Complete LibTech 2013 Print Program

PDF of the complete print program from the 2013 Library Technology Conferenc

Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

The networking effects of OER

Open Educational Resources (OER) give an openly available set of content and tools that in principle provide a basis for formal and informal communication and collaboration between groups of individuals around teaching and/or learning. In practice, most communication and collaboration around OER appears to be asynchronous, loosely connected and not sustained. The success of social networking sites is also based upon content and tools to enable and support communication and collaboration. However, that success is seemingly based upon more immediate, closely connected and sustained activities. In both cases much is made of the online, virtual aspects of networking and less about its relationship to offline, real world networking. This paper reviews the experiences with the OpenLearn site from the UK Open University which combines open content within a learning environment that offers tools for communication. Drawing upon the action research findings from its first two years of operation this paper describes examples of individual learners and institutions communicating and collaborating online and considers the influences of offline networks. It examines the motivations behind the communication and collaboration and suggests an emerging typology for such effects depending on who is involved and what the drivers (and restraints) are for their activities

The future of social is personal: the potential of the personal data store

This chapter argues that technical architectures that facilitate the longitudinal, decentralised and individual-centric personal collection and curation of data will be an important, but partial, response to the pressing problem of the autonomy of the data subject, and the asymmetry of power between the subject and large scale service providers/data consumers. Towards framing the scope and role of such Personal Data Stores (PDSes), the legalistic notion of personal data is examined, and it is argued that a more inclusive, intuitive notion expresses more accurately what individuals require in order to preserve their autonomy in a data-driven world of large aggregators. Six challenges towards realising the PDS vision are set out: the requirement to store data for long periods; the difficulties of managing data for individuals; the need to reconsider the regulatory basis for third-party access to data; the need to comply with international data handling standards; the need to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies; and the need to future-proof data gathering against the evolution of social norms. The open experimental PDS platform INDX is introduced and described, as a means of beginning to address at least some of these six challenges

Crowdcloud: A Crowdsourced System for Cloud Infrastructure

The widespread adoption of truly portable, smart devices and Do-It-Yourself computing platforms by the general public has enabled the rise of new network and system paradigms. This abundance of wellconnected, well-equipped, affordable devices, when combined with crowdsourcing methods, enables the development of systems with the aid of the crowd. In this work, we introduce the paradigm of Crowdsourced Systems, systems whose constituent infrastructure, or a significant part of it, is pooled from the general public by following crowdsourcing methodologies. We discuss the particular distinctive characteristics they carry and also provide their “canonical” architecture. We exemplify the paradigm by also introducing Crowdcloud, a crowdsourced cloud infrastructure where crowd members can act both as cloud service providers and cloud service clients. We discuss its characteristic properties and also provide its functional architecture. The concepts introduced in this work underpin recent advances in the areas of mobile edge/fog computing and co-designed/cocreated systems