Recent News
SIS To Host Two International Conferences
SIS will host two international conferences in June: JCDL 2008
(Joint Conference on Digital Libraries) and Hypertext 2008 (ACM Conference
on Hypertext and Hypermedia). The School is pleased to have the opportunity
to welcome more than 400 faculty, researchers, students and industry professionals
from all over the world to Pittsburgh. JCDL will take place June 16-20;
Hypertext will commence on June 19 and conclude on June 20. Most conference
events will take place at the Omni William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.
JCDL
is the major international forum focused on digital libraries and associated
technical, practical, and social issues. The Conference
is being chaired by Dean Ronald Larsen. The conference draws from a broad
array of disciplines including computer science, information science, librarianship,
archival science and practice, museum studies and practice, technology, medicine,
social sciences, and humanities. Topics of the sessions and workshops will
cover such aspects of digital libraries as infrastructure; institutions;
metadata; content; services; digital preservation; system design; implementation;
interface design; human-computer interaction; evaluation of performance;
evaluation of usability; collection development; intellectual property; privacy;
electronic publishing; document genres; multimedia; social, institutional,
and policy issues; user communities; and associated theoretical topics. For
more details, visit www.jcdl2008.org.
Hypertext
is the acknowledged venue for high quality peer-reviewed research on linking.
The Hypertext Conference provides the forum for research that considers links,
their semantics, their presentation, the applications they have been put
to, the knowledge that can be derived from their analysis and their effect
on society. Professionals from academia, industry and the media will examine
the incredibly diverse range of research areas linking people, places, and
information. These research areas will be highlighted through a series of
tracks: Information Linking & Organization; Social Linking;
Applications of Hypertext; and Hypertext, Culture, & Communication. For
more information, visit www.ht2008.org.
Alums recognized as "Mover and Shakers, 2008" by Library
Journal
Three graduates – Alexia Hudson, Mark Vrabel, and Karen Brooks-Reese --
of the Library and Information Science program are honored in Library
Journal. Each year, the magazine selects 50 individuals from the
hundreds nominated who contribute greatly to transforming the library profession.
Alexia Hudson was a motivating force when she was a student in the FastTrack MLIS program (MLIS 2005) here at SIS. Now, she’s being recognized nationally as a "Mover and Shaker, 2008" by Library Journal magazine. Alexia was honored, as part of the "Marketer" category, for her efforts to help "students reenvision libraries as a place for continuous professional development with emerging technologies." As the Assistant Librarian/Reference Librarian at Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies, Alexia focuses on graduate student orientation, training, and developing the virtual campus in the Second Life Penn State Virtual Worlds project.
Mark Vrabel is a graduate of the MLIS degree program and has a Certificate of Advanced Study in Medical Librarianship/Informatics from the School. He serves as Information Resources Supervisor at the Oncology Nursing Society in Pittsburgh. Mark was selected as a "Mover and Shaker" in the "Problem Solver" category for his use of "ONS evidence-based practice initiatives by keeping nurses apprised of research on best practices in clinical treatment of cancer patients." Mark has also published in clinical practice journals.
Karen Brooks-Reese was included in this listing for her work in creating new programs for teens at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Karen, who graduated from the MLIS program in 2005, serves as the Coordinator of Teen Services, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Working with teens, she has created a number of programs including "Tell-a-Tale Theater" (teens bring popular children's books and activities to children at branch libraries); a video contest for teen-designed ads promoting the library; and "Behind the Book: Authors Talk to Teens." Karen is training teen specialists at 83 libraries and is fostering a leadership development program in the library system.
Congratulations to these outstanding alums, professionals who are shaping libraries of the future!
ARO Funded Research Project
SIS faculty are part of a research project funded by the Army Research Office’s
Multi-University Research Initiative. Prashant Krishnamurthy and David
Tipper will collaborate on research on how to construct robust and secure mobile
ad hoc networks. "ARSENAL: A cross layer ARchitecture for SEcure resilieNt tacticAL mobile
ad hoc networks” is a joint effort of 12 professors at 7 institutions:
University of California, Davis; University of California, Santa Cruz; University
of California, Riverside; Brigham Young University; University of Utah; University
of Pittsburgh; and the Pennsylvania State University. The Army Research Office
funded this innovative project for a five-year period at $6.25 million. The goal
of this project is to develop a cross layer architecture that provides comprehensive
security and resilience for mobile ad hoc networks. The resulting architecture
will be able to adaptively provide the appropriate trade-offs between performance,
security and fault-resilience. Krishanmurthy and Tipper are associate professors
in the School of information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lewis wins MURI funding
Michael Lewis, Professor at SIS, will receive approximately $1.5 million in funding for two projects from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The MURI program supports research projects of interest to the Department. Lewis, whose research interests involve human-computer interaction, will work with researchers from four other universities on a project to discover methods for observing how cultural differences may impact negotiation efforts. The results may be used to train military negotiators. For the second project, Lewis will also work with faculty at other universities to evaluate the benefits of a decentralized military information network. More>
Pitt Highly-Ranked for Papers in Library and Information Science
Pitt was ranked third as a "Most Prolific Institution, 2002-2006" in
a survey of papers in the field of Library & Information Science. Of
U.S. institutions, SIS faculty contributed the third greatest number of papers
to the field of library & information science over a recent five-year period. The
survey was based on each institution's percentage of the 8,995 papers published
in Thomson Scientific-indexed library-science journals between 2002 and 2006. For
more information, please visit http://in-cites.com/research/2007/november_26_2007-1.html.
James Joshi Promoted
James Joshi has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, with
tenure, at the School of Information Sciences. Joshi, who joined the School’s
faculty in 2003, is the lead faculty member for our Track of Study in Information
Assurance and Security. His research interests include systems security,
role-based access control, secure interoperability, distributed systems
security, security and privacy of multimedia systems, security of XML documents,
and systems survivability. Joshi received his PhD in Computer Engineering
from Purdue University. More >
FastTrack MLIS expands with specialization in Archives, Preservation, and Records Management
The FastTrack MLIS program has been expanded to include the School’s
highly-regarded specialization in Archives, Preservation, and Records Management.
This program, ranked 4th in US News and World Report, will be offered in
the online environment beginning in Fall 2008. Students will gain theoretical
and practical knowledge about records and recordkeeping systems, electronic
records management, archival appraisal and access, the history and evolution
of recordkeeping systems, digital preservation, and preservation management
of library and archives collections. Graduates of this specialization have
found successful and challenging careers in government, higher education,
corporations, and cultural organizations. This is a 36-credit degree program,
which may be completed in 2 years of part-time study. Students may
enter the Archives, Preservation, and Records Management specialization in
the Fall Term. Learn
more here.
Lessig Presented SFI Lecture
The Sara Fine Institute (SFI) was pleased to welcome Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University, as the presenter of the 2008 SFI Annual Lecture. The lecture was held on Thursday, September 25, 2008, at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Law. The lecture hall was overflowing with attendees, many students from both the iSchool and the School of Law. Professor Lessig is the founder of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford and is on the Board of the Creative Commons project. He is a leading figure, both internationally and in the United States, in a field that lies at the intersection of constitutional law and intellectual property law. Professor Lessig presented “A Declaration for Independence,” discussing the growing threat to some of the most important institutions in our culture and political life from an improper dependence on money. Lessig described this threat academic and governmental institutions, as well as the developing movement to check it.
The lecture was presented by the Sara Fine Institute at the School of Information Sciences. The Institute is dedicated to examining the ways in which technology impacts interpersonal communications and relationships with family, friends, professional colleagues, governing bodies, health care providers, and educational institutions. SFI Faculty Affiliates conduct research on social, political, ethical, medical, technical, and educational issues via innovative research projects and campus-community partnerships. Each year, the Institute hosts a lecture featuring a leading researcher or speaker on a current topic around the impact of technology. The 2008 SFI Lecture was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Law and School of Information Sciences as well as by Panopto, a corporation specializing in scalable rich media systems.
Lessig is the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford University. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.
For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. He represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. His current academic work addresses a kind of "corruption."
The 2008 SFI Lecture will be available online shortly. For more information, visit http://www.sarafineinst.pitt.edu/news/lessig.html
Building Trusted Collaborations
On Monday, November 17, John Zic of the Networking Technologies Laboratory will present a lecture on “Building Trusted Collaborations,” as part of the LERSAIS Seminar Series. This presentation will present his work in facilitating secure, trusted collaborations in an environment where rapid deployment of resources is required through the introduction of several key pieces of technology: the Trust Extension Device (TED), enabling portability of trust; an electronic contract (eContract) that is machine interpretable and allows the partners to negotiate the use and access to shared resources; and an integrated software support infrastructure based on SOA principles that allows him to offer a Dynamic Collaboration Service to collaborating partners. The lecture will begin at 1:30 pm in Room 502 of the IS Building. For more information, please visit the LERSAIS Seminar Series website.
Biagini, Callery, and Detlefsen honored by WISE
Three iSchool faculty will be honored by the Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) consortium, a collaborative distance education model that increases the quality, access, and diversity of online education opportunities in Library and Information Science. Professors Biagini, Callery, and Detlefsen have been nominated for the 2008 awards for “Excellence in Online Teaching, Best Practices.” The awards are given to faculty nominated by WISE students from institutions other than the faculty member's home institution. The Awards will be presented during the ALISE conference in January -- the awardees will receive a crystal WISE globe to illustrate the global network of WISE consortium members and online students. More >
SIS Congratulates December 2008 graduates!
The iSchool at Pitt congratulates those students who were part of the December Class of 2008! On Friday, December 12th, the School recognized the 77 graduates who will go on to successful careers as information professionals. These graduates join the more than 11,000 iSchool alumni worldwide. More >
Digital Libraries Colloquium set for January 14
The Digital Libraries Colloquium Series is pleased to announce that the next event will be held on Wednesday, January 14, and will feature Judith Gelernter discussing “Improving Retrieval by Means of Ontologies and Visualization.” The colloquia will take place from 11 a.m. to noon in 3305 Newell Simon Hall on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Gelernter, a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University will examine aspects of her doctoral dissertation and current research that use semantic techniques to improve retrieval relevance. Already, some information retrieval systems employ word-relationship structures known as ontologies that are generally unseen by users. Ontologies serve to widen relevant results to make retrieval “smart.” Gelernter’s research offers a novel layout for an input screen that could enhance the ontologies’ indexing value. For more information, please visit http://www.ischool.pitt.edu/colloquia/digital-libraries-series.php.
iConference 2009 to take place February 8-11, 2009
How does an iSchool become “green?” What is “engagement” in a research institution? How do we address under-represented groups among iDesigners as well as iConsumers?
These are just a few of the topics open for discussion at iConference 2009--iSociety: Research, Education, Engagement. The iConference will be held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from February 8-11, 2009. The School of Information Sciences here at Pitt is one of the founding members of the iSchools, a consortium of institutions interested in the relationships between information, technology and people. The iSchools take it as given that expertise in all forms of information is required for progress in science, business, education, and culture. This expertise must include understanding of the uses and users of information, as well as information technologies and their applications.
The organizers of the iConference 2009 have released a Call for Papers and a Call for Reviewers. Consider how you can be a part of iConference 2009!