research as social activity: designing a collaborative e-research space

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Research as social activity: designing a collaborative e-Research space

Ian Johnson Archaeological Computing Laboratory

Spatial Science Innovation UnitUniversity of Sydney

Archaeological Computing Laboratory

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Is the quill dead?

55% of project applications have a digital component

Individual scholars and informal mechanisms


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Arts and Humanities needs We don’t have a data deluge We don’t deal with Petabytes or Teraflops … We don’t (mostly) need e-Science

We do need e-Research We do need virtual communities We do need tools to handle the information deluge, viz:

New ways of doing things (tools, techniques, methodologies, ways of thinking, paradigms …)

New analyses, reinterpretation, deconstruction and understanding of a (basically) fixed set of resources

We do need zero entry barrier Like: file storage, office, browser, email Grid computing?


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Information deluge

How do we find out about new tools, methodologies, approaches, projects, sources of data and information which don’t make it to formal publications

How do we do this without spending our life at conferences or hours of frustrating Googling?

Do we just try and ignore it? Discussion on H-world Historians saying they won’t accept anything from their

students which is not published in a refereed journal


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Specific issues

How do we keep track of all the different web sites, tools, databases, notes and so forth that we create or use?

How do we take notes about, or annotate, resources to which we have no write access?

How do we backup information if we have it scattered across several systems, some (many) of which we don’t own (eg. blogg and wiki servers)?


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Are Portals the answer?

Canadian cultural portal (Mostafa Zommo) The portal lets you find databases The databases are a proxy/ad hoc classification The real question is:

How do you find the things in which you are really interested?

The answer is probably: You need a search mechanism

Search reduces need for developing and sharing an unambiguous classification


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Is Google the answer?

Yes, that’s why we all use it No, that’s why we:

Publish papers Visit the library Attend conferences Talk to colleagues Create structured databases Create metadata etc…


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Keeping track

How can we keep track of all the different web sites, academic papers, ICT tools, databases, thoughts, ideas, scribblings, and so forth that we create or use?

Some solutions(increasing functionality, increasing shareability, higher entry barrier)

MS Word, Notepad Google desktop? Browser bookmarks Structure, attrition Bibliographic software Defined function Bloggs Server Wikis Server CMS, database Server/rigidity/cost/setup Knowledge managers Server/cost/setup


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Problems

Fragmentation of information Cross-resource searching Annotation and linking

Uncertain existence Unstable addressing

Sharing information Backup


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SHSSERI Sydney Humanities & Social Sciences e-Research Initiative

Groupware/Collaborative KnowledgeSpace Web-based community system

Reduced dependence on desktop systems Centralised, persistent, accessible Integrated information source, searchable Participation, information sharing Builds on community knowledge Low entry barrier – web browser, pre-configured


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SHSSERI for U. Sydney

One-stop-shop maintained within the University for: Information (Humanities and Digital Humanities) Bibliographies, bookmarks, notes/annotation Server-based digital tools – admin, information

management, database creation, analysis Communication, web pages, community activities Single-point backup, link verification, harvesting Archiving (Sydney e-Scholarship)


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SHSSERI + TMBookmarker

Simple designLightweight, rapid page loadHighly functional page headerTwo click hierarchyDatabase-drivenUser participation


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1. Digital Humanities Information

Annotated domain guides Linking to:

Guides to best practice Project exemplars Data resources etc …

Wiki-based Seeded by us Extended by users … we hope Monitored


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Wiki problems

Will we have the same problems as Wikipedia? Authoritative info overwritten by dunces Trashing by trolls Incomplete coverage compared with Encyc Brit.

(but compare the speed of development and cost!) Better-defined community, common goals Contributors are not anonymous


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2. Bookmarks, bibliography, annotation

TMBookmarker A consistent index to conventional bibliographic

entries, web bookmarks and personal notes Annotation linked to any physical or digital

resource (or free-floating notes) Bookmarks/annotation sharing Social bookmarking – exploiting group behaviour

of the ‘swarm’


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SHSSERI + TMBookmarker


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TMBookmarker


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Edit reference


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Social bookmarking

Communities of interest highlighting key resources in a particular domain through group behaviour (collecting, tagging and rating bookmarks/bibliographic entries)

“… allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as subscribe to the lists of others” (Wikipedia)


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Social bookmarking systems

Del.icio.us (late 2003) Furl (rating and popularity) Sync2It (tag clusters) CiteULike (academic bookmarking) Connotea (bibliographic entries with DOI) Yahoo MyWeb (mid 2005) – moving to mainstream Flickr (photos)

See Wikipedia entry for listing of approx. 40 social bookmarking tools and some reviews


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Social bookmarking functions

Personal topic/tag lists (folksonomies) Private and public bookmarks Rate bookmark (generic or against a topic) Search all bookmarks, copy to personal list Follow tags or people to find related bookmarks Sort tags or bookmarks by popularity, avg rating etc. Create groups, use to find relevant bookmarks Mark for reading, mark as read Save page (clipping) Email a friend or group


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User-defined tags

Each user defines their own tags Duplication (even within one user) Popularity

assumes consistency Clusters Networks of tags

my GIS = your Mapping Assumptions of meaning Potential for data mining

(correlation of tags)

social bookmarkingSocialbookmarkssocial softwaresocial_bookmarkingsocial-bookmarkingcollaborationsharingsocialbookmarkingtaggingsocial-softwareresource sharingSocial Bookmarkcommunity


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Furl

Anonymous users Saves web pages (reliable?) Search other people’s bookmarks (unless private) Free addition of tags visible to all Rating 1-5 (within topic) Tags rated in order of popularity Cool (>1), warm (>~3), hot (>~9 for popular topics) No bibliographic functions


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CiteULike

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.


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CiteULike

Anonymous users, no way to contact Depends on non-commercial service provider, free Approx 25 academic sources (journals etc) from which

publication details are extracted automatically Mostly science (eg. AIPScitation) or generic (eg.

Amazon) Export EndNote or BibTex, import BibTex No field for URL on manual entry Typed records but no conditional data entry


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CiteULike social functions

Free tagging, tags visible to all Most popular tags list Groups (~100, 0 – 31 members) Link to papers

with same tag by same author tagged by particular user tagged by members of group

Watchlists


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Connotea


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Connotea

Academic, science oriented Depends on commercial service provider, free Captures bibliographic info for pages on:

Nature.com PubMed PubMed Central Supported Highwire Press publications Amazon HubMed D-Lib Magazine

Support for DOIs, OpenURL resolver Open Source (perl, MySQL) Must have URL – no floating notes or referencing of

printed materials


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Connotea – social functions

Personal tags (with annotation) Related tags Search across all users Link to:

Users who tagged item Items with same tag in other user’s space

Groups Import Firefox bookmarks, RIS Export RIS, RSS


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TMBookmarker - now

Built from scratch in T1000 (php, MySQL) Flexibility to develop as required Rapid display, simple interface Use as browser startup page Server based, accessible anywhere Custom searches for frequently used resources Bookmarks, personal notes (+ or – URL) Bookmarklet, automatic DOI recognition Personal and public notes, password reminder Personal categories/keywords (controlled lists) Find/copy bookmarks


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TMBookmarker – plans

Open Source Bibliographic info, import/export/format Wiki and blogg functionality Humanities-specific content Identifiable users, interest groups Rating and weighting Data mine for related tags/records Automatic watch lists, notification, recommendation Data feeds (RSS), archive feeds, harvesting Pre-defined query results in web pages


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Conclusion

Model for overcoming the dangers and wasted effort associated with the current fragmentation of digital tools and resources

Promotes knowledge-sharing Scaling

institutional level community of practice need to identify an appropriate scale

research as social activity: designing a collaborative e-research space

Documents

emailgrid computing

new tools

things tools

ict tools

humanities needswe dont

new ways

data delugewe dont deal

databasesthe databases