• About
  • Center Overview
  • People
  • Affiliated Projects
  • Contact Information
• Collections & Curation
  • Overview
  • Digital Collections and Content (DCC)
  • Opening History
  • Curation Profiles Project (CPP)
  • Data Curation Education Program (DCEP)
  • Folktales, Facets, and FRBR
  • ECHO DEPository
  • Past Projects
• Digital Humanities
  • Overview
  • Data Curation Education Program for the Humanities (DCEP-H)
  • Preserving Virtual Worlds
  • TEI TITE
  • Networked Environment for Music Analysis
  • Metadata Offer New Knowledge(MONK)
  • NORA—Web-based Text-mining Tools for the Humanities
• e-Science
  • Overview
  • Towards Evidence-Based Discovery
  • Curation Profiles Project (CPP)
  • Biological Information Specialist (BIS)
  • Past Projects
• Scholarly Communication & Libraries 
  • Overview
  • Disciplinary Research Practices
  • Intermediary Models for Institutional Repository Development (IMIRD)
  • ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey
  • PLDS Statistical Report
  • Access to Government Information
  • Past Projects
• Roundtables
  • Metadata Roundtable
  • E-Research Roundtable
• Publications
  • By Type
  • By Year

e-Science

Given the ever growing universe of information resources, informatics tools, and scholarly communication options that need to be understood, assessed, and coordinated, the e-Science initiatives at CIRSS aim to improve information transfer and integration, technology development and sustainability, and collaboration in the practice of science through basic and applied research and training of information specialists to work cooperatively with research scientists.

Scientific data problems do not stand in isolation. They are part of a larger set of challenges associated with escalated production of scientific information and changes in scholarly communication in the digital environment. Across all scientific disciplines, researchers are producing and consuming increasing amounts and varieties of information and data, while striving to work with these resources in new ways. This has lead to daunting problems and opportunities for information management and integration. There are numerous challenges associated with the amount and rate of data being generated; however, the complexity of the underlying science is of greater consequence for scientific discovery than the sheer volume of the data.

Current Projects

Towards Evidence-Based Discovery (EBD) - Vast quantities of electronic information provide a unique opportunity for scientists identify candidate solutions for grand challenges as scientists, policy makers, and students have never had access to more electronic information than they do today. The goal in this research is to develop new text mining methods that are consistent with the manual processes that experts currently used to resolve contradictory and redundant evidence.

Curation Profiles Project (CPP) - This project combines both library and research domain strengths of the University of Illinois and Purdue University Libraries to investigate questions related to data collection, management, publication and preservation, including “at which point in the research cycle are researchers willing to share data, with whom, and under what conditions?”

Biological Information Specialists (BIS) - The objectives of the project are to develop curriculum, establish internships, integrate course work with informatics research, share the educational approach, and expand understanding of the role of informatics in scientific progress.

Current Activities

DCEP Interim Report Submitted.

DCEP Advisory Committee Meeting - January 29, 2009.

Curation Profiles Project and DCEP will have representatives at the 4th International Digital Curation Conference and present posters - December 1-3, 2008.

Publications

Heidorn, P. Bryan, Palmer, Carole L., and Wright, Dan (2007). Biological Information Specialists for Biological Informatics.

Heidorn, P. Bryan, Wei, Qin (2007). Using New Technologies for Education and Communication. Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Annual Conference. Abstract and presentation, Bratislava, Slovakia, September, 2007.

Palmer, C.L., Heidorn, P. Bryan, Wright, Dan & Cragin, Melissa H. (2007). Graduate Curriculum for Biological Information Specialists: A Key to Integration of Scale in Biology. International Journal of Data Curation, 2(2), 31-40.

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