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Information and Communication Technology-facilitated Social Movements

This year's 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) Annual Meeting was held at the Hyatt Regency-Crystal City in Arlington, VA from October 28 to November 1, 2009. SLIS faculty member Noriko Hara gave a presentation on her research (see abstract below) as a part of session #190 - "Online Worlds."

Abstract:
Information and Communication Technology-facilitated Social Movements

The Internet has long been recognized for its ability to reduce initial barriers to transnational collective action, thus making it easier for the general public to participate (e.g., McCaughey & Ayers, 2003). Although social and political scientists have widely studied social movements for a number of years (Hess, Breyman, Campbell, & Martin, 2008), investigation of technologies to support the activities of these movements has just begun. Historically, technology has constructively influenced social movements; perhaps most compelling is the use of the printing press by European social movements in the late eighteenth century (Tarrow, 1998). With the press, social movement organizers were able to widely distribute their ideas and better coordinate their activities. More recently, telephones, direct mailings, fax machines, and e-mails have commonly been used to disseminate information as well as mobilize a critical mass (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Porta & Diani, 1999). In a similar vein, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have had a major impact on numerous recent social movements. While participation in social movements has traditionally been limited to so-called activists, today general citizens who may not consider themselves activists are participating in online mobilization (e.g. Hara, 2008).

This paper first reviews a series of articles that question whether ICTs make a difference in social movements and, if so, in what ways. On one hand, some authors, especially in the early literature about online activism (e.g., Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 2001; Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007, Danitz & Strobel, 1999; Kahn & Kellner, 2004), support an ‘equalization’ thesis whose argument is that online tools will distribute powers relatively equally, especially in terms of communication channels—access to and dissemination of information. In this view, technologies are a significant factor to drive the change. On the other hand, according to the ‘normalization’ thesis, the Internet and online campaigns have certain limits in reshaping social movements. In this perspective, online social movements are mere reflections of offline environments and will fail to overcome the existing social structure (e.g., Norris, 2000; Stromer—Galley, 2000). While traditional media are accessible to ordinary people, the influence of the Internet depends on the accessibility and the willingness to find information on Web sites (Norris, 2001; van Dijk and Hacker, 2003). Second, the paper examines three types of ICT use in social movements: resources, framing devices, and mobilization tools. Whereas many interesting cases examining ICT’s role in social movements have emerged in recent years, research in this area appears to be focusing on case studies, e.g., the anti-WTO movement (e.g., Kahn & Kellner, 2004), Zapatista movement (e.g., Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001), and Indymedia (e.g., Kidd, 2003; Pickard, 2006). The paper provides a synthesis of the literature by presenting a framework to categorize the studies on ICT-facilitated social movements. As such, the contribution of the paper to the science and technology studies literature is to offer an overview of the landscape of online social movement literature.

References

Arquilla, J., & Ronfeldt, D. (2001). Emergence and influence of the Zapatista social netwar. In D. Ronfeldt and J. Arquilla (Eds). Networks and netwars: The future of terror, crime, and militancy (pp. 171-199). Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Castells, M., Fernandez-Ardevol, M., Qiu, J. L., & Sey, A. (2007). Mobile communication and society: A global perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Danitz., T., & Strobel, W. P. (1999). The Interet’s impact on activism: The case of Burma. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 22, 257-269.

Hara, N. (2008). The Internet use for political mobilization: Voices of the participants. First Monday, 13(7). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2123/1976

Hess, D., Breyman, S., Campbell, N., & Martin, B. (2008). Science, technology and social movements. In E. J. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (3rd ed.) (pp.273-498). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kahn, R., & Kellner, D. (2004). New media and internet activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to blogging. New Media and Society. 6(1), 87-95.

Kidd, D. (2003). Indymedia.org: A new communications commons. In M. McCaughey and M.D. Ayers (Eds). Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice (pp. 47–70). London: Routledge.

McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. (1977). Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American Journal of Sociology, 82(May), 1212–1239.

McCaughey, M., & Ayers, M. D. (Eds.) (2003). Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. New York: Routledge.

Norris, P. (2000). Virtuous circle: Political communication in postindustrial societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pickard, V. W. (2006). United yet autonomous: Indymedia and the struggle to sustain a radical democratic network. Media, Culture & Society, 28(3), 315-336.

Porta, D. D. & Diani, M. (1999). Social movements: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Stromer–Galley, J. (2000). Online interaction and why candidates avoid it. Journal of Communication, 50(4), 111–132.

Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

van Dijk, J., & Hacker, K. (2003). The digital divide as a complex and dynamic phenomena. The Information Society, 19(4), 315–326.

Director of Reference and Information Services - Laurel County, KY

SLIS alumna, Jennifer Daugherty (MLS'07), is employed at Laurel County Public Library in London, KY, which serves a user population of about 57,000. Jennifer is the Director of Reference and Information Services. In an email interview Jennifer highlighted her job duties and offered tips for current students.

What are your key job duties?
“I supervise the reference staff and the ILL manager. In addition, I am responsible for collection development of reference, westerns, romances, science fiction/fantasy, and genealogy collections. Since coming to the library, I have worked to expand the Genealogy and Local History collection and have translated this into a Digital project. We have digitized the yearbooks of a local 2 year college that closed its doors several years ago. We are also digitizing several yearbooks from historic community high schools that closed their doors to make way for the central county high school system. My job is unique in that I also serve as the reference librarian for the local community college campus. They have a partnership with our library for us to provide services and instruction to their students. So, I am a public as well as an academic librarian. I also manage the electronic services at the library including database subscriptions, downloadable media, and computer class instruction.”

What do you like most about your job?
“I like that my director is open to new ideas. The library had never done any kind of digital project before I came and she was open to us trying it out. I also enjoy genealogy and I get to my share my passion for research with my patrons. A major plus is that I have been able to attend the last two ALA conferences with other library staff. These conferences are very beneficial and not only help us grow as professionals, but also as a library team.”

Do you have any advice for students?
“I would advise current students to get as much experience as they can while they are in school. I think the libraries at IU are very eager to hire library students, even if they may not have that much experience. When I first came to SLIS, I had never worked in a library. I was able to find several positions that allowed me to work in different aspects of library service. I think that this has helped me become a better, more well-rounded, librarian.

Try different aspects of library work. You might end up doing something you never thought would interest you. You also might find out early on what you don’t want to do.”

ASIS&T Student Chapter - "Tech Talk"

The American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) – Student Chapter recently held its first Fall “Tech Talk.” The talk took place on October 21, 2009 in the Wells Library, Room E-174. The speaker was Cairril Mills of Cairril.com Design & Marketing. Her company provides web design and development, graphic design, and brand development on a nationwide client base.

SLIS Master of Information Science student China Williams is the current president of the ASIS&T Student Chapter. She provided a summary of the talk.

Cairril Mills started the talk by giving a brief history of the companies and jobs she held before she started her own business. She discussed the reasons why she decided to become a business owner. Then she discussed her business philosophy and her business model. She explained what she does at Cairril.com and how she organizes her design projects. Throughout the lecture she answered questions from attendees about owning her own business as well as her thoughts on web page design and her ideas about what constitutes an effective web page experience. She finished by giving advice to those who are interested in owning their own business as well as advice for those interested in going into web site design.

SLIS Associate Dean Howard Rosenbaum is the faculty sponsor for the ASIS&T Student Chapter. He stated: "These are valuable talks for students. They give an insider's view of what it is like to work in the IS [information science] field. This talk addressed practical concerns of running a small web-based business. And, it gave insights into the life of an entrepreneur developing a marketing/design company."

For more information on the student chapter, visit their Facebook page.

See Related Links:

2009 American Association of School Librarians Conference

The 14th National Conference and Exhibition of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) will be held November 5-8, 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

SLIS Executive Associate Dean Marilyn Irwin announced that faculty members Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson will be giving presentations (see abstracts below). Lamb and Johnson are both teach at SLIS Indianapolis, and they manage the eduScapes website: "a site for life-long learners."

About eduScapes: "Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson have designed this website to share a love of learning with others. As authors and educators, we work with teachers, parents, and children around the world to effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning environments. This eduScapes website was started in August, 1998."

Abstracts:

Get Graphic! Visuals for Deep Thinking, Inquiry, and Learning (Lamb)

We live in a high-tech, multimedia world, yet most classroom activities still emphasize print communication. Let's explore the potential of graphic inquiry in teaching and learning. This visually rich session provides numerous, standards-based inquiry activities and projects that incorporate traditional materials as well as emerging social and collaborative technologies. Learn to use free and inexpensive tools and resources to promote inquiry, collaboration, and communication across the curriculum to address the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.

Graphic Novels, Photo Essays and Illuminated Term Papers: Communicating Deep Understandings (Lamb)

From math comics to history e-scrapbooks, bring class assignments, student projects, and instructional materials alive with 21st century approaches across the curriculum. Learn how free and inexpensive technologies are used to produce graphic mini-novels and digital comics, illuminated term papers, visual science reports, photo essays, and other engaging alternatives to traditional student projects. Explore innovative ways to address the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner while motivating reluctant students and promoting a love of reading and writing.

Let's Go! Google Earth and GIS Resources Across the Curriculum (Johnson)

From virtual hikes to global investigations, learn to design content area activities that infuse relevant real-world data sources using Google Earth and Geographic Information Systems. Bring literature alive through visualizing the settings of picture books and novels. Add relevance to social studies, science, and math activities with access to endless real-world data sources. Enrich cultural and language studies with geography and travel. Connect place-based learning with global exploration for an engaging, interdisciplinary, standards-based approach.

Volume 44: ARIST Looks Ahead

• "Metrics are à la mode. Once it was plain old bibliometrics, now we have scientometrics, informetrics, webometrics, cybermetrics, digimetrics, tagometrics. Neologisms abound. The widespread availability of Web log files affords unprecedented opportunity for assessing the visibility, productivity, and performance of individual scholars, research groups, institutions, and nation states…

• Of course, information science has long been concerned with the quantitative analysis of scholarly communication and publishing behaviors. Latterly, however, there has been a renaissance of sorts and we are witnessing spectacular growth in the volume and variety of bibliometric research and experimentation, not just within information science but also in other disciplines.

• As I observed some years ago, there 'will soon be a critical mass of Web-based digital objects and usage statistics on which to model scholars' communication behaviors - publishing, posting, blogging, scanning, reading, downloading, glossing, linking, citing, recommending, acknowledging - and with which to track their scholarly influence and impact, broadly conceived and broadly felt' (Cronin, 2005, p. 196). What, then, are the implications of these developments?..."

The excerpts above are from the Introduction to Volume 44 (2010) of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST). The Introduction was by SLIS Dean Blaise Cronin - the editor of ARIST. SLIS faculty member Debora Shaw is the associate editor of ARIST, and SLIS faculty member Hamid Ekbia contributed a chapter titled "Fifty Years of Research in Artificial Intelligence" (see excerpt below.)

ARIST is published by the American Society of Information Science and Technology and Information Today.

Excerpt from "Fifty Years of Research in Artificial Intelligence" by Hamid Ekbia

Artificial Intelligence has come of age. The year MMVI marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Dartmouth Conference, where the term Artificial Intelligence was accepted as the official label of a new discipline that seemed to hold great promise in the pursuit of understanding the human mind. AI, as the nascent discipline came to be known in public and academic discourse, has accomplished a lot during this period, breaking new grounds and providing deep insights into our minds, our technologies, and the relationship between them. But AI has also failed tremendously, making false promises and often manifesting a kind of unbridled enthusiasm that is emblematic of Hollywood-style pecuniary projects. This review seeks to capture both of these aspects: AI's successes, accomplishments, and contributions to science, technology, and intellectual inquiry, on one hand, and its failures, fallacies, and shortcomings, on the other.

Facebook for Scientists: Map Your Expertise

SLIS faculty members Katy Börner and Ying Ding were featured in a press release from the Indiana University News Room for their participation in a National Institutes of Health research collaboration. The subtitle of the article is "IU information scientists receive $1.8 million in ARRA funding." The release and story photographs are reposted here with permission.

Facebook for scientists: Map your expertise

IU information scientists receive $1.8 million in ARRA funding

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 26, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana University has received more than $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health to collaborate on a $12.2 million, seven-university project designed to network researchers around the country.

While the proposed new networking system will contain authentication mechanisms to protect sensitive data and intellectual property, it is being described as a Facebook for scientists.

IU's portion of the project is led by Katy Börner, Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science and director of the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at IU. Co-investigators with Börner at IU are Ying Ding, an assistant professor of Information Science, and Robert McDonald, associate dean for library technologies at IU and associate director for the Data to Insight Center at the Pervasive Technology Institute.

Börner's team at the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center will conduct research and development on data analysis and visualization, Ding will be responsible for ontology development and McDonald will be responsible for implementation at IU of VIVO, a networking template currently in place at Cornell University that brings together publicly available information on the people, departments, graduate fields, facilities and other resources that collectively make up the research and scholarship environment in all disciplines at Cornell.

Ding explained that ontology is a formally represented community consensus that enables data integration into a form that allows for machine involvement for information understanding and processing.

"One of the major VIVO ontologies models the scholarly activities of research communities, where paper, grant, teaching, research interest, organization and event are interlinked and formally represented," she said. "This could gather all the related information for one researcher into one place and further links to any other related semantic datasets. Linking and formal representation generate great power to realize more intelligent knowledge discovery."

Research Associate - Indiana University Foundation

SLIS graduate Emily Heinlen (MLS'07) is working as a Research Associate for the Indiana University Foundation here in Bloomington. Her position is an example of non-traditional career paths that SLIS graduates can pursue.

Emily answered questions about her job in a recent email interview.

What are your key job duties?
My job duties are three-fold. First, I research potential IU donors. These donors fall into three categories: individual, corporate and foundation. Then, I analyze the information and write a profile and analysis of the potential donor. This information is then used by a variety of individuals during meetings and other donor contacts.

What do you like most about your job?
I love being able to research all day long. Not only is it incredibly fun, but the results of my research have the potential of helping to identify new donors to the university, which makes it extremely exciting!

Any advice for current students?
My advice is to find an area in which your interest is drawn and focus your studies in that area. I found that I was interested in research and reference and, therefore, focused the majority of my studies in those areas.

Any other comments?
I owe a great deal of gratitude to Professors Lokman Meho and Pnina Shachaf, who helped guide my research, both during their traditional courses and my independent study courses.

Analyzing Users' Retrieval Behaviors

SLIS faculty member Hsin-liang (Oliver) Chen gave an invited talk at the School of Informatics Colloquium, Indianapolis Campus, on October 23, 2009. The talk title and abstract are included here:

Analyzing Users' Retrieval Behaviors and Image Queries of a Photojournalism Image Database and Beyond

Research to enhance the quality of metadata elements and system functions of a photojournalism image archive web site, the Pictures of the Year International (POYi), was conducted using Google Analytics. Visitor activities were collected over a six-month period and findings indicate that visitors tend to browse the website rather than to launch a specific search query. When conducting image searches, users mainly populated the basic search function with single- and multiple-word queries. Advanced search functions represented a mere 0.70% of searches compared to total visits. Collected search terms were classified according to Jorgensen's (1998) twelve attribute classes and specific attributes. The most popular attributes were the interpretive attributes of artist, theme, and people and the perceptual attribute of setting. The most popular attribute classes were art historical information, abstract concepts, content/story, and people. The popularity of these attribute types may suggest potential modifications to the metadata elements for a photojournalism image database.

Edsel and Eleanor Ford House - Applegate Workshop

SLIS faculty member Rachel Applegate gave an in-house workshop for the staff of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House. This historic house museum is located in Gross Pointe Shores, Michigan (outside of Detroit). In an email interview, Applegate gave some details about the workshop (given October 21, 2009):

I gave an in-house workshop for about 16 staff of the Ford House. This was based on the Shaping Outcomes approach to "outcomes-based planning and evaluation." Staff worked in groups to learn and apply concepts such as audience orientation, needs assessment and results desired, and concrete, observable indicators of outcomes. An outcomes-based approach can be used with projects that any museum or library could do: internal such as effective signage, single-institution such as effective tours for children, and multiple-institution such as partnering with another museum, or library, or educational institution, for programs of mutual benefits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naokomc/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Geographies of Information Society (Special Issue of TIS)

"…research on the societal aspects of geographic information science and technology has maintained, and indeed intensified, its vitality." [Introduction]

SLIS faculty member Hamid Ekbia and colleague Nadine Schuurman, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada were Co-Guest Editors for a Special Issue of The Information Society (Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2009 - published by Taylor & Francis.) The title of the Special Issue is Geographies of Information Society. Excerpts from article abstracts by Dr. Ekbia are included below:

1) Hamid R. Ekbia; Nadine Schuurman (Guest Editors): Introduction to the Special Issue on Geographies of Information Society

In 1997 the National Science Foundation launched the Varenius Project with the aim of advancing geographic information science (Goodchild et al., 1999). Varenius incorporated three components: computational, cognitive, and societal. In a review paper titled “Geographies of Information Society,” Sheppard et al. (1999) explored the third (societal) component with the aim of introducing the key research initiatives and also to set “a benchmark by which to assess, a few years from now, the specific contributions of the Varenius project to that increasingly vital research area” (p. 798). This special issue revisits that benchmark and initiative 10 years after its publication. Judging by the diversity of topics and the scope of literature of the last few years, one could safely argue that research on the societal aspects of geographic information science and technology has maintained, and indeed intensified, its vitality.

2) Hamid R. Ekbia; Tom P. Evans. Regimes of Information: Land Use, Management, and Policy (pages 328-343) — [note: Tom Evans is with the Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington]

Socio-ecological systems are inherently complex. One source of complexity is the uncertainties involved in the decisions and behaviors of human actors that determine how landholdings are managed. Land management decisions are often influenced by diverse factors and considerations. Particularly significant among these are (1) the sources of information land managers utilize with their perceived quality, reliability, and accessibility; (2) the social networks of the decision maker with their pertinent history, appeal, and authority; and (3) the interests, resources, and prior experiences of individual decision makers. This degree of diversity and uncertainty gives rise to behaviors that cannot be entirely explained in terms of rational choice or any variation thereof. How can we best understand and explain these behaviors, as spatial but also social and informational, in land-use decision making? This article presents the case of land management in a county in the Midwest United States to develop a conceptual model of decision making of environmental resources in socio-ecological systems. This model conceives environmental decision making as a multivalent process that operates on the basis of different “regimes of worth,” incorporating not only the economic value of outcomes but also other personal and social values within different worlds or polities. These worlds, in turn, incorporate particular “regimes of information” based on particular higher principles that they uphold. The article examines these regimes, provides examples of what constitutes information in each regimes, and explores the management and policy implications of this framework.

3) Hamid R. Ekbia. An Interview With Eric Sheppard: Uneven Spatialities - The Material, Virtual, and Cognitive (pages 364-369) — [note: Boston, Massachusetts, USA, April 16, 2008]

Eric Sheppard is a prominent geographer at the University of Minnesota. As represented in his numerous books—The Capitalist Space Economy (with T. J. Barnes), A Companion to Economic Geography (with T. J. Barnes), A World of Difference (with Philip W. Porter), Scale and Geographic Inquiry (with R. B. McMaster), Reading Economic Geography and Politics and Practice in Economic Geography (with T. J. Barnes, J. Peck, and A. Tickell), Contesting Neoliberalism (with H. Leitner and J. Peck)— and other writings, he has a broad range of interests that span traditional dichotomies such as physical-human or quantitative-critical geography. In the late 1990s, after catalyzing collaboration between social theorists and geographic information systems (GIS) scholars around “GIS and society,” as part of the Varenius Project, Sheppard led the APEX initiative to explore the societal aspects of geographic information science. The outcome of that initiative was a paper (Sheppard et al., 1999), the title of which inspired the title of this special issue. As mentioned in the introduction essay of this special issue, that paper was intended to serve as a benchmark for evaluating the current state of research.

In this interview, I inquire into Sheppard’s perspective on the development of the field a decade after Varenius, as well as more recent developments that were unforeseeable at that point in time—e.g., public contribution to the practices of geographers that has come to be known as neogeography. We also discuss some of the topics that have theoretical significance for geography, information studies, and social science in general.

2009 SLIS Doctoral Research Forum

On Saturday, October 17, 2009, eleven SLIS doctoral students gave presentations at the SLIS Doctoral Research Forum. This annual event provides an opportunity to showcase research, to develop professional skills, and to receive feedback from faculty and other students.

This year's recipients for best presentations were (1st) Shannon Oltmann, (2nd) Peter Hook, and (3rd) Erjia Yan.

The event was held in the Herman B Wells Library, Room E-174, Indiana University, Bloomington from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Event Schedule (with links to talk abstracts)

• Speaker List and Topic (in order of presentation)

Lai Ma	Information entanglement
Inna Kouper	Information and discourse
Shannon M. Oltmann	The seven veils of censorship: Motives for restricting information
HyunSeung Koh	Active Reading and Annotations.
Tim Bowman	Goffman's Presentation of self in everyday life in HCI.
Peter H. Hook	An expert seeding approach to mapping a knowledge domain: Processing over a million citations on a desktop computer to arrive at a co-citation map aggregated to the author level.
M Yasser Chuttur	Exploring the characteristics of web- based tagging systems and their implications for tagging behavior.
Erjia Yan	An integrated model for scientific evaluation.
Hui Zhang	Ambiguity and context-aware query reformulation.
Muhammad Abdul-Mageed	Sociotechnical mining of Israeli and Lebanese media war blogs.
Lois Scheidt	Drilling down: A look at the digital ways bloggers tell their stories.
Muhammad Abdul-Mageed	[Poster] Now on YouTube: Reception of al Jazeera English on the video sharing social network site.

• Past SLIS Doctoral Research Forums

How to Measure, Map, and Dramatize Science

The New York Hall of Science was the site of a 1 1/2 day National Science Foundation/James S. McDonnell Foundation (NSF/JSMF) Workshop on How to Measure, Map, and Dramatize Science. SLIS Professor Katy Börner and colleagues Stephen Uzzo (V.P. of Technology, New York Hall of Science) and Joy Moore (V.P., Seed Media Group) were the workshop organizers. The event was held on October 1-2, 2009.

The Workshop Goals:

Börner gave an overview talk on "Modeling Science - Theory and Practice", as well as introductory remarks.

Acknowledgements
This effort is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-0715303 and the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University and the New York Hall of Science. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Katy Börner's CNS Center Open House: 10/26/09

Dr. Katy Börner and The Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center cordially invite you to our Open House 2009, to be held Monday, October 26, 4:00-6:00 p.m. in SLIS, Wells Library Room 001.

If you're curious about information visualization, the people who do it, or just who occupies all those rooms in the corridor between the SLIS Administrative Office and Room 030, come and experience it firsthand. Light refreshments and good conversation guaranteed.

• Open House Brochure (research areas highlighted)

Mark A. Price
Center Assistant
Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center
812-855-5120 (office)
http://cns.slis.indiana.edu
http://ivl.slis.indiana.edu

Herring discusses Google Wave in New Scientist

SLIS Professor Susan Herring was recently quoted in an article in the New Scientist. The article, “Innovation: The Psychology of Google Wave” (by Tom Simonite, October 9, 2009), talks about the new Google Wave, a "real-time communication and collaboration" system. "Innovation is a regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead."

The Wave allows users to create documents like web pages that other users can view, edit, and comment on. The Wave’s distinct features are live typing and a replay option. Susan Herring gave the following quotes about the functions of and the future of The Wave:

“Past research has shown that the real-time, synchronous, nature of instant messaging (IM) encourages an informal tone, says Susan Herring, who researches the convergence of computer communication platforms at Indiana University in Bloomington. ‘It invokes face-to-face communication and encourages people to use conversational strategies,’ she explains.
Seeing live typing may accentuate that effect, but Wave can also be asynchronous, like email. ‘We won't see the difference between the two types of communication disappear,’ says Herring. ‘More elaborate messages are still possible, but when the other person is online you will be drawn to a more informal style.’ The pace and style of communicating with Wave will be more varied than with email.”
“‘Replaying a Wave gives an even more tangible and reliable feeling for the history of a relationship,’ Herring explains, compared to the way email threading and sorting quickly breaks down, hiding chronology.”
“That may also help reduce the misunderstandings that can blight email communication, says Herring: when people don't pick up that a comment is meant as a joke, for instance. ‘You have a multiplicity of channels to repair the conversation.’”

p>Herring is also the Editor-in-Chief of Language@Internet.

On the Cover of Library Journal: Kristin Centanni (MIS/MPA'08)

Each year on October 15th, the Library Journal launches an issue dedicated to job placements and salaries. This issue includes the Annual Placements & Salaries Survey of the previous year graduates (from master degree programs of schools accredited by the American Library Association.) Articles highlight trends in the profession, and can provide current students with important information as they begin their careers. The survey results include trends by region, career niche, and other categories.

The cover photo this year is of SLIS and SPEA alumna Kristin Centanni (MIS/MPA'08.) She was interviewed by Library Journal's Editor-at-Large John N. Berry III for a "From the Class" article (see excerpts here):

Placements & Salaries Survey 2009 -
Change Agent: Kristin Centanni, Class of 2008

A recent SLIS graduate working in change management shares her insights
by John N. Berry III - Library Journal, 10/15/09

…Kristin Centanni accepted [a job] at Diamond Consultants in Chicago, a technology management consulting firm with other offices in New York; Hartford, CT; Washington, DC; London; and Mumbai… Centanni is currently assigned to a project helping "a large transit agency in Chicago" upgrade its technology systems. Her focus is on change management.
"I'm dealing with people and processes, not the technology, mostly working to get people there to accept the alternative," she says.
Centanni found that both her IS and PA education helped in her current position. In the SLIS program, students analyzed how organizational processes flow and studied how to communicate change and articulate its different stages to individuals. Students analyzed "tons of case studies" to gain insights into how organizations deal with restructuring.
"Because we're [moving] the client from a manual system to a more automated one, it is very difficult for the staff. There has been a lot of pushback and fear that they'll lose their jobs, to be replaced by this technology," she says. "I try to help them understand that [this] is an opportunity for them to learn a new skill set that will actually expand their individual tool kit. 'You are becoming more valuable,' I say, and they are slowly buying into that idea. The more you can get them [operating] with the development of the project itself, the more they begin to see the light."
Although her career is in IS, Centanni feels confident that the future for librarians is as strong as it is for IS graduates. She notes the "huge surge in public library use" in Chicago, where she regularly takes advantage of the Humboldt Branch of the Chicago Public Library.
"There are the job seekers using the resources, outreach programs packing them in. They do a fabulous job there," she reports. "Patrons learn how to research jobs on the Internet, how to format a résumé, and simply how to get plugged in." That's something every generation needs, she says, the ability to plug in and keep up…

IU Press Release: John Walsh, TILE Grant (Digital Humanities)

SLIS faculty member John Walsh was featured in an Indiana University Press Release that highlighted his work in digital humanities. See full release below:

Indiana University News Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 15, 2009
by Steve Chaplin (stjchap@indiana.edu)

One image, too much information: TILE grant will bring documents, knowledge together

Collaboration involves researchers from Ireland, Maryland

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — For John Walsh, an assistant professor in Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, a picture will soon tell so much more than a thousand words.

Backed by $400,000 just awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Walsh will collaborate with peers from the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) in Belfast, Ireland, to develop a new technical infrastructure designed for unleashing all of the knowledge connected to any one image or document, from a historic manuscript or painting to an image in a children's book or a graphic novel.

"We're all working together to develop an advanced suite of tools for linking texts and images, and developing image-based digital humanities resources," said Walsh, who is also director of SLIS's Digital Library Specializations program. "Despite the proliferation of image-based editions and archives, the linking of images and textual information remains a slow and frustrating process for editors and curators."

Imagine viewing online a detailed portion of one of Michelangelo's frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and then being able to obtain every possible piece of linked information about any image in the fresco: the story behind an angel, the meaning of a scroll or a chalice, the provenance of related art, a list of researchers currently studying some aspect of the work.

Walsh and principal co-investigators Doug Reside of MITH and Dot Porter of DHO believe the opportunity to employ digital environments and tools to support all types of materials — ancient or modern, handwritten or printed, illustrated or photographed — could facilitate transformational developments in how we view text.

They've dubbed the project Text-Image Linking Environment (TILE), and over the next two years they will develop a new Web-based image markup tool that will, among other things, allow symbols, shapes and labels to be displayed as overlays on a base image — like a detail of a Sistine Chapel fresco — that then provide links to extensive annotations stored in a searchable database. The team sees TILE as the next generation of technical infrastructure supporting image-based editions and electronic archives within the humanities.

"Digital environments and tools offer possibilities for new representations of texts, new readings, and new strategies and habits of reading as documents evolve from more or less static and fixed texts to fluid and malleable data," Walsh said. "We want to develop a new Web-based, modular, collaborative image markup tool for both manual and semi-automated linking between encoded text and images of text, along with image annotation."

Walsh, a 2008 faculty fellow of the IU Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities, is also editor of The Swinburne Project (see http://swinburneproject.indiana.edu/swinburne/www/swinburne ), a digital collection devoted to the life and work of Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne that will also serve as a platform for TILE into the electronic publishing of humanities data and the application of technologies to the discovery and analysis of literary texts. Both The Swinburne Project and another of Walsh's research projects, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton (see http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/), will serve as test beds for TILE, as will additional projects at the University of Oregon and Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies.

"TILE will provide scholars from a diversity of disciplines with tools for the digital examination and analysis of documents, particularly visually and graphically rich documents such as illuminated manuscripts, art books, illustrated children's books, comics and graphic novels, maps," Walsh said.

Walsh joined the faculty of IU's School of Library and Information Science in 2006 and that same year he received funding from IU's internal grants program New Frontiers in Arts & Humanities. He serves on the executive committee of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (see http://www.ach.org/) and as an editor on the peer-reviewed online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly.

To speak with Walsh, please contact Steve Chaplin, University Communications, at 812-856-1896 or stjchap@indiana.edu.

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference 2009

Internet Research 10.0- Internet: Critical was the title of the 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), "an international association for students and scholars in any discipline in the field of Internet studies." Internet: Critical was held October 7-10, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI. SLIS was well represented.

An excerpt from the conference website highlights this year's theme:

Internet: Critical will provide a space for interdisciplinary researchers to reflect on, describe, interrogate, challenge, and stake new claims to various critical Internet issues, including:

critical moments, elements, practices
critical theories, methods, constructs
critical voices, histories, texts
critical networks, junctures, spaces
critical technologies, artifacts, failures
critical ethics, interventions, alternatives

SLIS faculty members Susan Herring and Ron Day, SLIS alumna Ewa Callahan (Ph.D.'07), SLIS doctoral students Dan Kutz, Lala Hajibayova, Wayne Buente, and Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, and SLIS doctoral minor student (also Ph.D. student in Telecommunications) AstaZelenkauskaite contributed to the conference. Notes about their research contributions are included below.

• Convergent Media Computer-Mediated Communication - Panel (10/9/09)

Susan Herring was both the organizer and a presenter of this panel. She presented a theoretical overview of the concept of CMCMC, defining it, situating it in historical perspective, discussing its current importance, and classifying it into types. Following this, three presenters presented illustrative CMCMC case studies: 1) a study of comment threads posted in response to YouTube videos - by Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, 2) a study of text chat during the multiplayer first-person shooter game BZFlag - by Dan Kutz, and 3) a study of text messages posted from mobile phones to an Italian interactive television (iTV SMS) program - by Asta Zelenkauskaite.

• Towards a Critical Internet Theory 1 - Panel (10/8/09)

Ron Day spoke on the importance of cultural forms and social actions for understanding subjects and objects, including those taking place within 'the internet,' and the concept of 'the internet' as a cultural-social form. The purpose of the talk was to delineate the roles and methods of a conceptual-critical approach to studying 'the internet,' as distinguished from empirical or empirical-critical methods of analysis.

• Cultural Bias in Wikipedia Content on Famous Persons (10/9/09)

This paper was co-authored by Ewa Callahan and Susan Herring. Brief excerpts from their abstract:
… Wikipedia, although originally a U.S-based, English-language phenomenon, now has versions in many languages, with content and perspectives that can be expected to vary across cultures.
…In this study we ask: Are Wikipedia entries on famous persons different in English and Polish, and if so how? How neutral and balanced is the coverage in entries in each language?
…Taken together, the findings suggest that monolingual Polish and English readers would get different amounts and kinds of information about famous people through Wikipedia, and that both versions incorporate cultural biases to some extent…

• Nonstandard Typography and the Virtual Marketplace: Gender Expression in Italian iTV SMS - Panel (10/10/09)

This paper was co-authored by Susan Herring and Asta Zelenkauskaite. It was presented as a part of a panel "Language, Play and Performance" (in honor of Professor Brenda Danet, who had been a collaborator with Susan Herring.) Excerpts from the paper abstract:

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) language is a social and ideological construct. Historically, writing practices in social CMC environments reflect ideologies of freedom of (self-) expression, creativity, and play (Danet, 2001) that can be traced to the libertarian values of the early developers of the Internet. For contemporary users, the choice to use characteristic features such as emoticons (e.g., ☺), acronyms (e.g., LOL), and various kinds of abbreviation and nonstandard punctuation indexestheir membership in a broad community of CMC users, while group-specific practices index membership in specific CMC communities (Nastri, Peña, & Hancock, 2006). Participants who use language appropriate to the communication venue accrue social capital (e.g., social acceptability); in this sense, CMC environments are virtual “linguistic markets” (Bourdieu,1977) in which language use, including nonstandard typography and orthography, is the symbolic currency… This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography—specifically, abbreviations and insertions—in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program…

• Azerbaijani Online Community: Past, Present and Future (10/9/09)

Lala Hajibayova presented a paper that "discusses online representation of Azerbaijani Diaspora of post Soviet era. Diaspora websites, discussion groups and forums analyzed to see how critical historical moments of newly independent country manifested in its online representation."

• Influence of Cognitive, Social, and Psychological Factors for Digital Citizenship (10/9/09)

Excerpts from the abstract of the paper by Wayne Buente:

A recent Harris Poll indicated that 3 out of every four (77%) Americans are online (The Wall Street Journal, 2006). Whereas once, during the 1990s, concerns about a digital divide of technology "haves" and "have nots" were part of the U.S.'s policy agenda, it is no longer a significant public policy issue, garnering little attention by policy makers. Yet, for the scholarly community, the digital divide remains salient as a potent metaphor because it is a manifestation of continuing social and economic inequality. Nonetheless, this narrow conception of the digital divide needs to be reframed, or at least extended, so that our commitment to effective use of the internet, including literacy, skills, and regular access, can be advanced (Mossberger, 2009). The emerging concept of "digital citizenship" focuses our attention on the relevance of the web for providing access to political content and its relationship between social and economic inequality and political and civic participation in the American polis…

LSTA Grant Consultant – Indiana State Library

SLIS graduate Virginia Vought (MLS'08) responded to an email interview about her job at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis, IN. Virginia is the LSTA Grant Consultant for the state. She is responsible for the handling of federal money given to the state for library services under the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

Key job duties
My official job description states that I "coordinate and oversee statewide LSTA projects and initiatives and consult with libraries regarding LSTA programs, applications, and grant writing." Currently, this translates into day-to-day work overseeing our mini-grant programs - working with grant applicants, monitoring current grantee projects, giving a hand when problems arise, and overseeing our reporting to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. I also seek grants for the State Library and eventually I'll conduct site visits, give grant workshops, and coordinate the Indiana State Library Advisory Council.”

Favorite aspects
“I'll always love working a reference desk, but I really enjoy working in administration now. It's exciting having a part in large-scale library initiatives and doing work that I know is important for the health of our state's library services. I also really appreciate that the State Library is open to new ideas and ways of getting the job done. They've allowed me to implement a fair amount of change to improve the LSTA grant processes. They keep me busy and that keeps me happy!”

Tips for students
“Maintain contacts with the people you meet in the library world. Every opportunity I've had since graduation has been because of someone I'd met and kept in touch with along the way. Work experience is also extremely valuable. I interned with the State Library a year ago, which gave me a great advantage when a position opened there this spring. But my non-library work history was important, too. When you're getting ready to start applying and interviewing for jobs, know your work history well and be able to connect your experience in and out of library service to the position.

Get involved at SLIS! I did as many jobs/internships/activities as I could fit in during my short time at SLIS and that extra-curricular experience gave me a considerable edge for jobs I was interested in.

Be open! I was certain I wanted to work in "adult services in a medium-sized public library" but I couldn't be happier with the new direction my career is taking.

When you're in the field, get to know your state library. They may have a lot to offer you and your library.”

Youth Services Librarian

SLIS alumna Rebecca Daniel (MLS'09) works at Barrington Area Library as the Youth Services Collection Development Librarian in Barrington, Illinois. Rebecca responded to some questions in an email interview about her new job and advice to students.

What are your key job duties?
“I'm in charge of the fiction collection for the youth services department so I do all the ordering, evaluating, promoting, and weeding for the birth-8th grade fiction collection. I am also the coordinator of our Library Activity Center [LAC]. The LAC is an off-site collection of popular materials for all ages. The titles there are not available for holds, so it's a "grab and go" collection. I'm in charge of ordering and evaluating the fiction collection at the LAC and I do programming there. I am in charge of preschool outreach for the library. I coordinate preschool off-site storytimes and do preschool loans. Local preschools can request bags of books on various themes from the library. I also work the reference desk, do programming, and storytimes.”

What do you like most about your job?
“I love the interaction with the kids who use the department. There are the regulars who come in and like to stop by the desk to say hi and those who try to never miss your storytimes. They're the ones that make the job fun. I also enjoy the opportunity to really entrench myself in the world of youth/teen fiction. I love reading up on new titles and trying to prepare for which ones are going to be popular with our patrons. It's nice to actually start applying what I learned in SLIS!”

Do you have any advice for students?
“Good luck and apply for everything! Also, if you're applying for a position in youth services (public or school) start signing up for listservs now. PUBYAC and YALSA are great listservs to start reading and getting a feel for what's going on in youth services/literature. Also, try reading as much children’s literature as you can. Employers will ask you for sample reader's advisory and they always ask what you're reading. In an interview I was asked what 4 books I'd want to have with me on a deserted island. Be prepared for questions like that. Finally, check out the Kidlitosphere, it's a great group of librarians/youth lit enthusiasts who blog about juvenile-YA lit, programming, and other topics of interest.”

Progressive Librarian’s Guild – Student Chapter

The mission of the Progressive Librarian’s Guild – Student Chapter is to promote socially responsible librarianship and provide a forum for the exchange of ideas. The PLG-SC works with the community by sponsoring talks, events, and service. President Lisa Schelling sent us an update about the group and its involvement with the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project. Schelling is a current student in the Master of Library Science degree program.

“This is a great chance to brush up or improve your readers advisory skills, chat with other SLIS students, and help out a progressive book project. Feel free to stop by when you can, even after night class. Or stay and volunteer the entire two and half hours. Watch for more events including speakers, film nights, and more volunteer nights coming up later this semester!

Pages to Prisoners is an all volunteer organization that sends free books to prisoners in the United States. The project exists to alleviate pain and boredom and to provide an opportunity for self-education. During our volunteer night we'll be reading and responding to prisoner letters, selecting books to send from a library of donated books, and packaging items for mailing. The Pages to Prisoners Project is located at 118 S. Rogers, Suite 2 (near the corner of S. Rogers & 4th Street).”

The first Pages to Prisoners meeting for the Fall 2009 semester was held on Tuesday, October 13th from 7:30 to 10:00 p.m.

• Progressive Librarian's Guild (National Association)

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