Tag: Brown Bag

A History of the Internet

By on October 27, 2017

In a way the Russians caused the Internet. This talk will describe how that happened (hint: it was not actually the Bomb) and follow the path that has led to the current Internet of (unpatchable) Things (the IoT) and the Surveillance Economy.

Scott Bradner was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). Bradner was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN). Read more

Event details
Location: E25-202
We will provide lunch, please bring your own drink and your questions.

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consists of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.

November 13, 2017 12 - 1pm

Safety Nets: Rescue and Revival for Endangered Born-Digital Records

By on October 11, 2017

The web is now firmly established as the primary communication and publication platform for sharing and accessing social and cultural materials. This networked world has created both opportunities and pitfalls for libraries and archives in their mission to preserve and provide ongoing access to knowledge. How can the affordances of the web be leveraged to drastically extend the plurality of representation in the archive? What challenges are imposed by the intrinsic ephemerality and mutability of online information? What methodological reorientations are demanded by the scale and dynamism of machine-generated cultural artifacts? This talk will explore the interplay of the web, contemporary historical records, and the programs, technologies, and approaches by which libraries and archives are working to extend their mission to preserve and provide access to the evidence of human activity in a world distinguished by the ubiquity of born-digital materials.

Jefferson Bailey is director of Web Archiving at Internet Archive. Jefferson joined Internet Archive in Summer 2014 and manages Internet Archive’s web archiving services including Archive-It, used by over 500 institutions to preserve the web. He also oversees contract and domain-scale web archiving services for national libraries and archives around the world. Read more

Event details
Location: E53-212
We will provide lunch, please bring your own drink and your questions.

For those who would like to join via WebEx, details are below.

October Brown Bag with Jefferson Bailey
Monday, October 23, 2017
12:45 pm | Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00) | 1 hr 30 mins

Join by phone
+1-617-324-0000 US Toll Number
Meeting number: 310 052 752
Meeting password: Archive

Join WebEx meeting

Join from a video conferencing system or application
Dial 310052752@mit.webex.com

Mobile Auto Dial:+1-617-324-0000,,,310052752#

Add this meeting to your calendar. (Cannot add from mobile devices.)

October 23, 2017 1 - 2pm

Reality Bytes: Utilizing VR and AR in the Library Space

By on June 12, 2017

Terms like “virtual reality” and “augmented reality” have existed for a long time. In recent years, thanks to products like Google Cardboard and games like Pokemon Go, an increasing number of people have gained firsthand experience with these once-exotic technologies. The MIT Libraries are no exception to this trend. The Program on Information Science has conducted enough experimentation that we would like to share what we have learned and solicit ideas for further investigation.

This discussion will present participants with a firsthand opportunity to not only to hear about the ongoing learning in the VR and AR space in the MIT Libraries, but to also witness some of these technologies in action – both for viewing and creating relevant content. A variety of data will be shared and collected during the discussion.

Matt Bernhardt is a web developer at the MIT Libraries with a wide-ranging interest in technology – including digital fabrication and data visualization. A graduate of the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State, he has been interested in how physical spaces and shapes can be represented digitally since the days of Zork and Snow Crash.

Event Details
Location: E25-401
We will provide lunch, please bring your own drink and your questions.

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consist of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social, and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.

June 21, 2017 12 - 1pm

SolarSPELL: The Solar Powered Educational Learning Library

By on March 21, 2017

Access to high-quality, relevant information is absolutely foundational for a quality education. Yet, so many schools across the developing world lack fundamental resources, like textbooks, libraries, electricity and Internet connectivity. The SolarSPELL (Solar Powered Educational Learning Library) is designed specifically to address these infrastructural challenges, by bringing relevant, digital educational content to offline, off-grid locations. This talk will examine the design, development, and deployment of this for-the-field technology that looks simple but has a quite complex background.

SolarSPELL is a portable, ruggedized, solar-powered digital library that broadcasts a webpage with open-access educational content over an offline WiFi hotspot, content that is curated for a particular audience in a specified locality — in this case, for schoolchildren and teachers in remote locations. It is a hands-on, iteratively developed project that has involved undergraduate students in all facets and at every stage of development.

Laura Hosman
Hosman is assistant professor at Arizona State University, holding a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and in The Polytechnic School. Her work is action-oriented and focuses on the role for information and communications technology (ICT) in developing countries. Presently, she focuses on ICT-in-education projects, and brings her passion for experiential learning to the classroom by leading real-world-focused, project-based courses that have seen student-built technology deployed in schools in Haiti, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Samoa, and Tonga.

Event Details
Location: E25-202
We will provide lunch; please bring your own drink and your questions.

April 19, 2017 12 - 1pm

Making decisions in a world awash in data: We’re going to need a different boat

By on November 1, 2016

Join us for a brown bag talk with Anthony Scriffignano, SVP/Chief Data Scientist at Dun and Bradstreet. In this session, Scriffignano will explore some of the ways in which the massive availability of data is changing and the types of questions we must ask in the context of making business decisions.

The session will cover three main themes: The new normal (how the data around us continues to change), how are we reacting (bringing data science into the room), and the path ahead (creating a mindset in the organization that evolves). Ultimately, what we learn is governed as much by the data available as by the questions we ask. This talk, both relevant and occasionally irreverent, will explore some of the new ways data is being used to expose risk and opportunity and the skills we need to take advantage of a world awash in data. Learn more

Scriffignano in an internationally recognized data scientist with over 35 years experience in multiple industries and enterprise domains. He has extensive background in linguistics and advanced algorithms, leveraging that background as primary inventor on multiple patents worldwide. He provides thought leadership globally, including serving as a forum panelist at the World Internet Conference hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuzhen, China and providing subject matter expertise to the US National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee Report to the President on Big Data Analytics. He was recently published in CIOReview (US), Mint (India) and quoted in various publications including China Daily, Xinhua and Peoples Daily. He was profiled by InformationWeek and by BizCloud, and was a recent CXOTalk guest. He regularly presents at business and academic venues globally regarding emerging trends in data and information stewardship relating to the “Big Data” explosion, multilingual challenges in business identity and malfeasance in commercial settings.

Event Details
Location: E25-401
Lunch will be provided; please bring your own drink and your questions.

November 14, 2016 12 - 1pm

Come Together Right Now: An Introduction to the Open Access Network

By on October 11, 2016

Officially launched just over a year ago, the Open Access Network (OAN) offers a transformative, sustainable, and scalable model of open access (OA) publishing and preservation that encourages partnerships among scholarly societies, research libraries, and other partners (e.g., academic publishers, university presses, collaborative e-archives) who share a common mission to support the creation and distribution of open research and scholarship and to encourage more affordable education, which can be a direct outcome of OA publishing. Our ultimate goal is to develop a collective funding approach that is fair and open and that fully sustains the infrastructure needed to support the full life-cycle for communication of the scholarly record, including new and evolving forms of research output. Simply put, we intend to Make Knowledge Public.

Rebecca Kennison is the Principal of K|N Consultants and the co-founder of the Open Access Network. Prior to working full time at K|N, she was the founding director of the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, a division of the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, where she was responsible for developing programs to facilitate scholarly research and the communication of that research through technology solutions. Rebecca has worked primarily in the scholarly publishing industry, including production leadership roles at Cell Press, Blackwell Publishing (now Wiley-Blackwell), and the open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS), where she was the very first employee.

Event Details
Location: E53-212
We will provide lunch; please bring your own drink
Space is limited; RSVP here

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consist of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.

October 18, 2016 12 - 1pm

Issues in curating the open web at scale

By on September 1, 2016

Gary Price

Much of the web remains invisible: resources are undescribed, unindexed or simply buried — as many people rarely look past the first page of Google searches or are unavailable from traditional library resources. At the same time, many traditional library databases pay little attention to quality content from credible sources accessible on the open web.

How do we build collections of quality open-web resources (i.e. documents, specialty databases, and multimedia) and make them accessible to individuals and user groups when and where they need it? This talk reflects on the emerging tools for systematic programmatic curation; the legal challenges to open-web curation; long-term access issues, and the historical challenges to building sustainable communities of curation.

Event details
Location: E25-401
Lunch will be provided

About Gary Price
Price received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kansas, and a master’s in library and information science from Wayne State University. He was for a time a reference librarian at George Washington University. Price co-authored the book The Invisible Web (see Deep Web) with Chris Sherman in July 2001. Price has worked as a librarian at George Washington University and by the search engine Ask.com as Director of Online Information Resources. He also does frequent consulting projects and has written for a number of publications. Currently, he is a contributing editor at Search Engine Land. Before launching INFOdocket.com and FullTextReports.com in February 2011, Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy worked together for 10 years as founders and co-editors of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker. Price won the Special Libraries Association‘s “Innovations in Technology Award” in 2002, and their News Division‘s “Agnes Henebry Roll of Honor Award” in 2004. He was also awarded the Alumni of the Year Award from Wayne State’s Library and Information Program.

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consist of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.

September 20, 2016 12 - 1pm

Can Computers be Feminist? Procedural Politics and Computational Creativity

By on May 26, 2016

Join the Program on Information Science for a brown bag talk, Can Computers be Feminist? Procedural Politics and Computational Creativity. Discussant Gillian Smith will examine how computers are increasingly taking on the role of a creator — making content for games, participating on Twitter, and generating paintings and sculptures. These computationally creative systems embody formal models of both the product they are creating and the process they follow. Like that of their human counterparts, the work of algorithmic artists is open to criticism and interpretation, but such analysis requires a framework for discussing the politics embedded in procedural systems. In this talk, we will examine the politics that are (typically implicitly) represented in computational models for creativity, and discuss the possibility for incorporating feminist perspectives into their underlying algorithmic design.

Gillian Smith is an Assistant Professor in Art+Design and Computer Science at Northeastern University, where she performs research and teaches in the game design program. Her research interests are in computational creativity, computational craft, and gender in games and technology.

Event details
Location: E25-401
Lunch is provided. Please bring your own beverage.
More information

June 14, 2016 12 - 1 pm

Brown Bag: The Visual Component

By on April 19, 2016

Join the Program on Information Science for our May Brown Bag with Felice Frankel, research scientist in the Center for Materials Science and Engineering here at MIT. She will discuss visual representation of all kinds as it becomes more important in our ever growing image-based society, especially in science and technology, and how there has been little emphasis on developing standards in creating or critiquing those representations.

Frankel will consider images as more than tangential components of information, discuss ways to seamlessly search for accurate and honest depictions of complex scientific phenomena, show her own process of making visual representations in sciences and engineering, and make the case that representations are just as “intellectual” as text.

Event details:
Location: E25-401
The Information Science Program will provide lunch, please bring your favorite beverage and plenty of questions.
More information

May 11, 2016 12 - 1pm