Co-observing the weather, co-predicting the climate: Human factors in building infrastructures for crowdsourced data

This paper investigates the embodied performance of 'doing citizen science'. It examines how 'citizen scientists' produce scientifi c data using the resources available to them, and how their socio-Technical practices and emotions impact the construction of a crowdsourced data infrastructure. We found that conducting citizen science is highly emotional and experiential, but these individual experiences and feelings tend to get lost or become invisible when user-contributed data are aggregated and integrated into a big data infrastructure. While new meanings can be extracted from big data sets, the loss of individual emotional and practical elements denotes the loss of data provenance and the marginalisation of individual eff orts, motivations, and local politics, which might lead to disengaged participants, and unsustainable communities of citizen scientists. The challenges of constructing a data infrastructure for crowdsourced data therefore lie in the management of both technical and social issues which are local as well as global

The PATHS System for Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage

Over the past years large digital cultural heritage collections have become available, however access paradigms have not kept pace with this development and are still primarily constructed around simple keyword search. This works well for users familiar with the collections, but for new users who are unfamiliar with the collection they present a significant hurdle. The PATHS (Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces) project addresses these issues by providing a novel framework for exploring large digital cultural heritage collections, built around the metaphor of a path through the collection. In this paper we present the initial user requirements analysis that was used to determine what a path is in the cultural heritage domain. From this we developed a conceptual model of path interaction, which was turned into a system design and implementation. Finally we present the evaluation of the resulting system and draw a number of conclusions as to what systems supporting exploration in digital cultural heritage collections must support to enable the users to satisfy their information needs

PATHS in Context: User Characteristics and the Construction of Cultural Heritage Narratives

There is ample evidence of the influence of individual differences on information-seeking behaviours. Trailways and paths are increasingly important objects to support internet navigation. The EU-funded PATHS (Personalised Access to Cultural Heritage) project is investigating ways of assisting users with exploring a large collection of cultural heritage material taken from Europeana, the European aggregator for museums, archives, libraries, and galleries. A prototype system has been developed that includes innovative functionality for exploring the collection based on Google map-style interfaces, data-driven taxonomies, and supporting the manual creation of guided tours or paths along with the use of personalised (and nonpersonalised) recommendations to promote information discovery. After analysing the paths created by participants during an extended user evaluation, this paper discusses the effect of individual differences on path creation and characteristics

PATHS in Context: User Characteristics and the Construction of Cultural Heritage Narratives

There is ample evidence of the influence of individual differences on information-seeking behaviours. Trailways and paths are increasingly important objects to support internet navigation. The EU-funded PATHS (Personalised Access to Cultural Heritage) project is investigating ways of assisting users with exploring a large collection of cultural heritage material taken from Europeana, the European aggregator for museums, archives, libraries, and galleries. A prototype system has been developed that includes innovative functionality for exploring the collection based on Google map-style interfaces, data-driven taxonomies, and supporting the manual creation of guided tours or paths along with the use of personalised (and nonpersonalised) recommendations to promote information discovery. After analysing the paths created by participants during an extended user evaluation, this paper discusses the effect of individual differences on path creation and characteristics

Data Journeys as an approach for exploring the socio-cultural shaping of (big) data: the case of climate science in the United Kingdom

The paper reports on a pilot study aimed at developing a data journeys approach for critically exploring the socio-cultural shaping of interconnected data infrastructures, and presents initial findings from The Secret Life of a Weather Datum research project which applies the approach to explore the socio-cultural values and practices interacting with weather and climate data infrastructures. Through drawing on the data journeys concept to guide and inform the selection of sites for data collection, we begin to demonstrate the utility of the approach for beginning to build a picture of the “contingent and contested” (Dalton and Thatcher, 2014) relations between people, interconnected in time and space through data infrastructures, that are core to the development and shaping of climate data and knowledge. We also begin to draw out the interrelations between local and global spaces and infrastructures; and to ground amorphous ‘big’ data infrastructures in local sites and cultures of production.ye

Mapping Data Journeys: Design for an interactive web site

In this poster we present an overview of our approach to researching the information infrastructure for weather and climate data in the UK, which aims to map the various data journeys of an individual datum through this big data environment, and to uncover the socio-cultural values that shape the data and processes involved in data production, transformation, use and reuse. We then illustrate how we will disseminate our findings through the design of a forthcoming interactive web site, which presents the data journeys using a path/map metaphor, enabling the exploration of four interconnected case studies and several cross-cutting themes, in a way that is both flexible for the user and expandable, as the research progresses further.ye

Generating Paths through Cultural Heritage Collections

Cultural heritage collections usually organise sets of items into exhibitions or guided tours. These items are often accompanied by text that describes the theme and topic of the exhibition and provides background context and details of connections with other items. The PATHS project brings the idea of guided tours to digital library collections where a tool to create virtual paths are used to assist with navigation and provide guides on particular subjects and topics. In this paper we characterise and analyse paths of items created by users of our online system. The analysis highlights that most users spend time selecting items relevant to their chosen topic, but few users took time to add background information to the paths. In order to address this, we conducted preliminary investigations to test whether Wikipedia can be used to automatically add background text for sequences of items. In the future we would like to explore the automatic creation of full paths

Cognitive Styles within an Exploratory Search System for Digital Libraries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive style on navigating a large digital library of cultural heritage information; specifically, the paper focus on the wholist/analytic dimension as experienced in the field of educational informatics. The hypothesis is that wholist and analytic users have characteristically different approaches when they explore, search and interact with digital libraries, which may have implications for system design. Design/methodology/approach – A detailed interactive IR evaluation of a large cultural heritage digital library was undertaken, along with the Riding CSA test. Participants carried out a range of information tasks, and the authors analysed their task performance, interactions and attitudes. Findings – The hypothesis on the differences in performance and behaviour between wholist and analytic users is supported. However, the authors also find that user attitudes towards the system are opposite to expectations and that users give positive feedback for functionality that supports activities in which they are cognitively weaker. Research limitations/implications – There is scope for testing results in a larger scale study, and/or with different systems. In particular, the findings on user attitudes warrant further investigation. Practical implications – Findings on user attitudes suggest that systems which support areas of weakness in users’ cognitive abilities are valued, indicating an opportunity to offer diverse functionality to support different cognitive weaknesses. Originality/value – A model is proposed suggesting a converse relationship between behaviour and attitudes; to support individual users displaying search/navigation behaviour mapped onto the strengths of their cognitive style, but placing greater value on interface features that support aspects in which they are weaker

PATHS: A System for Accessing Cultural Heritage Collections

This paper describes a system for navigating large collections of information about cultural heritage which is applied to Europeana, the European Library. Europeana contains over 20 million artefacts with meta-data in a wide range of European languages. The system currently provides access to Europeana content with meta-data in English and Spanish. The paper describes how Natural Language Processing is used to enrich and organise this meta-data to assist navigation through Europeana and shows how this information is used within the system

Making data flow for the climate risk market

In 2011, the U.K. government announced that the national meteorological agency would be releasing a significant volume of data as part of its Open Data policy agenda. This article explores the interrelationship between this announcement and efforts to boost the competitiveness of the United Kingdom’s weather derivatives industry. Primary qualitative data are analyzed to produce a genealogical account of these policy developments, and Braman’s concept of “informational power” is used to frame a critical narrative of the broader dynamics of power at play. We argue that although there have been significant tensions around efforts to open the United Kingdom’s weather data, these have largely been absorbed by and, ultimately, contained within the hegemonic structures of the United Kingdom’s neoliberal state. We conclude by arguing that this struggle needs to be broadened and externalized beyond the state so that critical questions about the deepening data-driven financialization of climate change can be addressed