The Ares Auditorium (Room 164), The James E Rogers College of Law

Schedule of Events

4:00-4:10 Introductions >  Mary Feeney, The Alumni/ae Association Board

4:10-4:40 Ruth Kneale:  Embed Yourself: The Librarian is IN!

• Abstract: As a librarian who isn't part of a library, but part of an engineering team, Ruth Kneale will talk about embedded librarianship - what it is, how it works, and why it's a good idea.

4:40-4:50 Break

4:50-5:20 P. Bryan Heidorn:  Repository as App: Functionality to attract Dark Data

• Abstract:  Small research projects greatly outnumber large-scale projects and together represent big data; yet small projects rarely have dedicated data curation staff.  This has led to dark data.  Dark data is not easily discovered and rarely preserved.  The data across these myriad small projects appears heterogeneous, making standard metadata creation and other curation practices difficult. The solution is not to create one-size fits-all data repositories but to group similar research practices and develop research integrated value added tools.  If institutional and disciplinary repositories are to serve these projects, the repositories must provide services relevant to the daily research process. They must facilitate data acquisition, analysis, visualization, preservation and dissemination. Analysis of actual data management practices, of medium to small projects, are examined to identify not why they do not use repositories but why they apparently use less than optimal tools for curation such as spreadsheets and notepads.  To make maximum use of research data we must create a service industry that makes the life of researchers easier and more productive.  Biodiversity research practice with its strong researcher independence and interdisciplinarity is a prime example. 

5:30-7:00 Reception

• SLA Student Chapter Fund-raising Event will occur simultaneously.
• Have your photo taken & get an SLA thumb drive.

Speaker Bios:

• Ruth Kneale is Systems Librarian for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope in Tucson, Arizona. Prior to that, she was the Librarian and Webmaster for the Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii, and the Gemini 8m Telescopes Project (what observatories are before they grow up) in Tucson. Basically, she's a librarian in geek clothing, whose first program was created using BASIC on a TRS-80 with a tape drive. Ruth holds a master's degree in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona and a Bachelor of Science in astronomy and physics. Ruth has written on computer topics for Information Outlook and Computers in Libraries, and has spoken about embedded librarianship at the Special Libraries Association annual conference. Her co-authored article on the topic appeared in the March 2011 issue of C&RL News.
• Bryan Heidorn holds a degree in biology, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Information Science. He was an owner of a software company specializing in chemical tracking and environmental monitoring.  He was an associate professor for 12 years at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science and served two years as a program manager in the National Science Foundation Division of Biological Infrastructure where he served in several programs including Advances in Biological Informatics, Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation and the Data Working Group.  He is now Director of the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona and the president of the JRS Biodiversity Foundation.  His research areas include data curation, biodiversity informatics, natural language processing, and machine learning.