Learning by building digital libraries

The implications of using digital library software in educational contexts, for both students and software developers, are discussed using two case studies of students building digital libraries

Fedora Goes to School: Experiences Creating a Curriculum Customization Service for K-12 Teachers

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Fedora User Group PresentationsDate: 2009-05-20 01:30 PM – 03:00 PMEducational digital libraries provide a rich array of learning resources uniquely suited to support teachers to customize instruction. The problem we address is how to customize instruction to meet the learning needs of increasingly diverse student populations while ensuring that district learning goals and national and state standards are being met. This tension between supporting customization while supporting standards is further complicated by the challenges of scale: large urban school districts need technology infrastructure to support teachers district-wide to tailor curriculum, while still ensuring fidelity to learning goals. In partnership with Denver Public Schools (DPS), we are using open source digital library infrastructure available through the NSF-funded National Science Digital Library program to create a scalable Curriculum Customization Service. We are building on top of the Fedora-based NCore EduPak, which consists of the NSDL Collection System, the Digital Discovery System, and the NSDL Data Repository. DPS teachers will use this Service to (1) customize curriculum with digital library resources, formative assessments, and district-developed materials to aid student learning, (2) share their customizations as part of an online learning community and professional development program, and (3) discover, remix, and reuse other teachers' contributions. In this presentation, we will describe the Curriculum Customization Service and lessons learned from building an e-learning application supporting instructional planning and collaboration on top of Fedora. The Service uses learning goals as the central organizing concept of the interface. Organized around these are several curricular components including digital versions of the student textbook, digitized components of the associated teachers' guide (formative assessments, teaching tips, instructional resources, and background knowledge readings), and digital library resources. Digital library resources are further broken down by Top Picks (recommended), Images/Visuals, Animations, Additional Activities, and Working with Data. We will also present results from a 10 week pilot study with DPS middle and high school teachers (completed in Fall 2008) and plans for a large-scale, district-wide field study commencing in Fall 2009. In the pilot study, we used interviews, reflective essays, usage logs, and pop-up and email surveys to develop a detailed picture of how teachers were using the Service, and to examine how their usage of the Service changed over the course of the 10 week study. Results suggest the Service offers a powerful model for: (1) embedding digital library resources into mainstream teaching and learning practices and (2) enabling teachers to customize instruction to improve learner engagement and learning outcomes.NS

The Future of Institutional Repositories at Small Academic Institutions: Analysis and Insights

Institutional repositories (IRs) established at universities and academic libraries over a decade ago, large and small, have encountered challenges along the way in keeping faith with their original objective: to collect, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of an institution in digital form. While all institutional repositories have experienced the same obstacles relating to a lack of faculty participation, those at small universities face unique challenges. This article examines causes of low faculty contribution to IR content growth, particularly at small academic institutions. It also offers a first-hand account of building and developing an institutional repository at a small university. The article concludes by suggesting how institutional repositories at small academic institutions can thrive by focusing on classroom teaching and student experiential learning, strategic priorities of their parent institutions

Sensemaking Practices in the Everyday Work of AI/ML Software Engineering

This paper considers sensemaking as it relates to everyday software engineering (SE) work practices and draws on a multi-year ethnographic study of SE projects at a large, global technology company building digital services infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Our findings highlight the breadth of sensemaking practices in AI/ML projects, noting developers' efforts to make sense of AI/ML environments (e.g., algorithms/methods and libraries), of AI/ML model ecosystems (e.g., pre-trained models and "upstream"models), and of business-AI relations (e.g., how the AI/ML service relates to the domain context and business problem at hand). This paper builds on recent scholarship drawing attention to the integral role of sensemaking in everyday SE practices by empirically investigating how and in what ways AI/ML projects present software teams with emergent sensemaking requirements and opportunities

Learning bodies: Sensory experience in the information commons

Despite the digital shift, university libraries have grown in importance as places where students come to learn. Interest in designing better spaces has led to a flowering of user experience studies. Such research into how students use library space could usefully be informed by the theory of embodied cognition, which emphasises the role of the body in thinking and learning. This study explores students' embodied experience of an information commons building. Data were gathered from participatory walking interviews, where students were asked to give the interviewer a guided tour of the building. Findings revealed the way that particular combinations of sensory experience contributed to particular forms of learning. Very small movements or choices seem to reconfigure space significantly. This research also draws attention to the way that different learning atmospheres are actively constructed. The findings contribute a new perspective on inquiry into the use of library space. The potential implication for libraries is the need for more fine grained analysis of use experience from a sensory perspective and for teachers and learners to more explicitly reflect on the role of the body in learning

Digital Scholarship Needs Assessment: Binghamton University 2022

As digital scholarship and digital humanities (DS/DH) continue to grow on campus the libraries continue to collaborate with campus communities to ensure faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students’ research, classroom, and learning experiences in these fields are supported. This needs assessment, carried out over the course of the Spring semester in 2022, investigated the current climate for using and teaching digital scholarship tools methods on Binghamton University\u27s campus. While Binghamton\u27s digital scholarship community continues to grow four major needs for support were identified by the community: access to DS/DH resources on campus, building a stronger sense of community, providing a better system of support for those starting and sustaining long-term projects, and creating a holistic approach to engaging in DS/DH research and pedagogy

UCL (University College London) Libraries Masterplan: Library Report to Estates Management Committee January 2008

This document is a Report from UCL Library Services to UCL on Master Planning activities and outputs which have been undertaken to quantify use and development of estate in UCL Library Services. Prioritised options have been identified for the UCL Main and Science Libraries, and for a new central site option. This work has also addressed the needs of UCL for long-term offsite storage, which concludes that UCL needs to retain its facility at Wickford for at least the next ten years

Cycles of Learning and Growth: Developing the Tribal Digital Stewardship Cohort Program Guided by Indigenous Perspectives

This article provides lessons learned through four cycles of the Tribal Digital Stewardship Cohort Program at Washington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation. The author coordinated the hybrid online and in-person training program from 2015-2020, focused on the unique needs of staff at Indigenous archives, libraries, and museums at the beginning of digital projects with unique access considerations. The learning and professional growth of program staff was informed by the participants in the program, whose words and work are highlighted in the article. The author reflects on the program design, curricular outcomes, site visits, building relationships and peer support, and the evolution of the training based on assessment and feedback. Similar to how the TDSCP was built using guidance from existing initiatives, the program and lessons learned can be used as a model for future digital stewardship education, relationship building, and responsive curriculum design. As a program extending over several years and involving many stakeholders, the TDSCP is an example of the many opportunities for collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural heritage organizations

Libraries as Bridges across the Digital Divide: Partnerships and Approaches Used in the U.S. Technology Opportunities Program, 1994-2005

The purpose of the poster is to show how libraries used government funds and community partnerships to close the digital divide in the United States. Part of the mission of libraries is to bridge the digital divide. As an answer to the digital divide, the U.S. government started a grant program in 1994. Over ten years, the Technologies Opportunities Program (TOP) awarded $230 million to 600 communities to promote network technology and community partnership. The digital divide is a rich concept rather than a simple binary divide. It?s something that is nuanced, multidimensional and ever-changing. Everyone is immersed in the digital divide in one respect or another because none of us are on the same plane of learning and expertise. We have learned much from the plethora of research that has taken place in communities in the United States and abroad. This study sheds like on the digital divide and how libraries have addressed it. Of the 600 projects funded by TOP, 25 were library-led: approximately 10 took place in public libraries, three in academic libraries, and 12 in library networks or other settings. This research uses the TOP Data Archive, which we created with the help of others including the U.S. Department of Commerce itself, to examine these 25 projects. We have constructed tables and word clouds to find trends and analyze the projects and partnerships and will use established network analytical methods as well. Interviews with key leaders in each of the projects will help ascertain how each project developed over time. Our governing theory is that social capital and social networks contribute to ICT use. Our questions include: How did the partnerships between the library and other organizations affect each project? How did they define success, and did they achieve it? Our first finding is that libraries adapted the grant program to their own strategic activities and did not set library work aside. Second, the libraries took three main approaches: to build computer networks with wires and fiber-optics, to build the human-computer infrastructure known as a Freenet, or to create new library programs to help their community use technology. We will also present data on the programs and the size and shape of the partnerships that carried them out. Our research has found a total of 80 partnerships across 25 separate library-led TOP projects. Each project had an average of 4.3 partnerships; with the maximum being 11 and the minimum number of partnership being one. Our analysis included a typology of partners: education, corporations, government, and organization. Educational partners include schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations. Corporate entities are defined as businesses or companies. Government partners maybe municipal, city, state or national government entities. Lastly, organization is a broad category that fits every type of non-profit organization, whether it be community, environmental, educational, etc. There are also four sub-categories: library, health, art, and communications. Library partners may be local, state, college, or university libraries. Health institutions are any health organization, whether government or community, or hospitals. Art partners involve art museums, local art organizations, etc. Lastly, communications partners are communication corporations, TV or radio stations, or government communication entities. The categories will allow us to investigate the relationship between the type of partners in each project and the scope and outcome of each project. The data includes 33 education partners, 28 government, 23 organization, 8 libraries, 8 communications 6 corporation, 5 health, and 3 art. In December and January we will use NetDraw to create a visual representation of the egocentric network of a library and its partners, and look for patterns. We will also carry out telephone interviews with the leaders of each project. The phone interviews will tell us about long-term projects outcomes and how the partnerships advanced or impeded each project. This poster will provide insights and suggestions to libraries that are working on the digital divide or on building partnerships. Since the U.S. has yet to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of broadband speed and utilization, the government has started another round of grants called the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program; our findings will also inform that work. Libraries have the responsibility to serve increasingly disparate populations and our poster provides an analysis of an important group of library projects which have never been presented to an international audience. This topic will be of interest to many people in the library profession, especially those dedicated to serving the public through the use of innovative technology. Relevant links: TOP archive at the University of Michigan: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=sclead&idno=umich-spc-Power-Top Broadband Technology Opportunities Program: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants

INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report

INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives