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The School of Information Sciences is pleased to announce its yearly ISI
Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture on October 18, 2006, with a lecture by
Christine Borgman, Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Christine Borgman, one
of the nation's leading authorities in scientific communication and science
policy, will present the School of Information Sciences' Samuel Lazerow
Memorial Lecture on Oct. 18.
The lecture will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Hodges Library
Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public.
WHAT: ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture Research Forum with Dr.
Christine L. Borgman
WHEN: Wednesday, October 18, 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
WHERE: Hodges Library Auditorium
Borgman, a professor and presidential chair in information studies at the
University of California Los Angeles, will share her insights into the drive
for e-Science -- science that uses immense data sets that require grid
computing -- and the many ways that information and research data can be
shared in the digital age.
"Scholars in all fields are taking advantage of new sources of data and new
means to publish and distribute their work online," said Borgman, the author
of more than 150 publications in the fields of information studies, computer
science and communication.
"Some fields are more advantaged than others by the array of content now
online and by the tools and services available to use it."
Borgman also will talk about the difficulties of sharing raw data rather
than finished or published works.
"A close examination of scholarly practices reveals that more disincentives
than incentives exist to contribute documents and data for the general good.
Scholars in all fields are rewarded for publishing; few are rewarded for
managing information."
Borgman is a co-principal investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked
Sensing (CENS), and for two CENS projects -- CENSEI, for research on data
management and policy, and Women@CENS, both funded by the National Science
Foundation.
Embedded Networked Sensing Systems use microprocessors linked to tiny motion
detectors, cameras, and acoustic or chemical sensors to gather and report
complex, real-time information about the natural world or man-made
structures.
From 1999 to 2005 she also led the education and evaluation team of the
Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype Project (ADEPT). Through the project, a
massive amount of information about the Earth was gathered using digital
collections of everything from maps and images to text and multimedia
diagrams, all referenced by geographical area. The resulting information was
used to create a digital model of the planet, which then-Vice President Al
Gore dubbed a "Digital Earth."
Borgman's book, "From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure:
Access to Information in a Networked World" (MIT Press, 2000), won the Best
Information Science Book of the Year Award from the American Society for
Information Science and Technology. Her next book, "Scholarship in the
Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet," will be
published by MIT Press in 2007.
Borgman was a visiting scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute at the
University of Oxford in England, a visiting professor in the Department of
Information Science at Loughborough University in England, a Fulbright
Visiting Professor at the University of Economic Sciences and at Eötvös
Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the
Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.
She has a doctorate in communication from Stanford University, a master's
degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and a bachelor's degree from
Michigan State University. For more information on Borgman, visit
http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/cborgman
Talk Abstract:
Disciplines, Documents, and Data: Convergence and Divergence in the
Scholarly Information Infrastructure
Scholars in all fields are taking advantage of new sources of data and new
means to publish and distribute their work online. Content in digital form,
whether data from embedded sensor networks or text from digitized books, can
be mined to ask new questions, in new ways. Research is becoming
increasingly interdisciplinary, distributed, collaborative, and
information-intensive. However, the practices, products, and sources of data
vary widely between disciplines. Some fields are more advantaged than others
by the array of content now online and by the tools and services available
to use it. As readers, scientists have access to the greatest depth of their
literature online, but their use is most concentrated on recent
publications. Conversely, humanists’ reading habits cover the longest time
span of publications, yet they have the least depth of coverage online. As
researchers, scientists generate most of the data they use, while humanists
draw heavily on cultural artifacts and other sources that they neither own
nor control. Social scientists occupy the midpoint on both of these
dimensions.
Implicit in policy statements for e-Science, e-Research, and
cyberinfrastructure is the assumption that much of the content layer of the
scholarly information infrastructure will be constructed through voluntary,
and in some cases mandatory, contributions of documents and data by
individual scholars. Self-archiving, institutional repositories, data
repositories, and most forms of open access publishing rest on these
assumptions. A close examination of scholarly practices reveals that more
disincentives than incentives exist to contribute documents and data for the
general good. Scholars in all fields are rewarded for publishing; few are
rewarded for managing information. They balance cooperation and competition
in complex ways that vary by type and source of data, temporal factors,
effort involved in documentation, recognition and reputation, ownership and
control of content, and other considerations.
These factors interact differently within each discipline. Scholars
continue to rely on the scholarly publishing system to assure that the
products of their work are legitimized, disseminated, preserved, curated,
and made accessible. No comparable system exists for data. While individual
contributions will be important, the content layer will be built only by
concerted institutional and policy initiatives. Much is at stake in these
discussions, including the ethos of sharing and principles of open science
that underpin modern scholarship.
The distinguished ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lectures are sponsored by
the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) Corporate Awards Program
(http://www.isinet.com/). The Lecture Series was established by ISI in 1983,
to honor the memory of Samuel Lazerow, who was an outstanding librarian,
administrator, and pioneer in library automation.
