School of
Information Management & Systems
Previously School of Library & Information Studies
296a-1
Seminar: Information Access.
("The Friday Afternoon Seminar")
Summaries - Spring 2002.
Fridays 3-5. 107 South Hall.
Schedule.
Summaries will be added as they become available.
* at the end of a title indicates student project for credit.
Jan 25: Clifford LYNCH: Introduction to the Seminar.
Archiving of digital material.
Feb 1: Clifford LYNCH:
Archiving of digital material (Continued).
Also: With Fredric GEY and Ray LARSON:
Report on HICSS:
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan 2002.
http://www.hicss.org/
Feb 8: Michael BUCKLAND: Going Places in the Catalog:
Improved Geographical Search.
Library catalogs (and bibliographies generally)
are designed to support searching by author, by title, and by topic.
But support for finding material relating to places is currently
quite limited. One can search for place-names in titles or in
subject headings, or specify suitable place-related classification
numbers, if known. In addition to the basic problems of using
words and classifications numbers in searches, there are some
additional difficulties when the interest is in a geographical
location rather than in a geopolitical unit, such as a country.
Fortunately, places have a unique advantage:
Unlike authors' names, titles, and topics, places can (usually) be
defined unambiguously by their coordinates of latitude and
longitude. Further, since gazetteers and geographical (map)
displays are becoming available for use in a digital networked
environment, the tools for putting latitude and longitude
to use are at hand.
Ways to enhance geographic searching include:
(1) Better use of data already in library catalog records;
(2) Linking online catalogs with online gazetteers;
(3) Maps: Search results can be visualized and new kinds of query supported with map-displays; and
(4) Place-based searches can to be extended to
resources elsewhere.
Feb 15: Yale BRAUNSTEIN: Economic Impacts of Database
Production in Developing Countries.
Prof. Braunstein will discuss
a paper he recently presented at a WIPO meeting
in Geneva.
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~bigyale/Economics_of_DBProtection_summary.pdf
This study is focused on the economic impact of the protection of
non-original databases in developing countries. For the purposes of
this study, many databases are "unoriginal" in the sense that they do
not meet the originality criterion under the principles of copyright
recognized in the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty. As a
result these databases are not protected by copyright.
Databases are protected under the laws of several countries, both
developed and developing, with copyright protection available for
original databases and some form of special protection for non-original
databases. For example, many western European countries have enacted sui
generis database protection laws pursuant to Directive 96/9/EC of the
European Council. Similarly, Mexico's Federal Law on Copyright includes
a section that provides for the protection of non-original databases.
My presentation will focus on two of the chapters of the study. I shall
begin with a detailed examination of the economics of database
protection (from Chapter 2). There are two economic properties that
drive the need to protect information goods and services: economies of
scale and difficulty in excluding non-payers, sometimes referred to as
the "free-rider" problem. Without the adequate definition of property
rights, the economic incentives for the production of useful and desired
databases will be impaired. Furthermore, the specific provisions of the
protection statutes will affect the economic welfare of society.
Building on our knowledge of the economics of information organizations
and the theory of optimal pricing, I explore the implications of the key
findings in these areas for the protection of databases.
I shall then turn a number of possible "special cases." These include
databases with scientific and technical information or with culturally
sensitive content, databases for which there might be a sole source, and
the problem of the possible "capture" of content that is produced with
public funds or in the public domain into commercial databases. In each
case, the conclusion is that if exceptions to the general rules for
database protection need to be made, these exceptions should be drawn as
narrowly as possible.
Feb 22: What are the Most Interesting Questions
in Information Management? A Discussion led by
Michael Buckland.
A journal
plans a special issue
on "research questions that could and should be answered
in the next five to ten years." A guest editor, Mary Jo Lynch, has
invited half-a-dozen people
to write about about their choice of 3 to 5 questions and to explain
why each question is important, what existing work is available to
build on, and how one might seek an answer.
Dr Lynch has a
special interest in questions relating to library services, but we
can expand the scope to Information Management generally.
I will start with some general remarks on
(i) The relationship between research and the solving of
practical problems; and
(ii) Criteria for the selection of
research topics from the differing perspectives of individual
researchers and of managers / funders of research.
As one of the people asked to contribute a paper,
I will briefly describe my choice of questions
and invite comments on them.
All who come will be encouraged to say what questions they
think are particulary interesting and why - and to comment on the
the criteria for choosing some questions
over others.
Also, briefly: Chan KOH, Visiting Scholar:
The Economic Impact of the
Software Industry.
Mar 1:
Yueh-Ying HSU & Kyungmin KIM: WhereIS Project: A Locating Service.*
Progress report:
The project is to build a customized item
locating system with a map
interface, complementing current web library catalog search service.
When a user searches for a bibliographic item,
the search result will not only
display the textual bibliographic record,
but also visualize its physical
location on a map, from the targeted building, to the floor,
to the specific room and stack.
In addition to the streamlined locating function,
the system will also allow the user to
browse the items in an area on the map interface,
simulated a user's browsing
behavior in real space.
Followed by What are the Most Interesting Questions
in Information Management? Continued! Discussion led by
Clifford Lynch.
A journal
plans a special issue
on "research questions that could and should be answered
in the next five to ten years." A guest editor, Mary Jo Lynch, has
invited half-a-dozen people
to write about about their choice of 3 to 5 questions and to explain
why each question is important, what existing work is available to
build on, and how one might seek an answer.
Ms Lynch has a
special interest in questions relating to library services, but we
can expand the scope to Information Management generally.
Clifford Lynch will lead a
continuation of last week's discussion and reveal his personal
selection of interesting questions
and invite comments on them.
All who come will be encouraged to say what questions they
think are particulary interesting and why - and to comment on the
the criteria for choosing some questions
over others.
Mar 8: Clifford LYNCH:
Residential Broadband: Policy and Applications Issues.
I'll discuss some of the findings of the recent National Research
Council study on Residential Broadband deployment, "Bringing Home the
Bits" (I was a member of this committee); I'll also cover some of the
recent legislative and public policy discussion that has emerged over
the past few months, including some comments on the relationships
between broadband and copyright issues. Time permitting, I will also
include some brief discussion of issues related to internet radio
broadcast and rebroadcast.
Mar 15:Kim NORLEN, Gabriel LUCAS, Michael GEBBIE & John CHUANG:
TRAVIS: Extraction, Visualization and Analysis of the Telecommunications
and
Media Ownership Network.
We present TRAVIS, a prototype system for extracting, storing, and
visualizing corporate ownership information as a social network. Extraction
saves research labor by using probabilistic information retrieval and
extraction techniques to gather relationships from heterogeneous sources of
online text. These relationships are stored in a database that is structured
to capture changes to the industry over time. The browser-based visualization
tool allows users to query the database and explore large networks of
companies. We demonstrate this system with data describing the
telecommunications and media industries, and analyze our data set to reveal
the influential companies in these industries, and the power-law structures
that characterize the overall ownership network. We believe this system can
aid government regulators, policy researchers, and the general public to
better understand complex webs of corporate ownership.
Mar 22:
Niels W. LUND, Norway, Maribeth BACK, Polle ZELLWEGER,
Kine Anette JOHNSEN, & Silje MILJETEIG, Univ. of Tromsoe, Norway:
The Document Academy: Exploring the Future of Documents.
The seminar meeting will be a relatively informal workshop
designed both to explore new
ideas about documents and to propose a method of continuing the exploration.
First, a presentation of some practical projects on new kinds of reading and
document creation (Maribeth Back, Polle Zellweger) as well as more
theoretical
work on the conceptual framework for document analysis (Niels W. Lund and
students).
Followed by a dicussion of the idea of developing a networked /distributed
Research Center on documents (a Document Academy), conceived partly as a
global
online center, partly a physical center with branches on the campus of UC-
Berkeley as well as on the campus of the University of Tromsoe, Norway.
This
idea is launched by Professor Niels Windfeld Lund, Visiting Professor at
SIMS
in Spring 2001, who co-taught a seminar there with Professor Michael Buckland
on "Documents in Society."
Everyone interested in research on documents is
welcome to attend the
workshop.
More information can be obtained from Professor Lund via email:
niels.windfeld.lund@hum.uit.no
Mar 29: Spring Recess: No Seminar Meeting.
Apr 5: Clifford LYNCH: How to characterize databases/collections.
Apr 12: Merrilee PROFFITT, The Research Libraries Group:
RLG Cultural Materials.
The RLG Cultural Materials resource is a dynamic, multimedia
collection of digital versions of manuscripts, photos, art, historical
documents and memorabilia, and much more, brought together from around the
world. Through a unique, flexible Web workspace, developed with the
materials' special characteristics in mind, users can discover, compare,
interpret, and make connections between materials in ways that enrich
teaching, learning, and scholarship. RCM was developed in partnership with
RLG's members -- libraries, museums and archives from around the world --
and is built on a number of standards to ensure durability and
scalability. Advisory groups develop directions and consensus on a range
of issues, from licensing agreements to content development, descriptive
guidelines, and suggestions for creating and contributing digital
surrogates. The result is a growing, significant, online resource and
service solution for the broad research community.
April 19: Avi RAPPOPORT, Search Engine Consultant, searchtools.com:
Can P2P Search Engines Work in the Real World?
Peer-to-peer search engines have been hyped as the Next Big Thing,
but how much of what they do is new, and how much is actually useful?
P2P and distributed search engines will have to deal with privacy,
access, scalability, security, authentication and credibility.
Examining earlier efforts to distribute search away from central
indexes, such as WAIS and Z39.50, will indicate the most fruitful
directions as well as pitfalls. A survey of current distributed
search engines, including metasearch, server-to-server search and
open-source distributed search protocols provides some intriguing
approaches.
avirr@searchtools.com
http://www.searchtools.com
Apr 26: Howard BESSER, UCLA:
Adaptive User Interfaces; and Digital Divide Issues.
Howard Besser will discuss two projects that are part of the UCLA/Pacific
Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies.
The ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS Project is examining the feasibility of taking a
back-end database of content and presenting it to different sets of users
in ways that are more appropriate to those users' knowledge bases,
technical capabilities, and cognitive structures. UCLA researchers are
working with CDL staff to deliver Online Archive of California material to
profiles of 4th grade students, 12th grade students, and teachers. By
overlaying new user interfaces and content-groupings on top of existing
online material, we hope to improve accessibility and utility of
particular groups of users.
The DIGITAL DIVIDE ISSUES Project seeks to expose various digital divides
that lie beyond that of technological access. These include further
technological divides (bandwidth, processor speed, etc.),
intelligent/effective use divides (information literacy),
producer/consumer divides, access to appropriate content divides, etc.
This summer the UCLA/Pacbell Initiative will be bringing together
evaluation researchers to articulate indicators that might be used to
measure the narrowing (or widening) of any of these digital divides.
May 3: Gary MADDEN & Russel COOPER, Curtin University.
Network Externalities and the Internet.
A driving force behind the emergence of the "new"
or information economy is
the growth of Internet network capacity.
A fundamental problem in mapping this dynamic is the lack of
an acceptable theoretic framework through which to direct
empirical investigations. Most of the models in the literature
on network externalities have
been
developed in a static framework, with externalities viewed as
instantaneous or self-fulfilling. The model specified here builds
on received theory from several sources to include these features and
develops a model that is both capable of econometric estimation and
which provides as an output a direct measure of the network effect.
Accordingly, the main goal of this paper is to find the
magnitude of th eexternal effect on Internet network growth.
In addition, this paper illustrates the ability of
panel data to generate estimates of structural parameters
capable of explaining Internet host growth.
Draft paper in .pdf.
May 10: Yueh Ying HSU & Kyungmin KIM:
WhereIS: A locating service.*
The project is to build a customized item
locating system with a map
interface, supplement to current library online catalogs. When a user
searches for a bibliographic item, the search result will not only
display the textual bibliographic record, but also visualize its
physical location on a map, from the targeted building, the floor, to
the stack.
Also Mikael GLEONNOC, France:
The Collective Structuring of Innovation: What is the Synergy
Between Social and Technical Networks?
Innovation is a collective process based on interactions in
social and technical networks, among different actors,
different fields, different cultures. With the development of
information systems built to facilitate interactions inside and
among the organizations, how do we understand this collective
structuring of new concepts, new products, new tools, new
ways of working?
The study of the introduction of telework in Electricité de
France (the public energy supplier) clearly revealed the importance
of the cultural and psychological aspects of collaboration in
organizational change. Information systems and modes of management
"adapted to the distance" were not able to compensate totally
for the loose of proximity interactions. In most cases, the
negative evolution of social ties among the individuals was
determining in the inefficiency of collaboration, in spite of
high-performance groupware tools.
California presents a geographical concentration
of "innovating" actors (laboratories, firms, experts and
consultants…) taking advantage of data processing and
telecommunication networks in order to stimulate their research,
design, production and marketing channels. Therefore, this region
of the United States appears to be an excellent context for studying
the interweaving of social and technical networks in the
innovation process. Three research areas will be investigated
during the next five months: collaboration in open or semi-open
networks in Research & Development; the collective structuring
of information systems supporting Human Resource management;
the introduction of new organizational models in call-centers.
Website:
perso.wanadoo.fr/mikael.gleonnec/.
May 17: Jim MICHALKO & Judith BUSH, Research Libraries Group: A
Union Catalog on the Web.
Based on results achieved from an Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation planning grant to RLG last
year, the Mellon Foundation awarded RLG a substantial grant in
March for initial
implementation of a new information service that uses the
RLG Union Catalog in entirely new
ways.
The RLG Union Catalog is unique in its coverage of library and
archives holdings in academic
and research collections around the world.
The Mellon implementation grant
enables us, working with experts in data mining, Web design, and
database architecture, to
use this content as the starting point for new ways of
revealing deep content to the world of
Web users. Our investigations have focused on making the
union catalog data available to a
diverse Web-savvy audience in a manner more compelling and
far more extensive than
current online library catalogs. The challenge is to offer a
discovery interface that rivals the
intuitive ease of a Google search and takes advantage of
contemporary information-seeking
skills. The new service should also link from the wealth of
information in the catalog out to
the best of the Internet, getting users the material they seek,
in any format.
In the months prior to the new Mellon grant, we laid the
basis for this work through
investigating how data mining techniques and other
manipulations might be applied to the
bibliographic data to create rich access points.
Under the Phase I implementation grant, we
expect to introduce a pilot service based at several
RLG-member institutions in early 2003.
During the following six months, the project team will be
learning from usage trails and
making user-responsive changes to the interface.
Currently, team members are transforming bibliographic
records into a wholly new data
structure and doing user testing to determine how
college students may take to such access
points before interface design begins. Michalko and Bush
will discuss the genesis of the project, the
investigations done to date on discovery, the creation of
new information typologies, as well as initial ideas
about how to provide users with ways to get the
discovered material. As desired they can discuss the use of
XML in the effort and provide insights into the underlying
data base design issues.
Fall 2001 schedule.
Spring 2002 schedule.
Fall 2002 schedule.