The document discusses virtual communities and their role in advancing scholarship. It provides examples of real-life virtual communities like HarvestChoice and EthicShare that were developed to support specific scholarly communities. It describes the development process for EthicShare, a virtual research environment for practical ethics scholars, including assessing community needs, developing content and tools, and engaging the community through iterative design.

1. Virtual Communities: Catalysts for Advancing Scholarship Module 7: Libraries and Collaborative Research Communities Digital Libraries à la Carte 2009 John Butler <j-butl@umn.edu> Associate University Librarian for Information Technology University of Minnesota, USA

2. Outline Virtual Communities – some definitions Scholarly Practices as Context for Virtual Community Development Real-Life Virtual Communities precursors HarvestChoice EthicShare Governance & Sustainability VCs – Library Roles and Success Factors

3. Virtual Communities Defined Virtual Communities (VCs) Virtual Research Environments (VREs) Virtual Organizations (VOs) Virtual Organizations as Socio-technical Systems (VOSS) Collaboratories etc.

4. Virtual Organizations (U.S. NSF) A virtual organization is a group of individuals whose members and resources may be dispersed geographically, yet who function as a coherent unit through the use of cyberinfrastructure. Distributed across space, Distributed across time , Dynamic structures and processes , at every stage of the organizational lifecycle, Computationally enabled , via collaboration support systems, and Computationally enhanced Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical Systems (VOSS) -- NSF http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09540/nsf09540.htm

5. Virtual Organization as Process* Relationships with a broad range of potential partners Mobility and responsiveness of telecommunications to overcome problems of distance Timing , using responsiveness and availability to decide between alternatives Trust between actors separated in space for virtual organization to be effective Source: “Virtual Organization as Process: Integrating Cognitive and Social Structure Across Time and Space” Scott M. Preston

6. Whatever the name, what are they really about? The Scholarship

7. Scholarly Practices as Context for VC Development

8. Faculty & Graduate Students Behaviors Methodologies Perceptions Challenges Two phases: humanities & social sciences; sciences (physical, natural, life, health sciences communities): http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/scieval

9. Assessment Context Goal : Support the advancement of scholarship through understanding scholarly behavior, processes, and practices; then developing content & services that existing and new processes. Distributed context for scholarship Distributed environment for content and services Focus on the research processes Understand trajectory of research behaviors

10. Analytical Framework Categorize behaviors & identify “primitives” (Capture the processes, workflow) Analyze behavioral data, trends, relationships Identify potential tools/new services Prototype tools/services; solicit scholar feedback (iterative, release-feedback process)

11. Primitives University of Minnesota. “A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Academic Support (2005-2007)” http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon Discover Share Gather Create

12. Primitives => Behaviors Annotating Analyzing Reviewing & Rating Writing Describing University of Minnesota. “A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Academic Support (2005-2007)” http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon Collecting Organizing Discover Share Gather Create Serendipitous Finding Collaborative Finding Structured Finding Keeping Current Acquiring Publishing Teaching Data Sharing Rights

13. Primitives => Behaviors => DaTa Annotating Analyzing Reviewing & Rating Writing Describing Publishing Teaching Data Sharing Rights Collecting Organizing Discover Share Gather Create Serendipitous Finding Collaborative Finding Structured Finding Keeping Current Acquiring

17. Researcher’s Workflow Individual reputation management Institutional Research Output and Assessment

19. Real-Life Virtual Communities (+ precursors)

20. Began 1991 Rapid dissemination, open access Pre-prints physics, astronomy, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear science, quantitative biology and statistics Over 550K submissions to date; 50K/month Large-scale worldwide participation Facing economic challenges

21. Since 1995, sustained Open access, pre-print archive for agricultural and applied economics 35K submissions from over 150 academic institutions, professional societies, and government agencies worldwide

23. VC Characteristics Discipline/field focused Sustained Multi-institutional, global Adoption at significant levels Community contribution / investment

24. HarvestChoice

25. HarvestChoice Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Large-scale global project that supports the food policy analyst community Compiles, harmonizes, generates, and disseminates public goods information on the potential payoffs to smallholder farmers of production and marketing innovations in sub-Saharan Africa

26. Libraries role in HarvestChoice VC Development To build an innovative, integrated “biblio-spatial” search capability that blends the discovery spatial data, flat files and curated references to relevant scholarly literature.

27. Highly selective discovery base for food policy analysts seeking improvements in third world countries Unique aggregation and integrations (“bibliospatial” search)

30. HarvestChoice Google Map Query Interface: Household Attributes HarvestChoice Database Query Widget: Crop Production Reporting Tool

31. EthicShare A Collaborative Virtual Community for Ethics Scholars

32. Online research environment for information discovery and collaboration for practical ethics scholars and students Open & free to all – designed to enable multi-institutional collaboration between all scholars regardless of affiliation, but account creation is not restricted Developed by the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, Libraries, and Department of Computer Science & Engineering Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, Council on Library and Information Resources

33. EthicShare Partnerships Data: National Library of Medicine - PubMed & Catalog data OCLC – WorldCat data Other Publishers – in negotiations Web Services: OCLC – Registry Services University Centers: Georgetown University – Bioethics Thesaurus Governance and Presentations at Societies by partners from: University of Virginia, Indiana University- Bloomington, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis and Stanford University

34. Bioethics Community Engaged in “…consideration of issues in human values as they relate to health services, the education of healthcare professionals and research .” -- American Society for Bioethics and Humanities

35. The Cycle of Assessment Assess…Develop…Engage…Again Specify Engage/ Evaluate Assess Develop

36. Initial Community Assessment Planning Grant: Identifying and tuning collaborative technologies for a specific community of researchers Held 5 site visits – U of Minnesota University of Indiana University of Indiana – Purdue University – Indianapolis University of Virginia Georgetown University “ How do you know what you don’t know?” Bioethics scholars didn’t use collective work sites or technologies.

39. High quality ( selective/filtered ) content; mixing scholarly and popular sources Access to all relevant material types ( full text ), from all academic fields (highly interdisciplinary) Ability to have private work space Space for (global) community discussion, exchange, commentary Reputation security; “trust controls” Community Requirements (Defined through focus groups, surveys)

40. Requirements Community Emerging field Unique content requirements Scholarly networking interests, but… Legacy humanists practices High value on trust and reputation Sponsor Advance scholarship Collaborative technologies

41. EthicShare Abstracted : Virtual Research Environment Components Collection Development Content selection & aggregation Harvesting Ingest ETL CONTENT Discovery Tools Faceted searching Tags and ontology Recommendations Drupal, Solr ACCESS Policy & Sustainability Editorial policies Community value User privacy Intellectual Property GOVERNANCE Engagement & Collaboration Social dynamics Editorial participation Drupal COMMUNITY

42. ethicshare.org

43. EthicShare Site Functionality – Data Search Community-defined aggregation of content Faceted results (to include all EthicShare data) Link to full-text through your OpenURL resolver 500K records (diverse sourcing) Save , organize , export citations Contribute content to the database Find information about upcoming events, deadlines, news, etc...

44. EthicShare Site Functionality – Personal and Group Review your online activity Search history Recently viewed citations Make lists, recommendations Tag citations – personal and community Join or create groups private or public to share citations, discuss ideas, upload files, and work collaboratively User Directory and Profiles

45. My EthicShare – Personal View

47. Intelligent Linking Group Posting Tagging

48. Link Resolver Registry

49. Intelligent Linking Service Link Resolution – delivering an OpenURL linking service in a multi-institutional context, which allows users from any institution with a link resolver to access the full text of a resources (if their institution provides access to that resource). Visitors from over 900 institutions

50. EthicShare Groups Groups I belong to Privacy Setting

53. Usage Pattern Matching – “Recommendations”

54. Community-tailored Services Data Aggregation for Discovery Aggregation and Service Architecture

55. Automated ETL Process

56. Drupal Modules used in EthicShare

57. Drupal – “Community Plumbing”

58. Engage and Evaluate - Iterative Design Beta Testing - Feedback Loops

59. Iterative Usability Analyses

60. Adoption Evidence Account Creation – open to all – the site is designed to enable collaboration between all scholars regardless of affiliation, but account creation is not restricted

61. Technology Adoption Source : Sociological model developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers, later modified by Geoffrey Moore.

62. Motivating Community Contribution Collective Effort Model People will contribute more if: They believe their effort is important to the group They like the group Smaller is Better Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1980 People feel greater concern when the reference group they’re part of grows smaller. Specificity Matters Small & Loewenstein, 2003 Specific identity of those helped is important in drawing people’s support.

63. Publishing, Access, and Dissemination: Capture of community’s fugitive content; user submissions Gray literature contributions Digital collections (OAI-harvests), video/audio, art objects Curricular Materials/ Learning Objects Site Features: Recommenders Bioethics policy development support Five-Year Sustainability Plan Release the VRC Technology Stack and Development Model EthicShare … the future

64. ? Scholar Images Video Books News Data Knol What’s next… Future EthicShare Architecture? Data Aggregation for Discovery Community-tailored Services

65. Governance & Sustainability

66. Who “owns,” builds, runs, and sustains a VC? Producers Sponsors Mellon Found., NSF, CLIR Univ. Libraries Development Team tech. (lib.) content (lib.) research (CSci) domain (ethics) Partners OCLC NLM Consumers / Community EthicShare User Base Professional Societies User Advisory Panel faculty and graduate stud. EthicShare Users large-scale feedback Governance Principal Investigators – Lib Director, CSci Professor, Ethics Director Governance Board Senior Fac./ Center Dir. from 6 U.S. ethics research centers.

67. Sustainability – Economic Framework Economically sustainable academic resources require: Recognition of benefits Incentives for decision-makers to act Selection Efficiency Appropriate organization and governance -- Brian Lavoie (Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access)

68. Library Role in Virtual Communities Functional Roles “ Communities of practice” assessment and effective research environment design Content selection and access Preservation of community assets Tool development, calibration, and integration Catalyst for collaboration

69. VC Critical Success Factors Discipline/field focused Sustained Multi-institutional, global (hopefully) Adoption via value impact Community contribution/investment Intellectual Collegial Sustainable Model Governance Economic Technology Partnerships Builds / leverages scholarly collaboration and exchange Scale of everything network effect data leveraging potentials

70. Virtual Communities: Catalysts for Advancing Scholarship Module 7: Libraries and Collaborative Research Communities Digital Libraries à la Carte 2009 John Butler <j-butl@umn.edu> Associate University Librarian for Information Technology University of Minnesota, USA