Survey and Analysis of Production Distributed Computing Infrastructures

This report has two objectives. First, we describe a set of the production distributed infrastructures currently available, so that the reader has a basic understanding of them. This includes explaining why each infrastructure was created and made available and how it has succeeded and failed. The set is not complete, but we believe it is representative. Second, we describe the infrastructures in terms of their use, which is a combination of how they were designed to be used and how users have found ways to use them. Applications are often designed and created with specific infrastructures in mind, with both an appreciation of the existing capabilities provided by those infrastructures and an anticipation of their future capabilities. Here, the infrastructures we discuss were often designed and created with specific applications in mind, or at least specific types of applications. The reader should understand how the interplay between the infrastructure providers and the users leads to such usages, which we call usage modalities. These usage modalities are really abstractions that exist between the infrastructures and the applications; they influence the infrastructures by representing the applications, and they influence the ap- plications by representing the infrastructures

Campus-based publishing partnerships: A guide to critical issues

Campus-based publishing partnerships offer the academy greater control over the intellectual products that it helps create. To fully realize this potential, such partnerships will need to evolve from informal working alliances to long-term, programmatic collaborations. SPARCâ s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues addresses issues relevant to building sound and balanced partnerships, including: Establishing governance and administrative structures; Identifying funding models that accommodate the objectives of both libraries and presses; Defining a partnershipâ s objectives to align the missions of the library and the press; Determining what services to provide; and Demonstrating the value of the collaboration. SPARCâ s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships will help libraries, presses, and academic units to define effective partnerships capable of supporting innovative approaches to campus-based publishing

Strategies for Sustaining Digital Libraries

This collection of essays is a report of early findings from pioneers who have worked to establishdigital libraries, not merely as experimental projects, but as ongoing services and collectionsintended to be sustained over time in ways consistent with the long-held practices of print-basedlibraries. Particularly during this period of extreme technological transition, it is imperative thatprograms across the nation – and indeed the world – actively share their innovations,experiences, and techniques in order to begin cultivating new isomorphic, or commonly held,practices. The collective sentiment of the field is that we must begin to transition from apunctuated, project-based mode of advancing innovative information services to an ongoingprogrammatic mode of sustaining digital libraries for the long haul

The Scholar's Dashboard: Creating a multidisciplinary tool via design and build workshops (OhioLINK)

The Scholar's Dashboard project is a series of three two-day design and build workshops, teaming humanities scholars, librarians, and technologists in innovative application development to optimize use of humanities collections from the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons (DRC). The DRC is a 500,000 item open access collection from Ohio academic and cultural heritage organizations. Dashboard users will select and combine collections, add descriptions and metadata, and re-visualize and re-present information. DRC collections with relevant information (oral histories, narratives, records, documents, images, e.g.) will form the design base. Design and build workshops allow researchers and scholars to specify features needed to rapidly expand DRC functionality. This model will then be used as a magnet for further digital humanities collections, as scholars, librarians, and archivists contribute collections in order to benefit from the Scholar's Dashboard design and capabilities

Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) Technical Exchange in Eastern Africa Workshop Report

In 2005, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society published its assessment of key gaps in the use of climate information for health, agriculture, water and other sectors in countries across Africa. The results from the report were less than stellar. After an extensive review of use of climate information in the development sectors of Africa, the authors concluded that the continent suffered from “market atrophy” – the reinforcing effect of zero effective supply of climate information and zero effective demand. Twelve years later, organizations such as the IRI, CSRD, CCAFS, ICPAC, and UKMO have made enormous strides at increasing both climate information supply and demand through the implementation of climate data platforms and the organizing of capacity-building seminars. In order to capitalize on the presence of the many climate and sector experts from across the IGAD region, the organizations above held a joint event, the Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) Technical Exchange workshop, in Zanzibar on August 23-25, 2017, immediately after the 47th Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF47). The workshop was designed to offer potential and existing users a platform to voice their needs for the development and better use of historical, monitored and forecast information for the management of drought across climate-sensitive sectors

Smart cities : concepts, perceptions and lessons for planners

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-137).Today, there appears to be a visible trend in the use of the "smart" prefix. For example, cities are branding themselves as, or striving to become "smart" cities. Planners and policy-makers espouse "smart growth". Infrastructure planning involves "smart grids" for energy, "smart networks" for information and communications technologies (ICTs) and "smart mobility" in transportation. The "smart" term has also been stretched, where being "smart" is trounced by being "smarter". Being "smart", or "smarter", is perhaps seen as the next frontier for city planning, policy-making and management. A common underlying theme in "smart" cities is the application of technology to city planning and management, that leads to greater optimization of time and resources. However, definitions of "smart" cities remain elusive, and an inadequate understanding may lead cities to possible image or technological traps, heavy investments in ICTs and infrastructure without maximizing their potential, or to focus on "smart" technologies for short-term solutions without adequately considering the long term. As cities grapple with rapid urbanization and goals for sustainable development, resource management and climate change mitigation, learning about being "smart" will be timely and invaluable for planners. This study examines six "smart" cities - Boston, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro - assessing city officials' perceptions and concepts of "smart cities" and their "smart" initiatives. Their efforts and approaches are analyzed against four theories of "smart" cities; (a) "smart machines" and organization, (b) engaging communities, organizations and businesses, (c) learning and adaptation, and (d) investing for the future. From the research, learning points and best practices are extracted, to serve as an applicable guide for cities as they embark on their "smart" initiatives.by Tuan-Yee Ching.M.C.P

Toward a Nevada Digital Collaborative

In mid-2008, a statewide committee was formed to engage in a comprehensive, Nevada statewide digital planning process. This group consisted of broad membership from the range of Nevada cultural heritage institutions, and was focused on creating a five year digital plan for the state, with an emphasis on collaboration amongst various cultural heritage institutions, increased digitization, and adoption of a digital preservation strategy. This article describes the initial work of the parent committee and two subsequent working groups, funded by the Library Technology and Services Act and aided by outside consultants. Early steps included a comprehensive planning survey and various meetings to understand the capabilities and desires of both primary stakeholders and the community at large. While several challenges not necessarily unique to Nevada arose over the first couple of years, a clear path forward for additional progress has been charted