Turning Data Into Art

Data analysis and visualization can be fascinating, but such work doesn’t need to stop there. We can take the product of our professional data work and turn it into a personal practice of art. Two projects covered are a visualization of collections and a sonification of help desk activity. There are many ways that we can turn our professional practices of librarianship and archives into personal practices of art. In this talk I briefly point to a performance piece (about archival digitization) and a theatrical production (about information literacy) I did with others, then look in more detail at turning a data visualization into paintings and an analysis of help desk activity into sound. I will conclude with three steps that might help anyone who wants to try turning their work into art: transform it, work by hand, and abstract it

Minimizing epicormic branch formation on Louisiana leading commercial bottomland red oaks

The goal of this study was to isolate biological, natural, and silvicultural factors that encourage the production of epicormic branches on bottomland red oak saw-timber trees and to use this information to help landowners and forest managers reduce epicormic branches in stands dominated by bottomland red oaks. Quercus nigra, Q. pagoda, Q. phellos, and Q. texana, the most common commercial bottomland red oaks in Louisiana, were evaluated in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative variables were assessed in this study. The following attributes were collected from each sample tree and primary competitor: site class, basal area, crown class DBH, presence or absence of epicormic branches, soil series, flooding regime, total tree height, height to base of live crown, live crown ratio, localized disturbance, and distance to nearest competitor. A total of 768 trees were evaluated, of which 384 trees displayed epicormic branching and 384 were without epicormic branches. Sample trees of all four species were equally distributed across four crown classes (dominant, co-dominant, intermediate, and suppressed). Equal numbers of all four oak species were collected to maintain homogeneity within the dataset. Logistic and Poisson regressions were used to analyze the data. An á level of 0.1 was considered effective for significance in this exploratory research. Logistic regression analysis yielded three variables significant in relation to the probability of epicormic branch occurrence. Variables significantly affecting the probability of epicormic branch production were total height of the sample tree, distance from the sample tree to the primary competitor, and crown class of the nearest primary competitor. The Poisson regression analysis was used to evaluate the number of epicormic branches a tree might produce. In this analysis dbh of the sample tree, crown class of the primary competitor, disturbance, flooding regime, and live crown ratio of sample trees were significant in relation to the number of epicormic branches produced. Tree, site, and environmental characteristics isolated as being important to epicormic branch production produced a means for evaluating the potential development of epicormic branches. These factors in concert provide the forester or land manager with a simple means of enhancing bottomland red oak value. The driving mechanism for sudden appearance of epicormic branches seems to be related to reduced tree vigor as affected by competition (or relative vigor based on relative height to competitors) and site stress factors. Taller trees with less competition from similar sized trees have a reduced probability of epicormic branches. Or stated in another way, trees with close competitors or nearly equal height are more likely to produce epicormic branches. Dominant trees have a reduced likelihood of developing epicormic branches if other stress factors are not at play. Intermediate and suppressed crown class trees should be removed during early thinnings of red oaks stands to avoid or reduce epicormic branch production. In concert, factors reducing competition and decreasing tree vigor tend to reduce the probability of epicormic branch production on bottomland red oaks

Tangible Emanations

This is a report on my creative research. It is supplementary to my thesis exhibition of works of sculpture, images of which are included in this report. These sculptures explore the intangible emanations that emerge from a living being. My figurative sculptures depict archetypes of people with various types of auras. The auras emanate from one body and connect to another. In some pieces, they take on the shape of another life form, such as an animal.  Yoga postures are used as an entry point because yoga itself suggests a link between the abstract and the tangible. Tradition asserts that yoga can serve to produce an ephemeral spiritual enlightenment through physical fitness. Similar to a yoga practitioner using the palpability of the physical body to achieve the intangible, emanations are represented as physical things in these sculptures. The yoga postures and auras that are visualized and made into sculptures represent the intangible aura inherent in everyone.  M.F.A

After Launching Search and Discovery, Who Is Mission Control?

Presentation given at Access, 15 October 2010, in Winnipeg, MB. The MP3 has the audio of the talk and the PDF is the script. The Quicktime MOV and PowerPoint PPT are the slides shown, which included embedded audio and video.Reference librarians are whiny and demanding. Systems librarians are arrogant and rude. Users are clueless and uninformed. A new discovery layer means that they need to collaborate to build it and then — the next step — integrate it into teaching and learning. How should we (reference librarians, systems people, and users) work together to better exploit the possibilities of open source systems so we can focus on discovery and understanding instead of the mechanics of searching

Acute lobar pneumonia: with special reference to its treatment

Acute Lobar Pneumonia is one of the most important diseases with which we have to deal, on account of the appalling mortality with which it is attended. In his "Clinical Studies”, Bramwell says "There is perhaps no disease which cuts off so many valuable lives as Acute Croupous Pneumonia, killing as it does so many people at the height of their full vigour, activity, and usefulness”,In Great Britain alone, about 1,000 lives per week are terminated by this malady.Although most fatal at the extremes of life, no age escapes its ravages, and many of the apparently most robust fall victims to it.The percentage mortality varies considerably in different epidemics, and under different physicians, but it is usually from 20 - 30$. Out of the huge total of 465,000 cases collected, by E. F. Wells from all sources, 94,826 died, giving a mortality of 20.4$

How do musicians evaluate their musical performances? The impact of positive and negative information from normative, ipsative, and expectation standards

The purpose of the research reported in this article was to test two hypotheses about how musicians evaluate their musical performances. The first hypothesis was that musicians’ self-evaluations would be more influenced by their expectations and their past performances than by comparisons to the performances of other musicians. The second hypothesis was that musicians would exhibit an ‘adaptive evaluational style’ by showing more sensitivity to positive feedback than to negative feedback. We used the Experimental Evaluational Styles Questionnaire (Goolsby & Chaplin, 1988) in a sample of 78 music performance students (43 men and 35 women) to test these hypotheses, and both were supported. These results represent one of the first examples where the dominant theory of evaluation in psychology, Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, did not have the greatest influence on people’s performance evaluations. However, we did find individual differences in the influence of the different evaluative standards. Understanding the causes and consequences of these individual differences should be a fruitful target for future research

Effectiveness of an Integrated Pre-capstone Project in Learning Information Systems Concepts

The inherently interdisciplinary nature of electronic commerce makes it an ideal basis for an integrative course in information systems. This paper describes the initial design and implementation of a project-based pre-capstone course for undergraduate MIS majors, and assesses the impact of the course on student perceptions of their MIS skills. As defined here, a pre-capstone course integrates the major technologies and operational issues underlying electronic commerce for a class of students of varying skills and classroom experiences, with the intention of providing the students with a more meaningful experience earlier in the MIS program. We discuss the specific issues and lessons learned from our initial implementation of this type of course, which provided the students with a creative learning experience that allowed them to discover deficiencies in their knowledge and address those deficiencies through communicating and learning within student teams. We also present survey results indicating how the more realistic context of the course impacted students\u27 perceptions of their knowledge and abilities compared to the perceptions of students who learn MIS concepts and skills in isolation. We found that through the use of student teams containing a variety of students with somewhat different backgrounds, the learning experience can become more meaningful. This allowed students to become more aware of gaps in their knowledge, and should make them better realize the significance of their future courses