Citation
(2005), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 22 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2005.23922gab.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
New & Noteworthy
Duke UniversityIssues Final Report on Educational Uses of iPods
Duke University has released the results of an evaluation of the 2004-2005 Duke iPod First-Year Experience. As part of a university initiative to encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life, Duke distributed 20GB Apple* iPod devices, each equipped with Belkin* Voice Recorders, to over 1600 entering first-year students in August 2004. A report on the evaluation, conducted by the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), is available for download from the Duke iPod web site. www.duke.edu/ipod
The report details feedback from faculty, staff and students involved in the distribution of more than 1,600 iPods to incoming first-year students and their use in courses. In April 2005 Duke announced that preliminary information from the ongoing CIT evaluation contributed to the university's decision to continue using iPods in the classroom for the coming 2005-2006 academic year. The iPod use is part of the Duke Digital Initiative, a wide-ranging technology effort including digital audio, images and video, collaboration tools and tablet and hand-held computing.
Based on class observations, student and faculty focus groups, and course level and broad surveys of students, benefits of academic iPod use were identified as follows:
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Convenience for both faculty and students of portable digital course content, and reduced dependence on physical materials.
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Flexible location-independent access to digital multimedia course materials, including reduced dependence on lab or library locations and hours.
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Effective and easy-to-use tool for digital recording of interviews, field notes, small group discussions, and self-recording of oral assignments.
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Greater student engagement and interest in class discussions, labs, field research, and independent projects.
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Enhanced support for individual learning preferences and needs.
The report also includes detailed findings on the barriers to and problems encountered with academic iPod use, and the institutional impacts of the iPod project.
Next year, Duke will shift distribution away from an entire class of students and will focus instead on making the devices available to specific courses upon the request of faculty members at all undergraduate levels. The university's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) will coordinate the use and distribution of the devices, which will be given to any student who enrolls in a course whose proposed use of iPods is coordinated through CIT. Students who receive an iPod through the program will own the device and be expected to retain it for future use in any other Duke classes using iPods.
Duke iPod web site: www.duke.edu/ipod
Final evaluation report, June 2005: http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf
Chemical Abstracts ServiceScientific Databases Now Accessible via Handhelds
In an industry first, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) demonstrated the delivery of chemical information, including structures, via live interaction using BlackBerry* and other handheld devices at the CAS European conference in Vienna in April. More than 20 handheld devices were used simultaneously by conference participants to retrieve hundreds of literature references as well as molecular structure and related data for specific substances in real time.
"This capability opens up a new vista of convenient and personalized access to CAS data," said Bob Massie, CAS president. "Information professionals and scientists can retrieve key scientific information from CAS' unparalleled databases at any time and anywhere."
Bringing chemical information including structure diagrams to the small-screen handheld devices resulted from a CAS team effort led by Brian Bergner, CAS vice president of information technology. "Our goal is to make CAS information available on the platforms and through the tools gaining the most rapid and widespread use," said Bergner. "We know the pace of scientific research demands instant access to the best research data, and this advancement will give researchers the ability to log in even when they are away from their desktop workstations, during a meeting with colleagues, attending a conference or while taking a break from the lab."
The demonstration illustrated the ability to retrieve and analyze information from CAS' principal databases, CAplusSM and CAS RegistrySM. The Registry database contains records for more than 25 million organic and inorganic substances, including small molecules, and more than 56 million sequences. In addition, CAplus contains more than 23 million chemistry-related literature and patent references back to 1900.
CAS will be making this new mobile route to scientific databases, called CAS Mobile, available through its STN and SciFinder services in the near future.
Sirsi and Dynix Merge
Sirsi Corporation and Dynix Corporation have announced that the two companies are merging to create SirsiDynix, a single company positioned more strongly than either company on its own to develop and deliver leading-edge information technology solutions for libraries and consortia around the world. With detailed planning already being undertaken jointly, the two companies will integrate their worldwide operations. Representatives from both companies are working together to make strategic decisions regarding all aspects of the company's future. Integration and strategic planning for the new company are to be completed in fourth quarter 2005. Decisions now made include adoption of a strategy to continue full development and support of the Unicorn and Horizon 8.x/Corinthian integrated library system (ILS) platforms; appointment of Sirsi CEO Patrick C. Sommers as chief executive of the new company; and appointment of Dynix CEO Jack Blount as a consultant responsible for completing development of Horizon 8.x/Corinthian and as a member of the company's board of directors.
SirsiDynix offers a suite of library technologies, including products like the Unicorn and Horizon 7.x Library Management Systems, as well as the next-generation Horizon 8.x/Corinthian platform (the next upgrade to Horizon 7.x) and a host of user interface/portal, content, data-analysis, and productivity solutions. Going forward, the company will execute on a dual-platform strategy that involves continuing development of both the Unicorn and Horizon 8.x/Corinthian ILS platforms. Unicorn and Horizon users can continue to use their system of choice, just as they had prior to the merger.
"Because thousands of libraries around the world depend on Unicorn," said Sommers, "SirsiDynix will continue to invest the R&D required to maintain Unicorn's reputation as the most comprehensive and evolutionary ILS available." The company is now completing beta testing of Unicorn GL3.0 ahead of its general release in August 2005. Development of Unicorn GL3.1 is already under way.
"Dynix customers on a path toward Horizon 8.x/Corinthian can be confident that SirsiDynix will complete this next-generation ILS," said Blount. "We've invested tremendous time, energy, and resources in researching and developing 8.x/Corinthian – that's why we're confident that this new platform offers numerous compelling features and benefits to current and prospective customers." Beta testing of Horizon 8.x/Corinthian will begin in fall 2005, with general release scheduled for first quarter 2006. Horizon 8.x is the ILS solution for public, special, and school libraries; Corinthian is for academic and research libraries.
SirsiDynix has approximately 4,000 library and consortia clients around the world, serving more than 200 million people through more than 20,000 library outlets. With 725 employees worldwide, the company maintains operations in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Primary offices are located in Huntsville, Alabama, Provo, Utah, and St. Louis, Missouri, in the USA; Montreal and Waterloo in Canada; London, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Leiden (the Netherlands), and Hvidovre (Denmark) in Europe; Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia; Auckland, New Zealand; and Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai in Asia.
Thomson GaleLaunches AccessMyLibrary.com
Thomson Gale has announced a new library advocacy initiative that will enable libraries to capitalize on Internet search engines as a means of connecting library users with authoritative content. This initiative will increase peoples' awareness and usage of the library resources users are entitled to and at the same time provide them with direct access to more high-value information through an Internet search. The growing reliance on Internet search engines as a means of conducting academic research represents a departure from longstanding research patterns.
With the launch of AccessMy Library.com, Thomson Gale has enabled its content to be crawled and indexed by major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. In doing so, Thomson Gale is not only making high-value content resources visible to a broader universe of information seekers, but is also highlighting the critical role libraries play as providers of quality information. Once desired content has been identified and made visible through the search engine's results, it becomes available through AccessMyLibrary.com if the searcher is an authorized user of a library that subscribes to that content.
Thomson Gale has released AccessMyLibrary.com as a beta program, which includes thousands of libraries that will enable their authenticated users to gain access to millions of documents from Thomson Gale's product lines. There are no additional setup requirements for libraries in the beta program. Thomson Gale's service will set the standard for how publishers, aggregators, search engines and libraries can work in harmony for the benefit of their users.
With AccessMyLibrary.com, when searchers select a Thomson Gale article from a search engine's result list, they will be given the option to connect to their local library and freely access the selected article. Users will need to have their library card number or other identification to connect to the library. The library's address and phone number will also be provided so that users can contact their library to obtain a card or to learn more about the library's resources.
Web site: http://accessmylibrary.com/
Full text of press release: www.galegroup.com/servlet/PressArchive DetailServlet?article ID=200506_ accessmy
University of MichiganGoogle Digitization Contract Available
In response to a state freedom of information request, the University of Michigan has made available for public viewing its Cooperative Agreement with Google for their joint digitization project. In December 2004 the University of Michigan and Google, Inc. entered into a partnership to digitize the entire print collection, of approximately 7 million volumes, of the University Library as part of the Google Print project. The goal of the project is to have the digitized collection searchable by Google. Additionally, the University Library will receive and own a copy of all images to integrate into new and existing University Library user services.
Michigan Digitization Project Web site: www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/
Contract: www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/um-google-cooperative-agreement.pdf
Google Print Web site: http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html
New Cross CollectionSearching Tool Available
EEVL Xtra is new, free service which can help users find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing. EEVL Xtra is for anyone, including academics, researchers, students, lecturers and practicing professionals, looking for information in engineering, mathematics and computing.
EEVL Xtra cross-searches over 20 different collections relevant to engineering, mathematics and computing, including content from over 50 publishers and providers. It doesn't just point to these databases, but rather it "deep mines" them, so they can be searched directly from EEVL Xtra. Databases searched include: arXiv, ePrints UK, CISTI, CiteSeer, CSA Hot Topics, Copac, Euclid Mathematics and Statistics Journals, Interscience Journals IoP Journals, NACA Technical Reports, NASA Technical Reports, OneStep Industry News, OneStep Jobs, Pearson Education, Recent Advances in Manufacturing, zetoc, EEVL Best of the Web, EEVL Ejournal Search Engine, and more.
EEVL Xtra helps find subject-based information. Many of the things found through EEVL Xtra come from the "Hidden Web", and are not indexed by search engines. In many cases, the full text of items found via EEVL Xtra should be freely available. In some cases, the full items are details of books, websites or articles. In some cases, the full text of items may be available to the user if their institution subscribes to the publication.
EEVL Xtra is an initiative of Heriot Watt University, and is produced by EEVL, the Internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing.
EEVL Xtra Web site: http://www.eevlxtra.ac.uk/
Exalead Internet Search EngineAvailable in Beta Release
In October 2004, Exalead, a software company specializing in information access, launched its Web search engine. After focusing on the enterprise market with its Exalead Corporate product range, Exalead is now announcing an Internet search engine that provides a whole new search experience. As of early 2005, the Exalead Internet search engine has indexed more than one billion pages.
Designed to make life for internet users easier, this search service features a new and richer experience for information access, for speed, interactive navigation, and ease of use.
In addition to deploying its unique navigation system on the Web, Exalead is introducing many innovative features to help Internet users when they need it the most, and in ways they want to be helped:
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Spelling suggestions, approximate and phonetic searches, automatic word stemming, etc.
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Visually-enhanced search results with thumbnails and "safe page preview".
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Ability to sort search results by relevance, source, or even by date.
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Guides to help you quickly refine your search based on keywords, categories, language, document format, and even by country.
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Bookmarks to save the pages you find interesting as you navigate through the search results.
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A smart translation system, developed in collaboration with Systran.
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Breakthrough real-time Web indexing technology.
The following are some of the Exalead features that simplify searching for all internet users:
Thumbnails. As a picture is worth more than words, each search result has a thumbnail to give a visual preview of the page. Non-web pages such as PDF or Microsoft Word* documents are represented by an icon for quick identification. This feature makes search pleasant to use and is available for every page contained in Exalead's index – a world's first. It makes it much easier to recognize a logo or a site previously visited, to distinguish between a personal site and a corporate site, or to avoid spam sites.
Preview. By clicking on a search result, Exalead quickly shows a preview without formatting in the bottom half of the screen. Search terms are highlighted and a fast-forward button allows the user to see the next search term in a click. This preview protects public users and companies from viruses by not opening the original document (Webpage, PDF, Word*, etc.). Keyboard shortcuts make the interface even faster to use.
Bookmarks. The "Add a bookmark" function is in the preview window. If Internet users find a page interesting, it allows them to store the page's address in their browser's favorites list. They no longer have to open many windows to avoid losing what they have found – Exalead bookmarks what users find important so they can come back to it later.
Real-time. The freshness of search results is as important as relevance. Exalead has real-time indexing technology (even for billions of pages), allowing it to remain synchronized with the web to ensure the freshest results possible at all times. Of course there is always a delay between the creation of a new document and its arrival on the search engine, but this delay is now the strict minimum.
Sort-by date. Exalead allows for the first time ever the sorting of documents by date. Combined with the real-time indexing, this method makes real-time information monitoring much more efficient.
Natural language. Totally multilingual, Exalead has linguistic tools to help everyone search with greater ease. For example, the search engine automatically searches on word roots ("race horse" can find documents with the words "race horses"). The search engine recognizes compound words, to better refine the search, and it offers to automatically translate documents that are not in the user's primary language.
The Exalead internet search service is currently in beta release. Two search services are available as of October 2004:
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beta.exalead.fr (French audience); and
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beta.exalead.com (International audience);
Each service is tailored to its target audience, and search results and navigation may look very different from one service to the other.
Production Release of JHOVENow Available
JSTOR and the Harvard University Library have announced that the initial production release of JHOVE (the JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment, pronounced "jove") is now available at http://hul.harvard.edu/jhove/.
JHOVE is an extensible framework for format-specific object identification, validation, and characterization. Format identification answers the question, "I have an object; what format is it?" Validation answers the question, "I have a format purportedly of format F; is it?" Characterization answers the question, "I have an object of format F; what are its salient properties?"
This version, Rel. 1.0 (2005-05-026), includes modules that support the following formats:
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AIFF, AIFF-C;
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ASCII;
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GIF 87a, 89a;
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HTML 3.2, 4.0, 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and 1.1;
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JPEG, JFIF, Exif 2.0 and 2.1, SPIFF, JTIP, JPEG-LS;
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JPEG 2000 JP2, JPX;
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PDF 1.0-1.6, PDF/X-1, -1a, -2, -3, Tagged PDF, Linearized PDF, PDF/A-1;
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TIFF 4.0-6.0, Class B, G, P, R, Y, F, TIFF/IT, TIFF/EP, Exif 2.0; and
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2.1, GeoTIFF, TIFF-FX, RFC 1314, DNG;
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UTF-8;
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WAVE, BWF; and
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XML 1.0.
Still image metadata is reported in the form of NISO Z38.97/MIX schema; audio metadata is reported in the form of AES-X098B schema.
Detailed release notes, documentation, and tutorial information are available on the JHOVE web site. A "JHOVE-users" listserv has been established to provide a forum for general discussion and announcements and is intended to increase the adoption and usefulness of JHOVE in the digital library, archives, repository, and preservation communities. To subscribe, e-mail: majordomo@hulmail.harvard.edu with the command: subscribe jhove-users in the message body.
JHOVE is made available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
JHOVE is a joint project of JSTOR and the Harvard University Library. Development of JHOVE was funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a grant to JSTOR for its Electronic-Archiving Initiative.
Freeware Subtitle EditingTools Available
Subtitle Workshop, available from URLSoft, is an efficient and convenient freeware subtitle editing tool. It supports many subtitle formats and has an intuitive interface that mixes easy to access menus and essential features with advanced functions and speed and stability. It includes spell check function and an advanced video preview.
Features include:
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Reading and writing engine:
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Based in URUSoft SubtitleAPI, so new formats can be easily added by downloading an updated dll file.
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Currently (version 1.05 of SubtitleAPI) supports around 56 subtitle formats.
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Interface:
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Supports multi-language (currently over 35 languages are available!).
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User friendly "Translator mode".
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Video preview:
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Shows subtitles over the video.
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NOT based in Windows Media Player, this results in a highly improved performance and visual quality.
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Subtitle fixing:
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Advanced & easy to customize text scripts for OCR errors repair, offering the possibility of using regular expressions.
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Optional automated checks/fixes on load subtitle.
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General:
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Can split subtitle (at selected item, at given item, at given time, at given frame, or at the end of video), or in an indefinite number of parts (equal in time, in lines or at the end of multiple videos).
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Can join an indefinite number of subtitles, and those subtitles may be in different formats with different FPS (you can select a different FPS for each file).
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Two methods of getting FPS from video: without using DirectX (only supports AVI) and using DirectX (supports all video formats, but it is slower).
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Timing operations:
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Set delay (positive or negative, time or frames).
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Set duration limits (maximum duration and minimum duration).
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Adjust subtitles using four possible methods: 1- first and last dialogs, 2- synchronize using two points (linear algorithm), 3- Adjust to synchronized subtitles and 4- Advanced system to synchronize subtitles using an indefinite number of points.
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"Time expander/reducer" to expand/reduce the final time of certain subtitles under certain conditions.
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"Automatic durations" to calculate the duration of subtitles using a simple formula.
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FPS Conversion with one click.
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"Extend length" to extend the length of selected subtitles to the start time of the next one.
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"Shift subtitle" forward or backwards a configurable amount of time.
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"Read times from file" feature, to fix a subtitle using another subtitle's times.
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Text-related operations:
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"Smart line adjust" to constrain subtitles bigger than three lines into two and adjust length of lines.
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"Divide lines" to easily divide a subtitle with more than one line (or one big line) into two subtitles with proper time recalculation.
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"Reverse text" keeping lines order or not.
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Text and times related:
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"Sort subtitles" to sort all the subtitles according to their start time.
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Visual effects with the texts and times of the subtitles.
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Web site: www.urusoft.net/products .php?cat=sw&lang=1
The Video Help web site also provides a list of other freeware, shareware and adware subtitling software that is available: www.videohelp.com/tools?s=24#24 This site provides additional information in the form of user ratings and comments.
W3C SKOS CoreWorking Drafts Available
The W3C Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has announced the publication of the following technical reports as first public Working Drafts:
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SKOS Core Guide – www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-guide-20050510/
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SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification – www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-spec-20050510/
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Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web – www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-thesaurus-pubguide-20050517/
SKOS Core is a simple, flexible and extensible language for expressing the structure and content of concept schemes (thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary) in a machine-understandable form. The SKOS Core Vocabulary is an application of the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Using RDF allows data to be linked to and/or merged with other data. In practice, this means that distributed sources of data can be meaningfully composed and integrated.
The "SKOS Core Guide" is a guide to the recommended usage of the SKOS Core Vocabulary, for readers who already have a basic understanding of RDF concepts. The "SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification" gives a reference-style overview of the SKOS Core Vocabulary, and describes policies for ownership, naming, persistence and change management. The "Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web" describes in brief how to express the content and structure of a thesaurus, and metadata about a thesaurus, in RDF, and gives some practical guidance for publication of RDF data.
These reports are first public Working Drafts, and are works in progress. Feedback is sought from anyone with a potential interest in using these specifications, or with relevant expertise. The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group is committed to a public, consensus-driven design environment for SKOS Core, and to this end conducts all SKOS-related discussion in public, in particular drawing on feedback from the Semantic Web Interest Group mailing list public-esw-thes@w3.org. The public-esw-thes@w3.org mailing list is open, and anyone is welcome to subscribe or to post messages. To subscribe, send an email to public-esw-thes-request@w3.org with the subject line "subscribe".
Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group web site: www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/
Ontology Alignment EvaluationInitiative 2005 Campaign
The increasing number of methods available for schema matching/ontology integration suggests the need to establish a consensus for evaluation of these methods. There is now a coordinated international initiative to forge this consensus. After two events organized in 2004 (namely, the Information Interpretation and Integration Conference (I3CON) and the EON Ontology Alignment Contest), a group has organized one unique evaluation of which the outcome will be presented at the Workshop on Integrating Ontologies held in conjunction with K-CAP 2005 at Banff (Canada) on October 2, 2005.
The goal of the ontology alignment initiative is to provide ground to discuss alignment and matching algorithms and system performances and to help as much as possible their improvements.
This campaign will consist of three parts: it will feature two real world blind tests (anatomy and directory) and a systematic benchmark test suite. By blind tests it is meant the result expected from the test is not known in advance. The evaluation organizers provide the participants with the pairs of ontologies to align as well as (in the case of the systematic benchmark suite only) expected results. The ontologies are described in OWL-DL and serialized in the RDF/XML format. The expected alignments are provided in a standard format expressed in RDF/XML and described in: http://co4.inrialpes.fr/align/.
The anatomy real world case will have to be tested blindly. It covers the domain of body anatomy and will consist of two ontologies with an approximate size of several 10k classes and several dozen of relations. The directory real world case will have to be tested blindly. It consists of alignming (sic) a web site's directory (like open directory or Yahoo's). Similar to last year's EON contest, a systematic benchmark series has been produced. The goal of this benchmark series is to identify the areas in which each alignment algorithm is strong and weak. The test is based on one particular ontology dedicated to the very narrow domain of bibliography and a number of alternative ontologies of the same domain for which alignments are provided.
From the results of the experiments the participants are expected to provide the organizers with a paper to be published in the workshop proceedings. The results from both, the participants and the organizers, will be presented at the Workshop on Integrating Ontologies at K-CAP 2005 taking place at Banff (Canada) on October, 2nd 2005.
Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative web site: http://oaei.inrialpes.fr/2005/
K-CAP 2005 Workshop on Integrating Ontologies web site: http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/intont2005
British AcademyIssues Report on E-resources for Humanities and Social Sciences
The British Academy, the country's national academy for the humanities and social sciences, has recently issued the final report of a review of the state of research resources provision, and particularly of electronic resources provision, in the humanities and social sciences. Information and communications technology (ICT) is having a major impact on the form of, and access to, research resources, as well as on methods and tools. This has been particularly marked in science, technology and medicine. The British Academy wished to discover what impact e-resources and e-access are having on research in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), both in their own right and through their interaction with non-e resources. ICT can make research more efficient and effective in two ways: by making primary resources like text, images and data readily available through digitization; and by facilitating access to both e- and non-e primary resources through digital secondary resources like electronic catalogues and other discovery tools.
The Academy consulted relevant national institutions and organizations and individual researchers in all areas of HSS to establish the present state of e-resources and their use, and to identify future needs. The review reports on what the organizations are doing to support resource provision, and on how researchers are actually working with resources. E-resource provision is a complex area, with many component factors that have far-reaching implications. The Review thus examines the role of technological factors, of resource properties, access means, and holding requirements, and of publication and rights choices. E-resource provision is rapidly advancing, and HSS researchers are already exploiting a wide range of e-materials and tools for reaching and using them.
The review found that HSS researchers are proactive and enterprising in their use of e-resources, even where much of their work is with non-e resources; are conducting their research with as much e-sophistication as workers in science, technology and medicine; are developing HSS research in new ways; and are reaching across subject boundaries within and outside HSS. The review also shows that UK resource provision is ad hoc and fragmented, structural options are not being fully analyzed, and important policy issues are not being vigorously addressed. More strategic, coordinated and well-targeted action is needed to ensure that the UK's own rich stock of research resources is more accessible than at present, and that UK researchers can deploy the resources they need from both UK and non-UK sources to keep UK research and scholarship in HSS at the international leading edge.
The report includes both Specific and Overall recommendations addressed to pertinent stakeholders, notably national institutions and bodies, to universities and libraries, and to researchers themselves.
The review is available at: www.britac.ac.uk/reports/eresources/index.html
NSF Releases Final Reportof Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure for Social Sciences
Cyberinfrastructure is the coordinated aggregate of software, hardware and other technologies, as well as human expertise, required to support current and future discoveries in science and engineering. Cyberinfrastructure has the potential to be a fundamental enabler of innovations and new discoveries, and it is just as critical for the advancement of the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences as it is for engineering and the physical, natural, biological, and computer sciences. By participating in the development of cyberinfrastructure, the SBE sciences can take a giant step forward.
The National Science Foundation funded the SBE/CISE Workshop on "Cyberinfrastructure for the Social and Behavioral Sciences" in recognition of NSF's role in enabling, promoting, and supporting science and engineering research and education. The workshop was intended to help identify the SBE sciences' needs for infrastructure, their potential for helping CISE develop this infrastructure for engineering and all the sciences, and their capacity for assessing the societal impacts of cyberinfrastructure. Over 80 leading CISE and SBE scientists were brought together at Airlie House in Virginia on March 15 and 16 in 2005 to discuss six areas:
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Cyberinfrastructure tools for the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
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Cyberinfrastructure-mediated Interaction.
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Organization of Cyberinfrastructure and Cyberinfrastructure-enabled Organizations.
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Malevolence and Cyberinfrastructure.
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Economics of Cyberinfrastructure.
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Impact of Cyberinfrastructure on Jobs and Income.
Before, during, and after the Airlie House Conference, each working group produced reports on cyberinfrastructure and the social sciences. (All Workshop reports can be found at: www.sdsc.edu/sbe/). Based upon these materials as well as Workshop presentations (which can also be found on the website), the organizers of the Conference have produced their final report. The report includes conclusions based on the findings of the workshop, recommendations for projects, programs, and priorities, and a set of eight "Moonshot Challenges" to represent major undertakings that would have an immense impact on science and society.
Workshop homepage: http://vis.sdsc.edu/sbe/
Final report: http://vis.sdsc.edu/sbe/reports/SBE-CISE-FINAL.pdf