Following is a list of grants and awards to fund research at the School of Information and Library Science.
DataBridge - A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections
Dr. Arcot Rajasekar (PI), professor at SILS and chief scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), will lead one of the eight Big Data projects that received awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in October 2012. This grant and the other seven like it aim to develop new tools and methods to extract and use knowledge from collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science and engineering research and innovation. The project, “DataBridge – A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections,” will use socio-metric networks similar to Linked In or Facebook on a larger scale to enable scientists to find data and like-minded research. It will improve the discovery of relevant scientific data across large, distributed and diverse collections. The funds provided by NSF for the DataBridge project total $1.5 million.
DataNet Federation Consortium
Dr. Reagan Moore (PI), Dr. Arcot Rajasekar (co-PI), and collaborators Dr. Richard Marciano (Director of Sustainability), Dr. Helen Tibbo, Dr. Christopher (Cal) Lee (leaders of Policy and Standards Community of Practice), and Jewel Ward (SILS doctoral student) are part of a group that received an $8 Million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant over five years (2011-16) to build and deploy a prototype national data management infrastructure. About half the award will support research and development at UNC. The consortium will address the data management needs of six science and engineering disciplines: oceanography, hydrology, engineering design, plant biology, cognitive science, and social science. The infrastructure project will support collaborative multidisciplinary research through shared collections and archives and data publication within digital libraries.
Building a Bridge to Literacy for African-American Male Youth: A Call to Action for the Library Community
Dr. Sandra Hughes-Hassell received a $99,074 National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS) to organize a summit titled "Building a Bridge to Literacy for African-American Male Youth: A Call to Action for the Library Community." Hosted jointly by SILS and the School of Library and Information Science at North Carolina Central University, the summit "will unite national stakeholders, including members of the library and education community, researchers, educational policy makers, national organizations focused on the needs of African-American youth, publishers, and young black males, to focus on the role of school and public libraries in closing the literacy achievement gap of African-American male youth.”
Digging into Data: Integrating Data Mining and Data Management Technologies for Scholarly Inquiry
Dr. Richard Marciano (PI) received a $175,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) as the lead investigator, along with Dr. Ray Larson (PI, University of California Berkeley) and Dr. Paul Watry (PI, University of Liverpool), of one of fourteen teams that won the second Digging into Data Challenge. Through Dr. Watry, the team also received a £82,000 grant from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK. The project addresses how "big data" can change the research landscape for the humanities and social sciences. In SILS' press release, Marciano said, "The idea is to enable research that integrates digital library content with computational tools and services that analyze and find patterns across data sets."
BitCurator
Dr. Christopher (Cal) Lee has received a grant for $600,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project that creates and analyzes systems for archivists, librarians, and other information professionals to incorporate the functionality of digital forensics methods and tools into their work. The Bit Curator project will be a joint effort led by SILS and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. MITH's Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum is co-PI.
CI-BER: Cyberinfrastructure for Billions of Electronic Records
Dr. Richard Marciano (PI) received a $585,000 grant as part of a collaborative research agreement with the National Science Foundation Office for Cyberinfrastructure (NSF/OCI) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to further the understanding of infrastructure that scales and provides insights into the management of "big data" in general. According to its website, the project will look at ultra high scale collections and visual analytics techniques in order to enhance the value of government records that can lead to generalizable infrastructure and technology. CI-BER is concerned with the now familiar "digital tsunami" challenge and the management of billions of electronic records and thousands of petabytes of data. The project involves partnerships between SILS, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), the Data Intensive Computing Environments (DICE) Center at UNC, and the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
SDCI Data Improvement: Improvement and Sustainability of iRODS Data Grid Software for Multi-Disciplinary Community Driven Application
Dr. Arcot Rajasekar is the principal investigator of this project that includes researchers Barton P. Miller, Michael Y. Wan, Patrick Dreher and Reagan W. Moore. The project supports development of the iRODS integrated Rule-Oriented Data System. Recent development efforts have focused on extending data management to include registration of workflows along with registration of the resulting data sets. The goal is to enable reproducible analyses. A workflow can be shared and re-executed to generate the same analysis.
The National Science Foundation awarded the grant of $1,635,757 effective October 1, 2010. It expires September 30, 2013.
Closing the Digital Curation Gap: An International Collaboration
Dr. Helen Tibbo, Principal Investigator (PI), and Dr. Christopher (Cal) Lee, co-PI received a $92,812 grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS) that extends their "Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG)" project. The CDCG project is "an International Collaboration to Integrate Best Practice, Research, Development, and Training in Digital Curation."
Educating Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure (ESOPI2)
Dr. Helen Tibbo was awarded a grant for $897,449 in the category "Programs to Build Institutional Capacity" from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant is for the project, "Educating Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure (ESOPI2)." The grant extends ESOPI-21 and provides funding for ten dual-degree students, providing each of them with both a Master of Library/Information Science degree and a Master of Public Administration degree and one Ph.D. student. "Partners include the National Archives and Records Administration, Town of Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources."
Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 3 (WILIS 3): Sustaining the Career Tracking Model through Data sharing
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded Dr. Joanne Marshall $298,385 (matching $85,637) for this project in which The School of Information and Library Science, the Institute on Aging, and the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will collaborate to document the process of data archiving and sharing. The major aims of WILIS 3 are to create publicly accessible de-identified datasets; to develop an interactive program-specific data system to enable library and information science programs to explore their own data and benchmark with other programs; and to produce a data archiving toolkit for use by other researchers.
North Carolina Bio-Preparedness (NCB-Prepared)
Dr. Richard Marciano (Co-Lead on Infrastructure) is part of a team that received a grant of $7.8 million from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to advance North Carolina's capabilities for bio-preparedness in early detection, warning, risk analysis, intervention, and predictive output by developing, testing, and implementing an advanced bio-surveillance system. It is a collaborative partnership between UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, SAS, and DHS.
Educating Librarians in the Middle East: Building Bridges for the 21st Century: ELIME-21
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded Dr. Barbara Moran and Dr. Javed Mostafa $891,451 (matching $538,925) for this project, which is based on a partnership between The School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the university’s Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilization. The project will launch a program to promote graduate-level education in library and information science at two universities–the American University in Cairo and Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. Six doctoral students will earn joint degrees from the two UNC programs and will be involved with SILS faculty in providing on-site and distance learning opportunities for students at the two universities. The project will help to prepare future U.S. library educators who are knowledgeable about the Middle East and will promote collaboration among libraries in areas such as collection development and cataloging of Arabic-language resources.
Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC)
Dr. Richard Marciano is serving as Data Sharing Facility Director for this project, funded by an $18.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. One of six science learning centers, TDLC's purpose (according to its website) is to understand how the element of time and timing is critical for learning, and to apply this understanding to improve educational practice.
Educating Stewards of Public Information in the 21st Century (ESOPI-21)
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded Dr. Helen Tibbo $800,000 to develop formal education programs in policy related to electronic records. Working with the National Archives and Records Administration, the University Archives at UNC-CH, and the State Archives of North Carolina, a dual master's degree program in public administration and library or information science with an emphasis in digital curation will be established. This project will provide scholarships for individuals seeking the dual degree, intensive field experiences in agencies dealing directly with public electronic records, and support for one PhD student studying in this area. It is hoped that this project will provide not only a model for other programs but also a cohort of highly trained individuals who will help government archives protect the public's interest in preserving electronic government records. This project is funded from 2009 to 2012.
P3: Connecting People, Past, and Place
Dr. Richard Marciano (co-PI) and Dr. Robert Allen (co-PI, UNC Department of History) received a UNC Arts & Sciences Interdisciplinary Initiative Grant of $10,000, which will provide pilot funding for P3. This project, according to its website, is intended to develop a software platform for harvesting and spatializing (mapping) historical data from the most comprehensive and publicly available sources of information about everyday life in early 20th-century America: city directories, newspapers, urban ground plans, and census enumerations. It is predicated on the belief that the value of data sources such as city directories is significantly increased by mapping individual data points.
Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 2 (WILIS2)
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded Dr. Joanne Marshall $101,000 to complete the "Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 2 (WILIS2)" project. This project will develop a shared alumni tracking system that all LIS programs can potentially use. The IMLS supplement provides an opportunity to include an additional 10 programs, including SILS and the other North Carolina programs that participated in WILIS 1. Juxtaposed, the two WILIS projects will provide information on SILS graduates from 1964 to 2009. There were several articles on WILIS 1 and other workforce-related issues in a special issue of Library Trends in November 2009.
Closing the Digital Curation Gap: An International Collaboration
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded $249,623 to Drs. Helen Tibbo, Richard J. Marciano and Cal Lee as part of a cooperative agreement to complete their project, "Closing the Digital Curation Gap: An International Collaboration." The project will include co-operation with The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Digital Curation Center (DCC) in the United Kingdom and attempts to establish/support a network of digital curation practitioners, researchers, and educators through face-to-face meetings, web-based communication, and various other information and communication technology (ICT) tools. Funding for the project was from October 2009 to September 2011.
Policy-Driven Repository Interoperability (PoDRI)
The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) has awarded Dr. Richard J. Marciano of the DICE Group a grant of $492,463 for his project, "Policy-Driven Repository Interoperability (PodDRI). The principal focus of PoDRI is to investigate the feasibility of interoperability mechanisms between repositories at the policy level. There is a growing trend toward cross-repository integration, driven by the need for scalable, open, and distributed environments, in which content can be leveraged in a variety of storage spaces. The research project focuses on the integration of an object model and a policy-aware distributed data model with Fedora and iRODS as representative open source software for each model. Other project partners include the Carolina Digital Repository, UNC Libraries’ institutional repository, which is based on an integrated Fedora/iRODS infrastructure. The findings and validation work of this project will benefit the library, archival, and museum communities through identification of cross-repository patterns for interoperability.
TUCASI data-Infrastructure Project (TIP)
This project, which is directly informed by Dr. Richard J. Marciano's "Policy-Driven Repository Interoperability (PoDRI)" project, was funded on September 2nd 2009 through the Research Triangle Foundation Board. TIP is a $2.7 million grant that brings together the three CIO's and the three Head Librarians from Duke, NC State, Chapel Hill, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and DICE, and looks at building shared collections across the Triangle universities through the federation of storage resources. Dr. Richard Marciano of the DICE Group will direct the project.
NARA Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded nearly $5 million for a continuing grant to Drs. Reagan W. Moore, Arcot K. Rajasekar and Richard J. Marciano, professors, for a project entitled, “NARA Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype.” The grant began Sept. 15, 2008 and has been “approved on scientific/technical merit” through 2012 pending available funds and scientific progress. The initial funding, which includes support from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), for year one is $953,988 with about the same award provided each year for a total of five years. The NARA Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype (TPAP) conducts research on fundamental preservation principles to inform the NARA Electronic Records Archive. The current project is developing a reference implementation for preservation environments that can be used as a starter kit. The goal is to identify the basic preservation rules and procedures that automate the management of persistent archives.
Multi-site Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Trials Management Registry
Dr. Javed Mostafa, SILS associate professor and co-investigator, and Dr. Lisa Lavange, principal investigator and director of the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center, were awarded $2,480,772 by the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation for the “Multi-site Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Trials Management Registry.” The three year grant is through the University’s Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center, Department of Biostatistics.
A Digital Repository for Preservation and Sharing of Data Underlying Published Works in Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Jane Greenberg, SILS Francis Carroll McColl Term Professor is co-principal investigator on a $650,999 grant from NSF for year one, with the full award being $2,186,179 pending good scientific progress over a 3.5 year period. The funding is for the development of the Dryad repository for research data underlying scientific publications in evolutionary biology and related disciplines. Dryad was initiated as a collaboration involving the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and the SILS Metadata Research Center. The project includes an extensive research/evaluation program for building and sustaining a robust and functional repository. Partners include: Duke University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (SILS MRC and Biology), University of New Mexico and Yale University.
Distributed Custodial Archival Preservation Environment (DCAPE)
Dr. Richard Marciano (PI) received a $257,800 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to head a center that will develop a cost-model for providing preservation services for electronic records developing an iRODS (integrate Rule-Oriented Data) ruleset to meet the needs of state archives.
DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners
Dr. Helen Tibbo, professor, received a grant for $878,634 from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a project entitled, “DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners.” Building upon an earlier funded project, SILS partnering with the National Archives and Records Administration and the University of Glasgow, will develop an international, doctoral curriculum and educational network in the management and preservation of digital materials across their life cycle. This project will prepare future faculty to perform research and teach, as well as provide summer institutes for cultural heritage information professionals already working in this arena. This project runs from 2008 to 2012.
Towards Evidence-Based Discovery
Dr. Cathy Blake, assistant professor, received a three-year grant of $449,317 from NSF for her project entitled, “Towards Evidence-Based Discovery.” The goal is to develop new text mining methods that are consistent with the manual processes that experts currently use to resolve contradictory and redundant evidence. Both discovery and synthesis are difficult activities for people. Plans are to develop a socio-technical strategy to achieve this goal. This study includes a longitudinal study of manual discovery and synthesis behaviors of a diverse network of faculty, policy makers, and students from UNC and the Research Triangle Park. “One of the most exciting components of the grant is a new interdisciplinary seminar on discovery science that will bring together faculty and students from around the campus, and the Human Side of Discovery Science workshop that will take place in year three,” said Blake.
Result Space Support for Personal and Group Information Seeking Over Time
Dr. Gary Marchionini, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor, received a three-year grant from NSF for $448,000 to study and develop the next generation of search systems. The project aims to develop techniques and systems that help people solve information problems that are complex, general, or ongoing and when information seeking takes place over multiple intervals or in collaboration with other people. The approach is to first study how people seek information and interpret results of searches as they use multiple systems over time and in collaboration with emphasis given to managing and optionally sharing result sets and items. Based on these initial investigations the team will build systems that support dynamic search and visualization and can serve both as a personal information manager and a group information manager and evaluate these tools in field and laboratory settings. The results of this research will provide guidance for designers of the next generation of systems that support a full range of information seeking needs and contribute open source tools that people can easily adopt as plug-ins to popular Web browsing software.
HIVE: Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering
Dr. Jane Greenberg is the PI on a funded project by IMLS entitled, “HIVE: Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering.” The co-PI on the project is Ryan Scherle from National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent). Bob Losee, professor, is senior staff/project principal and Kathy Wisser, director of Instructional Services, is the workshop leader/advisory board member. SILS doctoral students, Hollie White and Sarah Carrier, are also working on the project, which is approved for $334,699. The project is a collaboration between the SILS Metadata Research Center and the NESCent. The work connects to the recent NSF funded research for the Dryad repository; and the use of W3C standards will be applicable to other interdisciplinary repositories, libraries, etc.
Workshop: Coordinating EU-US Digital Library Education
Dr. Jeffrey Pomerantz, assistant professor, received a $26,213 grant from NSF for his project, “Workshop: Coordinating EU-US Digital Library Education.” The meeting is intended to develop and launch a coordinated international digital libraries curriculum project. The two-day collaborative workshop will bring together about 15 experts in information and computer science research and educational curriculum development.
Contact Us