Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) Harvard University

Scholarship in the digital age is characterized by data-intensive, information-intensive, distributed, interdisciplinary, collaborative research. Scholars in all fields are taking advantage of new sources of data and new means to publish and distribute their work online. Content in digital form, whether text from digitized books or data from embedded sensor networks, can be mined to ask new questions, in new ways. However, the practices, products, and sources of data vary widely between disciplines. Some fields are more advantaged than others by the array of content now online and by the tools and services available to use it. As readers, scientists have access to the greatest depth of their literature online, but their use is most concentrated on recent publications. Conversely, humanists’ reading habits cover the longest time span of publications, yet they have the least depth of coverage online. As researchers, scientists generate most of the data they use, while humanists draw heavily on cultural artifacts and other sources that they neither own nor control. Social scientists occupy the midpoint on both of these dimensions. This talk will provide an overview of new developments in scholarly information infrastructure, focusing on policy and practice issues in scientific data, drawn from the author’s recent book of this title. The intersection of digital scholarship and cyberlearning also will be addressed briefly, drawn from the NSF Task Force Report, Fostering Learning in the Networked World.

Christine L. Borgman is Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. She is the author of more than 180 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Both of her sole-authored monographs, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (MIT Press, 2007) and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2000), won the Best Information Science book of the year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She is a lead investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked Systems (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, where she conducts data practices research. She chaired the Task Force on Cyberlearning for the NSF, whose report was released in July, 2008.  Prof. Borgman is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the US National Academies’ Board on Research Data and Information.