Brown University

Brown University Library News

E-Newsletter

Recent Posts

Latest News

  • Announcement | Library Innovation Prize & Carney Institute Brain Science Reproducible Paper Prize

    Jennifer Braga

    |

    The Brown University Library is thrilled to announce a new partnership with the Carney Institute for Brain Science on two prizes for student work that exemplifies research rigor, transparency, replication, and reproducibility.

    Library Innovation Prize

    Drawing on the rising importance of rigor and reproducibility of research, the Brown University Library will award up to $750 for the creation of a publication, capstone paper, digital project, and/or thesis/dissertation that incorporates innovation in rigor and transparency in any field of research.

    See past Innovation Prize-winning projects.

    Carney Institute for Brain Science Undergraduate Student Prize

    The Carney Institute for Brain Science is offering a parallel but independent undergraduate prize for a capstone paper or thesis within the general area of brain science that incorporates innovation in reproducibility.

    Timeline & Registration

    • Friday, March 13 at 2 p.m.:  Informational meeting the Digital Studio Seminar Room (160) at the Rockefeller Library. (Attendance is not required but is strongly encouraged.)
    • Wednesday, April 1, 2020: Deadline for registration for both prizes
    • Saturday, May 2, 2020: Submissions from registered participants are due by 5 p.m.
    • Week of May 18, 2020: Winners will be notified by email

    Judges

    • Dr. Jason Ritt, Scientific Director of the Carney Institute
    • Lydia Curliss, Physical Sciences and Native American and Indigenous Studies Librarian
    • Dr. Oludurotimi Adetunji, Associate Dean of the College for Undergraduate Research and Inclusive Science

    Innovation in Reproducibility

    An example of innovation in reproducibility is linking data, analysis code, and figures/visualizations within a single document file that can be opened, read, and executed by the panel of judges using commonly available, preferably open source applications (e.g., Jupyter notebooks in a generic web browser).

    Rigor & Transparency

    Projects with enhanced rigor and transparency could include:

    • Curating and publicly sharing a data set
    • Pre-registration and sharing of a protocol
    • Sharing and containerization (e.g., Docker or Singularity) of analysis code and other computing environment related technologies
    • Incorporating an “Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) Data Supplement” for transparency in qualitative data analysis

    More information:

    Rules

    • Library prize contestants must be currently enrolled Brown undergraduate or graduate students. The Carney prize is restricted to Brown undergraduates.
    • Projects may be created by individuals or teams. The projects should be new or created in the past calendar year (2019).
    • There are no limits on coding languages or tools to create the reproducible paper.
    • The research must be the contestants’ original work. You may submit original work that you complete for a capstone paper for a course or an honors thesis or thesis at Brown.
    • Winning projects remain the intellectual property of the contestant(s), but the winning contestant(s) will grant a non­exclusive perpetual license to Brown University for its internal, non­-commercial use.
    • A panel of judges selected from faculty and Library staff will determine the winners.

    Contact Information

    • For additional information, please contact Andrew Creamer at andrew_creamer@brown.edu
    • For questions on reproducible documents and their implementation, registered participants may contact Dr. Jason Ritt, Scientific Director of Quantitative Neuroscience in Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science at jason_ritt@brown.edu. Dr. Ritt will provide general advising up to schedule availability. Advice will be provided as is, with no implication for contest judging or award outcomes.

  • Announcement | Healthy Library Collections Ecosystem Initiative

    Jennifer Braga

    |

    Healthy Library Collections Ecosystem Initiative

    In January 2019, the Library launched the Healthy Library Collections Ecosystem Initiative for the Rockefeller Library and the Annex. The goal is to improve and develop workflows, processes, and solutions that will ensure healthy and equitable movement of library materials throughout their lifecycle. Findability and browsability will be enhanced, shelf space will be optimized, books and other materials will be suitably placed, and library usage data will be expanded and refined–all resulting in a healthy library environment for patrons, Library staff, and collections materials.

    The Shift

    A direct response to feedback received through graduate student survey data, the two-year Initiative will conclude in January 2021, when a large shift of materials at the Rockefeller and the Annex will take place. In addition to populating empty shelf space and creating room on overcrowded shelves, the shift will take usage data into account to make sure that items frequently circulated or used onsite will be available in the stacks at the Rock, and that less-used items and digital material available online will be moved to the Annex. We will not be getting rid of books.

    System of Healthy Collections Flow

    Once the improved processes are in place and the shift occurs, the Library will have identified and established a system of healthy collections flow that will allow for new items to move into the Rock.

    Benefits

    • Already, book locator technology has been repaired and improved! 
    • All new books can be shelved within a few days of receipt
    • Books and other materials will live in a healthy shelf habitat
    • Locations in the catalog will align with locations in the Rock
    • All items in a call letter will be located together, so browsing the stacks will be easy, enjoyable, and fruitful
    • Scans from all journals at the Annex can be requested and received in a timely manner 

    Process

    A cross departmental committee of Library staff is overseeing and conducting the steps of this process, which is akin to having construction zones on campus. Your experience at the Library from now until January 2021 will not change, aside from incremental improvements like small shifts to create more space for overcrowded books. We will continue to provide the same high level of services, facilities, and physical and digital resources throughout the entire process.

    Input

    In addition to using feedback the Library has already gathered from patrons, we are conducting focus this semester, including faculty and students. 

    If you would like to participate in the focus groups or have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact us at libraryecosystem@brown.edu.

    Committee

    • Nora Dimmock, Deputy University Librarian, Chair
    • Pat Putney, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources
    • Sarah Evelyn, Director of Academic Engagement for the Humanities and Social Sciences
    • William S. Monroe, Senior Scholarly Resources Librarian, Humanities
    • Emily Ferrier, Librarian for Social Science and Entrepreneurship
    • Bart Hollingsworth, Head of Circulation and Resource Sharing
    • Kimberly Silva, Rockefeller Circulation Manager
    • Michelle Venditelli, Head of Preservation, Conservation, and the Library Annex
    • Paul Magliocco, Head of Annex and Stacks Maintenance Preservation Service
    • Dan O’Mahony, Director of Library Planning and Assessment

  • Event | John Laudun – “Are We Not Doing Phrasing Anymore?”: Towards a Cultural Informatics

    Jennifer Braga

    |

    On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 12 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, John Laudon, PhD will give a talk, “‘Are We Not Doing Phrasing Anymore?’: Towards a Cultural Informatics.” Organized by the Data Science Initiative, the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, and the Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship.

    Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

    “Are We Not Doing Phrasing Anymore?: Towards a Cultural Informatics

    Recent headlines reveal the profound suspicion with which statistical methods have been received within the humanities. The pervasive belief is that a chasm lies between statistics and the humanities that not only cannot be bridged but should not be attempted, at the risk of losing the human. And yet slowly and steadily, a growing number of practitioners have not only developed research programs but also pedagogical methods that open up new analytical perspectives as well as new avenues for students to explore their relationship between the subject matter and their own understanding.

    This talk offers a small survey of various practices to be found in the digital humanities alongside a few experiments by the author in allowing students to experience how statistical methods in fact demystify the meaning-making process in language and empower students not only to ground their insights in things they can see and count, but also in understanding texts as nothing more than certain sequences of words, opening a path to making them better writers as well.

    Working from a broad survey to narrow applications, the talk suggests that concerns about a loss of humanity in the humanities is actually a concern for loss of certain kinds of authority, but that new kinds of authority are possible within which researchers and teachers will find a firm ground from which to offer interpretations and evaluations of the kinds of complex artifacts that have long been the purview of the domain.

    John Laudun, PhD

    John Laudun received his MA in literary studies from Syracuse University in 1989 and his PhD in folklore studies from the Folklore Institute at Indiana University in 1999. He was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow while at Syracuse and Indiana (1987 – 1992), and a MacArthur Scholar at the Indiana Center for Global Change and World Peace (1993 – 1994). He has written grants that have been funded by the Grammy Foundation and the Louisiana Board of Regents, been a fellow with the EVIA Digital Archive, and a scholar in residence with UCLA’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. His book, The Amazing Crawfish Boat, is a longitudinal ethnographic study of creativity and tradition within a material folk culture domain.

    Laudun’s current work is in the realm of culture analytics. He is engaged in several collaborations with physicists and other scientists seeking to understand how texts can be modeled computationally in order to better describe functions and features.

    Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2020
    Time: 12 p.m.
    Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence

Post Categories

Archive