School of
Information
Previously School of Library & Information Studies
Friday Afternoon Seminar: Summaries.
296a-1 Seminar: Information Access, Fall 2021.
Schedule. Weekly
mailing list.
Details will be added as they become available.
Session mode varies: Zoom only; in-person only; or hybrid.
See announcement for each session.
Campus policy requires all Zoom participants to sign into a Zoom account
prior to joining meetings hosted by UC Berkeley and a mask for in-person
attendance. Zoom sessions are not recorded.
A link to each Zoom Seminar session is available only at
the School's event listing: www.ischool.berkeley.edu/events.
Everyone interested is welcome!
Aug 27: Clifford LYNCH & Michael BUCKLAND: Overview of Seminar
and Plans for Fall.
Clifford LYNCH: Why "Web Archiving" is no Longer a Useful
Concept or phrase.
The Worldwide Web turned 30 years old earlier this month.
While the Internet Archive and various national libraries around the
world have done fantastic work in capturing and preserving the early
web, the nature of the web has changed drastically over the past three
decades. I will discuss the nature of some of these changes, and argue
that a conceptual model that centers "web archiving" has long outlived
its usefulness, and is now actively unhelpful. I'll examine some of the
conceptual and technical challenges implicit in attempts to preserve
material accessible thorough the today's web, and some of the choices
that memory organizations will need to make in addressing this
environment.
Sep 3: Labor Day weekend: No Seminar meeting.
Sep 10: ZOOM ONLY.
Clifford LYNCH: Policy and Strategic Issues in Managing the
Flood of Video in Universities.
In preparation for an upcoming Executive Roundtable my
organization, the Coalition for Networked Information, will be conducting
at the end of September, I want to lead an exploratory discussion of the
issues surrounding the management and preservation of vast amounts of
video that are being produced by changes in instructional practices in
US higher education -- notably, online classes, "flipped" classrooms
(online lectures, in-person discussion), reuse of lectures from one
class to another, etc. Depending on how much is kept, and how this is
stored, these video materials can represent major costs to the
institution. There are also policy questions about how long materials
should be kept and who is allowed to access them. I hope that we can
also at least briefly explore some of the records management implications
of conducting not only classes but meetings of various kinds online
(with the ability to capture the recordings).
Sep 17: IN-PERSON ONLY. SOUTH HALL 107. MASK MANDATE.
Wayne De FREMERY & Michael BUCKLAND: Relevance and Creativity.
Relevance has long been considered a central concept in
Information Science, but it has notoriously resisted satisfactory
explanation. Most discussions of relevance have focused instead on
potential and/or probable relevance and the design of information
services has centered on creating infrastructure for predicting what
might be relevant. Other concepts, notably topicality, guide design.
We explore the idea that relevance can be understood as creative
opportunity, and that this reconceptualization of relevance may
provide information scientists an avenue forward for research on
relevance. Systems can be designed to afford creative opportunities --
new ideas or old stable facts needed for new situations —- in addition
to (or instead of) topically similar documents that information scientists
have identified as [potentially or probably] “relevant.”
Wayne de Fremery is an associate professor in
the School of Media, Arts, and Science at Sogang University in Seoul
and Director of the Korea Text Initiative at the Cambridge Institute
for the Study of Korea in Cambridge, Massachusetts (www.koreatext.org). He represents the
Korean National Body at ISO as Convener of a working group on document
description, processing languages, and semantic metadata (ISO/IEC JTC
1/SC 34 WG 9). Recent research projects have concerned the integration
of privately generated textual heritage information into the
information management systems of the National Library of South
Korea (Library Hi Tech, 2020), digital humanities in the
iSchool (JASIST, 2021), copy theory (JASIST, forthcoming),
and the use of deep learning to improve Korean OCR (2020), for which
he received a national citation of merit from the South Korean Ministry
of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. More at www.pwdef.info.
Sep 24: ZOOM ONLY.
Leslie JOHNSTONE, NARA: Applied Trustworthy Digital
Repositories and Risk Assessment.
One of the greatest challenges for any digital collection
is the multiplicity of file formats, some of which may be decades old,
each of which carries different risks and risk mitigation strategies.
The discussion will cover some leading digital preservation risk models,
what risks exist that they measure (or not), and what data you need.
This will be accompanied by an applied use case from the United States
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and its Digital
Preservation Framework, which includes a holdings profile, a risk
analysis matrix, and preservation plans for 550 file format variants.
Leslie Johnston is the Director of Digital
Preservation for the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), responsible for developing and executing their digital
preservation strategy. Ms. Johnston has worked in the cultural heritage,
higher education, and federal communities; her expertise includes
system design and implementation, setting and applying content and
metadata standards, still image digitization, and the preservation
of born-digital and digitized collections. She has a B.A. and an M.A.,
both from UCLA.
Oct 1: IN-PERSON. MASK MANDATE. SOUTH HALL 107. ALSO ZOOM ACCESS:
Link at www.ischool.berkeley.edu/events.
Leonardo BURSZTYN, Univ. of Chicago: Appropriate
Behavior: Social Norms, Morality, and Decision-Making.
This talk will present an overview of Bursztyn's
work on how social image and morality concerns affect the way people
make important decisions. It will describe recent work on
identifying, understanding, and shaping the effects of social pressure.
Leonardo Bursztyn is Professor of Economics at
the University of Chicago and here on sabbatical leave. His current
research uses field experiments to understand how individuals make
schooling, consumption, political, and financial decisions -— and
in particular how these decisions are shaped by individuals’ social
environment. He is the co-director of the Becker Friedman Institute
Political Economics Research Initiative, a research associate at the
National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow at the Bureau for
Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and an affiliate at
the Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He is also the recipient of a 2016
Sloan Research Fellowship. More at home.uchicago.edu/~bursztyn/index.html.
Oct 8: ZOOM ONLY: 2:30 pm START.
The School's 103rd Birthday Celebration.
Ph.D. student Lucy Li will discuss her innovative research
using natural language processing to analyze gender, race, and
ethnicity content in textbooks. Former State Librarian Susan Hildreth
will give an overview of the extraordinary career of our alumna Regina
Minudri, MLS ’59 (1937–2021). Hany Farid, associate dean and head of
the School of Information, will discuss his work on deepfakes and
misinformation.
Registration required. For details see https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/events/2021/103rd-birthday-celebration.
Oct 15: HYBRID: IN-PERSON WITH MASK MANDATE. ALSO BY ZOOM.
Clifford LYNCH & Michael BUCKLAND: Short Reports.
Short reports on various topics, including, as time permits,
the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Social Networks and Archival
Context, the Mellon memorials project, Maritime Buddhism exhibit, some
recent National Academies workshops, information science history, and
an update on relevance theory.
Link to Zoom access Seminar at: www.ischool.berkeley.edu/events.
Oct 22: HYBRID: IN-PERSON WITH MASK MANDATE. ZOOM ALSO.
Alan INOUYE, ALA: Whiplash: Library & Education Public Policy
in the Covid Era.
With the profound changes in daily life caused by the
Covid-19 pandemic, there also have been radical changes in the U.S.
political and policy environment. Historic levels of federal spending
are accompanying the pandemic. The questioning of pre-pandemic norms
and practices in the library & education sectors is also taking place.
This session will explore this policy evolution, how policy-making and
lobbying have evolved during the pandemic, and engage in a discussion
of future directions for these sectors and public policy.
Alan S. Inouye is Senior Director of Public Policy
& Government Relations for the American Library Association and is
based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was the Coordinator of the
President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee in the Executive
Office of the President, and a Study Director and Interim Board
Director at the National Academy of Sciences. Alan completed his Ph.D.
in Library and Information Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
with a dissertation on "The External Social
Networks of Software Designers."
Oct 29: ZOOM ONLY.
Sarah HOUGHTON, Salwa ISMAIL and Günter WAIBEL:
California Digital Library & UC Berkeley Library:
Goodbye Melvyl. Hello UC Library Search.
On July 28, 2021, the University of California's 10 campuses,
two regional library facilities, and the California Digital Library CDL)
migrated to Ex Libris’s Alma/Primo VE to transform library services and
resource discoverability through innovation and collaboration. The aim of
this migration was to make the collective UC resources accessible at both
the local and systemwide levels via a modern discovery platform, UC
Library Search, which replaced Melvyl, local campus library catalogs
(OskiCat at UC Berkeley for example), and discovery platforms.
This session will focus on the various aspects of the
migration, including how the UC libraries found the will and funding to
tackle this massive technological and cultural change project. It will
outline UC's collaborative approach, including how we empowered
decision-making at the appropriate staff level and our commitment to
improving the patron user experience by keeping user-centered design
in the forefront. It will discuss how we considered all of our users
in their disciplinary and geographic diversity, and our focus on
continuously improving interface design in ways that support user tasks
and goals. It will also discuss successes, challenges, and the importance
of clear and regular communication and collaboration.
Sarah Houghton is the Director of Discovery and
Delivery for the California Digital Library. The team manages systemwide
support and coordination for the Systemwide Integrated Library System, aka
UC Library Search. Discovery and Delivery also manages resource sharing
technologies for UC Libraries, AGUA (ingestion and data analysis for the
Western Regional Storage Trust and the UC Libraries Shared Print
Initiative), and Zephir (ingestion, storage, and management for the
bibliographic metadata for all HathiTrust contributing institutions).
Salwa Ismail is the Associate University Librarian
for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology and the Associate
CIO for UC Berkeley Library. At the UC Berkeley Library she provides
Library-wide support and leadership for digital services including
digital scholarship, data services, and programs, computing, innovative
technology spaces, interface design, and infrastructure services
following a user-centric, service-oriented philosophy.
Günter Waibel is Associate Vice Provost and Executive
Director at the California Digital Library, UC Office of the President. As
one of the world’s largest digital libraries, the California Digital Library
provides transformative digital library services, grounded in campus
partnerships and extended through external collaborations, that amplify
the impact of the libraries, scholarship, and resources of the University
of California. More at https://cdlib.org/contact/staff_directory/guenter-waibel-staff-profile/.
Nov 5: ZOOM ONLY
Charles FAULHABER, Bancroft Library: PhiloBiblon:
From Siloed Databases to Linked Open Data via Wikibase: Proof of Concept.
PhiloBiblon
is a database of the Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Galician primary
sources, both MS and printed, for the study of medieval Iberian culture,
along with the texts they contain, the individuals involved with the
production and transmission of those sources and texts, and the libraries
holding them, along with relevant secondary references and authority
files for persons, places, and institutions. It currently contains over
415,000 records. This NEH-supported pilot project is intended to
demonstrate that a Wikibase platform, as instantiated in Wikidata,
would position PhiloBiblon to take advantage of current and future
semantic web developments and decrease long-term sustainability costs.
Moreover, we hope to demonstrate that this project can serve as a model
for low-cost light-weight database development for similar academic
projects with limited resources.
&nsp; For more on Philobiblon see
bancroft.berkeley.edu/philobiblon.
Charles Faulhaber is Professor Emeritus of medieval
Spanish literature at UC Berkeley as well as Director Emeritus and currently
Interim Director of The Bancroft Library. He has been curating the
PhiloBiblon database for 40 years.
Nov 12: ZOOM ONLY.
Mary ELINGS and Christina FIDLER, Bancroft Library:
Building a Born
Digital Archives Program at the Bancroft Library.
Much of the focus in born digital archives rightly centers
on the technical practices and tools necessary to manage these collections,
however, this is just one layer of the overall management of these
materials. A born digital archives program must address a user's ability
to access and work with these materials in practical ways while both
challenging and conforming to traditional archival practices.
In this presentation, Mary Elings and Christina V. Fidler
will discuss the Bancroft Library’s technical approach to managing
born digital collections and their efforts to build a framework to
support a sustainable digital archives program. They will discuss the
challenges born digital collections present throughout the archival
process including appraisal/selection, arrangement/description, and
access/preservation as well as the tools they use to address those
challenges.
Mary Elings is Interim Deputy Director and Head
of Bancroft's Technical Services division overseeing acquisitions,
accessioning, cataloging, archival processing, and digital collections
units. Prior to becoming Assistant Director in 2017, she served as
Head of the Digital Collections unit which is responsible for the
creation and management of Bancroft's digital collections. Ms.
Elings taught a graduate course in Digital Collections for over ten
years and regularly presents on that topic.
Christina V. Fidler is the Digital Archivist at
the Bancroft Library. Prior to this role, she was the Museum Archivist
at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. She has also worked at
the California Academy of Sciences as the Digital Projects Coordinator
and as the Project Manager for the Academy Library’s IMLS Grant
"Connecting Content."
Nov 19: ZOOM ONLY.
David S. H. ROSENTHAL & Clifford LYNCH.
David S. H. ROSENTHAL, Stanford (Retd): Blockchain:
What's Not To Like?
We're in a period when blockchain or "Distributed Ledger
Technology" is the Solution to Everything™, so it is inevitable that
it will be proposed as the solution to problems in academic communication
and digital preservation. These proposals typically assume, despite the
evidence, that real-world blockchain implementations actually deliver
the theoretical attributes of decentralization, immutability, security,
anonymity, lack of trust, etc. The proposers appear to believe that
Satoshi Nakamoto revealed the infallible Bitcoin protocol to the world
on golden tablets; they typically don't appreciate or cite the nearly
three decades of research and implementation that led up to it. This
talk will discuss the mis-match between theory and practice in
blockchain technology.
David S. H. Rosenthal is retired from Stanford
University Libraries. He was a team member of C-MU's "Andrew Project";
an early employee and Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems;
Employee #4, first Chief Scientist, and first sysadmin at Nvidia; and
Co-founder 20 years ago of the LOCKSS Program. He has been
blogging since 2007, about blockchains and cryptocurrencies since
November 2013.
Clifford LYNCH: Priorities for Capital Investment in
Digital Infrastructure and Services.
In preparation for roundtables that my organization,
the Coalition for Networked Information, will be conducting in
December, I am interested in hearing about the views of seminar
participants about priorities for new capital investments in digital
infrastructure and services. These investments could be at an
institutional level, though I am most interested in those that might
be made on a broader community basis, either within the higher
education or research and education communities. Such investments
might include either entirely new platforms, services or other
infrastructure, or replacement/modernization of existing systems
(either for technical or governance/support reasons). We might also
briefly discuss principles and methods for identifying and prioritizing
such investments, sources of funding, and mechanisms for managing
and governing such investments at the community level.
Nov 26: Thanksgiving: No Seminar meeting.
Dec 3: *IN-PERSON ONLY* Last Seminar meeting of semester.
Clifford LYNCH: The Networked
Information Landscape: Surveying Recent Developments and Future
Prospects.
This talk will broadly survey what I think are key recent
developments in the networked information landscape, with primary but
not exclusive focus on the research and higher education sectors, and
identify key prospective developments and decision points for the next
few years. The discussion at the seminar will inform my shaping of my
plenary talk at the upcoming CNI meeting later in December (which will
be recorded and made public after the meeting). I'm particularly
interested in participant views on whether I've captured the key issues,
and what I've missed.
The Seminar will resume in the Spring semester.
Spring
2021 schedule and summaries.
Spring
2022 schedule and summaries.