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2006/2007 Award Winners (Tenth Annual Award) Library Floorplans 2.0: The Spatial Information Manager for the Library 2005/2006 Award Winners (Ninth Annual Award) Developing a Digital Repository Service for Datasets 2004/2005 Award Winner (Eighth Annual Award) Oral Histories in the Tufts Digital Library 2003/2004 Award Winners (Seventh Annual Award) Research Paper Planner A Digital Repository for Datasets Education in Motion: A Large Scale Implementation of Video Distribution Technology at Tisch Library 2002/2003 Award Winner (Sixth Annual Award) Digital Boston Geotechnical Database for Research, Teaching, and Technology Transfer in Education 2001/2002 Award Winner (Fifth Annual Award) The Frederic Louis Ritter Collection: A Paradigm for Special Collections Access and Use 2000/2001 Award Winner (Fourth Annual Award) Mystic Watershed Collaborative Clearinghouse: Information Retrieval, Integration, Analysis and GIS Training 1999/2000 Award Winner (Third Annual Award) A Collaboration between Tisch Library and the Department of Child Development to create a prototype digital library project 1998/99 Award Winner (Second Annual Award) An Electronic Bolles Archive on the History and Topography of London, Phase I 1997/98 Award Winners (First Annual Award) Biologist's Guide to Library Resources Digital Practicum: A Database and Website on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Richard III Digital Boston Geotechnical Database for Research, Teaching, and Technology Transfer in Education Submitted to the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department (Laurie Baise and Lewis Edgers), the Geology Department (Anne Gardulski), Tisch Library (Wayne Powell), Digital Collections (Greg Colati), the GIS Center (Denise Castronovo), and Academic Technology Preliminary Summary This proposal seeks funding from the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment to develop a digital online database of geotechnical data in the Boston area for use in research and education at Tufts University. The project focus will be on the creation of a digital library resource as a part of Tufts Digital Library that can be navigated using technology for two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) visualization. This project will be accomplished by developing a geographical information system (GIS) and web interface for accessing geotechnical data and geologic and historic maps. In order to accomplish the educational objective of the project, the GIS will be developed in parallel with a set of teaching modules for undergraduate and graduate courses at Tufts. The project will represent collaboration between faculty in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department and the Geology Department (GEO), and staff of Tisch Library, Digital collections, the GIS center, and Academic Technology. Project Narrative In the late 1980s, Prof. Edgers of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department led a group of students at Tufts University in a data collection project organized by the "Boring Data of Greater Boston Committee of The Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers." This group gathered Cambridge boring data from consulting firms in the area, organized and located the borings, and then entered the subsurface data (manually). The effort included the development of a consistent format and resulted in a publication in the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Journal (BSCES, 1984). Our proposed project under the current Berger initiative is to continue this effort and bring it up to date with the technology available: GIS, digital data, 2D and 3D visualization. The proposed project will explore the use of technology to provide a direct connection from accessing data in a digital archive to viewing and analyzing data with visualization software. The combination of data retrieval and data visualization will be a unique application of technology to enhance a library resource. By compiling the geotechnical data in a relational database, the information can be explored and queried for analysis in a GIS. The GIS then provides an environment for mapping and visualizing the information. The resulting educational and research tool will provide a direct and powerful interface for accessing and visualizing subsurface conditions beneath Boston. The assembled geotechnical data will include stratigraphy (i.e. depth to bedrock, thickness of artificial fill, thickness of clay, etc.) and material properties. These geotechnical data are important for describing and understanding foundation conditions beneath structures and have had an important effect on the development of Boston. The inclusion of 2D maps of Boston in the GIS will provide geologic and historic context for the geotechnical data. In addition, the geotechnical data will supplement the geologic map coverage and provide research opportunities on improving the geologic map coverage of the region. A set of teaching modules designed for students and researchers to highlight the advantage of digital data and visualization through GIS in engineering education and research will be developed using the data retrieval/visualization tool (GIS for geotechnical data). The teaching modules will direct the student to use the GIS tool to answer specific questions about the subsurface conditions in Boston and how those conditions affected the development and resulting infrastructure of Boston. The GIS for geotechnical data will provide a powerful educational tool for teaching important engineering skills to students within the context of geology and Boston history. By developing this resource in collaboration with Tisch Library staff (Wayne Powell), the library will be able to provide instruction on accessing and using the digital data for the Tufts community. This project will build on previous initiatives by the library, the CEE department, and the Geology Department: 1) the Tufts Digital Library Collection - Boston Streets Project, 2) the compilation of geotechnical data published in the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Journal, 3) an on-going research project which is developing a database of geotechnical data for Boston to assess seismic hazard, and 4) on-going research mapping stratigraphy and sea level history in marsh deposits around Boston. In addition, the project aligns well with both the mission of the school of engineering to promote technology use across campus and the mission of the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment to "explore the world of information technology in order to improve [the library staff and faculty's] skills," to transfer these skills across campus and to apply the discoveries "to real issues within the University." Finally, this project will help establish collaborations between the CEE and Geology departments and the library that will continue in the future. The project will be accomplished with the achievement of the following four goals:
Project Goals, Timeline and Milestones The four goals of this project will be accomplished according to the work plan described below: Goal one: Gather relevant geotechnical,
geological, and historic data for Boston. The source data for this project (publicly available geotechnical data, historic maps, and geologic maps) are summarized below:
Goal two: Build a GIS/web interface for visualization of the compiled data. Web interface Academic Technology will be used as a consultant in this role as they have some in-house experience in this area. In addition, a proposal has been made to Academic Technology's Internal Grants Program that would augment the web interface development and further develop the visualization capabilities of the tool. The Academic Technology Internal Grant will focus on evaluating 2D and 3D visualization software for use in the classroom as well as on the web-interface. Goal three: Design a series of teaching modules for the Tufts community.
The proposed Teaching Modules would develop the following skills:
The proposed Teaching Modules would be used in the following courses:
Goal four: Develop a plan and consortium for building on this resource. Specifically we will explore the feasibility of additional data layers and potential funding possibilities:
Project Deliverables
Project Participants Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Geology Department Tisch Library Digital Collections and Archives GIS Center Academic Technology
Budget Justification Faculty Time: Lewis Edgers Anne Gardulski Student Assistants: Graduate Research Assistant (Web interface) Undergraduate Research Assistant Consultation: Academic Technology Consultation GIS Center Consultation Materials: Miscellaneous Supplies Text/Image Content Digitization Storage Space at Digital Collections
Submitted By Michael J. Rogan, Music Librarian, Tisch
Library; SUMMARY This proposal seeks to make a significant special collection at Tufts, the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection, more readily available, more widely known, and used by not only scholars but students as well. This can be accomplished by creating a new model for using special collections outside of the reading room through digital scanning, enhancing the content of special collections through web publishing of supporting material, and developing curricular resources from special collections material through an integrated Website HISTORY OF THE RITTER COLLECTION The Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection was purchased at auction by trustee Albert Metcalf, and donated to Tufts University to support the teaching of music (a professorship of music having been proposed and funded by Metcalf in 1895). The entire Metcalf Musical Library was presented in a series of gifts from that year, completed by 1901, and eventually totaled about 2500 scores, books, periodicals, and pamphlets about music. It was stipulated that it be kept from mingling with the College's other holdings, and was housed for many years in the Music Department under the care of Professor Leo Rich Lewis, first professor of the History and Theory of Music at Tufts, and head of the Music Department for fifty years. Frédéric Louis Ritter was a noted scholar, composer, and conductor. Born and educated in Strasbourg, he emigrated to the United States at the age of 23, first settling in Cincinnati ("where he was conspicuous for his activity in the advancement of taste and culture"--W.S.B. Mathews), and later moving to New York. He was made the first Professor of Music at Vassar College in 1867, where he served until his death in 1891. Throughout his life here, he made significant contributions to the study of and appreciation for Art music in America. His personal library displays the intellectual curiosity of a scholar and the passion of a collector, and contains many important works from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and covers all areas of musical interest: history, biography, theory, composition, and performance. In the third quarter of the 20th century, the collection was transferred to Special Collections, where it is now housed. It remains the single largest named special collection held by Tufts. Its many years of use and the variable conditions under which it has been housed during the last 100 years have left many items in the collection in fragile condition. Furthermore, it has never been cataloged, and the complete contents of the entire collection remain a mystery to most of the Tufts musical community. Indeed, the very existence of the collection is virtually unknown outside of Tufts. Intrepid users of the collection over the decades have devised their own means of understanding and locating items within the collection. The auction catalog from the sale of the collection exists, but offers no detail, merely providing short forms of author, title and publication. Professor Leo Lewis devised a card catalog to an accession number system for the collection when it was still housed in the Music Department. Music Librarian Brenda Goldman inventoried the collection in the 1970s, noting which titles were missing and which titles were eligible to be included in the international bibliography RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales). In the 1980s Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Jane Bernstein had graduate students go through the collection and complete data register sheets to capture such information as date of composition and correct mistakes found in the auction catalog. In 2000, Archivist Greg Colati had the auction catalog transcribed into an Excel spreadsheet so that it could be electronically searchable. A consultant, John Shepard (Head of Music Special Collections, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts), hired to evaluate the collection in November of 2001, annotated and corrected that Excel spreadsheet. However, none of these attempts were designed for the public; furthermore, their data has never been collocated and their insights remain isolated from one another. The treasures of the Ritter Collection remain hidden from the larger musicological community and untapped by the Tufts curricula in music and the liberal arts. PROJECT NARRATIVE Our goal is to demonstrate how technology can allow special collections material to be used in new and exciting ways to enhance undergraduate education and even secondary school curricula. Unique, fragile, and rare materials have historically been locked away, reserved for the elite scholar. We desire to show how to reach undergraduate and secondary education environments with original source material accompanied with the means to understand and utilize that source material. Since it remains uncataloged, a single, universal method of identifying the content of the Ritter Collection is clearly needed. Phase I of our proposal is to build that means, using the sources of information created by the past experts of the collection. Data from the Lewis card file, the Bernstein register sheets, the Goldman annotations to the auction catalog, and that catalog itself (in its modified and expanded Excel incarnation) will be transcribed into a web-mounted searchable SGML-based finding aid. While this is not the equivalent of full MARC cataloging into a national utility (such as OCLC or RLIN, see "Planning for the Future" below), it would provide an accurate index to the contents of the collection fully available to the public for the first time in its century of residence at Tufts. Phase II of the project will use specific items from the collection to educate the musical community at Tufts and the greater Boston metropolitan area, and to begin building a resource that would allow special collections and related contextual material to be regularly used--not just by scholars in a reading room, but by teachers at all levels who want to reach different populations through technology. To accomplish this, we will need to develop content that explains and enhances original source material in the Ritter Collection. We propose to do this by asking a series of nationally-recognized music scholars in areas of study that are strongly represented in the Ritter Collection to identify an item or several related items that interest them by using the completed web Finding Aid, and inviting them to give a colloquium here at Tufts about their subject using the Ritter material. All content they develop will become part of the Ritter Website The selected items will be scanned and linked to the Finding Aid. What we propose will expand upon the scanning and markup skills (of text and of images) that have been developed through earlier Berger proposals. The scanning and markup of musical score is an area new to us at Tufts, and a subject of growing interest in the greater scholarly community. The complex relationships of highly symbolic music notation and their graphical representation across pages throughout a score--and even between scores--presents many interesting challenges to the library and archives staff who want to make this material available for scholarly study. Having musical score not only available digitally but also marked up for retrieval of musical content presents new opportunities to researchers and theorists, comparable to the early days of text OCR for literary scholars. We intend to seek out musicologists and theorists who are eager to take advantage of this opportunity, and not only for their own research, but additionally as a means of conveying their discoveries to students. Scanning and markup of special collections material creates only the core of a Ritter Collection Website The scanned material will be available to the scholars as they prepare their colloquium papers, and will function as a resource during each colloquium presentation. But beyond this core, each scholar's research will be published on the Ritter Website, and linked to the scanned material. Any additional contextual information either created or identified, such as digital audio files of musical performances, or other editions of selected scores or treatises that are available via the web (such as through Gallica, the online image repository of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France), will also be linked to the Ritter Website By developing web publishing skills for newly created material, we in the library and archives will be deepening and expanding our support of very traditional functions of the University, but in a new technological environment. The colloquia will be open to students and faculty not only at Tufts but also throughout the region. The invited scholars will be promoting the use of the Ritter Collection by highlighting some of its treasures, demonstrating new research and teaching methods using technology, and providing a model for Tufts graduate students who will be encouraged to develop new expectations for the use of special collections. We recognize that we will need to carefully select the faculty to be invited to meet our high expectations, but remain confident that we can attract partners seeking to share their expertise and teach through technology to different populations. This project is in perfect harmony with the goals of the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment. Particularly relevant are the following goals, articulated in the Call for Proposals:
We feel we are moving, with Berger support, to a higher level of understanding of the uses of technology, and keeping Tufts apace with the greater digital community as described in a report prepared by members of the Digital Library Forum and distributed by the IMLS at http://webwise.mse.jhu.edu/IMLS-Framework.html:
PROJECT GOALS, TIMELINE, AND MILESTONES Goal One: Create a Finding Aid to the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection, incorporating all known sources of existing data.
Goal Two: Develop support knowledge to create a Ritter Collection Website through a training workshop with existing experts.
Goal Three: Invite 5 scholars to present papers at a Tufts Colloquium Series on the Ritter Collection, helping them select material from the Ritter Collection using the Finding Aid, and preparing that material for their use by digitization.
Goal Four: Secure further funding to support the Ritter Collection.
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE The electronic documents created for this project will be permanently housed in the DCA repository, where they can be accessed by either the DCA generic interface, or the Ritter Collection Website The Ritter Collection Website will be overseen and maintained by the Music Librarian with support from LITS, with input from the Music Department and from the Tisch Web Editorial Board. The Web site is a resource for future researchers in the Ritter Collection, as well as a potential publisher of their findings. Past research, in the form of graduate student papers written under the direction of Professor Jane Bernstein about documents from the Ritter collection, should be vetted by a committee of music faculty and the music librarian, authors' permissions sought, and included on the Web site Future funding for the Ritter Collection is necessary, in particular, to catalog the collection--or at least the significant portions of the collection--using US MARC and rare book and music cataloging principles, so that it may be represented in the cataloging utilities OCLC and RLIN. OCLC searching included in this proposal will help in identifying Ritter materials that are unique or very rare in the OCLC database, which can be noted to strengthen subsequent grant proposals. It is possible that OCLC searching will identify some exact matches for individual items in the Ritter Collection, although it is more likely that OCLC records will be found that relate to a different edition, state, or issue of a published item in the collection--bibliographic distinctions of some significance to music scholars. Such "hits" will be reviewed by the music librarian and by cataloging department librarians to determine the preciseness of the match and the quality of the bibliographic record. As appropriate, Tufts' holdings will be added to OCLC and the corresponding record downloaded into our local online catalog. Some funding is being reserved for a cataloger with specialization in rare music materials to consult and provide cataloging service in the process, if needed. (Note that Tufts currently does not have a music cataloger on staff, and ships current music cataloging to a contracted vendor. Special collections material should not be similarly shipped, and will need to be dealt with entirely on site. Therefore we are requesting funds to bring a music cataloger on contract (possibly from another BLC library) to Tufts to assist with Ritter materials--although since OCLC searching has not yet been done, we do not know if this will be necessary, and if it does become necessary, how much material will require attention. We will prioritize as needed, and batch workflow as much as possible.) Funding should also be sought to stabilize the physical condition of the collection, because parts of the collection are quite fragile. This Berger proposal grant, if funded, will allow future granting agencies to witness the value of the Ritter collection, not only to its curricular use here at Tufts, but to the scholarly musical community at large, and allow them to measure Tufts' commitment to the collection. PROJECT DELIVERABLES
PARTICIPANTS Michael J. Rogan, Music Librarian, Tisch Library; Project Leader. Gregory Colati, Director, Digital Collections and Archives. Jane Bernstein, Austin Fletcher Professor of Music. Thomas Cox, Web Developer, Library Information Technology Support,
Tisch Library. Mystic Watershed Collaborative Clearinghouse: Information Retrieval, Integration, Analysis and GIS Training A Project of Tisch Library, the Tufts GIS Center, and Tufts Institute of the Environment Submitted to the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment by Gregory Colati, University Archivist and Head of Special Collections; Regina Raboin, Librarian, Tisch Library; Edward Oberholtzer, Librarian, Tisch Library; and Molly Anderson, GIS Center Director, Associate Director of TIE, and Research Associate Professor, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy SUMMARY Tufts has contributed to solving environmental and social problems in the Mystic watershed for several decades through faculty research and reports, student projects, and collaboration with community-based organizations working on watershed issues. Increasing attention from state and federal agencies on water quality in the Mystic River and growing community concerns about the relationship between water quality and quality of life raise the importance and demand for the body of work completed or underway by Tufts faculty, staff and students. However, managing the information that has been generated, integrating it with other available data, and displaying or disseminating it in meaningful ways to different audiences are major challenges. A web-based information management system is a logical part of the infrastructure needed to handle Mystic watershed information, given the tremendous surge in use of the internet for retrieving information over the past decade. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is the ideal tool, as part of the overall information management system, for the integration, analysis and display of place-based information. With a grant from the Berger Family Endowment, we would like to develop an interactive Website to consolidate and make accessible the wealth of information available on the Mystic watershed. The core collections we will use are Tufts faculty and student projects and Mystic River Watershed Association documents in the University Archives. A simple Website for the Mystic Watershed Collaborative has been developed already by TIE staff (http://www.tufts.edu/tie/mwc), which we will supplement with these two core collections. In addition, we will incorporate a GIS interface to allow users to access and display related data on water quality, environmental quality, demographic characteristics, and other factors relevant to understanding the changing environment and population in the Mystic watershed. Using the interactive website as a model, we would like to design and conduct a series of workshops for Tufts librarians, staff, faculty and students to teach them how to:
We also will design and conduct an overlapping series of workshops for community partners, faculty and students who are interested primarily in the Mystic watershed, and who want to learn how to use the Website we have developed to its full potential. NARRATIVE On March 29, 2000, Tufts President DiBiaggio joined Grace Perez (Executive Director, Mystic River Watershed Association), Mindy Lubber (then Director, US Environmental Protection Agency Region 1), Dorothy Kelly-Gay (Mayor, City of Somerville), and Robert Durand (Secretary, Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs) in a joint commitment to improve environmental quality in our watershed. This was the official launch of the Mystic Watershed Collaborative (MWC), with the mission of helping to restore the Mystic River to fishable and swimmable condition by 2010. This partnership formalizes a long-term relationship that has existed between individual Tufts researchers or students and community-based organizations working on environmental issues in the Mystic watershed. For example, Tufts faculty and students designed and helped conduct the epidemiological studies in the 1980s documenting the correlation between children's diseases and contaminated wells in Woburn, leading ultimately to the infamous "Civil Action". Other faculty members have monitored water quality and stability of flow, and designed modules on water quality for use by local high school science teachers. Graduate student teams have considered the plight of the alewife as it struggles to migrate upstream through deteriorating dams, contentious land-use disputes between developers and citizens who want to preserve open space, and antiquated sewer systems that allow raw sewage to spew onto city streets and into streams during storms. Students in several departments have completed projects using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze, map and display different kinds of spatial data in the watershed. Undergraduate students have organized or participated in numerous river clean-ups. At least 15 faculty members from different disciplines have expressed interest in service learning projects focused on Mystic watershed problems. While individual projects have been quite valuable, Tufts faculty, staff, student and alumni projects in the watershed have been fragmented and uncoordinated with other efforts at local and state levels. Faculty and students are enthusiastic about designing research and service projects in the watershed, but they need a comprehensive orientation to work that has been done already or is being done now. Otherwise, they are left without a clear understanding of actions needed and may feel frustrated and without direction. People who want to contribute to work in the Mystic also need a comprehensive overview of previous and ongoing projects. Frequently those in one School or department are unaware that others, in another part of Tufts, are working on a similar issue. For example, we discovered last year that interns from the Department of Education were working with some of the same science teachers with whom a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering was designing classroom curriculum. The lack of communication about past and present work may lead to redundancy of effort and, at worst, situations in which faculty and students work at cross-purposes with our community-based partner, the Mystic River Watershed Association (MRWA). A single clearinghouse for information related to Tufts projects in the Mystic watershed is needed to make reports and data accessible to students, faculty, local schoolteachers, and community organization members. This would increase the efficiency and efficacy of work that various divisions of Tufts are doing in the watershed by raising awareness of the our partnership with the MRWA, clarifying the objectives of the Mystic Watershed Collaborative and ways that the MRWA has proposed we work on those objectives, making gaps in data and services apparent, and increasing awareness among people working on related projects. A simple GIS interface for this clearinghouse would allow users to map selected layers of data from the watershed, thereby helping them understand the interrelationships of environmental quality, socioeconomic inequity, and public health. The first phase of our proposed project (summer and fall 2001) will be devoted primarily to developing this clearinghouse in the form of an interactive website, and developing content to be stored in the Tufts data repository. After creating the website, with input from anticipated users, we will evaluate it with different kinds of users and make revisions as needed. During the second phase of the project (summer 2001-spring 2002) the main emphasis will be on designing and conducting workshops for library staff, faculty, students and Tufts staff who are interested in creating a similar integrated compilation of place-based information, in using the Mystic Watershed Collaborative clearinghouse to its full capacity, or in learning how to incorporate library research methods and GIS into their courses and research sessions. We plan to use the Mystic Watershed Collaborative Clearinghouse as the focal point, and demonstrate more general concepts by describing how we approached challenges we encountered in developing the website. The tentative workshop sequence we propose is:
We anticipate that these topics will be valuable to students, staff and faculty working in many different disciplines, as well as community-based partners interested in GIS. The workshops could be adapted after development for future use in various departments or Schools. For example, presentations could be designed for Masters of Public Health students on the collection of information about the spread of West Nile Virus in New England, digitization and georeferencing of data, and its analysis and display with GIS. Or presentations might be designed for Fletcher students on ways that natural disasters interact with environmental problems, demographic trends, and agricultural production levels in the Sub-Saharan region. We envision a similar format for each workshop: a) introduction and overview of the session and its learning objectives; b) presentation or demonstration of the relevant material or process from the MWC Clearinghouse project; c) completion of an exercise by small groups, using the concepts or skills introduced in the demonstration; and d) recapitulation of the main concepts. The information presented in each workshop would be summarized in a handout for future reference. This project seems to be especially appropriate for a Berger Family Endowment grant. It will facilitate technology transfer of GIS, a valuable, relatively new tool for dealing with place-based data. GIS has become essential for research and information management in fields that compare data in different geographic areas, or correlate different kinds of data in a single area. Consequently, the demand for GIS instruction at Tufts is rising sharply and now exceeds the availability of classes and workshops. The single course in GIS offered this semester was filled immediately, and the instructor added another entire section for students who preregistered. Using the MWC Clearinghouse as the focal point for GIS instruction would provide practical, easy-to-grasp applications of the technology to issues on which people in many departments and disciplines at Tufts are working. Our proposed activities go beyond simple training in GIS. They place the use of GIS within the broader context of information retrieval, storage in standardized formats, compatibility, and dissemination. Anyone who deals regularly with the internet or with GIS needs to be able to assess whether the information he or she retrieves is comprehensive and of high quality. The availability of powerful new information technology can encourage "shortcuts", such as an internet search for a topic with a single search engine, rather than a comprehensive search for all relevant references. Creating digital content according to library standards ensures the continued accessibility of this information for the foreseeable future. And checking for the internal compatibility and adequate representation of different kinds of information is essential for sound analysis and interpretation. Contemporary technology for information dissemination requires that people with this responsibility know how to create appropriate Website interfaces for different audiences, and have a repertoire of tools to display that information. Building the MWC Clearinghouse and transferring the lessons learned in the process will help others to acquire those tools. Additional points of intersection between the proposed project and the Berger Endowment's priorities are that the MWC Clearinghouse would allow the library to make valuable information in the MRWA archives, which have not yet been processed, available within and beyond Tufts. It would increase productivity by improving interdepartmental communication and access to prior projects. Finally, it would add value to secondary education and partnerships between Tufts departments and secondary school teachers who are incorporating watershed issues into their curricula. PROJECT GOALS, TARGET DATES, OBJECTIVES, and MILESTONES GOAL 1: Create a comprehensive Website clearinghouse for the Mystic Watershed Collaborative, in a form usable to prospective audiences. Objective 1.1 Collect all past and present work by Tufts faculty and students related to the Mystic River and environmental quality in the Mystic watershed (reports, data, student projects, etc.). Identify federal or state reports, databases, and materials in the MRWA archives housed at Tufts that are useful to understand Tufts faculty and student projects and place them in their historical regulatory, scientific and social context. Target Dates: January 2001 - June 2001 Milestones: a) Undergraduate student assistants from ES-27
begin collecting relevant reports, student projects, and data during
the Spring 2001 semester. They work with Professor David Gute, Molly
Anderson, faculty advisors, state agency contacts identified by
members of the MWC Steering Committee, MRWA staff members, Regina
Raboin, Ed Oberholtzer, and Wayne Powell to ensure that their collection
is comprehensive. Objective 1.2 Refine the site-map of the Mystic Watershed Collaborative Website developed by the Tufts Institute of the Environment to include maps, data, metadata, and textual documents which address specific information needs of students, faculty, and community-based watershed advocates. Target Dates: March 2001 - May 2001 Milestones: a) The Clearinghouse Team reviews
the current Website and plans needed modifications, which they
communicate to ES-27 student assistants. Objective 1.3 Digitize and catalog selected material according to library standards. Target Dates: June 2001 - August 2001 Milestones: a) The MRWA Archives Student Assistant stores
materials to be archived in the Tufts digital repository. GOAL 2: Build a simple Geographic Information Systems (GIS) interface for the Clearinghouse, capable of integrating spatial information from various sources. Objective 2.1 Revise the MWC Web site to include reports and data. Target Dates: April- August 2001 Milestones: a) Greg Colati and Sheri Kelley
develop a letter requesting permission to serve archived materials,
old projects, and current projects and reports to the Website Objective 2.2 Incorporate the interface into the existing MWC Website Target Dates: June 2001 - August 2001 Milestones: a) Johanna Meyer investigates options that
meet any restrictions of the ArcIMS piece of the Tufts ArcView GIS
license and allow rapid uploading of GIS software to different web
platforms. Objective 2.3 Evaluate the Web site with users. Target Dates: August - October 2001 Milestones: a) The Clearinghouse Team develops
a list of possible Website evaluators, with input from the MWC
Steering Committee, and a set of evaluation questions. GOAL 3: Design and conduct a series of workshops to teach users how to incorporate GIS into their information literacy sessions, courses, research and workshops; find and compile comprehensive, spatially-referenced information sets; and create and use a web-based GIS interface that can integrate and display geo-spatial information. Objective 3.1 Design and publicize workshops. Target Dates: Summer - Fall 2001 Milestones a) Regina Raboin and Johanna Meyer design
the workshop series, and circulate the learning objectives and outline
to members of the Clearinghouse Team for review. Objective 3.2 Conduct and evaluate the workshops, attracting at least 10 participants to each from the combined target audiences. Target Dates: Fall 2001 - Summer 2002 Milestones: a) Johanna Meyer, Regina Raboin, Sheri Kelley,
and the GIS Student Assistant conduct the workshop series. GOAL 4: Draft policy and procedures to ensure awareness of GIS services, and coordination of the delivery of those services between Tisch Library staff and GIS Center staff. Objective 4.1 Encourage participation in the training workshops of Library staff who will be expected to know about GIS, and ensure that workshops are relevant to their needs. Target Dates: Fall 2001 - Summer 2002 Milestones: a) Greg Colati and Sheri Kelley, in consultation
with Regina Raboin, Ed Oberholtzer, and Jo-Ann Michalak, draft a
list of library staff-members from across the campuses who need
to know about GIS, and the kinds of information they need (ranging
from awareness of its capacities and location of the GIS Center
to ability to use ArcView software with some proficiency). Objective 4.2 Observe where gaps in communication seem to occur on a regular basis, and address these with formal procedures. Target Dates: March 2001 - June 2002 Milestones: a) Molly Anderson collects complaints
and suggestions for improved procedures from Website users and
members of the Clearinghouse Team. CLEARINGHOUSE TEAM (boldface indicates new temporary positions created for the duration of this project) GIS Center Staff: Johanna Meyer (GIS Center Coordinator) Tisch Library Staff: Regina Raboin (Librarian) University Archives Staff: Greg Colati (University Archivist and Head of Special
Collections) Tufts Institute of the Environment Staff: Molly Anderson (Associate Director) Mystic River Watershed Association Staff: Grace Perez (Executive Director) PROJECT ADVISORS Mystic Watershed Collaborative Steering Committee Advisors: Janet Kovner (MRWA Outreach Coordinator) Arts, Sciences, & Engineering Faculty: John Durant and Paul Kirshen (Dept. of Civil and
Env. Engineering and MWC Steering Committee members) WORKPLAN SUMMARY 2001 January - March (not supported directly through the Berger Fund)
April - May
June - August
September - December
2002 January - May
June
A Collaboration between Tisch Library and the Department of Child Development to create a prototype digital project REQUEST We respectfully request from the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment a commitment of $50,000 to support the development of an innovative new internet service, which will constitute a prototype digital library project, and to cultivate library resources needed to create this and related digital library projects. The proposed service, the Child & Family News (CFN) WebGuide, will be an on-line rating and review guide for students, faculty and the public at large seeking information about children and families. The WebGuide will be fashioned after the highly successful Tufts University Nutrition Navigator. Both sites are intended to solve two major problems experienced by web users: how to quickly find information best suited to their needs and whether to trust the information they find. Because of the large and expanding volume of information on the internet, the time is right for the development of services such as the WebGuide and for the training of library staff to work together with faculty involved in this and related internet-based services. OVERVIEW OF THE CFN WEBGUIDE The WebGuide will be an additional feature of CFN, an innovative on-line feature news service developed by faculty at Tufts University (see Appendix A for a copy of our homepage). Under the direction of Dr. Fred Rothbaum and Ms. Nancy Martland from Child Development, and Dr. Larry Brown from Nutrition, CFN's primary goal has been to increase the public's interest in and awareness of children's issues by providing high quality, pertinent and newsworthy information to journalists. The service makes available relevant research, names of experts, information about solution-oriented programs and other information necessary to providing the public a context for understanding the news. There is no other internet-based service that provides these kinds of resources. (For a brief description of the Child Development Dept. and CFN, see Appendix B). The WebGuide is a key step in adapting CFN to the needs of students, faculty and the general public. It will integrate several previously segregated bodies of research in child development. Traditionally, students identify a topic and search for it on various databases, each of which is focused on a particular discipline (psychology, education, advocacy, sociology, anthropology, criminology, health sciences, etc.) and a specific type of source (websites, books, magazines and newspapers, etc.). Because child and family issues are interdisciplinary, our goal is to identify and incorporate numerous websites from each of several disciplines. WebGuide users will be encouraged to search for books, scholarly publications, newspaper and magazine articles, and other sources. In addition, the WebGuide users will be directed to websites that describe intervention programs and agencies that provide services related to the issues being researched. Students are often interested in the applied dimensions of an issue but lack the resources and theoretical understanding to research them; CFN makes this possible. The internet is ideal for making links between disciplines, between sources, and between basic and applied knowledge. The creation, maintenance and everyday use of the WebGuide will afford new opportunities for students and faculty to forge relationships with library staff. Library staff involved in this project will: (a) help faculty and students identify and evaluate relevant sites and organize those sites into meaningful topic areas; (b) develop a broader, more scientific understanding of organizational structures that will be needed in the next millennium; and (c) offer assistance to other faculty engaged in the selection, evaluation, cataloging and design of sites pertaining to their disciplines. MATCH OF WEBGUIDE GOALS WITH BERGER GOALS/SELECTION CRITERIA Goals of the WebGuide are to:
THE WEBGUIDE'S AUDIENCE Originally, CFN's primary audience was journalists and, through them, the general public. With the aide of the WebGuide, CFN will make students its primary audience, while at the same time continuing to serve journalists. There are many similarities between the two groups. The topics of interest to students are based in large part on those that have been identified by journalists. Both journalists and students need assistance in gathering specialized information from the web, in obtaining material from different disciplines and sources, and in integrating information about basic research with practical application. Both audiences also have in common an interest in summaries of research findings, names of experts in the field, and brief stories that can be expanded to full-length articles and papers. The WebGuide is well suited to the needs of students, 85% of whom use the web for academic/learning purposes At least several times a week (Lubans, 1998, unpublished manuscript, Duke Univ. Library). The WebGuide will also be a valuable tool for faculty and the general public. CFN can play a very positive role in encouraging the use of quality internet-based information about children by users at various levels of expertise. DEVELOPING THE WEBGUIDE: HOW WILL BERGER FUNDS BE USED? Partnership between Child Development Department and Tisch Library We plan to collaborate with Tisch library to expand the CFN "Related Sites" page, (see sidebar of current website: www.tufts.edu/cfn) into the WebGuide--the most comprehensive, useful and informative collection of newsworthy sites about child and family issues on the internet. To maximize value for users with varied interests, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
