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Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy By Jennifer Monahan Is art inherently better because it is created by a human? When asked that question, Brett Ashley Crawford, Ph.D., faculty chair of the Master of Arts and Entertainment Management programs, joint efforts between Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, answered with a scenario and some questions of her own. “Consider a wonderful writer, like [travel writer] Bill Bryson and how his position and journey (born in Iowa to a father who was a journalist), and circumstances, afforded him the opportunity to backpack through Europe with a friend. Going to all these places – which is very inspirational – fuels you as an artist,” Crawford said. “If I’m somebody who has a physical disability that prevents travel, or if my life journey has different financial or systemic challenges that prevent me from following that same path as Bryson, maybe using technology can help me get to something different, with a different form of inspiration. Is that better or worse, for the artist? The artist has been inspired to create something with AI. Is being inspired by AI really any different than the way Bill Bryson was inspired by the ability to do what he did?” The complexity of the response is indicative of the impact artificial intelligence (AI) is having in the world of art and entertainment. At odds in the scenario above are two things that both ring true, but don’t fit well together: the presumption that human creativity is predicated on authentic, lived experiences; and the idea that AI can assist human creativity in a way that makes creation more accessible for more people, no less authentic nor less valuable just because it’s digital. Daniel Green, Ph.D., director of the Master of Entertainment Industry Management Program, raised similar questions about the nature of creativity. Though the quality of plays, scripts, or short stories produced by generative AI may not yet be equal to that of a seasoned writer, it’s good enough that protection from competition by future generative AI tools is one of the issues being debated as part of the current writers’ and actors’ strikes in the U.S. The threat of a technological tool that can take in a popular book and instantaneously churn out a passable movie screenplay based on that story has writers worried. “For years, critics have been wary of entertainment – dramas or romantic comedies, for example – that are formulaic. They’ll say the work is derivative,” explained Green. Classic literary plotlines are fair game and have influenced many modern movie successes. The Lion King is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Clueless follows Jane Austen’s Emma. 10 Things I Hate About You was inspired by The Taming of the Shrew (more Shakespeare). “Is generative AI really doing anything different?” Green asked. The examples provided by Crawford and Green highlight a central dilemma caused by AI in the world of art and entertainment: that seemingly conflicting elements are both true. AI presents paradox after paradox, and the use of AI in art raises tangled questions with no easy answers. Authorship and Transparency Chief among these concerns is the question of authorship. When an artist or songwriter uses AI to create something, who owns the content? In April, the AI-generated song “Heart on My Sleeve” created a huge buzz. The song featured a fake Drake and The Weeknd, stealing their sound and style. While those musicians didn’t write the song, its popularity relies on their talent and fame. So who gets credit and compensation? Drake and The Weeknd? The person who created the prompt and put the song together? The company who created the AI tool? The computer engineers who wrote the algorithms for that model? The artists who created the content that the AI was trained on? Depending on how one defines authorship, the answer to all of those questions could be “yes.” The same issue exists in visual arts. “Artists playing with AI have existed on the fringe for many years,” Crawford said. “With digital artwork, I think there has been this assumption that we know technology has been involved and we just let it go, because it was truly more like having a better paintbrush. But AI has gotten better, and artists today are using it differently.” - BRETT ASHLEY CRAWFORD, PH.D. The quality of current AI is more like collaborating with a co-artist than having a better paintbrush. With that development, Crawford said, she expects to see more transparency about the authorship of a work of art. Competitions will have guidelines clarifying whether and how much assistance from AI-tools is acceptable. Finished pieces hanging in museums or galleries will include descriptions that detail the creation process and how AI was used. Green envisions a similar future in the entertainment industry. “Writers won’t be happy, but I could imagine there will be an acknowledgement that a story was written in combination with AI. So, for example, the credits would list the AI program used along with the names of the two writers who rewrote the AI-generated script,” Green said. Workforce Disruption While people might be more familiar with high-profile stories like “Heart on My Sleeve” or Jason Allen’s first-place prize in the 2022 Colorado State Fair art competition for the AI-generated “Theatre D’Opera Spatial,” less public creative and administrative roles across the arts and entertainment sector are equally likely to be affected by AI. Green referenced the AI-generated opening credits for Marvel’s Secret Invasion series. The use of AI in this case created some cool visual effects. It also took work away from the animators and graphic designers who would typically be employed for such a job. Crawford, who is also the executive director of CMU’s Arts Management and Technology Laboratory, said the increasing use of The Volume technology to create digital scenery – think Star Wars: The Mandalorian – is already changing the job market for designers and location-based filming. The recent “Joan is Awful” episode of Black Mirror hilariously – and disconcertingly – highlights the potential complications of what happens when actors license their digital image and likeness for use in new shows. Green speculated that audiences might someday see new films starring James Dean or Marlon Brando, though such conjectures prompt more questions about who is compensated when the featured digital actor is deceased. While it is easy to focus on the potentially negative implications of AI, both Green and Crawford are balanced in spotlighting its merits. Increased Access, Engagement, and Efficiency For content creators, AI tools have mitigated some barriers to producing music. “Musicians used to have to go into a studio. They used to have to know someone, or get a big break, in order to get studio time and resources. That’s difficult and expensive. Once the track was made, they had to figure out how to distribute it,” Green said. “Now, if you’re talented enough, you could record all those pieces onto a machine, use AI to mix it, drop in your vocals, and then you could distribute it an hour later on Spotify.” For people with visual, auditory, or mobility challenges, AI can change the landscape – literally. AI tools are already being used to enhance access and engagement. “Those same large language models that power ChatGPT can also be used to provide surtitles in operas for hearing-impaired patrons,” Crawford explained. “There’s new software that’s not only generating the text, but placing the words in the user’s line of vision right above the person who is speaking.” Museums are doing inventive work with technology to improve the patron experience. Have you ever wanted to pick up a piece of art in a museum? Strictly verboten, of course, but a sophisticated 3-D view offers a similar experience. Innovations at the Cleveland Museum of Art allow anyone, anywhere, to zoom in and out on selected objects, flip them upside down, spin them around, and see them from every angle. Images are accompanied by a “Did you know?” display featuring fun facts, plus brief, interesting descriptions that can help the uninitiated learn more about the world of art. During Covid, the Tate Britain launched its “After Dark” website; the museum had four remote-controlled robots, and viewers could take turns controlling robots’ movements as they roamed the museum at night. teamLab, an international art collective, explores the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Its exhibits often include immersive experiences allowing visitors to engage with the art and even create elements of it. From an administrative as well as a creative standpoint, AI has much to offer arts managers. “Arts organizations have been using AI for a while to assist with provenance,” Crawford said, and law-enforcement agencies like the FBI can use image-recognition software to help identify stolen artwork. In the non-profit world of museum management, AI tools can be a godsend. Arts organizations are often under-resourced and consequently understaffed. They may not have a marketing team with the bandwidth to create strategic campaigns. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can tailor marketing campaigns to the specific profiles of individual patrons, while chatbots such as ChatGPT or Bard can generate social media posts. “Efficient and effective communication between the organizations and their audiences is going to become better,” Crawford said. With individualized marketing, however, come accompanying privacy concerns. Crawford cited examples of geofencing and interactive outdoor advertising as normalized marketing opportunities but potential pain points for an individual’s privacy. “The tensions are around personal data – what big tech companies are allowed to do with my data, and how they are allowed to do it,” Crawford explained. Embedding Ethics Into Everything As educators charged with training the next generation of arts and entertainment industry leaders, Crawford and Green grapple regularly with how to teach their students to negotiate the ethics of a world where the technology – and the impact of that technology – is changing so fast. MEIM graduates work across the entertainment sector in streaming, gaming, filmmaking, music, and business. MAM graduates lead arts organizations, museums, theaters, and galleries. They are the current and future leaders of an industry that is being fundamentally changed by technology. “The students are going to be using this technology with or without us,” Green said. “We have to teach ethics in the classrooms. We have to give them frameworks for how to navigate this reality.” Faculty – even faculty at a university known for being at the forefront of new tech developments – cannot always anticipate what the upstream and downstream effects of generative AI will be, much less whatever technology comes after that. And after that. Instead of teaching students to respond to a particular situation, faculty teach them how to make decisions amid uncertainty and how to anticipate and consider the impact of those decisions for various audiences. “Part of what I try to develop is the habit of ethics,” Crawford said. “As an educator, my approach is that ethics is simply part of every question we talk about. Arts organizations that are trying to be true partners in an equitable and inclusive world have to have high ethical standards and to recognize where the ethical choices are.” Policy Implications “We have to be forward thinking with any policy around technology,” Green said. “Artists will increasingly use AI, and things are going to continue to change quickly.” To that end, the MEIM program is launching a fall class focused on AI in entertainment. This elective class will include an experiential learning component that allows students to create something using AI. “We have to be nimble enough to pivot our curriculum to what’s happening in the entertainment industry,” Green explained. “Media and entertainment disruption will only be exacerbated by the use of AI.” - DANIEL GREEN, PH.D. “Boundaries around AI need to be created sooner rather than later,” Crawford said. “Because AI has some powers that are currently unchecked and perhaps not understood, our issues with privacy and security need to be addressed first.” Policymakers also need to consider appropriate compensation as well as ownership and authorship transparency with respect to generative AI. Copyright law needs to address the role of collaborative AI – that is, when a human artist uses AI to create art – and how ownership in such a case will be codified into law. Crawford noted that international copyright laws will likely be established first and that the U.S. should follow suit. As an example, both Japan and Korea have a robust art and technology interface as well as interesting approaches to ownership of AI-generated art. The European Union is moving forward with an AI Act that includes provisions for copyrighted material. What’s Next? While no one can predict the future, Crawford believes that the real game-changer is not AI, but quantum computing. “Quantum computing is still in the developmental stage,” Crawford explained. Estimates are that it might enter the marketplace anywhere from 2025 to 2035. And that, Crawford said, will change the entire ecosystem. In the meantime, AI offers plenty to grapple with. Like every tool, AI has the potential to help and harm. In the context of art and entertainment, AI creates new opportunities and provides broader accessibility. It also requires thoughtful consideration about how it can be deployed in ways that assist human creativity rather than replace it, and how it can be used ethically, to contribute to the common good. Those thorny issues won’t get solved overnight. AI will most certainly be part of the ongoing story in art and entertainment; learning to reconcile its paradoxes is the new creative challenge. Original Article: https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2023/July/refashioning-creativity-ai-takes-center-stage-in-arts-and-entertainment

Time: Monday, September 25, 2023 | 10:00 am - 11:30 am EDT The iFederation@ALISE session will be a 90-minute online session offered through Zoom. The session will be open to any members of ALISE, ASIS&T, or iSchools. The iFederation@ALISE session will continue with the theme of “information integrity” from the iConference iFederation panel session (which took place on March 13, 2023), with the focus on the impact of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT on teaching and learning in the field of information. The format and time allocation of the session are as follows: Panelists’ conversation: 4 panelists discussing ChatGPT and education [30 minutes] Breakout room discussion: 4 different breakout room discussions, each room addresses a different topic area, each breakout room will have a discussion facilitator, a recorder and reporter [20 minutes] Report back: Participants return to the main room to report the key points of engagement in their breakout room discussion [20 minutes] Wrap up: Summary and consultation on potential next steps. [20 minutes] Click below to learn more and register!

Dylan Ruediger et al. have written a report in the Ithaka S+R (blog) called “Of Meetings and Members”, in which they discuss “The Interconnected Future of Conferences and Scholarly Societies.” The authors recognize that “annual meetings faced significant criticism even before the COVID-19 pandemic, much of it focused on exposing the limitations of in-person conferences.”¹ The cost of such meetings ranked high on the list of concerns, and the authors note that “[t]he virtual meetings of 2020-22 were much more successful than pre-pandemic conventional wisdom would have believed possible….”¹ When COVID made the iConference in Sweden impossible, the iSchools organisation held its first virtual conference in 2020 on only two weeks' notice thanks to the technical expertise of the Berlin staff. Ruediger et al. note that today many societies are “returning to primarily in-person conferences…”¹ often with a virtual component that some see as a supplement. For the iSchools, the virtual conference remains essential because many scholars simply cannot afford international travel. Nonetheless no one denies the importance of “the role that conference attendance plays in socializing students and early career scholars into the culture and norms of a field.”¹ The Ithaka report concluded that efforts to “replicate some of the social texture of in-person meetings… largely failed.”¹ The iSchools have seen how hard it is to replicate the serendipity of in-person social interactions. Nonetheless the Ithaka authors note “there is room for new purposes … [and] for adjusting programming in response to changes in the needs of members.”¹ The Ithaka report looked mainly at the experience of American organisations. The iSchools are primarily international (American schools represent 40%), which means that the cost of international travel plays a significant role for conferences. Finding ways to enable virtual social interactions has become a priority and ideas are welcome. Ruediger et al. note that “[f]or many societies, the primary purpose of their annual meeting is to generate revenue…”¹ The situation for the iSchools is different. The iSchools do not use the conference for income generation and typically make just enough to cover costs. This has been possible by avoiding conference hotels and using facilities at member schools. The key question the Ithaka report raises is not about the form of conferences, but about the relationship between conference and the organisation. The iSchools have the advantage of not relying on conference income, which means it is possible to make decisions based on “the long-term sustainability of the organization and the future needs of scholarly communities ….”¹ 1: Dylan Ruediger et al., ‘Of Meetings and Members’, Ithaka S+R (blog), accessed 19 August 2023, https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/of-meetings-and-members/.

University of Cincinnati, School of Information Technology Application Deadline: October 31, 2023 SoIT seeks to hire three tenure-track Assistant Professors to start in August 2024, advancing research in the practical, applied, and technical dimensions of securing systems and information, championing technological innovation, and engaging in new evidence-based approaches in IT industry with interdisciplinary collaborations. Link to Job Ad: https://jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinnati-Asst-Professor%2C-School-of-Information-Technology%2C-Educ-Criminal-Justice-&-Human-Srvcs-OH-45201/1065950200/

University of Michigan, School of Information Application Deadline: October 15, 2023 The University of Michigan, School of Information seeks qualified tenure-track faculty candidates (open rank) to broaden existing scholarship within the school and the U-M community in the area of racial justice in computing, technology, and policy, with a particular emphasis on the domains of data and AI. Areas of research and teaching may include, but are not limited to: critical data studies, critical algorithm studies, algorithmic inequality, science and technology studies, intersectional analysis of digital labor and precarity, racial capitalism and platform studies, the economics of race and racism, social implications of data-driven systems, technology policy, and the ethics and politics of computing. We especially welcome scholars who engage with the intersections of racial justice, data, digital technology and critical race/ethnic studies, Black studies, intersectional feminisms, decolonization and postcolonial studies, transregional and global studies, disability studies, Indigenous studies, and trans studies.

Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy By Bill Brink Heinz College has plenty of expertise in the prevention of cyber attacks, including phishing, the practice of sending fraudulent emails to obtain sensitive information. Fishing, with an F? Not so much. Until now. In 2022, a group of Heinz College students built a prototype of a data pipeline to help the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The students – Sebastian Dodt, Bikash Gupta, Yingzhe Jin, Eunyoung Lee, Ziyou Li, Liam McLane and Marc Weinheimer – built this pipeline for their Capstone project, during which students partner with real-world clients to help them solve a problem. “We are told that it has had an impact, that it radically changed the way the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency looks at illegal fishing,” Dodt said. “That’s something that’s super satisfying. My whole career, I’ve been striving to have an impact on the world. It’s the whole reason that I’m here.” It Started with a Memo The NGA’s portfolio includes a broad array of responsibilities. For most of its 26-year history, none of them involved fish. The agency typically supplies intelligence to the military (it played a key role in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound), assists in the wake of natural disasters, and supports security efforts for large-scale events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl. But it also assists with counternarcotics, and after the White House released a memo in June of 2022 directing federal agencies to address the issue of IUU fishing, the NGA asked for a bit of help. The team created a prioritization matrix for enforcement of IUU fishing. Policing IUU fishing is a tricky issue, and technology can help to a point. In 2015, Google partnered with the ocean conservation organization Oceana and the satellite technology firm SkyTruth to create Global Fishing Watch, an open-source, real-time suite of map and data analysis tools to track international fishing activity. But even if you can find the bad actors, reeling them in is another matter. “One of the things that I encouraged everybody to think about is to not frame it entirely as cops and robbers, how do we catch people,” said Jonathan Caulkins, the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Heinz College and the project’s advisor. “And that’s in part from my experience with analyzing other illegal markets. The problem with market-type crime is the tendency for easily replaceable assets to get replaced, even if they are incapacitated in some fashion. So you have to think about an economic model of the market and figure out what assets can be disabled that are harder to replace.” Refining the Search Every fishing boat must be registered, or “flagged,” to a specific nation. Some nations, known as flag-of-convenience states, sell these registrations for profit and have little interest in policing IUU fishing. For other countries, their small navies and coast guards make it impossible to patrol their exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which extends 200 nautical miles from the edge of their territorial waters. An inconsistent patchwork of treaties and agreements governs – and sometimes fails to govern – enforcement in international waters. “The problem is really complicated because you’re taking an illegal activity problem and then you’re dropping it thousands of miles in the middle of the ocean,” McLane said. “And on top of that, you’re giving every country in the world at least partial jurisdiction over a piece of this. And obviously, fish don’t respect national boundaries.” Attempting to enforce IUU fishing by targeting the world’s estimated 2.4 million powered fishing vessels is lunacy, but there are bigger fish to fry. “These fishing boats don't go back to ports every time that they fish,” Dodt said. “Instead, they meet ‘reefer’ vessels, these bigger support vessels, who give them fuel and take their fish and freeze it and package it. And then they go back out and steal fish again, and they can do that for years and never have to go to port.” While the fishing boats frequently deactivate their automatic identification system (AIS) transponders, the support vessels must keep theirs on. That, combined with the fact that there are only 1,500 or so reefers at sea at a given time, makes them desirable targets. By mixing legitimate and illegal catch, the support vessels can launder the illicit fish on the world market. One morning, a few hours before a meeting with his group, Dodt had an idea. He remembered reading about an incident in which a U.S. Coast Guard cutter attempted to intercept a fleet of Chinese fishing boats near the Galapagos Islands, scouring the waters off the coast of Ecuador in search of Humboldt squid. Some boats fled. One of them tried to ram the cutter. “That's Right up Their Alley” Among the boats that fled was the Yong Hang 3, a 472-foot-long reefer vessel considered one of the worst offenders in the IUU world. She’s flagged to Panama, but she’s essentially Chinese. These supply ships sometimes meet fishing boats with an active transponder in what is known as a tracked meeting. The meetings Dodt and his team were concerned about were “dark” meetings, when the reefer vessel remained stationary for hours, seemingly alone but almost certainly engaging in transshipment and resupply with a fishing boat. When those meetings take place in international waters just outside an EEZ, they’re a proxy for illegal activity. Dodt ran a quick analysis to see which fishing boats had met with the Yong Hang 3, and which other reefer vessels they met. Networks and patterns emerged. “The [NGA] advisor and two people on our team who have worked with the military before, they were like, ‘Wow, they will love this,’” Dodt said. “The military is all about networks. That's right up their alley. And I think that's one of the biggest things we contributed, was this network analysis.” Global Fishing Watch data has a 72-hour lag time, which makes real-time enforcement difficult. But SeaVision, a tool built for the Department of Transportation to track and sort thousands of ships around the world, contains information updated within the hour. Combining all this data, the team built the NGA a platform that at a glance shows a ship’s dark meetings, network, location, heading, and, most importantly in terms of enforcement, flag, EEZ status and proximity to U.S. waters. Finding the ships is only half the battle. The group also synthesized data on treaties, corruption indexes, capabilities of navies and coast guards, EEZ size, and economy, as well as broader factors – Russia and China, for example, probably have little interest at the moment in assisting a U.S. federal agency – to help the NGA identify which boats the U.S. or an ally has a good chance of catching. “I think it helped the NGA understand that they have intelligence capabilities, and this is a problem that could leverage intelligence capabilities, and they know where they fit into the whole puzzle,” McLane said. “Especially for these government agencies, if they have a new problem, just knowing where they fit into it can be a really good start.” Fishing with an F: Now a part of the Heinz College tackle box. Original Article: https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2023/May/illegal-unregulated-unreported-fishing-capstone-project-national-geospatial-intelligence-agency

Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science Application Deadline: Until position has been filled. The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University has a post-doctoral opening to work on an interdisciplinary project focused on the development and evaluation of methodologies and best practices designed to support privacy and AI threat modeling and mitigation. The project takes a user-focused perspective to modeling, identifying and mitigating threats and will initially focus on threats associated with inadequate support for notice and choice. The project will be informed by threat modeling frameworks such as LINDDUN as well as work on the design and evaluation of effective privacy notices and choices, extending this work to new threats associated with AI. This work will be co-led by Prof. Lorrie Cranor and Prof. Norman Sadeh. The successful candidate will have a PhD in computer science, information science or a related discipline. The ideal candidate will have a background in usable privacy or security as well as a general understanding of AI and a general interest in public policy and ethics. Preference will be given to candidates who also have some familiarity with threat modeling frameworks such as LINDDUN and/or privacy-by-design concepts. Candidates are expected to be capable of working under limited supervision, be well organized and have strong communication skills. They are also expected to have experience collaborating with others in the context of large-scale research projects. Actual work is expected to involve a mix of conceptual design, prototyping, and empirical evaluation with a particular focus on human subject experiments. The successful candidate is expected to publish papers in top-tier conferences and journals along with other faculty and students. Initial appointments will be for one year with option of renewal for an additional one or two years subject to performance and availability of funding. The start date is negotiable with a preference for people who can start in early Fall 2023. Carnegie Mellon offers competitive salaries and benefits. To be considered for this position, interested candidates should forward their resume along with the names of 3 references to: Ms. Linda Moreci S3D – School of Computer Science 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 - USA Tel: +1-412-268-9934 Email: laf20@cs.cmu.edu

The European / African Regional Doctoral Seminars Series is a forum for doctoral students to present their research. It grew out of a collaboration between the Berlin and Copenhagen iSchools more than a decade ago, and recently expanded to include any interested iSchool doctoral student worldwide. It is managed by Regional Chair Koraljka Golub of Linnaeus University and Linnaeus doctoral student Romain Herault. The presentations are conducted in English on Zoom. Using Visual Social Media Data to Better Understand Food Cultures in the UK: The Case of Deliciously Ella The most recent installment of the Series took place 20 May, 2022. In the first of two presentations, Ph.D. candidate Alexandra Boutopoulou of the University of Sheffield explained how her study of 4,000 Instagram images reveals that “nothing is what it appears to be” in the world of wellness blogging. Boutopoulou used an analytical method that she calls Comparative Instachronics to trace the evolving career of Deliciously Ella, a well-known food blogger. According to Boutopoulou, Deliciously Ella’s blog was initiated to address personal health issues through so-called “clean-eating”, and Instagram images show its progression through multiple stages into “a pure marketing story”. A 20-minute video of her presentation is available on the iSchools website. Unveiling Predatory Practices in Academic Research The second presentation was by Silvia Maccarini, a beginning doctoral student at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, titled Unveiling Predatory Practices in Academic Research. She examined predatory publishers, who exploit the need of academics to be published while offering little in return. A video of Maccarini’s presentation is also available on the website. Although the Series started as a European initiative, any iSchool doctoral student worldwide may now take part, either as observer or presenter. If you are interested in presenting your research, contact iSchools Ph.D. Student Representative Romain Herault for information on submitting a proposal. Upcoming seminars will be posted to the Doctoral Seminar Series webpage and iSchools Events Calendar as they are developed. Learn more and view all past presentations on the iSchools website.

The iConference has twice offered a Chinese-language papers track, and iConference 2023 will continue that tradition, as well accepting papers in Spanish and Portuguese. The iSchools organization represents more than 120 information schools worldwide, and while English remains the primary language of its annual iConference, accepting research papers in these additional languages more fully reflects the international nature of the conference and organization. This is just the latest step in the iSchools' ongoing commitment to globalism. 2012 marked the first time the iConference was held outside the U.S., and 2014 the first time it was held outside of North America. When Wuhan University hosted the iConference in 2017, a Chinese-language track was introduced and attracted almost 40 percent of all papers submitted that year. Since then, iConference hosting has rotated regularly among the iSchools’ global regions. Meanwhile, the iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award competition began accepting dissertations in their original language. And when the iConference was again hosted by a Chinese School in 2021 (Renmin University of China), the Chinese papers track was reintroduced with similarly successful results. Now, the iSchools expect to make the Chinese Papers Track a permanent addition to the iConference program. This means that every year, Chinese scholars will have the opportunity of submitting work to this track in their native language. The Spanish and Portuguese Papers Track may also become permanent in time, depending on author interest and the availability of reviewer resources. Submissions to these tracks will be subject to double-blind review by reviewers fluent in each of their respective languages. The addition of these tracks introduces logistical challenges, including the recruitment of a sufficient pool of qualified reviewers. The conference organizers are confident these can be addressed with the help of the global information community. See instructions below on volunteering to review. Scholars are now invited to make submission to all iConference tracks per the submission guidelines on our website; papers and posters are due 1 September. We invite scholars fluent in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese to volunteer as reviewers. Email staff@ischools-inc.org with subject line "volunteer reviewer". Include name, affiliation and language(s) in which you can review.

Climate change represents a growing research area in most parts of the world. A quick search of Google scholar shows over 4 million hits on a search for “climate change“, and a more detailed search would likely produce even more hits. A look at universities that belong to the iSchools shows that most do research on climate issues, even though the programs are not necessarily associated with the iSchools themselves. In the information world, climate has become big business. Climate information can be controversial. There are political leaders in most countries who both deny the evidence of climate change, and deny the role of humans in creating the conditions for atmospheric warming. Complex information issues are rarely completely without controversy. An important task is to separate fact from fiction, reliable information from speculation. Information quality is a long-standing concern that dates back to the iSchools‘ roots in the library world and information quality is an issue in every aspect of climate research. In the iSchools organization we currently support a number of special interest groups, and hope to expand to include iSchools scholars who would like to focus on climate issues. Such a group could develop in a number of ways, including sharing information about how their home universities do climate research, or creating criteria to judge the quality of climate information (including climate disinformation). As with all of the iSchools special interest groups, it will be up to those in the group to decide its direction and preferences. Those who have an interest in founding a group devoted to climate information issues should contact the iSchools staff at staff@ischools-inc.org. Depending on the level of interest, there could also be multiple groups based on region, time zone, or approach to the issues involved in climate research.

The iSchools Sponsored Research Fund supports research by the iSchool community through grants of up to $5,000. Grant applications were previously considered twice a year, but the submission date is changing to October so that the evaluation committee can meet to discuss all proposals face-to-face at the iConference. The committee consists of iSchools officers and Board members. The applicant should have a teaching position at a member-iSchool or be an iSchools doctoral student. The range of topics is open, and projects involving doctoral research or outreach to underrepresented regions are especially encouraged. Applications with external matching funds are a plus, but not a requirement. Decisions were recently announced for grant applications received through 1 March 2022. Of the six proposals received, the following three were selected for funding. One grant went to Henria Aton of the University of Toronto. In a proposal titled Tamil in the Archival Multiverse: Power, Memory, and Loss in Contemporary Sri Lankan Archives, Aton requested support for a two-month dissertation research trip to Sri Lanka. Her goal is to excavate “the entanglement of archives with politics in Sri Lanka, from the postcolonial moment to the present.” A second grant was awarded to Haley Bryant, also with the University of Toronto, for a proposal titled Digital Memory Work. Bryant will research “digital memory work: the assemblage of people, practices, protocols, knowledge, and technologies that enables digital cultural heritage projects in museums.” A third grant went to Heather Moulaison Sandy, Brian Dobreski, and Karen Snow from the University of Missouri, the University of Tennessee, and Dominican University, respectively, for their proposal entitled LGBTQ+ Identity, Code-Switching, and User Studies of Information Retrieval Systems. They investigate how “members of a marginalized community (e.g., LGBTQ+) engage in ‘code-switching’ to adjust the terminology they use regarding identity.” The next Sponsored Research Fund application deadline is 15 December 2022. Visit the Sponsored Research Fund webpage for more information, including judging criteria and an application form.

The desire for open access to scholarly information is a well-established principle, particularly among iSchools members. At the same time there has been discussion about how to improve mechanisms for sharing scholarly developments before they reach a stage where they are ripe for publication. Preprint options such as the ArXiv at Cornell have been around for a long time, and systems like SSRN let people in a broad range of disciplines read versions of potential publications before they are sent in for review. One of the flaws of pre-prints is their granularity: The research is presented as if it were a finished paper. Octopus is a new British project that „is designed for easy and rapid sharing and assessing of work, in smaller units. Octopus will be where researchers can record every piece of work that they have done, as they do it, to assert their priority and for it to be assessed and critiqued by their peers.” The intention is “to encourage a collaborative approach to the scientific process, with publications building on each other over time, regardless of authorship.”¹ The project website states: “Using Octopus, researchers can read, review and register ideas and findings - freely and immediately publishing their work in full detail, and in an open and transparent way and gaining the credit for it. … Initially, Octopus’s 8 publication types are most closely aligned with the scientific research process. These are problem, hypothesis, method, results, analysis, interpretation, real-world application and peer review.”² In some sense Octopus means having to rethink how we produce scholarly papers, and especially how the community is prepared to collaborate on research activities that may help other scholars with publications even at the expense of their own work. True collaboration sometimes involves a certain amount of selflessness that does not fit well with the competitive structure of academic promotion in many of our communities. 1: https://www.cni.org/topics/e-science/octopus-the-new-primary-research-record-for-science 2: https://beta.jisc.ac.uk/events/the-launch-of-octopus-the-new-primary-research-record