin messages.xml file spell check!
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/tdonohue/www/asist2007 (slides)
(or google dspace how-to)
Labels: ASIST2007
¶ 4:03 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Friday, October 12, 2007
Can ownership and control help information sharing in complex organizations?
This is sort of hazy and poorly formed, but I read Landbeck's article [1] and sort of started to think about the community in Flickr vs. the community in Wikipedia and about conflict resolution. Ownership is important in Flickr while the whole point in Wikipedia is to anonymously contribute to the whole (see also my discussions of the nature of communication in blogs vs. wikis, most recently at tech day). Then, just this morning, I was catching up on the JASIST RSS feed and ran across another article on online communities [2] and started chasing those citations based on a comment there, and it gets more complicated, ended up on an interesting article and then looked to see that it was cited 64 times in Scopus, and then went to Scopus and found this interesting article on ownership [3] (whew! yes, we are very rich in information resources here, full text and interlinked databases everywhere, I love MPOW).
Ah-ha. One of my (maybe less well-justified) feelings about KM is that researchers do not like to give up control of their knowledge (or information or data) to be put in some central KM system for various reasons. Nowadays, why can't we federate and exchanged instead of take, copy, lock up, etc.? Things like Ziki do pretty well at gathering online community contributions across various sites -- can't we mark calendar, e-mail, blog, wiki, lab notebook, technical report, memos, whatever, for sharing (internally in the organization), and have these feeds aggregated into a KM system, perhaps preserved, perhaps tagged with some automatic metadata (author is in x department, working on y project, etc.), some semantic information included...
There are massive amounts of research on this so perhaps this has been tried and failed? I just wanted to get this thought out there.
[1] Landbeck, C. (2007). Trouble in paradise: Conflict management and resolution in social classification environments. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 34(1), 16-20. http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-07/Landbeck_OctNov07.pdf
[2] Hew, K. F., & Hara, N. (in press). Knowledge sharing in online environments: A qualitative case study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. DOI:10.1002/asi.20698
[3] Raban, D. R., & Rafaeli, S. (2007). Investigating ownership and the willingness to share information online. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(5), 2367-2382. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2006.03.013 ¶ 10:17 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Ah-ha. One of my (maybe less well-justified) feelings about KM is that researchers do not like to give up control of their knowledge (or information or data) to be put in some central KM system for various reasons. Nowadays, why can't we federate and exchanged instead of take, copy, lock up, etc.? Things like Ziki do pretty well at gathering online community contributions across various sites -- can't we mark calendar, e-mail, blog, wiki, lab notebook, technical report, memos, whatever, for sharing (internally in the organization), and have these feeds aggregated into a KM system, perhaps preserved, perhaps tagged with some automatic metadata (author is in x department, working on y project, etc.), some semantic information included...
There are massive amounts of research on this so perhaps this has been tried and failed? I just wanted to get this thought out there.
[1] Landbeck, C. (2007). Trouble in paradise: Conflict management and resolution in social classification environments. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 34(1), 16-20. http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-07/Landbeck_OctNov07.pdf
[2] Hew, K. F., & Hara, N. (in press). Knowledge sharing in online environments: A qualitative case study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. DOI:10.1002/asi.20698
[3] Raban, D. R., & Rafaeli, S. (2007). Investigating ownership and the willingness to share information online. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(5), 2367-2382. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2006.03.013 ¶ 10:17 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Brilliant ASIS&T Bulletin on Folksonomies
In particular, I like Dr. Miksa's comparison of Google to giant mutant ants.
(oh, and there are some important changes coming down the pike for members, so it's worth looking at the president's page, too)
(oh, and there are some important changes coming down the pike for members, so it's worth looking at the president's page, too)
Labels: ASIST
¶ 10:50 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Lack of current central journal subscriptions directly impedes interdisciplinary research
I've railed against a local large public university library's collection policies. Namely, they do not buy current electronic subscriptions to the most central journals in each of the large social science research fields. (two examples are: JASIST and ASR). Instead, they claim that the most frequent users of these journals will have access through their own or departmental subscriptions. Other users can access (sometimes crappily scanned) full text with a 1 year embargo through various aggregators such as Proquest and Ebsco.
I also sort of follow the view that there really is no interdisciplinary science -- each researcher is so narrowly focused... yadda, yadda, yadda.
Anyhoo- I complain that CS researchers don't read and cite our work, but perhaps they don't have access to it! I also complain sometimes (but a lot less frequently) about lacking ties between communications, psychology, education, and the LIS literature. But, hey, if you can't serendipitously find it, if you don't attend the same conferences, if you can't even read it if you want to without magically knowing about (and having access to) the hidden socy library on the 4th floor of the Escher-like building... ¶ 1:17 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
I also sort of follow the view that there really is no interdisciplinary science -- each researcher is so narrowly focused... yadda, yadda, yadda.
Anyhoo- I complain that CS researchers don't read and cite our work, but perhaps they don't have access to it! I also complain sometimes (but a lot less frequently) about lacking ties between communications, psychology, education, and the LIS literature. But, hey, if you can't serendipitously find it, if you don't attend the same conferences, if you can't even read it if you want to without magically knowing about (and having access to) the hidden socy library on the 4th floor of the Escher-like building... ¶ 1:17 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Saturday, October 06, 2007
You know you're a scientist if....
I've been trying to remember where I saw this blogged, so I'll just put it here. (From xkcd at: http://xkcd.com/242/) ¶ 1:37 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
I've been trying to remember where I saw this blogged, so I'll just put it here. (From xkcd at: http://xkcd.com/242/) ¶ 1:37 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Friday, October 05, 2007
Maryland Technology Day 2007 Notes
I was able to attend only half of this fabulous program because I had class in the afternoon but here are my notes.
First, it was a great design. It was very practical and and drew people from all kinds of libraries from New Jersey to Virginia.
It started with a keynote from Gary Price from ResourceShelf and Ask.com. I could listen to Gary speak an hour a day 365 days a year and still learn something new. The first thing Gary did was to perfectly set up my talk later :) He did this by talking about the roles of librarians and how we need to get the word out better and how traditional communication media are still important (well maybe not traditional, but older technologies such as e-mail). One minor criticism on this was that he spent quite a bit of time preaching to the choir which shortened his time to show other resources.
Neat things:
Then we had the first set of talks. My slides are posted below which is live. You can comment here or on slideshare. I had a great turnout - standing room only. I did a quick survey and there were people from - special (gov't, law firm, corporate), academic, school, public libraries, as well as from vendors and Catholic University and University of Maryland (HCIL and CLIS, students and faculty). Some fabulous questions. I may post some specific comments with the slides but may not due to time and a killer headache I'm fighting.
Then an awesome lunch (I wish I had a picture of the dessert table!). We even had cloth napkins and china plates.
and I ran off to class... ¶ 10:41 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
First, it was a great design. It was very practical and and drew people from all kinds of libraries from New Jersey to Virginia.
It started with a keynote from Gary Price from ResourceShelf and Ask.com. I could listen to Gary speak an hour a day 365 days a year and still learn something new. The first thing Gary did was to perfectly set up my talk later :) He did this by talking about the roles of librarians and how we need to get the word out better and how traditional communication media are still important (well maybe not traditional, but older technologies such as e-mail). One minor criticism on this was that he spent quite a bit of time preaching to the choir which shortened his time to show other resources.
Neat things:
- Ask City - *meaningfully* annotate a map. Click on two points and get directions (walking or driving) between them, find businesses within a box or circle you draw, find the acreage in a box you draw... pretty cool. (see my map of restaurants near the ASIST hotel)
- TerraFly - Gary's been telling us about this for a while, but I hadn't realized all of the public records now available for each location... (see Milwaukee)
- Opinion searching - I've seen plenty of conference papers about this, but there are now some competing things available on the web. (I also talked about doing this at CIL um, 2006 maybe?). One is http://wize.com/
- Podcast to phonecast is pretty cool if you have lots of minutes. (I think it was: http://www.phonecasting.com/)
- Remember NewsNow and Argali
- Ovid's new interfaces
- Knovel adding biomedical engineering, earth science, and Merck
- Morgan & Claypool Synthesis new titles, free trials, MARC records
- CAS, STN - express software free, anavist and viewer
- Royal Society now has a rep in Boston to cover North America
- WoS new interface
- Iconitel - consulting on licensing (I think?)
- the Elsevier guy just read straight from something so you can do that yourself
- L-N , new interface, new tools for all types of information
Then we had the first set of talks. My slides are posted below which is live. You can comment here or on slideshare. I had a great turnout - standing room only. I did a quick survey and there were people from - special (gov't, law firm, corporate), academic, school, public libraries, as well as from vendors and Catholic University and University of Maryland (HCIL and CLIS, students and faculty). Some fabulous questions. I may post some specific comments with the slides but may not due to time and a killer headache I'm fighting.
Then an awesome lunch (I wish I had a picture of the dessert table!). We even had cloth napkins and china plates.
and I ran off to class... ¶ 10:41 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Thursday, October 04, 2007
My Maryland Tech Day Slides
From: cpikas, 3 minutes ago
Presentation given at Maryland Technology Day, Laurel, MD October 4, 2007
SlideShare Link
¶ 4:21 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Pikas Maryland Tech Day 2007
From: cpikas, 3 minutes ago
Presentation given at Maryland Technology Day, Laurel, MD October 4, 2007
SlideShare Link
¶ 4:21 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Organized skepticism, the new scientific literacy?
Seed magazine ran an essay contest to answer the question: What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st Century? The winning essay is the one linked from the title above by Thomas W. Martin titled Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Discourse.
In essence, Martin says that facts or knowledge of concepts are not enough, but that to be literate in science, one must
This is actually all classic social studies of science. In fact, much of Martin's article, and others that have appeared recently along these lines echo Merton's work from the late 30's. Merton (1938) describes the state of Nazi Science and public hostility towards science (sound familiar?). In this work and others, he describes the ethos of the scientist which is "that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science" (Merton, 1942/1973, p.268-9). The institutional imperatives of science are: universalism (applies everywhere and consistently), communism (scientific facts can't be owned, they are made available in exchange for social capital in today's terms), disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (Merton, 1942/1973). Organized skepticism is just this thing that Martin describes: scientists must question everything or at least subject everything to "detached scrutiny."
---
Now, in the way I usually do, to make a huge leap, should Martin's original points actually go for information literacy? Scientists who ask me if they can ever trust a wiki -- they should be telling me that they don't ever trust anything at first look!
---
Merton, R. K. (1938/1973). Science and the social order. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 254-266). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merton, R. K. (1942/1973). The normative structure of science. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 267-278). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Note: part of this was copied out of an unpublished essay I wrote as part of an independent study I'm doing as part of my doctoral program. I'll probably try to re-read this when I'm awake to see if it makes sense.
Update/PS: the second essay is very Polanyi-esque. I do like the classics!
Update 10/12: There are notes posted (and here, oh and a quick note here) from a lecture given by Dr. Sheila Jasanoff on science communication (she's the editor of the Handbook of STS, which is on my reading list). (via Blog Around the Clock). Very interesting ideas here. We underestimate the citizenry, we can't measure science literacy by recitation of facts, trust in science can come through skepticism, communication is a two-way street (indeed!), citizens have to be able to interact with "science" in a meaningful manner. I must go look up some of her stuff. Too bad this wasn't recorded!
In essence, Martin says that facts or knowledge of concepts are not enough, but that to be literate in science, one must
- require evidence
- firmly but civilly criticize each other's ideas
- be able/willing to change one's mind in light of evidence.
This is actually all classic social studies of science. In fact, much of Martin's article, and others that have appeared recently along these lines echo Merton's work from the late 30's. Merton (1938) describes the state of Nazi Science and public hostility towards science (sound familiar?). In this work and others, he describes the ethos of the scientist which is "that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science" (Merton, 1942/1973, p.268-9). The institutional imperatives of science are: universalism (applies everywhere and consistently), communism (scientific facts can't be owned, they are made available in exchange for social capital in today's terms), disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (Merton, 1942/1973). Organized skepticism is just this thing that Martin describes: scientists must question everything or at least subject everything to "detached scrutiny."
Merton (1938/1973) states that society may be hostile toward science if
- There is a belief that the results or methods go against values
- There is an “incompatibility between the sentiments embodied in the scientific ethos and those found in other institutions” (p. 255)
Merton suggests that organized skepticism is misunderstood as general skepticism (or cynicism) and thus incompatible with both religion and loyalty to a totalitarian regime (perhaps any government or political movement). The gap between society and the scientists ("esoteric science as popular mysticism") can be exploited by totalitarian regimes and con men by using scientific jargon for propaganda or selling snake oil.
So, if you really follow this stuff (and all sorts of other stuff I've been reading), more than skepticism is necessary. There's a need for public understanding of how scientists work and a separation between atheism and organized skepticism (sorry for a political religious view!).---
Now, in the way I usually do, to make a huge leap, should Martin's original points actually go for information literacy? Scientists who ask me if they can ever trust a wiki -- they should be telling me that they don't ever trust anything at first look!
---
Merton, R. K. (1938/1973). Science and the social order. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 254-266). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merton, R. K. (1942/1973). The normative structure of science. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 267-278). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Note: part of this was copied out of an unpublished essay I wrote as part of an independent study I'm doing as part of my doctoral program. I'll probably try to re-read this when I'm awake to see if it makes sense.
Update/PS: the second essay is very Polanyi-esque. I do like the classics!
Update 10/12: There are notes posted (and here, oh and a quick note here) from a lecture given by Dr. Sheila Jasanoff on science communication (she's the editor of the Handbook of STS, which is on my reading list). (via Blog Around the Clock). Very interesting ideas here. We underestimate the citizenry, we can't measure science literacy by recitation of facts, trust in science can come through skepticism, communication is a two-way street (indeed!), citizens have to be able to interact with "science" in a meaningful manner. I must go look up some of her stuff. Too bad this wasn't recorded!
Labels: sociology of science
¶ 10:35 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
