(a draft of an application for Hewlett Foundation
funding, since superceded by a very different version)
APPLICANT:
Washington & Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
SUBMITTED BY:
Hugh A. Blackmer, Ph.D.
Science Librarian
Leyburn Library
540-463-8647 (voice)
540-463-8964 (fax)
blackmerh@wlu.edu
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The proposed grant will enable Washington & Lee University to plan, build, and implement the infrastructure for a digital library, in order to improve management and delivery of information resources in its library, instructional, and consortial programs. The infrastructure will include an electronic collaborative environment and support for spatial data and images. The planning phase, which is partly completed, includes visits to peer institutions. The initial prototype will focus on the information needs of the Environmental Studies Program (including its participation in an international research consortium on Amazon development), in conjunction with the library and the Instructional Technology Group. The prototype will serve as a model that will be adapted and extended to the needs of the university as a whole, including departments, other interdisciplinary programs, and ties to consortial partners. In the final phase of the project, results will be disseminated and assistance in implementation made available to other liberal arts colleges. Funds are requested to provide release time for the Science Librarian and one technology specialist for 12 months; hourly wages for student programmers; two years of support for a post-graduate intern responsible for deployment and user training; and travel for conferences and dissemination to other institutions.
RATIONALE:
What will happen with electronic information in liberal arts colleges? How will digital media be linked into teaching and learning? The answers will come from experiments that connect teachers, learners, and researchers in classrooms, laboratories, libraries, offices, dormitory rooms, or wherever they are with information sources on and off campus. The nascent digital library is distributed (accessible any time and any place) and is partly built by users, as they contribute and interlink their work.
The college library is the prime candidate to manage the flood of new media, which includes imagery and the spatial data necessary for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), external databases, and the information streams that result from research and collaboration activities. College libraries can be at the center of teaching with technology by redefining and enlarging what they do, and by substantially expanding their collections and their connectivity. Most liberal arts college libraries are unprepared (in terms of staffing and technical skills) to take on these responsibilities. The tools required to manage and distribute digital resources need to be researched and developed to suit specific situations, and students and faculty must learn their use. More broadly, college libraries need to develop the vision to plan for new roles that are being forced on them by evolving technologies.
In liberal arts colleges, it is often interdisciplinary programs that are the leading edge in articulating the demand for new forms of information resources. Interdisciplinary programs pursue teaching and learning in areas that go beyond the tools, perspectives, and mandates of traditional disciplines and departments. Many interdisciplinary programs also have significant off-campus components and are involved in consortial collaborations. Such programs need access to broad ranges of information resources, including such digital resources as imagery, spatial data, sound, and video, which must be organized and made accessible to users who are not specialists. Interdisciplinary programs are also often creators of information, and each must develop its own information infrastructure.
The Foundation’s wish under “Using Technology Effectively” to support initiatives capable of “substantially increasing the effectiveness and quality of content and instruction” links directly to Washington & Lee’s need to address fundamental changes in access to and uses of information, exemplified by an accelerating shift to online resources and a rising demand for access to digital resources. A recent consultant’s report recommends that the library add a position for an “electronic librarian”, but the vision for what this person will do is not yet clearly developed. One of the purposes of Hugh Blackmer’s university-approved Fall 2002 sabbatical visits to a dozen liberal arts colleges in New England is to explore how others are handling the challenges of planning for the digital future; another is to seek allies and collaborators on the campuses of other liberal arts colleges who are also interested in building digital libraries.
Washington & Lee is suited to a national leadership role in digital library development by a combination of environment and skills. The university’s scale (1600 undergraduates, 160 undergraduate faculty) facilitates personal contact and collaboration, and Strategic Plan initiatives provide broad institutional support for innovation. An increasingly diverse and international student body, interested in new combinations of majors and programs, is raising the profile of off-campus internship and overseas study as a natural part of the four-year experience. Replacement of retiring senior faculty is bringing many new professors to the campus, many of whom have substantial teaching experience and active research programs that require the coordinated support of library and computing staff. New programs and new ideas of disciplinary definition are producing requests for expanded digital resources.
Outside support is sought for this R&D effort because its purpose is broader than the institution. While it does address needs at Washington & Lee, it is intended to create a model for solution of information management problems common to liberal arts colleges.
BACKGROUND:
Information management is a substantial part of teaching and learning. Colleges supply their faculty, staff, and students with a broad range of tools to carry out these activities, and computers are now central to many of them. Washington & Lee (like all liberal arts colleges) has huge investment in hardware, and provides access to all corners of the campus, and links to the world outside. Our library systems distribute full text and database services. We (like other places) explore the uses of computers in classrooms, and expect that students and faculty and staff will use computers in more and more aspects of their work. The conduits are in place, the basic skills are fairly well developed, and there is a level of expectation that transformative events are about to happen. Every electronic innovation opens unforeseen possibilities, generally producing ever greater floods of information and widening the array among which teachers and learners can choose. The next steps must be integrative, and will link the various constituencies, but it is not clear who is responsible for their conceptualization, development, and implementation.
This project will lay groundwork for the digital library development of the next decade by building electronic infrastructure centered on a Web-based suite of information management tools. These tools will include support for GIS and other media, and will focus initially on the information needs of Washington & Lee’s Environmental Studies Program and its participation in an international consortium focused on Amazon development. Once developed and deployed, the tools can be adapted for traditional departments and for other interdisciplinary programs, and will serve as models for other institutions.
Most digital library development is underway at large universities, is collection-specific, and does not address the problems of smaller libraries and teaching-oriented liberal arts programs. Our emphasis is on tools for collaborative work at a distance, and on extension of the existing library collections and services by integration of locally-produced materials.
Washington & Lee has a substantial pool of people with experience in digital library creation. Both principal investigators and several of the people listed below as consultants to the proposed project have served as consultants in the development of the Alsos digital library, a project on nuclear issues funded by the National Science Foundation’s Digital Library Initiative, and based at Washington & Lee.
In the closely-related area of teaching with technology, grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Culpeper Foundation have underwritten the development of Washington & Lee’s Instructional Technology Laboratory (which supports faculty in skills and content development) and Tucker Multimedia Center (an expanded language laboratory).
Externally, both principal investigators are involved in planning for a ‘virtual spatial librarian’ service for the 16 members of the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS). Washington & Lee personnel are also involved in the Joint ACS/GLCA/ACM/CET Multi-Media Archive Project (focused on support for language teaching). Potential linkage to work at other liberal arts colleges is a major objective of Blackmer’s Fall 2002 sabbatical leave project.
This proposal developed out of two interlinked information management problems posed by the emerging needs of Washington & Lee’s Environmental Studies Program: GIS support, and information sharing in an international consortium.
1. The necessity to develop support for the use of spatial data and GIS is a problem common to many colleges and programs. Despite the broad utility of GIS technology, most liberal arts colleges are not yet ready to dedicate resources to full-time support for GIS, and few libraries have personnel with the skills to manage the spatial data for GIS projects. Some means of centralizing and sharing resources, and of distributing expertise, would make it feasible to extend the power of GIS to the many departments that would make use of computer mapping if they could, and to bring the use of spatial data into the classroom. For those who need the full power of spatial analysis, the complexity and power of GIS software requires that an instructor commit considerable time to learning to use the applications, and to the task of teaching basic skills to students --seemingly, one has to teach GIS before one can teach with GIS. The online tutorials distributed by ESRI’s Virtual Campus are effective for general support of GIS beginners, but cannot address the specific needs of local network configuration and specific datasets; online tutorials to suit local needs are an efficient solution to many problems.
2. Washington & Lee’s Environmental Studies Program is a participant in a research consortium (including Universidade Federal do Amazonas and Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense in Brazil, and Fairfield University in Connecticut) on development in the Amazon Basin. In addition to student and faculty exchanges, projects include work on sustainable forestry, petroleum development, and monitoring of ecological indicators. It is essential for the projects to gather, manage, and distribute a broad range of information to the four institutions, including GIS materials, remote sensing imagery, numerical data, images, bibliographical sources, and text. The emphasis is on active use of and contribution to a pool of shared resources.
PROPOSAL:
Seven interlinked problems define the compass of the development effort proposed:
1. The proliferation of digital information is changing teaching and learning. Users must navigate among a broadening array of kinds of information, available in multiple media. The much greater volume made readily available by the ubiquitous Web makes it necessary for information seekers to develop evaluative skills and learn to winnow. At the same time, most faculty and students are active creators of digital information, most of which remains in the private domains of disk drives, but the Web offers the possibility of global distribution.
2. Tools must be built to manage this flood of digital information. Any active creator has the continual need to collect; to store, organize and curate; to manipulate, query, and analyze; and finally to deliver or communicate what has been created. These were once desktop tasks performed on freestanding computers, but networking and Internet access allows many of these activities to be carried out via active Web pages which connect to databases, and thus make the results distributable.
3. Teachers and learners need to become fluent users of the tools which are transforming the information landscape. New media require new kinds of support, for users at all skill levels.
4. Libraries have to incorporate digital information into their operations. The image of the library as a center of campus life is carefully nurtured at most colleges, but the traditional venues of reference room, book stacks, study carrels and circulation desk are now partial manifestations of the information services that the library provides, and more and more information transactions take place outside the library’s walls. In the next decade the growth of the library’s digital collections will probably come as much from locally-produced contributions as from purchased and licensed resources, as professors and students digitize, create, and archive material, including maps, images, and databases. The library must prepare to manage digital traffic in both directions, developing routines for managing the metadata for this flood, and for supporting access to and use of collections which include a great diversity of media. The library and the sources it provides and mediates will be more closely linked to classrooms, offices, and dormitories than before.
5. Interdisciplinary programs have special information needs. They are established to pursue teaching and learning in areas that go beyond the tools, perspectives, and mandates of traditional disciplines and departments. Interdisciplinary programs are often creators of information, and there are no ready answers for who should be responsible for curation and support and distribution of what they produce.
6. Extramural collaborations and consortia are becoming more common and more important to the mission and operations of liberal arts colleges. Communication needs and resource-sharing opportunities at a distance pose challenges in libraries and classrooms.
7. Liberal arts colleges all have the same basic problems in meeting these demands, but few clear models for how to solve them. Whatever the solutions are, they are likely to come from liberal arts colleges as worked examples, and are likely to be the outcome of collaborations that cross administrative boundaries.
The principal investigators have been working with information management issues in a wide variety of library and computing contexts, at Washington & Lee and elsewhere.
Since his arrival at Washington & Lee in 1992 Hugh Blackmer has worked on a succession of evolving electronic issues, discovering, developing and disseminating new technologies and applications, first as a reference librarian and for the last six years as Science Librarian. His prior experience of 18 years as professor of Anthropology equips him to understand the problems of the classroom teacher, and the proposed project is another in a succession of collaborations with computing and instructional technology specialists. He has worked on digital library issues as a consultant to the ALSOS Project (a digital library on nuclear issues, funded by the NSF Digital Libraries Initiative) and as instructor in a Computer Science course (Digital Libraries, with Dr. Thomas Whaley). In the last four years he has explored GIS extensively, including workshops, conference presentations (EDUCAUSE, Associated Colleges of the South Information Fluency Conference, Gettysburg College Instructional Technology Conference, ESRI Educational Conference), fact-finding visits to more than a dozen campuses, a visit to ESRI, participation in Associated Colleges of the South planning and research for GIS development, consultancies at other institutions, and classroom use in courses he taught in Human Geography and Anthropology of East Asia. He is also a consultant to the Environmental Studies Brazil project, and traveled to Brazil in April 2002 to discuss digital library issues with consortium members. His sabbatical travel in Fall 2002 will take him to a dozen liberal arts colleges and several centers of digital library development in New England.
In the last six years with University Computing, Henry Williams’ assignments have included a wide range of networking and database projects, including creation of Access-based management tools for the Law School, establishment of field monitoring equipment for Geology and Biology departments, participation in research on distribution of the narrow endemic Helenium virginicum, and implementation and management of Washington & Lee’s Internet Map Server. He is also a participant in the Associated Colleges of the South GIS virtual spatial librarian project, and with Hugh Blackmer will direct the R.E. Lee Scholars in the summer 2002 prototyping project for the Brazil consortium. In November 2001 he traveled to Brazil to discuss database development with consortium participants.
Together, Williams and Blackmer have developed a number of proof-of-concept demonstrations of interlinked maps and database applications which can be seen at http://ims1.wlu.edu (Microsoft Explorer required):
Ø Conner's Emerald Isle, a geo-referenced library of images of Ireland (for a professor of English)
Ø Parker's Latin America, linking a historian’s chronologies through a map interface
Ø Redistricting Projects, showing changing political boundaries in Virginia, developed in a Politics course using GIS, and 2001 Election Results for Virginia
Ø Research in Rondonia, connecting a map interface with a database of research in a Brazilian state, for Environmental Studies
Ø Mapleflats, mapping evolution and distribution of Helenium Virginicum and other Helenium Species in the United States for a biology professor
Ø Maury River Alliance, a water sampling and health study of the Maury River watershed, being developed in collaboration with Geology/Computer Science student Geoffrey Marshall.
Components of the project include:
1. Web-based collaborative environment, including personal and group digital libraries. Individual participants at the four institutions can use the collaborative software to build and manage their own materials. In addition to the research agendas, each institution will use the information gathered in courses, and the collaborative environment can serve as a portal, supporting the sharing of materials and data among course participants. The user will experience the collaborative environment as an array of Web pages with entry, upload, search, display and editing capabilities. Behind this user interface, the Web service is built upon active server pages which connect to relational databases. The service provides links to data, texts, maps, images and other forms of information, and may also be connected to specific software applications for display and analysis of data. The service also provides the means for individuals to manage their own personal digital libraries, and to contribute materials to the group’s collection.
2. GIS support, based on a virtual spatial librarian service, including metadata creation tools and a map interface linked to the library’s online catalog, which will facilitate organization and permit delivery of spatial data to campus users and distant collaborators.
A Web-based Map Kiosk (based on ESRI’s Internet Map Server [ArcIMS]) will also be developed to deliver interactively constructed maps to Library users, especially those who need maps but do not wish to learn to use GIS software.
A library of ancillary online tutorials will handle many of the questions that arise in campus uses of GIS software.
Support for classroom uses of spatial data will be addressed via utilities which simplify the creation of interactive maps, distributed by an Internet Map Server. We will also develop the capabilities of Map Servers as providers of spatial input to other applications, such as library catalogs and data analysis software.
As a consequence of their extensive development work with GIS software, the principal investigators and the ITG intern will be able to provide ongoing consulting support for GIS use and development at Washington & Lee.
3. Online catalog links which will make locally-produced electronic maps and other digital resources available via Dublin Core records and other metadata standards, after editing and vetting by library catalogers. Thus, while individual and group digital libraries are working environments, not accessible to the outside world, resources from an group or individual digital library can be contributed to public collections.
The project will be developed using database, programming, and applications software including Microsoft Access and SQLServer, ArcGIS, ArcIMS, VBScript, Java, XML, SQL and ASP; we anticipate that we will also explore the applicability of Flash, ColdFusion, ArcSDE, and various modules of Innovative Interfaces online catalog software, and that other new products will be included as they become relevant.
Much of the code will be written by student programmers employed by the project (R.E. Lee Scholars funded by Washington & Lee in Summer 2002, and part-time hourly employees during the academic year), under Williams’ direction. They will explore extensions and alternatives to the basic database design and gain experience in practical work with a variety of languages and applications.
In the dissemination phase of the proposed development, we will seek opportunities at Washington & Lee and elsewhere to help teachers and learners make use of the tools and resources to integrate content, and to craft the environment that they use to teach. The collaborative environment, GIS support, and digital library linkage are all built to be transferable to other institutions with similar problems, and adaptable to the needs of other programs.
On the Washington & Lee campus, the ITG intern will assume primary responsibility for assisting faculty to develop classroom applications using the various modules, for introducing the GIS and online catalog utilities to librarians, and for basic training for student users.
The principal investigators will be the primary support for implementation in the Environmental Studies program, will assume responsibility for liaison with Brazil consortium members, and will consult with other institutions and consortia. They will also make presentations at these conferences:
Ø ESRI Education Conference 2003 (GIS educators, librarians)
Ø ESRI Users Conference 2004 (wider GIS community)
Ø EDUCAUSE 2004 (educators, computer services, IT)
Ø Associated Colleges of the South Information Fluency 2004 (librarians and professors)
Ø CLAC (liberal arts college administrators) 2004
Ø Associated Colleges of the South Environmental Studies 2004, 2005 (biologists, economists, public policy)
Ø ACRL 2005 (college and research librarians)
Ø regional Instructional Technology conferences 2004, 2005 (IT specialists)
Ø digital library conferences
PROJECT PHASES:
The project is divided into three one-year phases:
1) Exploration and prototyping June 2002-May 2003; this phase includes some already funded activities
a) Summer 2002
i) R.E. Lee Scholars (Washington & Lee funded proposal; see Appendix A) with Blackmer and Williams develop prototype collaborative environment tools
(1) Personal information management tools
(2) Group digital library tools
(3) Metadata collection module
(4) Uploading module
ii) Williams attends ESRI Users Conference
b) Fall 2002
i) Blackmer travels to 12 peer institutions in New England during his sabbatical leave (approved sabbatical proposal; see Appendix B)
ii) Blackmer tests personal information management tool from remote locations
c) January-May 2003: Blackmer and Williams devote 20% of their regular assignments to the project and student programmers develop new tools
i) Local GIS development using ESRI’s Virtual Campus
ii) Continuing work with collaborative environment
(1) Database development
(2) Testing summer 2002 prototypes
iii) Blackmer and Williams visit ACS collaborators in GIS project (ACS-funded proposal; see Appendix C)
2) Development, testing and implementation June 2003-May 2004
a) Blackmer and Williams commit full time, while student programmers work part time during the academic year and full time in the summer: programming, testing, and implementation
i) Collaborative environment
(1) Digital library interface
(2) Dublin Core linkage to online catalog
ii) Spatial data tools
(1) Virtual spatial librarian module
(2) GIS kiosk
b) Post-graduate Instructional Technology Group intern works full time on implementation
i) Learns use of prototypes
ii) Works with Environmental Studies faculty to implement developing versions
iii) Works in liaison with reference librarians
c) Blackmer and Williams travel to Brazil to introduce tools to collaborators (funding committed from Environmental Studies)
d) Blackmer and Williams travel within the U.S. starting dissemination
i) Visits to collaborating ACS institutions
ii) ESRI User Conference
iii) ESRI headquarters
3) Adaptation, dissemination and final evaluation: Blackmer and Williams return to regular appointments, and allocate 20% of time to project
a) Post-graduate Instructional Technology Group intern continues local dissemination
i) Works with faculty in departments and interdisciplinary programs to introduce and adapt tools
ii) Works with librarians to develop content
b) Blackmer and Williams undertake broader dissemination
i) travel to conferences and present results
ii) visit collaborating ACS institutions
iii) conduct external consultations
iv) complete final report on project
A program of ongoing evaluation is essential to the success of the project; only through feedback from users can the tools be successfully modified to meet their needs. In the last phase of the project, the dissemination activities will foster reflection and data analysis documenting the accomplishments of the project as a whole. In addition, a final report is planned.
Because the fundamental technology of the digital library implementation is active server pages, it is possible to build in automatic counts of transactions from the first prototypes onwards. All tools created will have evaluative components built in which can be monitored to show total counts and changes over time. Examples of such components are listed below. We will encourage user suggestions, and add further evaluative components as feedback from users defines particular problem areas.
Ø Personal digital libraries in use at the university and in the consortium will be counted through the number of personal databases created on servers.
Ø Activity in personal digital libraries will be monitored through counting numbers of records added to the server, numbers of queries to databases, uploads, and transactions.
Ø Group digital library use will be tracked through the number of participants passworded at each institution, and through monitoring traffic volume.
Ø The extent of use of the map kiosk will be monitored through counting the number of map-making sessions and maps printed.
Ø The demand and use from W&L for map creation will be monitored through counts of the number and kinds of layers requested from providers.
Ø Interactive tutorial and GIS support materials use and will be monitored through counters on each static Web page.
Ø Use of stored read-only spatial data will come from access counts of folders.
Ø Creation of new data layers and their successful internal publication will come from counts of added metadata records.
Ø Use of ArcIMS in classes and reserarch will be shown in the number of ArcIMS services created.
Ø Use from outside the institution will be monitored through counts of queries by IP address
Ø The success of spatial data cataloging tools will be shown through the number of metadata records added to the online catalog
Ø Retrieval of spatial data from the online catalog will be shown through the number of map records requested.
Ø Dissemination of toolkit modules will be monitored through counting the numbers downloaded from the W&L website, and usability will be monitored through one month follow-up questionairres.
In addition to built-in monitoring, statistics will be collected from other sources to indicate success:
Ø Use of the ESRI virtual campus will come from ESRI statistics and course registrations and completions.
Ø Dissemination activities to interested constituencies at an informational level will be evident through the list of conference presentations made.
Ø Requests for help with digital library issues will be tallied by the Science Librarian, Research and Academic Technology Specialist, and Instructional Technology Group Intern and classified by source and type of help.
Ø Requests for external consultations and invited conference presentations will be recorded.
Some measures of success are discrete. At the end of the project, the principal investigators expect to see the listed components of the project in place, functioning, and in use.
As the planning phase of the project is completed, it will be reasonable to delineate ways to evaluate broader measures of success:
Ø Has use and making of maps become easier and more common among teachers and learners at W&L?
Ø Do library cataloguers at W&L routinely handle non-print media and Dublin Core records without problems?
Ø Are library patrons accessing spatial data?
Ø Are consortial members sharing data smoothly across distances?
Ø Are consortial members publishing data to library catalog records?
Ø Are the collaborative environment modules being adopted at other institutions?
Ø Do creators of information at W&L view the library as useful in their dissemination process?
Ø Is the library successfully evolving to accommodate non-print media?
Ø Do teachers, learners, and researchers view the library as a source of electronic information?
GOVERNANCE AND STAFF:
Principal investigators:
Hugh A. Blackmer, Ph.D. Science Librarian and Associate Professor
(20% of time assigned to project June and July 2002, 100% of time with salary paid by Washington & Lee during sabbatical leave August-December 2002, 20% of time assigned to project Jan-May 2003, full time replacement paid by proposed Hewlett Foundation funds June 2003-May 2004, 20% of time assigned to project June 2004-May 2005)
Henry G. Williams III Research and Academic Technology Specialist, Instructional Technology Group
(20% of time assigned to project June 2002-May 2003, full time replacement paid by proposed Hewlett Foundation funds June 2003-May 2004, 20% of time assigned to project June 2004-May 2005)
Consultants (all have agreed to participate on unpaid basis):
James R. Kahn, Ph.D. Dupont Professor of Environmental Studies
Thomas P. Whaley, Professor of Computer Science
John Blackburn, Head, Instructional Technology Group
John Tombarge, Reference Librarian
Peter Jetton, Web Editor, Instructional Technology Group
Other staff:
Student programmers
(paid by Washington & Lee as R.E. Lee Scholars in Summer 2002; by proposed Hewlett Foundation funds as part-time hourly employees during academic years, and as full-time employees in summer 2003)
Post-graduate intern in Instructional Technology Group
(full time for two academic years, 2003-2005, paid by proposed Hewlett Foundation funds)