Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

DiSCmap : digitisation of special collections mapping, assessment, prioritisation. Final project report

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users isequally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term? The 'Digitisation in Special Collections: mapping, assessment and prioritisation' (DiSCmap) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Information Network (RIN), aimed to:- Identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK Higher Education's libraries, archives and museums as well as faculties and departments.- Assess users' needs and demand for Special Collections to be digitised across all disciplines.- Produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users' needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources.- Provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector.The project was carried out jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) and has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a user-driven digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities.Between September 2008 and March 2009 the DiSCmap project team asked over 1,000 users, including intermediaries (vocational users who take care of collections) and end users (university teachers, researchers and students) a variety of questions about which physical and digital Special Collections they make use of and what criteria they feel must be considered when selecting materials for digitisation. This was achieved through workshops, interviews and two online questionnaires. Although the data gathered from these activities has the limitation of reflecting only a partial view on priorities for digitisation - the view expressed by those institutions who volunteered to take part in the study - DiSCmap was able to develop:- a 'long list' of 945 collections nominated for digitisation both by intermediaries andend-users from 70 HE institutions (see p. 21);- a framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria which could be used to inform current and future digitisation priorities; (see p. 45)- a set of 'short lists' of collections which exemplify the application of user-driven criteria from the prioritisation framework to the long list (see Appendix X):o Collections nominated more than once by various groups of users.o Collections related to a specific policy framework, eg HEFCE's strategically important and vulnerable subjects for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics.o Collections on specific thematic clusters.o Collections with highest number of reasons for digitisation

Using drama to introduce ethics to technology students and practitioners

In this poster we describe the use of Joe Penhall's play 'Landscape with Weapon' as a resource to teach ethics to students and practitioners in technology. 'Landscape with Weapon' is a play in three acts that revolve around issues confronting an engineer who works in the weapons industry. The play raises a number of broad questions concerning intellectual property rights, duty and responsibility in professional conduct, amongst other ethical issues. Crucially, however, although the play raises 'big' questions concerning technological development, it is in the portrayal of relationships between individual characters each with their own personal ethical stance, and it is in the development of these relationships through conversations and outbursts that vital ethical questions arise. Although it is not always clearly recognised, it is in the everyday, routine conversations and dealings of people that ethical questions are refined, developed and, on occasion, answered. Accordingly, such dialogues influence action and guide conduct. Rather than focussing on the formulation of theory, a play can demonstrate how ethical stances fare when placed alongside one another. Also, a play encourages the audience to empathise with characters thus inviting the audience to examine their own ethical positions through their reactions to the dialogue, gesture and action set out in the play script. In short, a suitable play such as 'Landscape with Weapon' can function as an allegory representing issues and questions of relevance to an audience of practitioners in a variety of areas of technology development. This poster uses 'Landscape with Weapon' as an example of one amongst several plays and dialogues used as resources for teaching ethics in the Unit 'Introducing Ethics in Information and Computer Sciences' (working title), currently under development with the support of a grant from the HEA Subject Centre for ICS. The Unit, a self-contained multi-media course, will be made available, for re-use and re-purposing under a Creative Commons License, on the LabSpace (http://labspace.open.ac.uk), the experimentation site of the Open University open content initiative OpenLearn (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn)

Shake It Off: Journal of eScience Librarianship Edition

This case study explores the evolution of the library published Journal of eScience Librarianship (JeSLIB), as it evolves to continue to serve librarians faced with the many challenges of a data driven environment. JeSLIB is an open access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The library publishes JeSLIB through its eScholarship@UMMS repository on the bepress Digital Commons platform. JeSLIB was at the forefront of thinking about the “library as scholarly publisher” and sought to fill a need for librarians to learn about new challenges related to scientific research data. The journal’s team of librarian editors has acquired new skills and expertise in all facets of scholarly publishing to the benefit of the library. Running a publishing program can serve as a critical tool to help librarians cultivate new partnerships and roles. In response to the changing scholarly communication landscape and developments in open access publishing, the Journal of eScience Librarianship must react accordingly in order to remain relevant. JeSLIB is proactively responding to shifts in community needs including reworking its scope, updating journal policies, acknowledging peer-reviewers, and changing the default Creative Commons Licensing terms. Through this presentation, the editors will share their experiences supporting open access of research, rethinking scholarly publishing, and advancing scientific communication

Development of a pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester – approach, findings, challenges and outlook of the MaDAM Project

Management and curation of digital data has been becoming ever more important in a higher education and research environment characterised by large and complex data, demand for more interdisciplinary and collaborative work, extended funder requirements and use of e-infrastructures to facilitate new research methods and paradigms. This paper presents the approach, technical infrastructure, findings, challenges and outlook (including future development within the successor project, MiSS) of the ‘MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester’ project funded under the infrastructure strand of the JISC Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) programme. MaDAM developed a pilot research data management solution at the University of Manchester based on biomedical researchers’ requirements, which includes technical and governance components with the flexibility to meet future needs across multiple research groups and disciplines

Automatic Annotation of Images from the Practitioner Perspective

This paper describes an ongoing project which seeks to contribute to a wider understanding of the realities of bridging the semantic gap in visual image retrieval. A comprehensive survey of the means by which real image retrieval transactions are realised is being undertaken. An image taxonomy has been developed, in order to provide a framework within which account may be taken of the plurality of image types, user needs and forms of textual metadata. Significant limitations exhibited by current automatic annotation techniques are discussed, and a possible way forward using ontologically supported automatic content annotation is briefly considered as a potential means of mitigating these limitations

Fostering open science practice through recognising and rewarding research data management and curation skills

In a bid to improve research integrity, drive innovation, increase knowledge and to maximize public investment, researchers are increasingly under pressure to work in a more open and transparent way. This movement has been referred to as open science. Open science offers a range of potential and measurable benefits – for researchers and the institutions that employ them as well as for society more generally. However, to realise these benefits, we must work towards changing current research practices and behaviours. Researchers will need to acquire new research data management and curation skills that enable them to undertake a broader range of tasks along the entire research lifecycle – from undertaking new means of collaboration, to implementing data management and sharing strategies, to understanding how to amplify and monitor research outputs and to assess their value and impact. In parallel, information professionals who work to support researchers and the open science process will also need to expand their research data management and curation skillsets. It will be equally important that current recognition and reward systems are amended to reflect the application of such skillsets within a range of disciplines. This paper will explore the potential role that librarians can play in supporting and progressing open science and discuss some of the new skills that librarians may require if they are to fulfil this role effectively. Citing examples from the current UK research landscape, this paper will map these skills to the Wellcome Trust and Digital Science’s CRediT Taxonomy which was developed in 2013 to enable the broad range of contributions involved in producing research outputs to be more consistently described and rewarded