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News from the Department of Information Science (formerly SIM)

Category: Students

SIM Digital Libraries Showcase

Today I want to share with you some interesting digital libraries created by my students in the Digital Libraries course from this past academic year. They were created using Greenstone, an open-source suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections.

As part of this project, students work in groups to select a topic for their digital collections, decide what items to include and, if needed, to digitize them, prepare and assign metadata to digital items, customize search options, and user interface.

As you will see from this Virtual Showcase, students in the class mastered a number of important skills which are highly in demand in our digital economy, including digital collection development, digitization skills, document representation, multimedia formats and standards, information retrieval, interface design, and copyright issues.

The Digital Libraries Showcase is available at http://bit.ly/gsdl12

Hope you will enjoy it!

Anatoliy Gruzd

 

Seeking Social Media Volunteers to Contribute to the ASIS&T SIG-III Twitter account

Icon by Babasse (Sebastien Durel)

In preparation for the official launch of the ASIS&T SIG-III (International Information Issues) new Twitter account @sig3i on June 1, 2012, we are looking for social media (SM) volunteers to join the dynamic team at the Social Media Lab at Dalhousie University to tweet and organize social media events on behalf of the SIG.

As a SM volunteer, you will have a chance to

  • Join ASIS&T’s international community of leading scholars and practitioners on Twitter,
  • Gain experience of managing a Twitter account from an organization perspective,
  • Be more informed about international informational issues and key players in this area,
  • Organize and participate in exciting tweet-ups and live events on Twitter,
  • And of course, become a member of the SIG-III social media team!

If interested, please complete a short form at http://bit.ly/SigIIIVol by May 15, 2012.

 

*** The SIG-III was founded in 1982 to promote awareness and collaboration amongst ASIS&T’s international community, and provide a forum to explore international informational issues. For more information about the SIG, please visit our website at http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/ or join us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/asist.sig.iii/.

Dal Libraries May 8th Lunch & Learn: 3D Printing and Scanning in Libraries

SIM students and faculty are invited to the upcoming Dal Libraries Lunch & Learn on Tuesday May 8th where Michael Groenendyk, Riel Gallant, and IT Systems Director Marc Comeau will present their 3D printing and scanning pilot project. The presentation will be held from noon to 1pm in room 2616 on the second floor in the Killam Library.

For more information, please visit this link or view this video.

Social Media Lab Awarded Grant to Organize a Workshop on Measuring Influence on Social Media

Conference lecture

The Social Media Lab has recently been awarded a grant by MITACS to organize and host a two-day Symposium & Workshop on Measuring Influence on Social Media in Halifax. The funds will be used to organize the workshop and offset some of the travel cost for Canadian graduate students selected to attend the workshop.

The symposium will be held at the School of Information Management, Dalhousie University in the Fall of 2012. The workshop will provide internet and social media researchers an opportunity to present and debate their ideas on how to measure social influence, and provide graduate students with the opportunity to build academic and professional contacts, present their research, and learn about latest research in this area from a multidisciplinary perspective. The official call for proposals will be available later this month on the lab’s web site, so stay turned.

Social Media Lab students presenting at the GRAND Conference in Montreal

NCE GRAND 2012 MLIS and Computer Science students from SIM’s Social Media Lab (SML) will be presenting posters at the GRAND 2012 Conference in Montréal next week. GRAND 2012 will showcase a multi-disciplinary program of research and innovation spanning the broad spectrum of digital media. The conference, held at Le Centre Sheraton, Montréal, will start on the evening of Wednesday, May 2, with an Opening Reception featuring Posters and Demos.

The SML posters are part of two different research projects within the GRAND network: DINS (Digital Infrastructures: Access and Use in the Network Society) and the NAVEL (Network Assessment and Validation for Effective Leadership):

  • Melissa Anez (MLIS Candidate, 2012) will be presenting on: “AcademiaMap Dashboard: Visualizing Scholarly Networks on Twitter”
  • Sreejata Chatterjee (M.Sc. in CS Candidate, 2013) will be presenting on: “Targeted Harnessing of Transient Micro-Blogging Date”
  • Amanda Wilk (MLIS Candidate, 2012) is the lead student organizer on the Grand Poster and Demos committee

 

* GRAND is a federally-funded Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) research network and commercialization engine whose goal is to address complex issues in digital media and transform multidisciplinary research into user-centred solutions.

Stories You Might Have Missed: SIM’s Social Media Lab Research Featured in the Scholarly Kitchen & Foreign Affairs

NewsThe paper, “Investigating biomedical research literature in the blogosphere: a case study of diabetes and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c)” which first appeared in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association, was featured in the Scholarly Kitchen in an article entitled “Birds of a Feather Blog Together” on 03/07/2012. In this study, Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd and Dr. Fiona Black, along with their now former students Thi Ngoc Yen Le and Kathleen Amos used a variety of methods such as web mining, social network analysis and content analysis to examine whether bloggers use peer reviewed medical literature in their blog posts and why.

Another paper, “Geography of Twitter Networks” which was originally published in the January 2012 issue of Social Networks, was recently featured in Foreign Affairs on 04/04/2012 in an article entitled, “How Twitter Makes the Internet More Local.” This study explored how connections on Twitter are influenced and bounded by geography. This study has also been featured on NPR, Slate.com and other media outlets.

Calling all students who are attending the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting in Seattle this May

 Enhance your MLA 2012 conference experience through Colleague Connection!

 

Colleague Connection is a mentoring program that pairs newer members or first-time meeting attendees with returning, more experienced members during the 2012 Annual Meeting. The purpose of Colleague Connection is to introduce new attendees to the Medical Library Association and help them get the most out of the Annual Meeting in Seattle.

 

If you are a new member or first time conference attendee, consider pairing up with an experienced colleague at MLA ‘12! Colleague Connection allows you to have your questions about the conference answered, maximize your time, choose the best programs and meetings to attend, meet new colleagues, build your professional network, and discuss new ideas. Initial contacts made through Colleague Connection can lead to lifelong friendships with your peers and increase your professional network. Don’t be left out – sign up today:  http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22F9Y65KUWA.

 

Those who register by Friday May 11th will be guaranteed to receive their mentor before leaving for the meeting. Once assigned, each pair of colleagues will be responsible for working out a time to meet and connect.

 

If you have any questions, please contact Hannah Norton (nortonh@ufl.edu, 352-273-8419).

Fabulous Opportunity for an MLIS Student!

Would you like to attend Statistics Canada’s Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) annual regional training workshop to be held 26-27 April at the University of New Brunswick? (http://library.acadiau.ca/DLI2012/)

The regional training workshop is an opportunity for an MLIS Information Studies student to meet a variety of professionals who work with socio-economic and demographic data on a regular basis.  There are many job vacancies where a demonstrated interest in these areas is either an advantage or a requirement.

If you are interested in working with government documents, data, ormaps, you may find this workshop to be of particular interest; however, it would be useful for any student who wishes to work as an academic librarian.

The DLI is currently offering to reimburse the costs of travel, accommodations, and meals for one MLIS student who isinterested in attending the workshop.

If you would like to take advantage of this opportunity please send your C.V. and a covering letter by email to Ann Smith, Regional Training Coordinator Atlantic Region, Acadia University, ann.smith@acadiau.ca by Monday the 16th of April.

With warm personal regards,
Ann Smith
RTC Atlantic Region
Data Liberation Initiative
Acadia University
Voice: 902 585-1378
Email: ann.smith@acadiau.ca

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