New Tool for Online Collections

Archival collections, impossible to house centrally at many campuses, are about to get easier to use. Starting today, librarians and archivists can upload digital content into online collections with relative ease, allowing them to effectively curate items with open-source tools instead of relying on third-party consultants to build specialized Web portals.

The solution is a software package called Omeka (whose Swahili name means, among other things, “to display,” “to lay out for discussion” or “to unpack”), developed by George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media. The center, which supports numerous projects exploring online archives for historical purposes, also developed the open-source citation management tool Zotero. Omeka evolved from several similar historical archive projects being produced independently at the center, such as the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank.

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Additional details online: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/eresearch08/

This multi-disciplinary, international conference on e-Research will be held
at the University of Oxford from 11-13 September 2008. It is being organized
by a consortium of research projects in association with the journal
Information Communication and Society (iCS).

The Oxford e-Research Conference 08 seeks to stimulate and inform
multi-disciplinary research on the development, use and implications of
information and communication technologies (ICTs), like the Internet, in
shaping research across the disciplines. It will bring together research
from key e-Research projects from around the world examining the role of the
Internet, Web and the Grid in research. The conference seeks to facilitate
scholarly communication and publication on this topic, and help foster a
broader public understanding of the significance of this area to the
sciences and humanities as well as to the public at large.

Anyone with a serious interest in conducting research on the development or
use of ICTs across the disciplines should attend, as well as those with
questions about how new research tools might impact the range, significance
and quality of research. The conference is intended to complement and extend
the activities of key research projects and programmes in this area,
representatives of which are among the organizing committee.

Topics will include, but not be limited to:
*    Major e-Research initiatives, such as e-infrastructure and
cyberinfrastructure programmes in Europe and North America;
*    E-Social Science, including social, legal and institutional dynamics
of e-Research;
*    Case studies of e-Research projects, programmes, and policies;
*    Policy analyses of key issues, ranging from IPR to privacy;
*    Ethical and legal analyses of innovations in e-Research, focusing on
risks as well as approaches to resolving ethical dilemmas;
*    Research on e-collaboration, including new platforms for scientific
collaboration, such as those using social networking sites;
*    Survey research and in-depth interviews focused on the attitudes and
practices of researchers;
*    Usability of e-Research tools, and related issues of human-computer
interaction;
*    Showcasing new methods, practices, and tools afforded by new ICTs;
*    Research on the social shaping and impact of e-Research;
*    Take-up, diffusion and sustainability of e-Research infrastructures;
*    Technical advances of relevance to any stage of research, from
agenda-setting and budgeting to data collection, analysis, dissemination and
evaluation of research;
*    Social and technical perspectives on innovations in metadata, the
development of ontologies, and the semantic Web;
*    Overviews and comparisons of particular schools of research,
including Web Science, e-Social Science, e-Research, and e-Infrastructure
communities.

Individuals may submit abstracts, or drafts of full papers; workshop or
panel proposals; and demonstration projects, which can be showcased at the
conference. Top papers presented at the conference will have an opportunity
to be prioritized for review by the journal iCS.

Conference Programme Committee

Chair: Professor William Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute
Panel Chair: Dr Marina Jirotka, Oxford e-Research Centre

Committee Members

Professor Christine Borgman, Information Studies, UCLA
Professor Alan K. Bowman, Ancient History, Faculty of Classics, Oxford
Professor Roger Burrows, Social Informatics Research Unit, University of
York
Professor Thomas Finholt, School of Information, University of Michigan
Professor Wendy Hall, Computer Science, University of Southampton
Professor Paul Jeffreys, Director of Information Technology, Oxford
University
Brian Loader, Editor of iCS and Social Informatics Research Unit, York
Professor Rob Procter, National Centre for e-Social Science, Manchester
Dr Ralph Schroeder, James Martin Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton
Professor Anne Trefethen, Oxford e-Research Centre, Oxford
Professor Yorick Wilks, Oxford Internet Institute and Sheffield University
Professor Steve Woolgar, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

How to Make a Submission

Those who wish to propose a paper should submit a paper abstract of 500-1000
words by 15 March 2008. Proposals for a workshop or panel session should
define the focus and proposed title, provide an outline of topics likely to
be covered, and describe the proposed format, audience, and any special
requirements. All proposals should include the name of the authors or
contributors, their affiliations, where applicable, and indicate who will
present the paper or chair the proposed panel. Submissions will be reviewed
by two or more members of the Conference Programme Committee, which will
communicate its decision by 15 April 2008. Final versions of accepted
conference papers will be compiled and posted on the conference Web page.

Send all proposals and abstracts to: eresearch@oii.ox.ac.uk
For Registration and Further Information: events@oii.ox.ac.uk

Deadlines

Abstracts (or drafts) of Proposed Papers: 15 March 2008.
Workshop and panel outlines: 15 March 2008.

Authors will be informed of the programme committee’s decision by 15 April
2008.

Full Papers should be received by 15 August 2008

Registration and Fees

The conference will be supported by the Oxford e-Social Science Project and
the e-Horizons project, but a registration fee will be charged to cover the
costs of meals and entertainment not covered by these research funds.
Therefore, the following fees will apply for those registering to attend the
conference:

Students                        £15*
Speakers (authors of accepted papers)                £25
Panelists                        £50
Other attendees                                £75

*Students may volunteer to assist in the conference in lieu of a fee.

More information about the conference and the collaborating centres can be
found at:

Conference Web site: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/eresearch08/

Information, Communication & Society (iCS):
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713699183~db=all

Collaborating Projects and Programmes

e-Horizons Project of the James Martin School for the 21st Century at
http://www.e-horizons.ox.ac.uk/

EPSRC’s Embedding e-Science Applications: Designing and Managing for
Usability  See: http://www.oesc.ox.ac.uk/usability/

EPSRC’s Networks for Web Science Project
http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/F013701/1

ESRC’s e-Society Programme at http://www.york.ac.uk/res/e-society/

ESRC’s National Centre for e-Social Science http://www.ncess.ac.uk/

James Martin 21st Century School, University of Oxford at
http://www.21school.ox.ac.uk/

Oxford e-Social Science Node of the ESRC National Centre for e-Social
Science at http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/oess/

Oxford e-Research Centre http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/

Oxford Internet Institute at www.oii.ox.ac.uk

Social Informatics Research Unit www.york.ac.uk/soci/siru.html

http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/conference/call/

The aim of the conference on e-Social Science is to bring together leading
international representatives of the social science,
e-Infrastructure/cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities in order
to improve mutual awareness, harmonize understanding and instigate
coordinated activities to accelerate research, development and deployment
of powerful, new research methods and tools for the social sciences and
beyond.

We invite contributions from members of the social science,
e-Infrastructure/cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities with
experience of, or interests in: 1) exploring, developing, and applying new
methods, practices, and tools afforded by new infrastructure technologies
- such as the Grid and Web 2.0 - in order to further social science
research; and 2) studying issues impacting on the wider take-up of
e-Research.

Submission categories include: full and short papers, posters, demos,
workshops, tutorials and panels.

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

* Case studies of the application of e-Social Science research methods
to substantive social science problems
* Case studies of (e-)Research and (e-)Social Science research
practices, including benefits and challenges of collaboration (both small
and large scale) across disciplinary and geographical boundaries
* Advances in tools and techniques for quantitative and qualitative
e-Social Science, including statistical analysis, simulation, data mining,
text mining, social network analysis and collaborative environments
* Infrastructure and services for e-Social Science, including data
collection, discovery, sharing and integration, standards for metadata,
ontologies, annotation, curation
* Enabling new sources and forms of sociological data through e-Social
Science, including ethical issues and challenges in the collection,
integration, sharing and analysis of sociological and other personal data
* The e-Research technical roadmap, including grids, web 2.0 and their
future (co-evolution)
* Socio-technical issues in the development of e-Research, including
usability challenges for the design of research tools and middleware,
factors influencing the wider adoption and sustainability of
e-Infrastructure

Submission Deadlines
Paper abstracts: February 11th, 2008.
Workshop, tutorial and panel outlines: February 22nd, 2008.
Poster and demo abstracts: March 21st, 2008.
Final versions of long and short papers: 16th May 2008

Just to get us all in the mood for Open Access Collections in Brisbane on February 14, why not check out this article from The Scientist. Called OA, OK?, it looks at how far open access has come in the past decade. The link is http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/53735/

– Belinda Weaver

http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/

Digital Futures: from digitization to delivery
7th - 11th April 2008, London, UK.
Including visits to the National Gallery and The National Archives

King’s College London is pleased to announce the
Digital Futures 5-day training event for 2008.
http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/

Led by experts of international renown, Digital
Futures focuses on the development, delivery and
preservation of digital resources from cultural
and memory institutions. Lasting five days,
Digital Futures is aimed at managers and other
practitioners from the library, museum, heritage
and cultural sectors looking to understand the
strategic and management issues of developing
digital resources from digitisation to delivery.

Digital Futures will cover the following core areas:
- Planning and management
- Fund raising and sustainability
- Copyright and IPR
- Visual and image based resource development and delivery
- Metadata - introduction and implementation
- Implementing digital resources
- Digital preservation

There will be visits to 2 institutions to see
behind the scenes and received expert
presentations at the National Gallery and the National Archives.

The agenda is here:
http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/digiprog.htm

Digital Futures aims for no more than 25-30
delegates and every delegate will have the
opportunity to also spend one-to-one time with a
Digital Futures leader to discuss issues specific to them.

Digital Futures will issue a certificate of achievement to each delegate.

The Digital Futures leaders are:
Simon Tanner - Director of King’s Digital
Consultancy Services, King’s College London
Tom Clareson - Program Director for New Initiatives, PALINET.
Other experts will be invited to speak in their areas of expertise.

What past delegates say about Digital Futures:
- “Excellent - I would recommend DF to anyone
anticipating a digitization program”
- “I was very pleased. The team was exceptionally
knowledgeable, friendly and personable.”
- “Excellent, informative and enjoyable. Thank you.”
- “Thanks, it has been an invaluable experience.”
- “A really useful course and great fun too!”

Cost: £770 (VAT not charged, excludes accommodation)
Venue: King’s College London, London
Dates: 7th - 11th April 2008

To register, go here:
http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/digireg.htm

The Digital Futures is run by King’s Digital
Consultancy Services and the Centre for Computing
in the Humanities, King’s College London working
in co-operation with PALINET, USA.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Simon Tanner
Director, King’s Digital Consultancy Services
King’s College London
26-29 Drury Lane, 2nd Floor, London WC2B 5RL
tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1678 or +44 (0)7887 691716
email: simon.tanner@kcl.ac.uk
www.digitalconsultancy.net

Digital Futures: 5 day training event for 2008
See: http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/

For those who are engaged in the business of data stewardship, there are two new documents which might be of help.

Michael Witt and Jake Carlson of Purdue University Libraries have produced a list of 10 questions  that “a librarian can use as a starting point” for a data interview.  They see this as a tool to assist with the identification of data sets to add to the repository and to help with the creation of the necessary infrastructure to do so.  See http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/81/ 

From EPrints comes a poster designed to persuade researchers to ensure that their data is properly managed and curated.  It’s a great poster with a strong message.  Take a look at http://www.eprints.org/resources/rgirr2.pdf 

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/12/zotero

The various and competing efforts to digitize university libraries’ vast holdings have no lack of ambition, but access to documents and copyright issues have been two factors slowing the development of online scholarly repositories. Now, an effort at George Mason University seeks to bypass libraries entirely and delve into scholars’ file cabinets instead.

See http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/12/openyale for information on Yale University’s open access course site (only 7 courses so far).

Blurb follows:

“A new online database available from the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) offers the chance to explore nearly 8,000 European oil paintings in Britain’s public art collections.

NICE Paintings (The National Inventory of Continental European Paintings) was launched on 21 November 2007 and will be the first time information on many of the pre-1900 oil paintings have been accessible outside the museums and galleries in which they are housed.

The database has been created by the National Inventory Research Project - a groundbreaking research project designed to gather and present information about Britain’s public art collections. A team of researchers from the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck College University of London visited 200 museums from Penzance to Inverness in order to collate information and shed new light on European paintings from 1200 to 1900. This unique collection is the first phase of a project to record and make public a searchable database of all 22,000 pre-1900 Continental European oil paintings in Britain’s public collections.

Project Director Andrew Greg, from the University of Glasgow’s Department of History of Art, said “This project has been an innovative and productive partnership between the academic world and national and regional museums across the UK. By working with the museums for three years we have been able to uncover a lot of new information on the paintings that the museums themselves often didn’t have the resources to unearth.”

“Through the richness of the information provided on the website the project addresses the lack of publicly accessible information about what is in museum collections as well as the decline of collections research in the UK.”

The research project has been awarded grants from the Getty Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Research contributing to the database has also been made possible by research grants from the Pilgrim Trust, made to 29 participating museums, and the Neil MacGregor Scholarship scheme funded by the National Gallery Trust, which supported ten scholars on the project.

The launch of the database coincides with an exciting new exhibition at the National Gallery, London, from 21 November 2007 to 10 February 2008. ‘Discoveries: New Research into British Collections’ includes revealing examples of new research uncovered by the project. The exhibition features eight paintings, spanning 500 years, from institutions across the country.

The database is available online at: http://www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/NIRP

For more information about the exhibition, visit the National Gallery website at: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/discoveries/default.htm.

For more information about the project please contact Andrew Greg, Project Director, National Inventory Research Project on 0141 330 8519 or 0141 423 7081 (a.greg@arthist.arts.gla.ac.uk)”

See http://ismir2008.ismir.net/ for information on this conference to be held Sep 14-18, 2008 in Philadelphia.