iConference 2012 | Alternative Events

Contents

Data Management and Human Values (Fishbowl)

Organizers: Geoffrey C. Bowker (University of Pittsburgh); Gary Burnett (Florida State University); Kenneth R. Fleischmann (University of Maryland); David G. Hendry (University of Washington); and Katie Shilton (University of Maryland)

Description:This fishbowl session will engage the audience in a collaborative discussion of the role of human values in data management. Opening 5-minute mini-talks will be designed to stimulate discussion, with provocative stances taken by the presenters. Each presenter will focus on a specific human value and how it impacts a specific large-scale data management project. Geof Bowker will address how social values are integrated into scientific data resources at the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Gary Burnett will address how the concept of information value from the theory of information worlds is being used to examine the lifecycles of distributed teams at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Ken Fleischmann will discuss the impact of intellectual property on the utilization of the FUSEnet collection of scholarly articles and patents that he is using as a member of a research team funded by the Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition (FUSE) program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Dave Hendry will focus on the responsibilities that designers have when dealing with the data and information needs of homeless youth and other vulnerable user populations, including the role of the precautionary principle. Katie Shilton will discuss how values such as privacy and equity were incorporated into systems that deal with ubiquitous personal data at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). The remainder of the session will involve a fishbowl discussion of questions such as: How do values such as privacy, equity, security, intellectual property, justice, and human welfare currently shape the management of scientific and human subjects datasets? And how should we take values into account when setting data management policies and practices? What are the human values embedded in data management policies mandated by the NSF, NIH, and other funding agencies, and how can these policies be refined to explicitly address appropriate human values?

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Design Jams in iSchools: approaches, challenges and examples

Organizers: Michael Twidale, Ingbert Schmidt, Sunah Suh, Jeff Ginger, Peter Organisciak (University of Illinois); Matthew Ratto (University of Toronto); Jean-François Blanchette (University of California, Los Angeles) Christopher Lueg (University of Tasmania)

Description: This alternative event is not just about design thinking but the doing of design. Through a live demonstration, we will showcase a particular group of focused design techniques known collectively as a Design Jam. Activities that fit this broad definition are sometimes also called charettes, sprints, hackfests and barcamps. Design jams are about looking at a particular design challenge and thinking-by-doing. Although they often have a component of brainstorming, they involve additional activities, including paper prototyping, mashup programming, and storytelling with personas and scenarios.

There are various pedagogic advantages to this approach:

  • It gives an introduction to Design Thinking.
  • It is an approachable starting point for students with minimal prior experience of design.
  • Short focused activities can facilitate intellectual risk-taking – you can just try something out to see where it leads rather than worrying about committing at this stage to a semester long project.
  • It can help students understand the potential of multiple iterative approaches to analysis, design and evaluation in a fun, motivating manner.
  • It follows techniques used in professional creative design studios, labs and startups, particularly when exploring a novel approach.

The first half of the event will be a live design jam run as a public spectacle, so that attendees may either participate in designing or watch others doing so. In the second half, we will discuss issues related to the pragmatics and pedagogy of design jams.

We invite you to share your experiences (positive and negative) of using various design activities in teaching. By the end of this event, participants will have a new technique for pedagogical or pragmatic design purposes, or a refined sense of how to effectively conduct design jams of your own. Our aim is to provide a forum for those who teach or plan to teach design in iSchools to share ideas, tactics, pedagogic challenges, best practices, evocative tasks, and neat solutions.

Website:https://sites.google.com/site/iconf12designjam/

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Social Media and Elections in Canada

Organizers: Delia Dumitrica (University of Calgary), Thierry Giasson (Univeristé Laval), Daniel Pare (Ottawa University), Greg Elmer (Ryerson University), Ganaele Langlois (University of Ontario Institute of Technology), Fenwick McKelvey (Ryerson University), Sara Visser (McGill University), Dietlind Stolle (McGill University), Joshua Greenberg (Carleton University), and Vincent Raynauld (Carleton University)

Description: The increasing presence and seeming centrality of social media in the Canadian electoral landscape did not remain unnoticed by communication scholars. This alternative event brings together researchers interested in the role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) in the recent federal and local elections in Canada. The event consists of 5 research briefs followed by a discussion session. It is expected that the interaction between the presenters and the participants in this panel will contribute to the mobilization of knowledge between those interested in this problematic, opening the door for the creation of a network of expertise on social media and electoral processes.

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Material Relations: Information, Media, Technology

Organizers: Patrick Keilty (University of Pittsburgh);John M. Budd (University of Missouri); David Humphrey (University of California, Berkeley); Kiersten F. Latham (Kent State University); Erin Obodiac (SUNY Albany)

Description: The main purpose of this panel is to discuss the divergent theoretical, disciplinary, methodological, and interdisciplinary orientations of our material relations to information, media, and technology. Panelists will discuss a range of issues, including perceptions of physical objects in museums, our relations to the material of laughter in popular Japanese comic mach-up videos, embodiment and desire in browsing online pornography, and the idea of architecture as a biological extension. In doing so, this panel will highlight issues of epistemology, information seeking, and subjectivity. Specifically, the panel engages with three emerging themes of study within the field of Information Studies. First, this panel engages with phenomenology, a method championed within Information Studies by John Budd and Tom Wilson, who have described the need to examine the ongoing and continuous perceptual experiences of our engagements with and activity around information. Second, this panel addresses the need, as described by Ron Day, to reconceptualize subjects, objects and their relations. Day suggests an end to certain understandings of human beings and their activities as either determinative causes of, or effects from, ‘generating’ or ‘using’ information. By attending closely to phenomenology, the panel inverts models of the mind (mechanism, cognitivism, and behaviorism) and displaces the concept of need into a contrasting conceptualization of subjectivity and objects. Finally, this panel engages with the growing body of work concerning affect in our engagements with and activity around information. We can trace issues of affect within Information Studies at least as far back Robert Taylor’s foundational essay, “The Process of Asking Questions,” in which he describes the need for information as “visceral.” In recent years, a number of “information-seeking” studies have addressed our visceral relations on a variety of registers: anxiety, leisure, pleasure, boredom, frustration, the recoil from or avoidance of information, uncertainty, curiosity, serendipity, and immersion, to name a few.

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I want to

Organizer: Laewoo Kang (Cornell University)

Panelists: Dan Cosley (Cornell); David Phillips (University of Toronto); Matt Ratto (University of Toronto)

Description: The project ‘I Want To’ is an interactive installation whose purpose is to ask audiences to consider the extent to which our desires come from our internal mind and from social mechanisms. Fifty custom-designed wooden toys, a television screen, and speakers comprise the installation, which is controlled by live Twitter messages. The system extracts Twitter messages starting with the phrase ‘I want to,’ replacing it with ‘I have to’. The television displays the newly-formed sentence while being broadcast through speakers. With each new sentence, the wooden toys march in unison.

The goals of the panel are first, to introduce the motivation and technical details behind the installation, and second, to open up the broader discussion regarding how information science scholarship can interpret this, and other, design and artistic work. In particular, we will consider:

  1. What can the installation tell us about themes of identity, expression and control in online media?
  2. How can artistic and other types of scholarly expression help us to explore and understand key concepts and concerns of information science and HCI scholarship?

We invite you to share your thoughts and experience regarding it as artists, engineers, and social scientists.

http://www.laewoo.com/iwantto

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Digital Humanities (in | and | vs.) iSchools?

Organizers: Moderator: Ryan Shaw (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Panelists: Johanna Drucker (University of California, Los Angeles); Alan Galey (University of Toronto); Patricia Galloway (University of Texas); Dave Lester (University of California, Berekley); Bonnie Mak (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Jeffrey Pomerantz (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Amanda Visconti (University of Maryland)

Description:Digital humanities research and teaching is a growing part of the activity at many iSchools. Some iSchools have gone as far as to offer specialized degrees in digital humanities, while others are core members of multidisciplinary digital humanities centers. iSchool students and faculty have become a noticeable presence at both scholarly digital humanities conferences and the proliferating “unconferences.” The time is ripe to examine the relationship between iSchools and the humanities and to ask what the future holds for both communities.

The goals of the roundtable are to introduce conference attendees to the wide range of humanities work being done in or involving iSchools, allow panelists and audience members to share their experiences with and ideas for multidisciplinary work in the humanities, and consider what humanist perspectives have to contribute to the mix of disciplines found in iSchools.

Some of the questions we plan to consider are:

  1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various different approaches to and levels of engagement with the humanities?
  2. What alternatives exist for iSchools that wish to launch digital humanities initiatives?
  3. It is becoming common for humanities PhDs interested in digital humanities work to follow up with a Master's degree at an iSchool, or vice versa. How might we offer alternative routes to these kinds of students that might require less time spent in school?
  4. What are the differences from and overlaps with the areas where iSchools are involved in new media centers?
  5. What is the potential for digital humanities work to bring a revival of humanist perspectives and methods to a field that has tended to strive for recognition as a science?

Website: http://aeshin.org/dhmeetsi/

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Accessibility in the iSchools: Not Just for People with Disabilities? (Fishbowl)

Organizers: Lisa Anthony, Amy Hurst, Shaun Kane (University of Maryland Baltimore County); Sonya Allin (Women’s College Hospital / University of Toronto / Toronto Rehabilitation Institute); Leah Findlater (University of Maryland College Park); Karl Groves (Deque Systems)

Motivations: Traditionally, the term accessibility has emphasized interactions between people with disabilities and technology. Many in the iSchools community conduct research in various aspects of accessibility, including human-computer interaction, web accessibility, and accessibility policy. However, we would argue that many of the themes and values expressed in accessibility research (e.g., access, equality, personalized information access, cultural issues) are applicable to a wide range of research areas within the iSchools, particularly in research considering the digital divide.

The purpose of this fishbowl session is to encourage discussion and collaboration within the iSchools’ accessibility community, and to identify and build connections between “traditional” accessibility research for people with disabilities and researchers in other topic areas who address related concerns.

Goals:

  • To bring together members of the iSchools community who study, or who are interested in studying, the various facets of accessibility (HCI, web accessibility, policy);
  • To provide an open and welcoming discussion for those outside the area who are interested in accessibility research, or have questions about accessibility research;
  • To welcome discussion, questions, and other contributions from iSchool researchers in related areas (e.g., developing regions, health care, digital divide);
  • To identify common interests and collaboration opportunities between accessibility researchers and researchers in other fields.

Outcome: The primary outcome of this event will be to foster new connections between accessibility researchers in the iSchools, and between accessibility researchers and researchers in related fields.

Website: http://umbchci.org/events/iConference12

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Is information material? Digital materialities and mediated logics

Organizer: Daniela K. Rosner (University of California, Berkeley)

Panelists: Jean-François Blanchette (University of California, Los Angeles), Jenna Burrell, (University of California, Berkeley) and Johanna Drucker (University of California, Los Angeles)

Description: Over the last decade, the concept of materiality has gained considerable currency in a variety of fields, including anthropology, sociology, archeology, and even information studies. This meeting of disciplinary perspectives has given rise to a diversity of approaches to material, from close examinations of objects to broader analyses of the elements that afford and constrain action. Most broadly, the concept of materiality has helped scholars make sense of the social world by taking seriously its entanglement with physical processes.

Yet for scholars of information, the lack of definitional clarity around materiality and digitality has helped sustain a few analytical challenges. For one, information is thought to have finally unburdened itself from the shackles of matter. As a mere collection of 0s and 1s, digital information is imagined to be independent of the particular matter on which it is stored—hard drive, optical disk, etc.—and the particular signal carrier which encode bits, whether magnetic polarities, voltage intensities, or pulses of light. Digital information also achieves a separation of content and form that could only be partially realized with analog carriers. This fantasy of loose coupling overlooks the logistical and socio-political costs of information exchange and assumes a coarse distinction between atoms and bits (cf. Negroponte, 1995).

A second concern for information scholars involves the material constituents of digital activity. Talk with any number of craftspeople, and they will likely describe material as the ingredients with which forms are rendered and environments are assembled. Yet digital ingredients are often far less visible; their properties are obscured by the amorphous metaphors of digital media and digital content. Noise, corruption, and degradation, while often imperceptible, severely affect information reproduction, use and access. Understanding the particularities of digital files and infrastructures and the ways in which digital properties change over time has implications for how we think about their preservation as well as how we trace their meaningful interactional histories.

To more closely consider the materialities of information, we propose a panel discussion on what information studies can learn from and contribute to an engagement with material studies. We draw together perspectives from science and technology studies, craft studies, and organizational studies to consider questions of digital materiality that inform some of the basic tasks scholars face when attempting to theorize digital culture: the interpretation of digital media artifacts as well as the skills sets necessary to interrogate these artifacts. Thus we take materiality as an entry point for acquiring a deeper understanding of the possibilities and constraints of computing.

The aim of this panel is to serve as a springboard for discussions of digital materiality that will ultimately lay the groundwork for developing a common and productive understanding of material in information studies. Our hope is to incorporate discussions from this panel in an NSF workshop proposal on the topic of materials and information.

References
Negroponte, N. 1995. Being digital. Alfred A. Knopf.

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Brainstorming Data Science @ iSchools

Organizers: Jeffrey Stanton (Syracuse University); Carole Palmer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Catherine (Cathy) Blake (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Lesley Farmer (California State University Long Beach), Suzi Allard (University of Tennessee)

Description:We will use a typical brainstorming format with an ice-breaker/introductory activity, followed by facilitated participant responses to a short series of focusing questions, considering both curriculum and scholarly activity. Findings from earlier workforce analyses (on both jobs and curricula) conducted by Illinois, Syracuse, and California State University Long Beach will be used to engage the audience, and start the discussion. The session serves as follow-up to the 2010 Research Data Workforce Summit where participating iSchool faculty identified the lack of a shared vocabulary as a key problem for future coordinated activity. The session will also dovetail with a half-day iConference workshop on Data Science occurring earlier in the program. We will collect participants’ responses into a Google Doc in real time (collaboratively if we have multiple editors). The Google Doc will be shared with participants who provide their email addresses on a sign-up sheet. Following the conference, the Google Doc will be shaped into a brief position paper to be freely shared among iSchool deans, faculty, and staff.

Websites:
http://ischool.syr.edu/research/eScience/index.aspx
http://eslib.ischool.syr.edu/
http://cirss.lis.illinois.edu/SciCom/index.html

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The State of Infrastructure Studies

Organizers: David Ribes (Georgetown University); Jillian C. Wallis (University of California, Los Angeles).

Participants: Geoffrey C. Bowker (University of Pittsburgh); Ayse G. Buyuktur (University of Michigan); Paul N. Edwards (University of Michigan); Steven J. Jackson (Cornell University)

Description: We invite you to come discuss the challenges of research on infrastructure from information studies perspectives. We will begin this session with brief panel presentations to stimulate a rich dialogue for the rest of the session.

Infrastructure studies has a long heritage, largely under other names. Starting in the 1980s, work on the history and sociology of large technical systems converged on a coherent research program that led to identification of a historical model for infrastructure development. In the 1990s, the late Susan Leigh Star, with Geoffrey C. Bowker and others, developed the concept of infrastructure in other directions, notably the analysis of classification systems and scientific collaboration. More recently, practitioner discourses about “information infrastructure” grew prominent during the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web, and were embraced by the National Science Foundation under the neologism “cyberinfrastructure.”

The panel consists of researchers who are actively engaged in the study of infrastructure, its designers and user communities. Each has a different theoretical or methodological perspective. These scholars represent a range of career stages, from doctoral students writing dissertations to senior scholars in the field. We want to engage you, scholars in the current state of the field, to push forward the infrastructure studies research agenda. We encourage you to bring your own infrastructure experiences to share.

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Making Little Books

Organizer: Greta Golick (University of Toronto)

Description:Handmade books have a long history. Over the centuries handmade books have been used for utilitarian purposes, such as daily account tallies and for writing diaries and novels. This event will provide conference participants with the opportunity to (re)visit a physical book format that dominated society for two millennia. Participants will assemble two handmade books: the simple pamphlet, so common in Europe and America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and an alternate method used for the production of account books in Japan.

Participants in “Making Little Books” will create personal, utilitarian blankbooks, which can be replicated at home with minimal equipment and expense. During the hour-long session, conducted by Greta Golick, participants will observe a demonstration of the two bookbinding structures, select paper for covers, fold, cut (slit), and gather paper to create the inner pages of their books, and finally, bind their books with thread, string, or ribbon to create two personal and cherished blankbooks, suitable for their own use or to be given as gifts. Participants will exercise creativity through their choices of materials, experience the satisfaction of fashioning handmade artifacts, forge a physical connection between materials and a manufactured product, and marvel at the simple beauty of their handmade books.

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Exploring the role of Design Thinking in iSchool pedagogy

Organizers: Rick Kopak and Lisa Nathan (University of British Columbia)

Description: The goal of this *hands-on* alternative event is to stimulate active discussion around the role of design thinking within and across the iSchool curriculum. Although design thinking is a term historically applied to the practices and problem solving processes of working designers, its popularity as an approach for addressing design concordant problems across a variety of academic disciplines is increasing. This is especially so in those disciplines that are ‘applied’, or at least have a significant component of synthetic thinking (i.e. thinking aimed at synthesis and creation rather than analysis and reduction) involved in their pedagogical and research practices. For the purposes of this event we approach design thinking as a human-centred problem solving methodology. By drawing on this methodology, one is particularly well positioned to be responsive to local contexts and conditions, to recognize that there is likely more than one answer to a problem, and to value synthetic thinking in the identification of solutions. As such, we see design thinking as an approach that iSchools are particularly well poised to introduce throughout their curriculum.

As iSchools continue to define and redefine areas of research and practice, adoption of a design thinking approach could help create a continuum on which different iSchools can place themselves in terms of the balance between the rationalist and creative approaches to the study of information in society. Inspired by the words of Victor Papanek, "The only important thing about design is how it relates to people" (Papanek, 1972), the organizers propose that a design thinking approach is particularly germane to the underlying goals of the iSchool movement.

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Emerging Web metrics of scholarship: Future or Fad?

Organizers: Judit Bar-Ilan (Bar-Ilan University), Johan Bollen (Indiana University), Jonathan Levitt (Loughborough University), Staša Milojević (Indiana University), Jason Priem (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Dietmar Wolfram (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

Description: The purpose of the event is to discuss the value of traditional and alternative metrics of scholarship: the pros and cons of these metrics and whether and how these can complement each other.

There is increasing interest in metric studies, as can be seen by the number of specialist conferences, conference sessions and journals related to the topic and by the activities of the recently established ASIST SIG/MET. New metrics and indicators are being introduced, many of them based on data from the Web and Web 2.0. Researchers have proposed and begun to study metrics based on activity from diverse new sources including article downloads, Wikipedia, Twitter, social reference managers and post-publication reviews. On the other hand there is continued interest in citation-based metrics like the journal impact factor, the h-index and newly introduced citation based measures (e.g. SNIP, Eigenfactor, SJR). Even “traditional” metrics are sometimes computed based on new data sources, like Google Scholar or Microsoft Academic Search.

This explosion of interest raises many questions as to the meaning and the added value of these metrics and whether and how these can be used in evaluating science. Will these new metric sources displace the old standards, or are they merely fads?

In the debate the panel participants will form two groups; one is going to argue in favor of the traditional metrics and the other in favor of the alternative ones. First, panelists will emphasize the pros and cons of the metrics, and then discuss how to integrate alternative metrics with the traditional ones. After initial statements from the panel participants, the panel will answer questions from the audience.

The organizers are established members of the metrics community. The conclusions and recommendations of the panel will be disseminated through a report published on the SIG/MET website. ASIST SIG/MET endorses this event.

Websites:

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Cultivating Creative Information Practice: Supporting the Yin and Yang of the Research Process

Organizers: Theresa Anderson (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia), Leanne Bowler (University of Pittsburgh), Lisa Nathan (University of British Columbia), and Eileen Trauth (Pennsylvania State University)

Description: A heightened research focus on creativity is coming from many quarters. In response, this event calls attention to the very activity through which scholars are exploring creativity -- the research process. In particular, we focus on the accepted information practices that are supposed to support our research. Are these standardized practices scaffolding truly creative inquiry that enables researchers to put their imagination to work? This interactive session provides an opportunity for participants to uncover the challenges and opportunities that emerge as one attempts to develop and sustain creative information practice, particularly in the increasingly regimented environment of academia. We wish to generate conversations and share reflections about how we can create, nurture and sustain sites of creativity proactively through research-related information practices. In light of growing interest in a more humanist emphasis to information research, the discussion explores the intersection between critical and creative capacities as a way to better enable contemplative scholarship.

The organizers will motivate this alternative event through short research narratives that illustrate the tension resulting from the privileging of structure over messiness in the creative process. Participants will then be invited to share, in breakout groups, their own experiences of nurturing creativity, coping with messiness, methods of creative dissemination of research results, and new information practices. In this way the session models creative information practices and serves as a first step in building a community of like-minded researchers. The provocative content and the interactive format will appeal to those interested in discussing and sharing creative information practices.

Please see the event wiki for further details: http://creativeinfopractice.pbworks.com

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Health, Connectedness, Well-Being: Social Media and Diverse Populations

Organizers: June Ahn, Sahar Khamis, Jes A. Koepfler, Amalia S. Levi, Ivan Watkins, Bo Xie (University of Maryland, College Park)

Description: The panel assesses how new forms of interconnectedness among diverse segments of the society challenge assumptions and promote cultural change, potentially affecting the design of information systems. It also examines how the use of social media sites introduces new forms of socialization and redefines one’s sense of belonging in the case of underserved populations.

For such groups, appropriation of online health communities and resources is not always an easy process. New technologies offer unprecedented malleability in the way health information is adopted in various cultural and socioeconomic settings and challenge the sensitivities, beliefs, and perspectives of diverse populations.

The presenters seek to define a common ground across five different populations: I. Watkins and B. Xie examine the accessibility of health-related social networking sites for older adults. June Ahn analyzes how the social information sharing behaviors of teenagers may relate to their psychological well-being. Jes Koepfler discusses issues of public health and sees self-identified homeless Twitter users as an emerging social phenomenon. S. Khamis compares and contrasts women’s attitude in a rural Egyptian village towards traditional sources of health information to new forms of Internet-based communication. A. Levi evaluates how ethnosymbolism in online health communities contributes to a transnational understanding of identity in the case of diasporas and ethnic minorities.

Drawing on a range of methodologies— including social network analysis, content analysis, ethnography, usability testing, and grounded theory—the presentations will showcase how social media affect health and well-being by changing how people connect, communicate, and learn.

The event will be webcast and the audience, both at the conference and joining us online, will be invited to interact with the presenters through a Twitter backchannel and index cards. The presentations, activities, and subsequent discussion will explore different ways that social media can enhance everyday life experiences for underserved populations.

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Re-framing the News Reader: a Tweet Jam Panel

Organizers: Mary Cavanagh (University of Ottawa), Luanne Freund (University of British Columbia), and Abby Goodrum (Wilfred Laurier University)

Description:Journalism is in the midst of a dramatic upheaval in which the roles, practices, expectations and structures of news producers and consumers are shifting and re-aligning. Although technology is at the heart of these changes, the concomitant social and cultural shifts in news and media practises play an equally important role. This session will focus on a re-framing of the news reader in the current context, exploring notions of authority, sociality, media literacy, infotainment, and produserism. The relationship between the design of news information systems and the uptake and use of those systems by contemporary news readers will also be addressed.

Panelists are three members of the NCE GRAND Canada-wide research network who are collaborators in the Access to News Media project, which explores aspects of access, dissemination and use of online news. Each panelist will draw upon current and ongoing research to provide context to the themes under discussion and to identify key questions.

The aim of the session is to engage the iSchool community in rethinking some central notions of information access and use in society by focusing on the dramatic changes taking place in the culture and practise of journalism. The event will consist of a series of brief presentation by panelists (10 minutes each) and a response by a professional journalist (10 minutes). The remainder of the session will be devoted to responding to comments and questions posed by the audience, either via Twitter or in person. Volunteer micro-bloggers will be recruited to report on the event in real time, and to moderate the Tweet Jam. Throughout the event the live Tweet stream will be projected on the wall alongside the presentations.

Website: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/lfreund/NewsPanel.htm

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A Visual Approach to the Perennial Question: “What is Information?”

Original research presented by: Jenna Hartel, Rebecca Noone, and Karen Pollock (University of Toronto)

Commentary from an expert panel composed of: John Budd (University of Missouri); Kiersten Latham (Kent State University); Muriah Umoquit (Cancer Care Ontario)

Description: Over the decades the question “What is information?” has been asked by scholars in information studies and the answer remains highly contested. Our session provides a fresh, interdisciplinary, visual perspective on this perennial question. During the summer of 2011, 137 students were asked “What is information?” and responded by drawing upon a 4" by 4" piece of paper, coined an “iSquare.” The visual expressions of information were analyzed using compositional and thematic analysis techniques. This alternative event will: 1.) Survey existing conceptions of information from within information studies; 2.) Review empirical precedents from across the social sciences that utilized drawing as a data-gathering method; 3.) Describe the visual methodology and research design at hand; 4.) Report findings via a classification scheme of diagrams and inductively generated themes; 5.) Comment upon the artfulness of the iSquares; 6.) Present the pedagogical potential of the iSquare exercise and, 7.) Solicit feedback from a panel of experts. There will also be ample time for discussion among everyone in the room. To complement this alternative event, the 137 iSquares will be featured as a dynamic on-site exhibit duration the iConference and they will be re-arranged daily to express different interpretations of the data. All iConference attendees will have an opportunity for hands-on participation. Adjacent to the exhibit will be a workstation to create and affix an iSquare to the fascinating, growing amalgamation. Overall, the project aims to explore the nature of information in a novel way; showcase scholarship at the crossroads of social science and the arts; and stimulate the imagination of the researchers, research participants, and conference attendees.

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Scholarly Matchmaking: Fostering a cross disciplinary dialog between the digital humanities and the information sciences

Organizers: Matt Burton, Melissa Chalmers, and Adam Kriesberg (University of Michigan)

Description: The emergence of humanities computing and the digital humanities over the past several decades have sparked both enthusiasm and consternation across humanities disciplines. We believe that today’s iSchools Caucus contains a diverse and interdisciplinary collection of students, researchers, and teachers whose work orbits the digital humanities. These scholars could benefit greatly from an opportunity to connect and collaborate; this iConference alternative event seeks to take a first step toward this goal.

This event will include a “speed dating” networking exercise to introduce interested scholars from the iSchools consortium to each other. Each participant will have approximately three minutes to introduce himself and his research to another participant before shifting seats and meeting someone new. This exercise will allow scholars in the information sciences to make connections with interested colleagues and lay the groundwork for the development of a digital humanities research program within the iSchools Caucus.

The second part of the event will involve a series of ad-hoc “lighting talks” by you! We strongly encourage participants to bring - or create during the event - a powerpoint slide to contribute to a broad conversation about the relationship between the iSchools and the digital humanities. These slides could be quick summaries of your research work, a digital humanities resource, a tool, or a set of questions about the digital humanities. We're prepared to seed the presentation with our own research and topics of interest, but ultimately we don't want this event to be about us - it's about you. As artifacts of the conversation, the slides will be a resource to share after the conference.

This event offers an opportunity for all interested conference participants to contribute to the growth of an emerging community. Come prepared to meet your peers and discuss research, background, or curiosities related to the digital humanities.

For more information, visit the editable Google Presentation at http://goo.gl/xQhlP.

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Translating Culture

Organizers: Judith Saltman (University of British Columbia); Annette Y. Goldsmith (University of Washington);Gail Edwards (University of British Columbia and Douglas College)

Description: It is a paradox that in an increasingly interconnected worldwide economy in which the globalization of publishing is a recognizable fact, culturally conscious translated children’s books into English-language markets are rare. The book is still a crucial technology that allows our children to share stories, experience imaginative and literary empathy and engagement beyond their national and linguistic borders, and therefore connect with children worldwide. Despite the obvious benefits of introducing children to the diversity of national literatures, what should be a flow across borders of information, narrative and character is a mere trickle. By contrast, culturally conscious English-language books are published into other languages worldwide, yet relatively few international books are translated into English and published in the United States. Similarly, in Canada, there is also resistance to children’s book translation between French and English, the country’s two official languages, and challenges exist in translating from one market to another within the country and beyond.

Purpose: To analyse and explore issues of translation, culture and censorship in children’s book publishing in the United States and Canada.

Activities: A panel of papers will examine the economic, cultural and aesthetic issues that inhibit the publication of translated editions and will draw on our research in publishing from over 140 interviews with American, Canadian, and international publishers, editors, authors, illustrators, book designers, librarians, and children’s literature specialists.

Two participatory activities examining translation and book illustration will immerse the audience in the cultural and aesthetic issues revealed by the difference in illustration across cultures.

Outcomes: The audience will gain an understanding of the concerns and issues involved in the lack of translation, and the commercial, aesthetic and cultural difficulties in the process of translation, which involves translation not only of language, but also of textual and visual images, ideas, and values.

Related links:

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IXmaps.ca - Tracking Your Information Packets Over the Net, Through Exchange Points and Across Borders

Organizers: Andrew Clement (University of Toronto), Nancy Paterson (University of Toronto, OCAD University); Colin McCann (University of Toronto), Gabriel Resch (University of Toronto), Steve Harvey (Independent), and Erik Stewart (Independent)

Background: There is popular tendency to regard the internet core as an immaterial, virtual, placeless 'cloud' where much happens, but without wider interest or concern. The IXmaps research project seeks to dispel this myth by revealing the internet core’s political, geographical and physical concreteness. It does this by illuminating for users the routes their packets take through the internet core along with the related issues - e.g. surveillance, deep packet inspection (DPI), ownership, network sovereignty, ...

IXmaps allows users to explore geographic visualizations of the routes taken by their information requests over the internet - presenting information about internet exchange points along the way. Data packet routes and switching sites are shown using Google Earth.

The IXmaps project relies on voluntary user contributions to its database, mainly through the installation of TRgen, a modified version of a common Traceroute analysis program.

Purpose: The main goals of this demo/tutorial are two-fold:

  1. Enable attendees to learn about internet traceroute visualization, and in particular how they can use the IXmaps.ca mapping service to see where their packets travel, discovering information about ‘interesting’ points and internet policy issues along the way.
  2. Enroll contributors in the collaborative expansion and refinement of the IXmaps.ca database of traceroutes, backbone router locations, and internet exchange point facts.

We hope to foster an enthusiastic cohort of informed individuals interested in collaboratively shedding light on the inner workings of the internet and contributing to the value and utility of the IXmaps tool.

Agenda:

  1. Introductions (10 mins)
  2. Motivations – backbone surveillance, network sovereignty (10mins)
  3. Viewing traceroutes (10 mins)
  4. Geo-locating backbone routers (10 mins)
  5. Generating traceroutes (20 mins)
  6. Policy implications (20 mins)
  7. Wrapup: Staying in touch (10 mins)

We encourage participants to bring a laptop, but this isn’t necessary.

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