Design and Evaluation of Information Systems and Services

Understanding the problems with existing information systems and services, and making them more effective and easier to use

Researchers Working in this Area

Related Research Projects

AEOLIAN (Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Organizations)

Time frame
2021-2023
Investigator
Glen Layne-Worthey
Total funding to date
$49,820.00
Funding agency
National Endowment for the Humanities

Many digital archival collections are limited due to factors such as privacy concerns and copyright. AEOLIAN combines innovative AI methods and the knowledge of scholars from multiple cultural institutions to address the accessibility of these collections, ultimately making them more accessible. Additionally, the project aims to foster collaboration amongst scholars and practitioners from…

artificial intelligence

App Authors: Closing the App Gap II

Time frame
2014-2019
Investigator
Kate McDowell
Total funding to date
$248,205.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

The focus of this three-year, multisite project is development of app-based curricula and tools for use in school and public libraries. These tools will teach children aged eight to twelve how to build their own apps, providing them with early programming experience, and allow them to share their creations with other children. The project further establishes libraries as places to engage youth…

Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Kurator: A Provenance-enabled Workflow Platform and Toolkit to Curate Biodiversity Data

Time frame
2014-2019
Investigator
Bertram Ludäscher
Total funding to date
$748,931.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Data curation is a critical step in scientific data digitization, sharing, integration and use. The considerable resources allocated to digitization of natural science collections in the U.S. and globally require a focus on both digitization efficiencies and the utility of the generated data. One way to address both issues is to employ workflow software to automate and streamline data curation…

gears

Data Capsule Appliance for Research Analysis of Restricted and Sensitive Data in Academic Libraries

Time frame
2017-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$32,500.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Indiana University, in partnership with eight other academic libraries, will enable new kinds of computational research while ensuring librarians remain expert stewards of information collections. In the last decade, there has been a nearly exponential increase in the volume of digital content, much of which could be valuable for computational research. However, not all datasets can be made…

DataONE (Observation Network for Earth)

Time frame
2013-2017
Investigator
Bertram Ludäscher
Total funding to date
$416,623.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) is a collaborative, global project that is laying the groundwork for a new, innovative approach to conducting environmental science research. DataONE is a distributed framework and sustainable infrastructue poised to resolve many of the key challenges that hinder the realization of more global,…

Developing Tools for Implementation of Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Needs (IPLAN) for Local Health Departments

Time frame
2017-2019
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$75,000.00
Funding agency
Illinois Department of Health

This project works with the Illinois Department of Public Health to develop an information system that will enable local health departments and other stakeholders in Illinois to use and analyze data currently being disseminated by IDPH. This data will be used to develop health indicators, such as maternal and infant health, non-communicable diseases, drug overdoses, healthcare access, and…

IDPH Web Portal

Digging Deeper, Reaching Further: Libraries Empowering Users to Mine the HathiTrust Digital Library Resources

Time frame
2015-2018
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$398,844.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Librarians and digital humanities scholars from the University of Illinois in partnership with colleagues at Indiana University, Northwestern University, Lafayette College, the University of North Carolina, and the HathiTrust Research Center will develop a shared curriculum for use in academic libraries and a train the trainer series designed to assist librarians in getting started with the…

FABRIC Across Borders

Time frame
2021-Present
Investigator
Anita Nikolich
Total funding to date
$60,958.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Science is fast outgrowing the capabilities of today's Internet infrastructure. To fully capitalize on big data, artificial intelligence, advanced computation and the Internet of Things requires robust, interconnected computers, storage, networks and software. Uneven progress in science cyberinfrastructure has led to bottlenecks that stymie collaboration and slow the process of discovery.…

high speed computing

FABRIC: Adaptive Programmable Research Infrastructure for Computer Science and Science Applications

Time frame
2020-Present
Investigator
Anita Nikolich
Total funding to date
$257,243.00
Funding agency
University of North Carolina

FABRIC is a unique national research infrastructure to enable cutting-edge, and exploratory research at-scale in computer networking, distributed computing systems, and applications. It is a platform on which researchers will experiment with new ideas that will become building blocks of the next generation Internet and address requirements for emerging…

cords plugged into a supercomputer

HathiTrust Research Center Phase 2

Time frame
2019-2025
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$1,208,599.00
Funding agency
HathiTrust

The HathiTrust has provided funding for the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), colocated at University of Illinois and Indiana University, to serve as the research arm of the HathiTrust and create an agile, technology-rich service for researchers in the digital humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and informatics. This service will help researchers conduct nonconsumptive research on…

HathiTrust Research Center: New Opportunities through Computational Analysis of HathiTrust Digital Library 2014-2018

Time frame
2014-2018
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$1,000,000.00
Funding agency
HathiTrust

The HathiTrust has provided funding for the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), colocated at University of Illinois and Indiana University, to serve as the research arm of the HathiTrust and create an agile, technology-rich service for researchers in the digital humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and informatics. This service will help researchers conduct nonconsumptive research on…

Innovation in an Aging Society

Time frame
2013-2020
Investigator
Vetle Torvik
Total funding to date
$569,272.00
Funding agency
National Bureau of Economic Research

The U.S. scientific workforce is aging - the average age of both US academics and medical school faculty increased to the late 40s, from the early 40s in 1970. This aging is troubling because people are seen to make important scientific contributions early in their careers. Moreover, the U.S. is turning to innovation as an economic driver, and the aging of the population will both increase and…

aging society

Merging Science and Cyberinfrastructure Pathways: The Whole Tale

Time frame
2016-2022
Investigators
Bertram Ludäscher, Matthew Turk
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Full title: CC*DNI DIBBS: Merging Science and Cyberinfrastructure Pathways: The Whole Tale

Scholarly publications tend to be disconnected from the underlying data and code used to produce the published results, despite an increasing recognition of the need to share all aspects of the research process. As data has become more open and transportable, a second layer of research output…

Whole Tale

Promoting Computational Thinking Skills for Blind and Visually Impaired Teens Through Accessible Library Makerspaces

Time frame
2022-Present
Investigators
JooYoung Seo, Kyungwon Koh
Total funding to date
$498,638.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Library makerspaces offer community members the opportunity to tinker, design, experiment, and create with a range of technology in an informal learning space. However, because current makerspaces and maker tools are highly vision oriented, blind and visually impaired (BVI) people have limited access to these learning opportunities. This project (…

student wearing goggles

Rapid Prototyping of Semantic Enhancements to Biodiversity Informatics Platforms

Time frame
2014-2018
Investigator
Michael Twidale
Total funding to date
$421,200.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Taxonomists are scientists who describe the world’s biodiversity. These descriptions of millions of species allow scientists to do many different kinds of research, including basic biology, environmental science, climate research, agriculture, and medicine. The problem is that describing any one species is not easy. The language used by taxonomists to describe their data is complex, and…

Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science II: Research and Development towards the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern

Time frame
2022-2025
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$249,998.00
Funding agency
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

This project is intended to reduce the real and perceived danger to science and society when retracted research is mistakenly circulated within the digital scholarly record. The goal is to build more confidence in scientific discovery. Retraction alerts readers to unreliable scholarly material and is intended to remove that information from the citable record. Harm can result when faulty…

retracted science

Repository Services for Accessible Course Content

Time frame
2015-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$7,173.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Across the country, colleges and universities are struggling to meet demand for accessible forms of course materials for students with an array of disabilities. At present, each institution is addressing this problem individually, at great expense, and often without full campus coordination, much less consortial collaboration. Locating digital files is difficult and entails numerous sources.…

Research Software Credit and Sustainability

Time frame
2014-Present
Investigator
Daniel Katz

An ever-increasing fraction of research is dependent on software, much of it developed in academia. But the developers are often not recognized or rewarded for their contributions in the academic systems. In addition to recognition, resources are needed to sustain research software: to continue to make it available in the future, on new platforms, meeting new needs. This project examines both…

RIDIR: Collaborative Research: Developing and Deploying SKOPE - A Resource for Synthesizing Knowledge of Past Environments

Time frame
2016-Present
Investigator
Bertram Ludäscher
Total funding to date
$884,627.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Recent research has demonstrated that investigations of contemporary societal problems can benefit from the use of long-term environmental data and from comparisons with cases in which the interactions of human societies with their environments is well-documented over centuries. By providing easy access to time- and place-specific long-term environmental data, this project seeks to facilitate…

Pueblo village

Scholar-Curated Worksets for Analysis, Reuse & Dissemination (SCWAReD)

Time frame
2021-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$1,031,655.00
Funding agency
Indiana University

The Scholar-Curated Worksets for Analysis, Reuse & Dissemination (SCWAReD, pronounced “squared”) project is intended to produce a suite of curated, targeted HTRC (HathiTrust Research Center) worksets and illustrative, reusable research models that demonstrate the collaborative workset-building, textual analysis, workflow development, and dataset creation activities typically carried out by…

person sitting at desk working on computer

Textual Geographies

Time frame
2016-2019
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$15,536.00
Funding agency
National Endowment for the Humanities

Textual Geographies uses named entity recognition and geolocation to extract place names from multilingual (English, German, Spanish, and Chinese) printed volumes held by the HathiTrust digital library and to associate those names with detailed geographic information. The project corpus currently includes about 10 million volumes published between 1700 and the present day.

Textual Geographies logo

The Internet of Musical Events Digital Scholarship Community and the Archiving of Performance (InterMuse)

Time frame
2021-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$100,840.00
Funding agency
University of York

This project arises from longstanding recognition of the challenges associated with the documentation of, and access to, collections of performance ephemera, for which the British Library is a key repository in the UK. Live musical events play a vital role in community life across the globe, yet they often leave only faint traces on the historical record, even in modern times. Sources can be…

sheet music

Towards Reliable and Optimized Data-driven Cyber-Physical Systems using Human-centric Sensing

Time frame
2021-2024
Investigator
Dong Wang
Total funding to date
$543,087.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Full title: CAREER: Towards Reliable and Optimized Data-driven Cyber-Physical Systems using Human-centric Sensing

Participatory science has opened opportunities for many to participate in data collection for science experiments about the environment, local transportation, disaster response, and public safety. The nature of the collection by non-scientists on a large scale carries…

human-centric sensing

Understanding the Needs of Scholars in a Contemporary Publishing Environment

Time frame
2015-Present
Investigator
Allen Renear
Total funding to date
$1,000,000.00
Funding agency
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

“Understanding the Needs of Scholars in a Contemporary Publishing Environment,” better know as Publishing Without Walls (PWW), is a digital scholarly publishing initiative that is scholar-driven, openly accessible, scalable, and sustainable. PWW will directly engage with scholars throughout the research process. It aims…

WCSA+DC

Time frame
2016-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$1,170,000.00
Funding agency
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

This project builds upon, extends, and integrates two developmental research threads within the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC). The first thread originates from work that was conducted in the Workset Collections for Scholarly Analysis (WCSA): Prototyping Project. The second thread continues the work of…

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