Learning and Research Success:
the role of libraries in the IT age
Eberhard R. Hilf
and Julika Mimkes
ISN Institute for
Science Networking Oldenburg, GmbH
Content
- The past age of frustrations in teaching/learning
[slide numbers 1-5]
- The future scenario [slide 6-9]
-
Requirements for eLearning and some realizations
[slide 10-15]
-
Requirements for Scientific documents and some realizations
[slide 16-21]
- summary [slide 22]
- summary: future tasks of Information centers at Universities [last side]
Slide 1
Learning and Research Success:
the role of libraries in the IT age
Eberhard R. Hilf
and Julika Mimkes
ISN Institute for
Science Networking Oldenburg, GmbH
A personal view at the recent past of everyday-learning
and teaching at German Universities, contrasted with a future scenario.
Requirements for some services are compared with present realizations
--thrown in is: what I learned at this conference..
slide2
The past age of frustrations: the students view
Suspicion, when teaching methods, content, and books stay the same
in 50 years in contrast to the rapid progress in the sciences.
- Do I learn to be an active creative, narrative researcher
by 30 hours/week of receptive silent
listening?
- Do I have to meet with 100 students in one room to meet the knowledge?
- Is my lecture best or one of the simultanous at 65 other places in Germany?
- The speed of teaching is for shure either too slow or to fast for me.
- I feel isolated by just one examen in 2 years.
slide2
The past age of frustrations: the teaching staff's view
Same suspicion....
- Is it enjoyable when students silently leave instead of argue?
- It is boring to teach the same material every year,
it distracts me from active creative research!
- Why do I have to get up at 7 am and bicycle
in the rain to teach?
- The preparation for the lecture is boring,
knowing all the other colleagues
at 65 places doing the same.
- There are later on only few bright candidates, because my present
lecture has to be too slow.
slide2
The past age of frustrations: the librarian's view
The suspicion, when for 100 years the methods, the
distribution, the means, and the business model for information services
stay the same in a time of rapid change.
- Do you enjoy sorting papers when less and less come and ask for them?
- You realized that that less and less journals can be ordered.
- You worry about frozen budgets when money for other means booms?
The past age of frustrations: the government's view?
- 1993-98: Know nothing and don't grasp the transition [as most of the public]
and do not listen to the experts [Australia govt. and DC]
- Didn't they have to listen to the industry of the past?
- 'Do not move or uproot anything before an election'!
The future scenario: Student's imagination
I am the future of a competitive industrial country and want to
be optimally served to get prepared.
- I want to learn,
contact, discuss with my comrades, tutors, teacher, as close as
possible to whenever I feel
I need it, say, sitting on the campus lawn and interconnected by my laptop.
- I want to learn by interactively
experimenting.
- I want to be enabled to access whatever and whereever teaching
material in the world is best suited to my present needs.
[lean learning just in time..]
- I want to learn with the speed I personally can
handle.
- I want to permanently know where am I in the learning process.
The future Scenario: teaching staff's imagination
We lead the nation in research and most professional teaching
-
We give few but key lectures.
-
We work at most suitable places and time, say,
leaning leasurely at home on
a couch, or while at a boring summary talk at a conference ..
-
We answer questions individually,
guide discussions of small learning groups.
-
We do research to retrieve the material most suited to my class.
The future Scenario: the information center personnell
The IT service personnell at the University, distributed
across campus at all research and teaching units,
forms one virtual center.
What do they do?
-
Standing together, and sipping a cup of coffee, watching the green lights
of computers, showing the correct operation of all service programs,
-
feed in newly requested teaching modules,
-
give classes for
staff and students how to make use of IT-tools and services,
-
do research and develop new technical service means,
- assure the worldwide visibility of the University by connecting to all
professional retrieval services.
The future Scenario: The voters imagination
Government should ensure the international industrial competitiveness
and cultural and scientific front- running.
What do they expect?
- to set new laws to set the new frame and requirements,
- to enforce international standards,
- to take decicive actions,
- to fund a multitude of independent threads of research.
What we learned here.. (a personal collection) [Tuesday]
Active politicians: -.-
Maurer: Don't think, this is done by the external supercomputer.
Prime: Don't manage change, stay ahead of it.
Petry-Eberle: carving as a way to reach personalization..
Büttner: the Bielefeld-tuesday law:
the intranet traffic grows exponentially with company size.
Thus the development in the world is the more underestimated, the
bigger the company,
-- just as the dinosaur body's interior did not mind the climate change..
<
Requirements for eLearning organizing the classes [Platforms]
-
business model: free of charge for Academia use; export by companies
for use in industry
-
Open Source code for future add-ons by third parties.
-
possibility to import third party eLearning modules.
eLearning platform realizations
Management platforms, which try to fulfill the requirements are
e.g.
- OKI Open Knowledge
Initiative OKI of MIT, USA
- MSU [LON CAPA]
- There are numerous others
in various states of development.
Requirements for creating eLearning modules
- information on what plug-in types, which tools to install where to get
them
- searchable with content, audience, teaching-type, etc. [see Metadata]
- compatible with all browser types, and run on all operating systems
- clearly readable [trivial? then see
latex2/twohtml(I. Schaffer et al.)]
-
business model: free of charge for Academia use; export to companies
-
Open Source code for future add-ons by third parties.
-
platform independence for easiest export to other Universities.
eLearning Modules
A multitude of collections
Multitude of Categories
texts, pictures, animation, interwoven with other distributed modules
[see e.g.
physics of the inner human ear by C. Ecke with an applet
of Univ. Wuppertal.],
interactive: Mathematics-Module 'waves'
[C. Ecke], angular momentum [
online, offline].
Requirements for Retrieval of eLearning modules
To assure the fullest, instant, worldwide content retrieval one needs:
- sources at the creator's place: a worldwide distributed database
to assure copyright stays with the author and latest version,
- content search by international metadata standard usage
- cooperation of scientists as creators and editors, and IC-services
for usability and standards.
addresses basic physics for non-physics
students
- funded: BMBF (there are 100 plus other projects)
- Partners: [online]
-
Universities: Bremen, Greifswald, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Rostock
- Learned fields: Physics, Didactics, Computer Science, Biology
- Aim of project: a structured set of MM-modules
tasks of Oldenburg
- communication within the project. [visits]
-
distribution, and retrieval of worldwide distributed MM-modules
The techniques chosen, allow for worldwide distributed databases,
editors, entrypoints
- to be organized regionally by the
respective IC of the Universities.
|
A realization of Retrieval:
Lili
What we learned here.. (a personal collection) [Wednesday morning I]
Thorhaug: Our Danish heroes hope to fight the prices down
by the market of small libraries and countries
Bode (BMBF): Mehr Geld in alte Dienste bremst die Entwicklung.
New money for new services.
Scientific Information: Requirements for Portals
- strict separation of providers and quality control,
- unbiased to any commercial publisher,
- no commercials,
- adherence to international standards,
- fast uploading, technical stability (mirrors),
- ...
Entry-Points and Portals of Science
- national entrypoints
- of science societies:
[List] served by IuK,
- for physicists:
Fachwelt.de, served for
AKI (DPG) by [TIB, FIZ Karlsruhe, ISN, Welt-der-Physik.de]
- of the National Library for Physics TIB:
ViFaPhys (DFG-Project: started 2.2002)
- International field-specific entry-points: e. g.
PhysNet (EPS),
MareNet (DGM)
Requirements for Long Term Archiving of Distributed Documents
- Long Term means 10 to 100 years from now.
- Decision with regard to what should be elected to be archived.
- Free access is mandatory [cultural aim to be taken care of by government
[DDB, SSB, rules commercial publishers out].
- Open Source archiving formats only [rules .pdf, .ps, .. out].
- Full content to be archived, not just an image [Math-ML instead of .pdf].
- ...
Realizations of Long Term Archiving
There is no realization yet.
Scientific documents: how to distribute and publish them
The eDocuments "Publish first, evaluate then" needs a new concept for
professional distribution instead of the traditional 'journals',
and the department servers.
- The original file resides stays best at the author's
institution's website (say, its local Information Center).
-
Free access to anyone and free of commercials:
for maximum visibility and distribution to boost science
and competiveness of national economy -
and because of the doc's creation had been funded by government
-
IC to organize web-distribution and quality filters, add metadata,
integrate into international retrieval systems.
The German Academic Publishers Network Concept GAP
- Registry of the scientists.
-
Posting edocuments handed in by them, in a stable fashion, adding metadata,
allowing withdrawal up to a certain quality level.
- Offering a multitude of quality filters:
registered creator, research group leader, institute,
department, IC, GAP-refereed, externally
refereed.
- Assuring long term stability, readability, layout, retrieval (metadata).
-
grouping of docs to topical or quality collections by use of scientific editors.
The local ICs form a distributed network of local publishers,
with a joint concept, quality control levels scheme, software, topical
collections, integration into international retrieval.
Scientific documents: Retrieval
Recommendations by the
Open Archive initiative.
Document databases distributed at author's place
- register as OAi dataprovider
- register as OAi service provider
- gather all international databases
-
...
Scientific documents retrieval: a realization
Open Archive Distributed OAD for Physics [joint NSF and DFG project]
- 04.2001 registered as OAi data provider
- 12.2001 registered as OAi service provider
- gathering PhysDoc, all of IoPP, part of ArXiv, (in progress: APS
and other publishers)
- distributed independent
brokers
and gatherers for worldwide
Physics departments.
-
export the software of OAD to any IC, -- and to the publishers (IoPP)
What we learned here.. (a personal collection) [Wednesday morning II]
Stones:
Google puts now paid ads at top of ranking.
Vogts, Wegener, Bolk, Gutbier:
very professional new services are ready to use
What we learned here.. (a personal collection) [Wednesday afternoon]
Androvic: Global players but individuals out in the dark!
Dyer:
Open Access will lead to World Wide Wisdom.
<
What we learned here.. (a personal collection) [Thursday]
Hilf: bother about costs at Libraries? I am on pension..
The End
Sincere thanks of us all go to Dr. Neubauer
for his professional lifelong smooth and audacious frontrunning
in transforming IT at Universities.
I remember many of the earlier respectable workshops of this series,
many meeting where he showed to be open minded and open to new developments.
New services came out from here.- and new views.
Thank you and your crew for this professional, international and
fruitful workshop.
The Beginning
I welcome him at the club of active observers of the future developments
- - which is the responsibility of you all.
Some Tasks for the Information Centers at Universities
Professional information services at Universities in the future need
new structure and profession.
//see DINI,
the German Network Initiative of the dmv, ZKI, AMH societies//.
-
Restructuring of library, computer center, multimedia-center, distant-learning
center to an integrated Information Center.
-
Training of personnell
- training of University members (students and staff) in the usage of the new
techniques.
-
Competence centre for new techniques and services.
-
Service and maintenance of eLearning modules, search engines.
-
Posting, archiving, correct metadata usage, quality filters for
eDocuments.