Conference Reports

CNI in DC: Closing Plenary on the Future of Scholarly Communication

Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing Group

Focused on five main areas:

• audio & video
• databases
• open data
• peer review & blogs
• online collaboration

CNI in DC: Recommender Systems, BibTip

Andreas Geyer-Schulz, Uni Karlsruhe

In a rather German introduction, he noted that one of the main goals of having a recommender system is to save both the time of the user and the staff member. To that end, they've developed BibTip, which provides title recommendations. The development of this tool was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the German analog for the NSF.

CNI in DC: LibraryThing and the Library Catalog

John Wenzler, San Francisco State University

Materials and slides

[Watching this talk, I briefly had the sensation of being at Internet Librarian, where this kind of topic is the bread and butter. I was very happy, however, to see a topic like this presented to a good-sized audience with a lot of library administrators in it, as well as to see their enthusiasm for it.]

Reviewed the service and why people might use it for personal and social reasons. He then moved into a description of the public benefits, i.e.- those that benefit all users:

• book suggestions
• book unsuggestions (people who own x don't own z; more for fun that useful)
• tag-based folksonomy

To get these benefits, you need not join LibraryThing, and those who join aren't necessarily cognizant of their role in the creation of these public benefits. They are simply derived from the massive data set that results from a service such as this.

CNI in DC: Integrated Digital Library on the Fedora Platform

David Kennedy, U of Maryland
Susan Schreibman, U of Maryland

Do not use Fedora for their IR (which uses DSpace), but for their digital collections. Previously they used DigiTool, which they opted to drop (for one, it doesn't handle TEI well, nor EAD particularly well, per one speaker's comments).

CNI in DC: Electronic Publishing Systems

Mark Cyzyk, Johns Hopkins

In the scope of his study, Cyzyk did not interview the developers. His methodology began with an environmental scan, seeking any possible product and system. He showed a rather long list, many of which I've never heard of in the US context. From the many candidates, he chose seven: DPubS, GNU EPrints, Hyperjournal, OJS, Connextions/Rhaptos, DiVA, and Topaz. The first four are those that he installed and evaluated; for the latter three, he gathered data, but did not use the product.

CNI in DC: Digital Humanities Centers

John Unsworth, UIUC
Daniel Cohen, George Mason
Katherine Walter, U of Nebraska
Neil Fraistat, U of Maryland
Mark Kornbluh, Michigan State

Walter offered, by proxy, since Unsworth was unavailable, a commentary on the eight recommendations of the ACLS report on cyberinfrastructure for the humanities. As usual, when this is the topic, I mused on the question of how many humanities scholars even grasp the ramifications of the report, or, frankly, even know or care about developments in the field. Most of them are at institutions that do not have the luxury of a humanities computing center and are, at best, consumers of work done elsewhere. What is missing, I think, is a discussion about or study of the attitudes of humanities scholars toward the development of a humanities cyberinfrastructure. It's telling that I hear more about this topic at library conferences, while when I ask humanities scholars about their conferences and this topic, I generally get blank stares. This is not a function of being at K-State, either; this pattern repeats itself ad nauseum regardless of the scholar's home.

CNI in DC: Opening Plenary

Tim Berners-Lee, Internet Überlord
Clifford Lynch

Berners-Lee was at CNI to present the 2007 MATC (Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration) prizes. Nominations for the MATC are open, and the next cycle begins within a few days of this conference (12/12). Rather than record the winners here, it probably makes more sense to consult the Website.

Cliff Lynch offered his review of the year and the major issues that have arisen since the last CNI meeting in April. As usual, recording his musings can be somewhat fraught, since he offers them largely via stream of consciousness. Additionally, while it is interesting to hear about the major issues facing Internet2, we, as K-State Libraries, are at least several layers removed from the implications of those issues. Perhaps at some point in the future we will be closer to such things, but, for now, we have different fish to fry.

CNI Phoenix: Closing Keynote - Microsoft Speaks

Speaker: Marc Smith (Microsoft Research)

CNI site for this talk

Full title: Pictures of Traces of Places, People, and Groups

First, an apology: my notes for this talk may abruptly cease, as I have to duck out before the end to catch my flight.

Smith is a sociologist speaking on the evolution of social spaces (I think).

CNI Phoenix: Google at UMich Update

Speaker: Paul Courant (UMich)

CNI site for this talk

Courant offered a review of the origin of the project, which has been widely reported and analyzed elsewhere. He pointed out that a project such as this fits their mission statement, and should fit anyone's mission statement.

The digitization began in July 2004, which the first large upload to Google Book Search taking place in November 2005. Books are gone for about 5-7 days for scanning, and are returned in the same condition in which they left. Of course, both the process and technology used are confidential, and he made something of a joke of this.

CNI Phoenix: Open Access Publishing

Speakers: Nancy John (UI Chicago), Edward Valauskas (First Monday)

CNI site for this talk

The full title for this talk was "Trying the Gold Road on a Shoestring Budget: Open Access Publishing with PKP's Open Journal System." Needless to say, I was drawn to this session not only because I am quite familiar with PKP/OJS from attending Access in Canada, but because we in K-State Libraries have discussed moving into the role of publisher, and this desire recently found expression in our strategic plan. While Cornell and other partners (including the U of Utah as I learned at dinner last night) are busy at work on DPubs, it has yet to become a full-fledged publishing platform, as opposed to OJS, which can handle the full lifecycle of journal publishing, from submission to archiving.