UniPR Co-Lab Report of the activities carried out by the Digital Co-Laboratory academic year 2010-2011 academic year 2011-2012
Learning, sharing, collaborating
Introduction Anna Maria Tammaro UNIPR Co-Lab is a digital co-laboratory born in 2010 as a research center to support both professors and students of the University of Parma, in particular of the humanities. This report is the first report on the activities of the co-laboratory and it aims at offering an overview on the needs it is intended to meet, on the first results obtained as well as the prospects for the next future. A Co-Laboratory was first defined by William Wulf in 1989: “center without walls, in which the nation’s researchers can perform their research without regard to physical location, interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing information in digital libraries” (Wulf, 1989) Bly (1998) underlined the interdisciplinary nature of such a center: “a system which combines the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tooloriented computing and communication systems to support scientific collaboration” (Bly, 1998, p. 31) UNIPR Co-Lab was inspired by these definitions, as well as by several similar models which are being born in many Italian and foreign universities (a list of them is accessible at: http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet/centers/), so as to create a bridge between the technological infrastructure and the current research and teaching organization. The University of Parma is undergoing a very important change, like all other universities in this difficult period of crisis. We wondered what contribution the Co-Lab could give to make it easier to reach the institutional goals, and we resolved to promote initiatives of informative and coordination nature aimed at the improvement of the quality indexes based on which the University will be able to get rewarding evaluations, together with fund raising activities (Performance Plan of the University 2011/2013). The Co-Laboratory is first of all a research and teaching experimentation center where you can learn the various opportunities which are made available by the digital infrastructure of the University of Parma to improve learning. Secondly, UNIPR Co-Lab is an open collaborative context where it is easier to share resources and competences with regard to agreed research topics. Lastly, UNIPR Co-Lab is intended as a reference context to face the daily
teaching and research problems and needs, such as projects, events, international collaborations, with the aim of offering a guidance on the technologies which are available to improve the results and visibility of projects. To reach these objectives, UNIPR Co-Lab gathered a community of professors and researchers and the first groups of students engaged in particular educational projects, all working together on the first research topics. This report on our activities aims at giving an overview on the realizations and collaborations which are being born within the Co-Lab, with the details of the projects, the calendar of the events, the list of all those who contributed to them as professors, students, staff and visiting professors. You can get further information through the various information channels which have been activated on the web. UNIPR Co-Lab is supported by the technological infrastructure of the Technical Support Service for teaching and e-learning (S.I.T.A.) and has self-financed its activities thanks to the contributions received from the programs and projects in which it has been involved. Thus, it has been possible to invite foreign professors for the interdisciplinary Seminars and start relations with other universities and with the institutions which are active in the region, by involving researchers and scholars at different levels of their career. The first thanks shall be addressed to all those, from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, who have worked together with me to create and develop UNIPR CO-Lab and who have kindly put at everybody’s disposal their particular competences, by sharing the vision of collaborative work. UNIPR Co-Lab has been characterized, since its beginning, by the voluntary work of professors, students and some members of the staff, who have accepted the risks of experimentation and interdisciplinary exchange and also faced controversial topics such as the application of informatics to humanities, always trying to build “bridges� with other cultural institutions of the region. Many ideas and projects have been put into practice so far, many other, and even more, have been suggested and proposed by the students and professors who took part in the initiative. The enthusiasm of some professors and students, in particular young doctoral candidates, interested in an integrated and interdisciplinary approach, has been really captivating. UNIPR Co-Lab is now pursuing the objective of becoming an Interdepartmental Research Center. The reason is that it needs a favorable context and an institutional support to offer a reliable infrastructure to an always increasing number of professors and students. This first report also wants to give an overview on what can be done from now on, so that the Co-Lab continues to be collaborative, interdisciplinary and innovative as it has always been so far. Parma, 3rd May 2012
Overview on the activities The first period of activity of UNIPR Co-Lab was a phase of experimentation and start-up of the infrastructure. The accomplishments as well as the aims reached are described following our main objectives:
learning, sharing, collaborating.
Learning
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The first need that UNIPR Co-Lab wanted to meet was the support to teaching, starting from the need to make the students more collaborative and active in their learning process. To reach this objective, professors were interviewed so that the first needs could emerge.
Evaluation of learning – statistics, online exams The first problem we focused on concerned the evaluation of learning and the possibility of using the tools at disposition for your self-evaluation, by supplying online questionnaires. This activity was based above all on the experimentation of online written exams and on the subsequent analysis of their results. The students of the course in Digital Publishing first experimented such online written exams and were involved in the following inquiry, so as to know their perception together with the their eventual difficulties. They were asked these questions: 1) Please indicate your degree of satisfaction, from 1 to 4, with the online exam. 2) Have you had any specific problems with regard to the online exam? 62% of the interviewed students who had taken the online exam filled in the questionnaire. The degree of satisfaction turned out to be high and none of the students indicated the minimum degree of satisfaction. None of the students declared he had had any specific problems. During the exam the students showed that they had analyzed the eventual mistakes made, thanks to the feedback immediately received online, and that they had investigated the topics, thus reaching a better comprehension of them.
The success of this experimentation led to the consideration of possible applications, such as the possibility of a formative evaluation (repeated in different phases of the course) for attending and not attending students, so as to distribute the study uniformly during the course, to make it more useful for learning.
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Study groups The creation of study groups was fostered to achieve more participation in lessons and a better knowledge of the tools at disposition. The current e-learning infrastructure is mostly used as a repository of teaching material, without taking full advantage of all existing possibilities of interaction between students and professors. The study groups were involved in the preparation of presentations and works connected with the course (by creating wiki documents, videos, integrated research reports), which helped to make the attending students participate more actively and lively in the lessons.
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Some tutorials and seminars which were subsidiary to the course were especially made for the students of the study groups.
We created for example the seminar “An open source system for the video-recording of lessons, seminars, events: OpenEyA”, a tutorial for university students of the course in “Digital Publishing and Digital Humanities”. The students attended the tutorial, saw a video interview to the staff of the Science Dissemination Unit of the Center for Theoretical Physics of Trieste (ICTP), with which UNIPR Co-Lab cooperates, and directly experimented the use of the system in the classroom. The students were then able to autonomously register the lessons and seminars organized by UNIPR CoLab.
Academic writing We tried to do more for the students with regard to the writing of the dissertation, for which we supplied a support to the research methodology and the structuring of the final work. UNIPR Co-Lab put a virtual space at disposition to collect support materials and foster the collaboration among students. The experimentation was started within the International Master DILL by trying to foster the exchange of experiences and the sharing of the same resources among students writing their dissertation at the three partner universities. Two different meetings were made and registered as videoconferences during which the students shared S their presentations of the works in progress, thus getting a feedback from the Mix-Me professors as well as from the other students. Moreover, the first e-book was made, of a general nature, on how to write the dissertation.
MIX-MeS uncourse course for professors The creation of the “uncourse course” MIX-MeS (As you like it) was based on the needs of researchers and professors, who were interviewed and defined some topics themselves, as this is an online and face-to-face experimentation laboratory where you can learn and at the same time make multimedia research and teaching projects on the web, where you can knowingly choose the mix of appropriate solutions after having reviewed them and checked them in practice.
Learning
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Online internship A space within the platform UNIPR Co-Lab helps the students of the International Master DILL to find the available internship offers and the activities foreseen by the agreements that the University negotiated with the employers. The support given by UNIPR Co-Lab was also useful to monitor the internship period, with short weekly reports that the students put into the suitable virtual space, including a constant reflection, both by students and professors, on the reaching of the educational objectives.
Multimedia active learning Gillian Mansfield felt the need to find new ways to foster the students’ active participation in her course in English Language and Translation (Specialization Course) and accepted the suggestion to start an experimentation with the students attending her course. A tutorial explained the students that the platform is an environment of active interaction and not just a repository of contents, and that they would be evaluated based on their suggestions and support to the colleagues, besides their knowledge and competences. Up to now, our observations have underlined that students react actively, with enthusiasm, whenever interaction and participation are suggested and adequately fostered. We didn’t just checked quantitatively the number of answers given in the forums, but we observed the type of interactions carried out on the platform, and their content as for emotional involvement and reciprocal support among students. The students open new discussions and suggest ideas and new points of view, and don’t just answer the messages posted by the professor. The key words that emerged within the course and were put into practice are discussion, participation, feedback, sharing. The technician/researcher cannot be always at their disposal, but the students’ virtuous circle showed that they can make up for this lack. The students are so willing to participate that they share their knowledge of how to use the tools, as well as the instructions which are necessary to solve the problems connected with the use of technology. This experience has shown that a reasonable use of the virtual space improves the quality of conversation. The enthusiasm and active participation of the professor-trainer, who punctually answers and gives hints and motivations, are fundamental. UNIPR Co-Lab has had a support role through the continuous collaboration and dialogue among e-learning experts and professors.
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Folksonomy for learning
Elisabetta Longhi decided to devote a lot of her energy to the update of the useful links for German learning which are published online in the website of the multimedia language laboratory of the Department for Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Parma (http://160.78.69.100), thus getting ideas and reflection hints for Folksonomy. At the end of the courses in German Language and Translation the students are evaluated with regard to the levels established by the Goethe Institute; therefore, the courses must foresee the necessary exercises for the preparation, but in some periods the multimedia laboratory is crowded. As a consequence, an alternative form of exercise was suggested, based on searching for and sharing links to useful resources for German learning. The suggestion of social bookmarking and corresponding folksonomy is due to the fact that, through the individual tagging and subsequent sharing, the acquisition of new knowledge is sped up thanks to a progressive creation of a network of users identified by key words. A tool of social bookmarking can be reached from any place at any time, provided that there is an Internet connection, so the possibility of bookmarking and tagging is enhanced in comparison with local systems. The distance learning platform Moodle provides tools which could be used to achieve similar results, but the use of an online tool allows you an eventual reuse for teaching and common information of the work made by each group of students. Step 1: show how easy it is to archive links Step 2: let the students try it out Step 3: gather the archived links by key words and share them Step 4: foster reflection by comparing the different tags used to catalogue the resources, and stimulate the discussion through online comments. A tutorial was made to inform the students on why and how this tool can be used.
Tutorial on Social Bookmarking
Sharing and collaborating Research topics Collaboration has been our objective since the beginning, together with interdisciplinarity, so as to build virtual spaces for communication and sharing. The initial idea of UNIPR Co-Lab was to direct the collaboration towards yearly research topics which could gather different communities of professors and students around common interests. UNIPR Co-Lab focused in its first year of activity on three interest topics arisen at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy: »» Digital publishing, »» Digital humanities, »» Internationalization. The first feature of the three topics chosen is interdisciplinarity, i.e. the common cross-interest for groups of three or more professors interested in how digital technologies can change the diffusion of publications, the research in the field of humanities and international teaching. The second feature of these three topics is that they meet both teaching and research needs. The students of different courses who were involved in the experimentation performed group works and studied on their own too, like researchers, under the professors’ supervision, so as to define the problems and opportunities emerging from the applications of digital technologies to humanities. This experience has contributed to improve the critical thinking and technological skills of all students who participated in UNIPR Co-Lab, involved at various levels of engagement. The research topics for the next year will be discussed and selected through a competition of ideas among all professors and students who are taking part in UNIPR Co-Lab.
Digital Publishing This topic has explored the new challenges of e-books and their possible impact on the publishing market and on the chain of information diffusion. These problems were discussed in particular with representatives of publishing houses, with professionals and with secondary school students, also by starting a first collaboration with the Palatina Library, with which the Workshop “The future of the book” was organized. The university students of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy were encouraged to follow the Workshop and the secondary school students were given 1 credit, in case of their future registration at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Parma. In the specific field of scientific communication, we investigated the opportunities of multimedia Open Access and Open Educational Resources through a series of seminars in English, during the Open Access Week, held by international professors and open to all students. The research made by UNIPR Co-Lab is characterized by its combination with experimentation and practical application. Digital books were made as a result of the studies on e-books and on social reading.
UNIPR Co-Lab started a collaboration between the Municipality of Sala Baganza and the University which foresees the experimentation of the OpenEyA system by involving the students for the registration of the meetings of the Municipal Council. This activity is, in itself, an experience of transparency connecting different kinds of “actors” as regards both their professional profile and the cooperation between institutions. The experimentation foresees a first phase in which UNIPR Co-Lab is organizing the video registration and the training of the Municipality staff which will be involved.
Digital Humanities The awareness of the importance that the computer and telematic tools have got in the world of humanities too is already very widespread, in spite of the initial resistances. UNIPR Co-Lab has tried to explore the current use of digital resources by professors of the humanities, and their eventual impact on research modes and on the progress of the specific knowledge of the subjects. The Seminars on Digital Humanities Series 2011 were parallel to the Course in Digital Publishing and Digital Humanities and were part of the activities of UNIPR Co-Lab, which collaborated as for the video interviews and the registration and the subsequent publishing of the e-proceedings.
Internationalization Through the video registration of the events, the application of e-learning technologies and the diffusion on the social networks, UNIPR Co-Lab has made the seminars and all other initiatives of international exchange which were organized available not only to the students, but to all those who are interested in these topics. The first series of seminars, under the title “Digital Librarianship and Information Society”, was held within the International Master DILL (Digital Library Learning) and involved the International Library Ilaria Alpi, based in Parma. Experts coming from various European universities and from other nations such as US, New Zealand, Australia, came to Parma and took part in the seminars thanks to a DILL scholarship. We invited to take part in the seminars, besides students, the professionals managing digital collections and services based on them, and all people interested in information politics, such as journalists and administrators. A second cycle of seminars was held within the Project Tempus NMPLIS, by involving the Universities of Barcelona, Middlesex London, Aberdeen, Rezekne together with Georgia, Armenia and Uzbekistan. The seminars concerned the impact of the Bologna Process on university education in Europe, and a Summer School was organized in Georgia to train the trainers of the partner universities. A virtual class of Co-Lab was used for the fruition and interactive discussion of the seminars.
Sharing and Collaborating
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Publications The shift from paper to digital shouldn’t be considered just as a change of support, but as the possibility of new interactive forms for the diffusion of academic writing as well as new possibilities of facilitating the visibility of the University from outside through multimedia documents.
e-books UNIPR Co-Lab experimented innovative forms of self-publishing and the following e-books were produced:
Tammaro A. M. Biblioteche digitali e scienze umane
(Digital libraries and humanities) This book is the new edition of the two volumes published in 2008 by the publishing house Casalini Digital. Unlike the previous edition, which you could download from the Internet in pdf format and corresponded to a paper edition with the same title, this e-book is a revision which allows you totally new opportunities of interactivity.
It makes use of Bookliners (www.bookliners.com), a platform where you can perform a system of social reading, by inserting comments and saving quotations, for a kind of socialization of the text. The objective is that the students, who study this book as their text book, can read and share the annotations with other students directly online, thus trying to transfer on the web the work of the study groups. The “social reading” was expected to give the students the possibility of giving and receiving advice on how to further investigate the topics, spreading the word of mouth online and getting to know people with similar interests, creating online reading groups, gathering people around a topic. The agreement with Bookliners foresees that UNIPR Co-Lab can manage, through a publisher access, the opportunity of experimenting the upload of texts and the creation of groups. Within such experimentation Sara Valla, a member of UniPR Co-Lab, created the reading groups UniPR Co-Lab and Silmarillion.
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Umanisti e risorse digitali (Humanists and digital resources), edited by A.M. Tammaro
This book collects the e-proceedings of the Seminars on digital humanities which were held in 2011 at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. It also includes the video interviews and presentations during the seminars. The e-book was published by using the Italian platform Narcissus.
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The book gives international students some orientation in the preparation of their dissertation and it is in English. An e-book was created and published by using the international platform Lulu (http://www.lulu.com) for self-publishing. Lulu is used by several universities as a platform for the creation of e-books and their online diffusion.
Academic Writing
DOING RESEARCH IN LIS AND ACADEMIC WRITING
Sue Myburgh UniPr Co-Lab
electronic journals As for electronic journals, thanks to a sponsorship received from the Foundation Digital Renaissance and in cooperation with the Universities of Florence, Pisa and Udine, we focused on the application of the Open Access to electronic journals. As a result of such cooperation for electronic journals, we started the international journal “Papyrotheke”, directed by Prof. Andorlini.
Open Educational Resources Open Educational Resources in multimedia form were created and made available under the license Creative Commons on the video server Youunipr.it and inside the platform arranged by UniPR Co-Lab for the innovative experimentation of e-learning, in a form which is accessible to guests too. 42 videos have been put on you.unipr.it since September 2011 and on 19th April 2012 the videos by UniPR Co-Lab were 28,5% of all videos which were available on the video server (147). Among these, 17 videos are part of the International Master DILL and 27 were created by the OpenEyA system.
Subtitled video interview Anna Maria Tammaro interviewed R. David Lankes, author of “The Atlas of New Librarianship” and winner in 2012 of the ABC.CLIO/Greenwood Award for the best text in the field of the librarianship literature. The video interview, in English, is undertitled in Italian thanks to the cooperation with the coordinator and professors of the Master in Audiovisual Translation of the University of Parma (METAV). It was broadcasted in mid-March during the congress “The new alphabets of library” at the Foundation Stelline in Milan and published on the video channel CoLab, where it was displayed more than a thousand times from different nations, also thanks to the possibility of embedding it into external blogs.
Sharing and collaborating
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Projects, seminars, events UNIPR Co-Lab actively cooperated in the organization of interdisciplinary seminars and events as well as international projects. The following list is chronologically ordered:
Workshop “Online teaching and learning”, 16th March 2012 Case studies »» »» »» »» »»
Luisa Marquardt: Between librarianship and education: lessons learnt by teaching Matilde Fontanin: E-learning, blended learning and professional training Sara Valla: A digital laboratory for online teaching and learning Patrizia Luperi: Training in the libraries of the University of Pisa: from credits to customized student placements Elena Corradini: Cooperative face-to-face and distance learning. Some examples of international courses
Discussion: What is the best definition of learning? How can it be evaluated?
Seminar Il futuro del libro 2011 “The future of the book” The Seminar belongs to a cycle of seminars under the title “Has the book got a future?”, organized by the Palatina Library and the Bodoni Museum in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Parma, the classical lycée “G.D. Romagnosi” and the institute for arts “P. Toschi”. The project aims at analyzing the development of publishing in the light of the evolution of the new technologies, and it is intended as a development of the didactical activity destined to both university and secondary school students. 16th November 2011 Luca Formenton, president of the publishing group “Il Saggiatore” The choices made by the publishing companies 1st December 2011 Annamaria Tammaro The future of the book
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Parma Beyond the border 2011 Open Conference Program on Digital Librarianship and Information Society "Parma beyond the border 2011"
Jointly organized by the International Library Ilaria Alpi and the International Master in Digital Library Learning of the University of Parma (DILL)
7th September 2011 Digital library Collections - Fit for the digital age: Reorganisation and restructuring of the Bavarian State Library (BSB) for tackling the challenges of the digital library Dr. Klaus Kempf 11th September 2011 Digital library System Prof. Ian Witten 12th October 2011 Freedom of Information and Access to Knowledge Global and Local Perspectives on Information and Library Work Thoughts from 35 Years of Professional Travel Prof. Paul Sturges 25th October 2011 International librarianship and digital library: trends and development Prof. Alex Byrne Prof. Joan Stein Prof. Monika Segbert 9th November 2011 Open Access to Knowledge Dr. Steve W. Witt
Sharing and Collaborating Seminars on Digital Humanities Series 2011 The Seminars on Digital Humanities Series 2010/2011 are interdisciplinary and parallel to the course on Digital Humanities and Publishing; they are part of the activities carried out by Co-Lab, the virtual laboratory for the application of the new technologies to teaching at the University of Parma. 9th November 2011
Nicola Reggiani Digital resources and classical studies: the case of papyrology 16th November 2011
Simone Bordini Medieval studies and new media: status quaestionis and prospects 23rd November 2011
Federico Monaco Innovation and knowledge: from the book to the e-book 30th November 2011
Elisabetta Longhi Online resources for language learning 7th December 2011
Marco Moderato Between the pick and the iPad: the web 2.0 and the new technologies in the archeological research 14th December 2011
Nausicaa Milani Digito ergo sum. Research strategies and philosophical database in the web age 21st December 2011
Francesca Zanella Digital resources for the history of art
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Nmplis Tempus – June 2011
Study School on the university accreditation systems organized by the University of Parma and the University of Barcelona. The aim of the Study School is to analyze all aspects connected with the Quality Assurance (QA) of training in the fields of librarianship and information science, as well as to analyze the methods suggested by the Bologna Process for the improvement of the teaching quality.
Presentation of the activities carried out by the Co-Laboratory Bobcatsss 2012 Amsterdam - Information in e-motion 20th International Conference on Information Science 24th January 2012, Amsterdam Presentation of UNIPR Co-Lab “Parma Co-Lab: Constructing Crossroad Environment Between Research and Teaching” First international presentation of UNIPR Co-Lab
International joint workshop ICTP – UNESCO "New Trends for Science Dissemination" 26th September 2011, Trieste Siel2011 VIII National Conference of the Italian e-Learning Society 14th-16th September 2011, Reggio Emilia Presentation: “A CO-Laboratory at the University of Parma for the creation of and access to multimedia teaching contents”
TEAM (University of Parma) Anna Maria Tammaro e-mail: annamaria.tammaro@unipr.it Anna Maria Tammaro teaches Digital Publishing and Digital Librarianship in Parma, she’s the local Coordinator of the International Master in Digital Library Learning (DILL) and the Rector’s Delegate for distance learning. She’s the Chair of the IFLA Division Support Services and member of the Governing Board.
Sara Valla e-mail: sara.valla@unipr.it She has been a computer technician at the University of Parma since 1998. She has been specifically concerned with online learning since 2009 and her current field of interest is the support to experimentation of innovative methods for teaching and research. She was the technical coordinator of the European Master in Audiovisual Translation (METAV) in the year 2010-2011, provided consultancy and technical support in the Italian semester 2011-2012 of the International Master DILL. She’s coordinating the OpenEyA experimentation for UniPR Co-Lab.
Gillian Mansfield e-mail: gillian.mansfield@unipr.it Associate professor of English language and Translation. Coordinator of the degree courses in Foreign Modern Languages and Civilizations and European and Euro-American Languages and Literatures, and President of the teaching and research area “English”. Teaching coordinator of the Multimedia Language Laboratory for language self-learning. Secretary General CercleS (European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education). Her main research topics are Teaching Translation Skills, Media Language and Lifelong Language Learning.
Elisabetta Longhi e-mail: elisabetta.longhi@unipr.it Grantee and Lecturer in German Language and Translation. She got a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures (German, English and French) in 2002 and a Master in Applied Foreign Languages for the International Commerce in 2003. From 2005 to 2007 she was tutor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, where she has taught German since 2007. Since 2010 she has been concerned with the application of the new media to German teaching and while she was attending the training course “Multimedia-Führerschein” organized by the Goethe Institute she began to experiment all suggestions received in her daily teaching practice.
Maria Valero Gisbert mariajoaquina.valerogisbert@unipr.it She got her doctor’s degree in Linguistics in 1998 at the University of Valencia. She has been a researcher at the University of Parma since 2002. Teaching Coordinator of the European Master in Audiovisual Translation (METAV) at the University of Parma, in cooperation with the Independent University of Barcelona. Her main research topic is the theory and practice of translation.
Nicola Reggiani e-mail: nicola.reggiani@nemo.unipr.it He has got a doctor’s degree in History and he’s a Research Fellow in Greek History. He attended the Papyrological Summer Institute at the Stanford University and the SoSOL Training Session in Durham (USA); he’s taking part in the International Seminar on Unpublished Papyri of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. He got the study prize “The resources of Papyrological informatics applied to the study of professional knowledge”. He’s a Teaching Assistant in Papyrology at the University of Parma, where he’s participating in some digital projects such as the Online Corpus of Greek Papyri on Medicine; he’s also the Associate Editor/Journal Manager of the electronic journal Papyrotheke.
Nausicaa Elena Milani e-mail: nausicaa.milani@gmail.com Ph.D. student in history of the modern philosophy. She studies the development of Cartesianism in France in the second half of the 17th century, with regard to Pierre Sylvain Régis’s thought and his fortune in the European culture. She was a member of the scientific committee of the international conference “Johannes Hevelius – the burger of Gdansk, and his work”, organized in Gdansk by the Scientific Society of Gdansk.
Federico Monaco e-mail: federico.monaco@nemo.unipr.it He got a doctor’s degree at the University of Parma, where he teaches Demoethnoanthropological Sciences. His research topics are in the field of STS studies (Science, Technology and Society). He has been working for a long time in the fields of education and intercultural cooperation. His studies focus on knowledge infrastructures and on the relationship between information and society.
Francesca Zanella e-mail: francesca.zanella@unipr.it Experienced academic researcher. She has been teaching since the academic year 2001/2002, first History of Architecture and design at the Degree Course in Preservation of Cultural Property in the fields of Entertainment and New Media and then History of Contemporary Architecture at the Specialization Course in History of Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Arts.
VISITING PROFESSORS Ian H. Witten University of Waikato - New Zealand e-mail: ian.witten@gmail.com Ian H. Witten is professor of Computer Science at the University of Walkato in New Zealand, where he is at the head of the New Zealand Digital Library Project. He’s one of the developers of the software Greenstone for the construction and distribution of digital collections. He got a Master in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, in England, a master in computing science at the University of Calgary, in Canada, and a doctoral degree in electronic engineering at the Essex University, in England. He got the Prize IFIP 2004 Namur, a recognition granted for “contributions to the awareness of the social implications of information technologies, and the necessity of an holistic approach to their use”, and the Service 2005 SIGKDD Award, granted for his extraordinary contribution to the research field of “data mining”.
Lillian Cassel Villanova University e-mail: cassel@acm.org She is a professor at the Villanova University and collaborates in the program NSF NSDL. CITI-DEL is the component of calculation collection of this digital library, which aims at improving learning in all fields. Her teaching and research interests focus on digital libraries and the information retrieval on the web.
David Lankes Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS) e-mail: rdlankes@iis.syr.edu R. David Lankes is dean of the iSchool of the Syracuse University (IIS). He’s involved in research projects such as the Educator’s Reference Desk of the and NSF National Science Digital Library. Dr. Lankes is co-founder of the project AskERIC awarded in 1992 and worked as a director of the Clearinghouse ERIC Information & Technology from 1998 to 2003. Furthermore, he founded the project of Virtual Reference Desk, which aims at building a national network of competences for learning.
Klaus Kempf Bavarian State Library e-mail: kempf@bsb-muenchen.de Since 2000 Klaus Kempf has been the Director of the department for the development of collections and catalogues, as well as of the division Digital Library at the Bavarian State Library. He is an expert and consultant in the management of libraries, in particular with regard to the reorganization and reengineering, the management of staff and the buildings of the library; he has participated in several consultancy projects at regional, national and international level. Furthermore, he’s the author of many publications appeared in professional journals on various topics connected with the management of libraries.
Gabriele Messmer Bavarian State Library Gabriele Messmer studied librarianship at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich. She’s chief cataloguer at the Department for the acquisition and development of the collections and catalogues and head of the division Digitalization of the Munich Digitalization Center at the Bavarian State Library in Munich and teacher at the Bavarian Library School.
Susan (Sue) Myburgh E-mail: hopeisland1@yahoo.co.uk Professor at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. Her study and work experience covers both theory and practice throughout the five continents (South Africa, North America, Australia, Europe and South-Eastern Asia). Her research interests are in the fields of document management, knowledge management, record management, strategic information and technology management.
Paul Sturges University of Loughborough UK e-mail: R.P.Sturges@lboro.ac.uk Professor emeritus at the University of Loughborough in the United Kingdom and Professor extraordinarius at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His current research is to explore and discuss the aspects of intellectual freedom through a series of conferences and papers on topics such as the reason for intellectual freedom, tolerance and freedom of expression, the role of transparency in the fight against corruption and comedy as freedom of expression.
Alex Byrne University of Technology Sydney e-mail: Alex.Byrne@uts.edu.au State Librarian & Chief Executive of New South Wales, Sidney. Byrne has a lot of experience in libraries and universities all around Australia, together with a deep experience in the digital technology and a particular interest in the knowledge of indigenous natives. He was the President of IFLA from 2005 to 2007.
VISITING PROFESSORS Joan Stein
Carnegie Mellon University e-mail: joan@andrew.cmu.edu Reference Librarian/Interlibrary Loan Coordinator and director of the public services at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries
Monika Elbert
eIFL.net Foundation e-mail: info@monikasegbert.com She graduated in librarianship at the University of Munich (Bavaria). She lived and worked in various countries – Germany, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Russia, Budapest, and she has had practical work experience at public libraries, national libraries and special libraries. Her recent experiences include the collaboration with the research program of the European Union on Digital Libraries, the introduction of the new information and communication technologies in the Russian State Library in Moscow and the participation in European programs for the creation of the European digital library “Europeana”. She has cooperated with the Consortium EIFL since its beginning in 2000.
Steve Witt
e-mail: swwitt@ad.uiuc.edu Web: http://cgs.illinois.edu/content/steve-witt-0 Director of the International and Area Studies Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Luisa Marquardt
Faculty of Education Science – University “Roma Tre”, Rome e-mail: marquardt@uniroma3.it She’s professor of “Bibliography and librarianship” at the University Roma Tre and advisor for CASPUR. She’s an expert in school libraries. She’s a member of CNBS and of the Work Group for International Relationships. She’s a member of AIDA. Founder member of ENSIL. Director of IASL Europe for the period 2009-2011.
Matilde Fontanin
University of Trieste – University Library System Library of the Seat of Gorizia e-mail: fontanin@pug.units.it She has been working at the academic libraries since 1995. She holds face-to-face and blended English courses for librarians and she’s concerned with e-learning and the training of the library staff. She has been a member of the IFLA Standing Committee CPDWL since 2009.
Patrizia Luperi
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy – University of Pisa e-mail: luperi@rom.unipi.it She works at the Library System of the University of Pisa, where she’s in charge of e-learning. She’s concerned with placements and traineeships at the library and holds face-to-face and distance “Courses on bibliographic information” for the acquisition of free credits at the Faculties of Philosophy and Languages. She’s an advisor for projects aimed at the diffusion of reading and in 2010 she won two national prizes (Premio Città del Libro and Premio Verdigi); she directs a literature collection for teenagers (Parole in libertà nella scuola, Felici editore, Pisa).
Elena Corradini
Municipal library of Ala e-mail: ecorradini67@gmail.com She has been a librarian since 1996. In 2004 she got the international master degree in librarianship and information science (Parma/Newcastle). She’s enrolled in the PhD in Knowledge Society and Information Transfer of the University of Zara (Croatia). She has been Secretary of the Section IFLA Literacy and Reading since 2009 and regional president of AIB Trentino Alto Adige since 2011.
Marco Moderato
State University of Milan e-mail: marco.moderato@gmail.com He’s specializing at the Specialization School in Archaeological Heritage. He has participated since 2005 in the excavation campaigns of the amphitheater in Durres (Italian Archeological Mission in Durres) and since 2008 in the excavation campaigns of the Forum in Bliesbruck-Reinheim (in cooperation with the European Archeological Park). He’s taking part as a Grant Holder Assistant in the European project Tempus CHTMBAL “Network for Post Graduate Masters in Cultural Heritage and Tourism Management in Balkan Countries”. His research interests are: the Hellenistic fortifications, the Romanization, the late Republican Roman sanctuaries, the late antique urban planning and the theory and methodology of the archeological research. Furthermore, he’s concerned with the management of the cultural heritage and with the relation between economy, cultural heritage and sustainable development.
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