Projects

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Inclusive Gigabit Libraries

Investigator
Total funding to date
$99,168.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Inclusive Gigabit Libraries: Learn, Discuss and Brainstorm consists of an educational campaign to raise awareness of next generation networks and how libraries might participate in U.S. Ignite-related initiatives; at least six national forums for about 150 library leaders; development of at least five case studies; and a white paper that will synthesize the forums and case studies.

INDICATOR: An Information System for Monitoring the Health of a Community

Time frame
2007-2011
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$300,723.00
Funding agency
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Carle Foundation

INDICATOR is a novel information system for collecting, integrating, and analyzing data from multiple sources to provide public health decision makers real-time data on the health of their community. Data comes from sources as varied as emergency department visits, school attendance, veterinary clinics, and social media postings and together have been used to change public policy in outbreak…

INDICATOR

Information and War: The Intelligence Branch and Library of Britain's War Office, 1873-1914

Time frame
2016-2017
Investigator
Alistair Black

Intelligence has always been an aspect of organized warfare. It was not until the 1870s, however, that the British Army effectively recognised this formally by establishing a dedicated division named the "Intelligence Branch," to be supported by libraries spread across a number of locations. The project explores the ways in which these services developed before the First World War and,…

Information Forum Requirements to Promote Knowledge Capture, Knowledge Sharing, and Community Interaction on the VHA Data Portal

Time frame
2014-2020
Investigators
Catherine Blake, Michael Twidale
Total funding to date
$162,953.00
Funding agency
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

iSchool faculty members Catherine Blake and Michael Twidale are working as expert advisors to the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Information Resource Center (VIReC) on a project to analyze the socio-technical aspects of VA’s HSRData-L Listserv. VIReC is a VA Health Service Research & Development Service (HSR&D) resource center that supports VA researchers in need of information…

Knowledge Management Portals - High Performing Organizations

Investigator

This research project developed a strategy for implementing knowledge management systems to support collaborative work in disparately located high-performing teams in a large complex organization. This study provided the Air Force Center for Engineering and Environment (AFCEE) with guidance to implement the ANSR knowledge management system using SharePoint. AFCEE is responsible for protecting…

Language Change in Text Retrieval

Time frame
2010-2016
Total funding to date
$49,429.00
Funding agency
Google

In order for older texts to be searchable, contemporary English needs to be translated into language from various historical timeframes. The project will develop software that will let people enter a query in contemporary English, and search over English texts throughout history—from Medieval times to the present day. The project will mostly involve training statistical models that assign…

Language Evolution

Investigator

Language is an information system. We're building computer-based models of language evolution so that societies of autonomous agents can develop their own languages, and as a foundation for theories of dynamic information systems of all kinds (e.g. mutually co-adapting distributed subject indexes, website structure evolution).

Librarians Serving Community-based Higher Education: Preparing the Next Generation of Community College Librarians

Investigator
Linda C. Smith
Total funding to date
$354,896.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

This project partners NILRC along with ten libraries in community colleges in Illinois and Missouri to build a diverse professional workforce that understands community-based library staffing and service strategies as well as the challenges of serving a non-traditional, diverse, commuter-based student population. The iSchool will work with the University of Illinois College of Education to…

Markup Languages for Complex Documents

Investigator
David Dubin

For all the developments in XML since 1998, one thing that has not changed is the understanding of XML documents as serializations of tree structures conforming to the constraints expressed in the document's schema. Notwithstanding XML's many strengths, there are problem areas which invite further research on some of the fundamental assumptions of XML and the document models associated with it…

HTML code

Mathematical Models in Information Retrieval

Investigator
David Dubin

Gerard Salton is often credited with developing the vector space model (VSM) for information retrieval (IR). Citations to Salton give the impression that the VSM must have been articulated as an IR model sometime between 1970 and 1975. However, the VSM as it is understood today evolved over a longer time period than is usually acknowledged, and an articulation of the model and its assumptions…

open book with someone's hand writing math and science formulas