As we look forward to the new school year and our new and returning students it is a good time to update all on the range of conferences SIM Faculty have participated in this summer.  While not a complete list, here are some of the highlights of the impact of SIM in our community, across Canada and Internationally. Join us for the Beyond the Classroom session during Orientation week to hear more about our research projects and passions.

Dr. Vivian Howard

Dr. Vivian Howard’s conference travel began with a trip to Australia, where she arrived in time for the first day of winter, a balmy 21 degrees in Perth. Dr. Howard gave a talk at the State Library of Western Australia, focusing on her research into the role of pleasure reading in creating social community.  This talk was organized by former SIM students Yusuke (Ishimura) and Megan Fitzgibbons (class of 2007) who are now living and working in Perth.  Dr. Howard then flew to the east coast for the Digital Humanities Conference at the University of Western Sydney, where she presented on the Sea Stacks website (https://seastacks.lib.unb.ca/) and her research into Atlantic Canadian children’s authors and illustrators.  Dr. Howard returned to Nova Scotia just in time to travel to Wolfville, where she was one of the organizers of the 9th Thomas Raddall Symposium at Acadia University, an exploration of Child, Youth, and Place in Atlantic Canadian Literature.   Dr.

Dr. Keith Lawson

Dr. Lawson presented a paper at Congress 2015 in Ottawa (Canadian Society for Digital Humanities) on mobile apps and the sense of place. Museums and other memory institutions have undergone a fundamental shift from being primarily presenters of objects to being providers of experiences that offer visitors opportunities for individual meaning making and narrative creation. Dr. Lawson’s research brings together perspectives from the ideas of Michael de Certeau, tourism studies, game studies, and mobile interface theory to examine how museums or archives can present digital objects—texts, images, audio and video—through mobile applications and create an experience of place, both individual places and larger narrative spaces joining a number of places.

Dr. Bertrum MacDonald

Two members of the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research team, James Ross and Dr. Bertrum MacDonald, presented the paper “The Generation and Regeneration of Scientific Literature: The Case of State of the Environment Reports” at the 23^rd international conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing in Montreal on 9 July. Presented in a session on “Generating and Regenerating Scientific Communication,” this paper drew on recent research by the EIUI program, particularly case studies of The 2009 State of Nova Scotia’s Coast Report, the State of the Gulf of Maine Report, and the State of the Scotian Shelf Report. More information on this conference and their other activities are available on the EIUI website:  http://eiui.ca/.

Dr. Lori McCay-Peet

In June, Lori McCay-Peet had a paper and poster presented at the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) in Ottawa on exploratory search in digital libraries while in July a work-in-progress paper on interdisciplinary teams in social media research was presented at the Social Media & Society Conference in Toronto.

Dr. Mike Smit

SIM professor Dr. Mike Smit delivered a talk this past week on Open Data and Open Government to an interesting (and interested!) audience: the Commonwealth Hansard Editors Association and the Hansard Association of Canada’s annual conference, which is taking place in Halifax this week. In most parliamentary systems, the Hansard Office is responsible for parliamentary reporting, capturing verbatim (or near verbatim) records of what elected representatives say in their parliament. Dr. Smit’s teaching and research interests include Open Data and its role in civic society, particularly how we move from Open Data to open, usable, accessible information. “The Hansard is one of the earliest examples of governments making democratic data and information widely available to the public, so it’s an honor to speak with this audience about the relationship between parliamentary reports and Open Data,” says Dr. Smit. “I’ve always admired the dedication editors have to the accuracy of their record; they should inspire everyone to strive for accuracy and context when trying to realize the value of open data.”

Dr. Sandra Toze

SIM Interim Director Dr. Sandra Toze took part in a lively panel discussion on Transforming Digital Governance at the IPAC 2015 conference in Halifax this past Monday.  Along with fellow Digital Governance Partnership members Dr. Davide Cargnello, Chief Research Officer at the Institute on Governance, Dr. Evert Lindquist, Professor of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, Dr. Jeffrey Roy – Professor of Public Administration at Dalhousie University and Maryantonett Flumian- President of the Institute on Governance the group highlighted their work to date to explore the historic challenges and opportunities facing governing institutions in the digital era.Dr. Toze focused on the critical question of information governance focusing how processes and culture needs to evolve to allow us to fully harness the power of digital information. The relationship between information, power and accountability are being renegotiated.  To move forward we need information leaders who are focused on enabling information flows within and between departments, as well as between governments and citizens, while protecting privacy and ensuring security.