cyberinfrastructure

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April 2007, Vol. 6, Issue 4

LESS CYBER CONFUSION AND MORE CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

by George Lorenzo

As part of EdPath’s coverage of interesting topics presented at various educational conferences, I return once again to the Internet Librarian conference held in October 2006 in beautiful Monterey, California. This was one of the most informative and eye-opening conferences I have ever attended. Clifford Lynch’s keynote, titled "Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure and Choices for Libraries," was especially interesting, although it was also very confusing, at times, as it was loaded with all kinds of information that was completely new and alien to me.

Lynch is executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), an organization that, as noted on its website (www.cni.org), fosters "connections and collaboration between library and information technology communities" and represents "the interests of a wide range of member organizations from higher education, publishing, networking and telecommunications, information technology, government agencies, foundations, museums, libraries, and library organizations." Lynch’s presentation on the cyberinfrastructure seemed to be very much in line with CNI’s mission.

Cyberinfrastructure for Scientists and Engineers

Actually, this was the first time I was introduced to the term "cyberinfrastructure," which is a term that, if I am not mistaken, was first introduced to the general public in January 2003, when the National Science Foundation published "Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure" (see www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/). In this report, our so-called "digital revolution," is characterized as being 60 years of age and rapidly transforming the capabilities of the science and engineering communities. It was noted that the term infrastructure, "has been used since the 1920s to refer collectively to the roads, power grids, telephone systems, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy to function. The authors of the report added cyber to infrastructure "based upon distributed computer, information and communication technology. If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy."

Now, for the latest iteration on this topic, take a look at NSF’s March 2007 publication titled "Cyberinfrastructure Vision For 21st Century Discovery," which is intended to be a living document that will be updated periodically. NSF Director Arden Bement writes in the opening letter of this document that the vision is basically "the development of a cultural community that supports peer-to-peer collaboration and new modes of education based upon broad and open access to leadership computing; data and information resources; online instruments and observatories; and visualization and collaboration services" (see www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/index.jsp). This document is comprised of a three-page executive summary, five distinct chapters, and five appendices that give readers fairly comprehensive listings of the organizations involved in the future of the cyberinfrastructure. It is a must read for anyone who wants to get a clearer idea of what the cyberinfrastructure is all about from the perspective of NSF and the participating science and engineering communities. It’s only 56 pages in length. But I digress. . .

Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Getting back to Lynch’s presentation. . . Instead of being entirely focused on the science and engineering cyberinfrastructure, Lynch emphasized that "this technology and thinking is equally applicable in the humanities and social sciences." For instance, he pointed to a recent American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Commission that focused on the cyberinfrastructure needs of the humanities and social sciences. The ACLS Commission published a report in December 2006 titled "Our Cultural Commonwealth," explaining that the humanities and social science disciplines "have essential and distinct contributions to make in designing, building and operating cyberin-frastructure." The report basically addressed the promise of cyberinfrastructure for research and education and called for investments of money and leadership "from scholars and scholarly societies; librarians, archivists, and curators; university provosts and university presses; the commercial sector; government; and private foundations" (see www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure).

Lynch noted that the ACLS built up a strong case emphasizing the importance and further development of humanities and social sciences-based cyberin-frastructure. "If you talk to humanists and look at practice in history, archeology and similar subjects, you will find some really stunning leadership projects in these areas," Lynch said, (although he was not very specific as to the "who" of such projects). For example, "people are modeling architectural, economic, political and population kinds of systems from ancient societies, building up very detailed models of buildings and how agrarian economies evolved." He added that this kind of research and development has extended to recent times, as humanists and social scientists try to model and understand how economies and politics change in the U.S.

Mass Digitization

Another part of Lynch’s presentation dealt with the digitization of mass amounts of literature. Humanists are asking whether or not it is possible, for instance, to digitize the literature, as well as the images, of all cultures and societies that have existed so that we can more easily search through such information and data and work with it to better understand history. Lynch added that museums (as well as companies like Google and Microsoft and a wide variety of open educational resource initiatives throughout the world) are playing an important role in these kinds of mass digitization projects. "There is a lot of interest in how we can start getting large-scale digitization programs underway in the museum world," he said. "You are starting to see some leading museums - the Getty being one of them - saying ‘we should be digitizing, at high quality, our public domain materials and making them broadly available to society.’"

Another area of mass digitization takes into consideration the enormous amount of special collections, scholarly monographs and reports, along with a wide variety of historic materials (including e-mail records), being converted into digitally archived records by biographers, political scientists, historians, and even corporate litigation experts, from all over the world.

Questions about how to deal with the scope of such records are starting to take root. The needs of faculty and research scientists today "are shifting from what I might characterize ten years ago as problems that were often tied up with information technology in the sense of ‘I can’t get my workstation to work on the network’ to things that are more involved with disciplinary tools and informatics," Lynch noted. He then asked rehtorically, "How do I organize my data? How do I back it up? What parts do I need? How do I deal with confidentiality issues?"

Libraries and Others

Lynch’s presentation then turned to the concerns of his librarian audience and how their roles are changing in this new cyberinfrastructure world, as well as how the roles of universities, foundations and researchers, in general, are changing. In the interest of being succinct within the constraints of this article’s length, below is a short list of some of Lynch’s comments and notions:

Libraries are facing much bigger demands for data curation.
Scientists are becoming more interested in sharing data, with discussions about how to make public the disclosure and interchange of data that underpins scholarly and scientific publication.
Retiring faculty are thinking more about how they can make all their data and research accumulated over a lifetime more accessible to more people.
Funding institutions are starting to realize that there is value in all of the aforementioned data. Private foundations are realizing that it is consistent with their missions that such data be shared with the public.
Demands are showing up on universities and with researchers in terms of what can be contributed to science and to the demands of funding agencies.
Who is suppose to be doing all this? A "largely mythological" professional known as a "data scientist". . . There are questions about what such professionals need to understand from both a general knowledge perspective and a highly disciplinary perspective.
More data curation-oriented inter-institutional collaborations on a global scale are starting to happen, including the rise of new research frameworks that are virtual organizations. Libraries and other data curation organizations are beginning to deal with delivering services that support such activities.
The demand for access to the cyberinfrastructure is increasing. Undergraduates, K-12 students, etc. are engaging and interacting with the cyberinfrastructure in new ways. This is affecting libraries in new ways too.
Capturing personal histories and organizational collections, such as those from cultural memory organizations, is becoming a broader concern for libraries, museums and institutions.

Overall, getting a better understanding of the cyberinfrastruc-ture and how it comprises the most important elements of today’s knowledge economy is a worthy endeavor that takes a highly concerted and disciplined effort that can often be confusing. Paying attention to people like Lynch and the information coming out of organizations such as the NSF and the ACSL are all helping to move that effort into a clear, easier-to-comprehend direction.

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