EXPLORE SPRING 2020 | VOLUME 2 | NUMBER 1
EXPLORE SPRING 2020 | VOLUME 2 | NUMBER 1
Contents 2 Facilitating Future Access to Student Projects 4 Cultured Data Symposium 6 Strategic Priorities 2020–2022 8 Collection Spotlight: Archive for New Poetry 10 Here to Help 12 Giving the Gift of Knowledge
On the Cover UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts faculty member Michael Trigilio uses a modular synthesizer, guitar, electronics, and data in his multimedia artistic performance on Day 1 of the Cultured Data Symposium.
EDITORIAL Nikki Kolupailo Editor April Green Deputy Editor CONTRIBUTORS Lynda Claassen, Erin Glass, Stephanie Labou, Nina Mamikunian, Robert Twomey PHOTOGRAPHY April Green, Zackary Szabo DESIGN Leah Roschke, StudioGrafik
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As learning and research shift from in person to online, our mission remains unchanged: to advance the educational, research, creative, and public service aspirations and goals of UC San Diego.
UNPRECEDENTED TIMES As we are midway through the last quarter of the 2019–20 academic year, we find ourselves facing unprecedented challenges as COVID-19 impacts our community, country, and world. As our university has stepped up to this challenge, I have seen collaboration, innovation, and community care that make me proud to be affiliated with UC San Diego. In service of our community, our librarians and staff have worked tirelessly to provide safe and rapid access to digital information, research, and learning support as part of the university’s move to online instruction. Throughout this situation, we have found new and creative ways to serve the campus community.
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As learning and research shift from in person to online, our mission remains unchanged: to advance the educational, research, creative, and public service aspirations and goals of UC San Diego. Over the past year, the Library renewed our strategic priorities and, as you’ll see on pages 6 and 7, these priorities help us live our mission every day and achieve long-term outcomes that support the success of our students, faculty, and researchers. In this issue, we highlight some outcomes from our strategic efforts, including our long-standing investment in the Archive for New Poetry; our exciting collaboration to ensure future access to the products of student
capstone projects; and a new project to digitize, preserve, and make available a unique part of San Diego history through Sally WongAvery’s donation of the San Diego Chinese Newspaper. These projects are just a few examples of the exciting work happening at the UC San Diego Library, and as we prepare for the upcoming academic quarters, I look forward to once again welcoming you into our physical spaces.
Erik T. Mitchell The Audrey Geisel University Librarian
UC SAN DIEGO DAY OF CARING MAY 14–15, 2020 Due to the current pandemic, UC San Diego’s Giving Day campaign has transitioned to UC San Diego’s Day of Caring, or u.care. Beginning May 14 at 6 a.m. and continuing through May 15 at 2 p.m., join us in supporting health care professionals, researchers, and students affected by the COVID-19 crisis. You can help save lives, spread empathy, and impact our world. Now more than ever, one day can change everything. ucare.ucsd.edu I #UCSDCares S P R I N G 2020
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Facilitating Future A Student Capstone Pr Providing context and preservation for data science research at The Library’s Research Data Curation (RDC) program has been helping UC San Diego researchers better manage and preserve their data for the past seven years. In 2019, RDC tackled a new challenge: student projects. Specifically, the capstone projects from the Data Science & Engineering (DSE) Master of Advanced Study (MAS) program. The DSE MAS projects are serious business. Groups of two to five students spend more than a year working on their projects, from initial question development to reporting and presenting the results as the culmination of their studies. Like most data science projects, there are many moving parts to handle: raw data needs to be cleaned; models need to be created, tested, and tweaked; and results need to be interpreted and explained in context. The result of a project might be an improved or annotated dataset, a predictive model, or even an application such as a chat bot. And, typical of data science projects, one group’s finished project might be the start of another group’s project later. Reanalyzing data might lead to new insights, or new methodologies
Raw data is cleaned by replacing or removing missing values and standardizing naming conventions.
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might result in a better model, so DSE MAS cohorts often continue to build on the projects initiated by previous graduates. While this type of collaboration is valuable, it also presents a challenge for course instructors: how best to store and share these types of projects? Fortunately, the Library is no stranger to issues of access, storage, and preservation. When it comes to research data, RDC has the expertise to provide guidance that will contribute to the cataloging of said projects. Last year, Data Science Librarian Stephanie Labou and Curation Analyst Ho Jung Yoo worked with Ilkay Altintas, chief data science officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and DSE MAS course instructor, to implement a pilot project to ingest the student projects into the Library’s Digital Collections. According to Yoo, “The broad range of disciplines on our campus means that research outputs span a wide range of data types, organization, and workflows. The Digital Collections was intentionally designed to accommodate diverse needs while also providing long-term findability and context for the valuable data generated at UC San Diego. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate reuse of the data.” Over the course of six weeks, Labou and Yoo worked with DSE MAS students to prepare their projects— which included raw data, processed data, analysis code, and final report— for submission to the Library.
With the right partnerships, we can expand this model of collaboration between faculty and the Library... and start building a full collection of data- and code-intensive works to support teaching and learning.
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a globally unique identifier that can be used to provide persistent, citable links to data. DOIs are available free of charge to campus affiliates via the EZID service administered by RDC.
ccess to rojects UC San Diego
Projects represented a wide range of topics, including creating algorithms to identify specific parts of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data; developing a recommender system (akin to Amazon’s recommended items list) for video games; analysis of human gut microbiome data; and others. Working with students on submission preparation also fits well with RDC’s mission to teach campus constituents about best practices for working with data. “It was really valuable to talk to students about the importance of properly citing datasets and checking for any data sharing restrictions, as well as formally documenting the software used,” said Labou. “These are the things that make a project not only reproducible, but also more user friendly for students and other researchers in the future.” After additional processing of student-submitted data and metadata, the projects were ready to go live in the Library’s Digital Collections. All projects were assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is a globally unique and persistent identifier. So, not only are projects stored and preserved for access by future DSE MAS cohorts, but students also have a full and
formal citation for their projects to add to their resumes. The entire collection of DSE MAS capstone projects was also issued a DOI and is accessible online. “This is the first collection of data science-oriented student projects in the Library’s research data collections,” RDC Director David Minor pointed out. “This was an exciting project because it allowed us to broaden our work on campus and reach the next generation of scholars. We look forward to working with future cohorts.” After the success of the DSE MAS pilot, Labou sees plenty of opportunities to expand. “With the right partnerships, we can expand this model of collaboration between faculty and the Library to other courses and start building a full collection of data- and codeintensive works to support teaching and learning. This is only the beginning!” To view the collection of DSE MAS capstone projects, visit lib.ucsd.edu/dsemas. Right: Predicted segmentation of membranes, mitochondria, and nuclei. From “Electron Microscopic Data Analysis” (Tushar Singhal and Prashant Kolkur).
Metadata is information about the data, such as dates of creation, keywords, related resources, licenses, and more.
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Cultured Data Symposium Bridging areas of scholarship The growing datafication of cultural materials along with the explosion of new data generation, collection, and analysis practices create a new state of cultured data: culture as data, and data as a driver of culture. As more of our activities and cultural materials are transformed into data, emerging data science methods facilitate new ways of seeing and producing culture. However, data science is a mode of academic inquiry and an increasingly powerful tool in society, yet it is still not well understood by the majority of those whose lives are being affected by it. As an area of scholarship, it is full of creative potential and its ethical risks are only just beginning to be considered.
As more of our activities and cultural materials are transformed into data, emerging data science methods facilitate new ways of seeing and producing culture... As an area of scholarship, it is full of creative potential and its ethical risks are only just beginning to be considered.
In order to help demystify data science and foster dialogue between this emerging field and the arts and humanities, the UC San Diego Library co-hosted the Cultured Data Symposium in February 2020 in collaboration with the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, the Division of Arts & Humanities, and other campus partners. Co-organized by Robert Twomey, postdoctoral scholar at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and Erin Glass, former digital scholarship librarian, the symposium featured topical presentations, live performances, and art exhibitions both on and off campus. Symposium attendees heard from 18 scholars and industry practitioners, each of whom offered a diverse range
The first day of the symposium was hosted at the Qualcomm Institute and featured keynote speaker Shannon Mattern, professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research. In her talk, Mattern discussed the paradoxical role of data-driven methods in environmental research and “green” technologies. The second day was hosted at the popular arts warehouse Bread & Salt in Barrio Logan and featured Jessica Marie Johnson, assistant professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University, as the keynote. Johnson delivered a talk on her work in black code studies and discussed ways black digital practice can offer alternate modes of responding to and utilizing emerging digital technologies.
of disciplinary perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of data science, the datafication of culture, and data-driven inquiry.
Other scholars discussed ways of using data-driven methods for humanistic inquiry, such as Monte Johnson and Jacobo Myerston in their presentations on using network analysis to make new discoveries in ancient philosophical history. Ryan Germick, principal designer at Google, discussed the ways creativity played a role in designing the personality of Google’s voice assistant in his talk. Overall, the symposium helped attendees better understand the role of data science in research and everyday life while also showcasing the important tools and perspectives that the arts and humanities can offer the discipline. This event, however, has only touched the tip of the iceberg, and we hope there will be many more collaborations and interdisciplinary conversations to come. For more information about the symposium, visit cultureddata.net.
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Strategic Priorit Guided by UC San Diego’s Strategic Plan and the
Support student and faculty success through instruction,
university’s Strategic Plan for Inclusive Excellence, the Library sets priorities and engages in annual goal setting evaluation. We aim for long-term outcomes that support the success of our students, faculty, and researchers.
2 Public Buildings 4,229 Seats 385 Computers
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2,648,564
Annual Gate Count
7,655
Average Daily Visitors
information services, and outreach to help patrons discover, critically evaluate, manage, and disseminate information.
Support research and learning by securing or providing access to academically-focused information resources and tools.
79,658
Group Study Room Reservations Across
56 Rooms
3,731,948 Print Volumes
1,556,783 E-Books
182,012
Journals & Periodicals
Library by th
ies 2020–2022 Be a place for community and scholarship by providing students
Build institutional excellence through campus and community
with diverse, inclusive, accessible, safe,
partnerships, staff development,
and resource-rich physical and digital
organizational planning, financial
spaces that are centered on supporting
stewardship, and assessment.
the academic experience.
Extend the impact of research
The Library’s priorities support the following university goals:
at UC San Diego by being a leader in
Student Experience, Interdisciplinary
the preservation and dissemination
Research, Diversity and Access,
of research output.
Supportive Infrastructure, and Community Enrichment.
Data as of 7/1/19
215,785
Library Materials Checked Out
55,055
Tech Lending Program Items Loaned
462,430
Views/Downloads of Library-developed Content on UCTV
59,289
Information & Reference Questions Answered
he Numbers
1,315,948
Views of the Library’s Digitized Collections
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Archive for New
A collaborative novel typed on a roll of toilet paper; collage art on a folding fan; journal entries detailing self-doubt and fear; letters between families, lovers, and friends; drafts of applications to the Guggenheim Foundation. These are just a sampling of the types of items one finds in the Archive for New Poetry (ANP) in Special Collections & Archives at the UC San Diego Library. The Archive for New Poetry, a research collection of post-1945 experimental American poetry and poetics, was established in 1968 when professor of literature Roy Harvey Pearce and the UC San Diego Department of Literature worked with the Library to initiate a collection that would support undergraduate instruction and advanced scholarly studies. In the ensuing 52 years, the collection has 8 EXPLORE
grown to include more than 30,000 volumes, 2,000 broadsides, 1,800 serials, 1,500 audio recordings, and several miles of manuscript/archival materials, with more material being added on almost a monthly basis. The ANP primarily focuses on “New American” poets, such as the Objectivists, New York School, Black Mountain, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. The collection is used extensively by independent scholars and researchers from national and international universities, as well as by students and faculty at UC San Diego. Undergraduate and graduate classes and scholars peruse notebooks and first drafts of celebrated writers to glean the secrets of a particular poem or essay and to understand the internal creative processes of
literary giants. They investigate early concrete and kinetic poetry to figure out how the latest technologies—be it a mimeograph, tape recorder, word processor, or computer—can change the experiences of expression and communication. Often, the students are writers themselves and leave the ANP with a greater sense of the possibilities that await them in their own artistic pursuits. Ultimately, the ANP is about more than just poetry; it is about the connections that the poets have with each other—evident in the extensive correspondence spanning the collection—and the experiences of their day-to-day lives and cultural moments. One poet records the audio of the first moon landing. Another writes to friends about going through
COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT
Poetry
menopause. One writes through his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Many write to each other about jobs lost and jobs found; their parents and children; their illnesses; their writing and editorial processes; their trips around the world; politics; and even their own write-in campaign for president. It’s the documentation of their poetic endeavors alongside their lived lives that creates such a rich stew for students and scholars. Interested in learning more about the Archive for New Poetry? Visit lib.ucsd.edu/anp for an overview of the collection and bibliographic access to these materials provided through Roger, the Library‘s online catalog.
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Here to Help
At the Library, we have subject librarians who specialize in topics ranging from aerospace engineering to visual arts. These subject matter experts are here to help our patrons explore their area of study and drive research projects forward. Meet two librarians who consistently go above and beyond to ensure student success and support the next generation of changemakers.
Stephanie Labou Data Science Librarian On her role: I am the Library’s point person for all things data- and data science-related. I visit classes to talk about Library data resources; help students and researchers find and access the data they need for projects; teach workshops about scientific programming with R and Python; comanage the Library’s Data & GIS Lab; and serve as the Library’s liaison to the data science major and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI). On working at the Library: I started in my current position in June 2018. I previously worked as a data manager and research assistant, which was great preparation for my current role at the Library.
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On helping students achieve their academic goals: Many of the consultation requests I get from students, especially graduate students, involve finding and accessing specific data they need for their projects. There is a lot of data out there—more than ever before—but it can be challenging to track down exactly what is needed, in the correct format, and at the right spatial and temporal scale. That’s where I can help. I also work with patrons to automate their data analysis workflow with software like Stata, R, and Python. On what she loves most about her job: I really enjoy seeing the kinds of projects students and faculty are working on. There is a lot of interesting research happening on campus!
On one of her favorite projects: I have been working with students in the Data Science & Engineering Master of Advanced Study capstone course to deposit their projects into the Library’s Digital Collections (see page 2). This collection of student data science projects (the Library’s first!) will not only serve as a platform to educate future students about proper project documentation through access to similarly structured projects, but will also provide a public-facing portal through which students can better publicize and share their scholarly works. A surprising fact about her: I am a UC San Diego alumna! I got my bachelor’s degree here and it’s great to be back on campus in a professional capacity.
Peter Mueller Music Subject Specialist On his role: Like most of the other subject specialists in the Library, I’m both a generalist and a specialist. I help Library users at the Information Desk and provide general reference assistance at the Research Assistance Desk. I am responsible for the music materials collections—print, media, and digital. I also serve as the liaison between the Library and the Department of Music. On working at the Library: I’ve always had an affinity for libraries. In fact, one could say I was destined to work at the UC San Diego Library. Junior high was my first experience working in a library. My best friend at the time and I volunteered to work at the circulation desk at Cherokee Junior High in Madison, Wisconsin, and loved it. When I was completing my Ph.D. at the UC San Diego Department of Music, I worked as a student assistant in the Library. I became a career Library
employee in 1991 working with the musicrelated collections, which at that time were on the 4th floor of Geisel Library.
unfamiliar with. It’s always refreshing to learn new things and see things from different perspectives.
On helping students achieve their academic goals: I take great pride in helping our users successfully navigate our research materials and find the information they are seeking. It’s always enjoyable to learn more about each person’s needs and experience in accessing materials at an academic library. I love sharing my knowledge of music, but equally enjoy helping our students and faculty discover information on virtually any topic. Never a dull moment!
On one of his favorite projects: Every year, I am invited to work with the upper division music history class. This usually involves me giving a lecture on how students can access and use Library resources to help enrich their term papers that quarter. This lecture will, at times, prompt students to book an appointment with me to learn how they might find information on their topic or interpret the information they’ve already discovered, which is very rewarding.
On what he loves most about his job: I learn something new every day, and that’s been true going back to 1991. Sometimes it’s technical and Library-specific, other times it might be information discovered due to a user’s inquiry on topics I’m
On a surprising fact about him: I’m an active composer and I’m still working on a stamp collection that my dad and I started when I was 11.
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Giving the Gift of Knowledge
Alumna Sally WongAvery helps the Library acquire and digitize 13 volumes of San Diego’s first Chinese language newspaper “Give and not to count the cost; give and not to ask for any reward” is the motto of dedicated community member and philanthropist, Sally WongAvery. Serving the Chinese community and preserving Chinese culture, heritage, and history have been paramount throughout her life, which is one of the reasons why she helped facilitate the donation of 13 volumes of San Diego Chinese News— the first Chinese language newspaper published in San Diego—to the UC San Diego Library. WongAvery’s generosity makes our Library the only research library on the West Coast to hold the bound volumes and the first to provide digitized copies of the newspaper.
She hopes that by adding the volumes to the Library’s collections, researchers from various fields will be able to glean information about the multicultural history and the contributions of San Diego’s Chinese population. Born in Hong Kong, WongAvery came to the United States in 1969 and finished her high school education at San Diego High. During that time, San Diego had a small Chinese population of only a few thousand individuals. Today, nearly 50,000 Chinese Americans call San Diego home, including WongAvery, who attended UC San Diego and graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1975.
The volumes comprise every edition of the Chinese News printed between 1983 and 1998, when the newspaper ceased publication. Thriving throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the newspaper served as a focal point for Chinese speakers in the greater San Diego area by disseminating global, national, and local news; connecting readers with services; and facilitating trade and commerce in the local communities. “Chinese News has a special place in my heart because it was the first publication produced for the non-English speaking Chinese population in San Diego,” said WongAvery. “The publisher knew the challenges that these newcomers faced, not knowing how to read or speak English, so the publication was provided free of
Members of the Avery-Tsui Foundation meet with Library leadership and take a tour of Geisel Library. From left to right: Xi Chen, Loretta Hom, Jennifer Brown, Roger Smith, Stanley Ting, Tom Hom, Sally WongAvery, Natasha Wong, Erik Mitchell, Tom Smith Tseng, and Paul Dostart.
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charge to keep all Chinese Americans informed and connected with the greater community.” In the coming months, students and researchers will be able to peruse individual issues, all of which dedicate a considerable amount of space to the advertisements of local businesses—many of those being restaurants and grocery stores. Chinese Studies Librarian Xi Chen notes, “These volumes are great primary sources for the study of ethnic cuisines/Chinese food in the United States, which indeed are of scholarly interest to some researchers.” Advertisements aside, the newspaper occasionally included the announcement of births, marriages, and deaths, all fitting sources for history enthusiasts and community members conducting genealogy research. The newspapers also included detailed information on the activities of various community organizations, many of which were active participants of local politics, making the volumes unique primary and secondary sources for the anthropological study of Chinese Americans in San Diego and Southern California.
Chinese News has a special place in my heart because it was the first publication produced for the non-English speaking Chinese population of San Diego. The publisher knew the challenges that these newcomers faced, not knowing how to read or speak English, so the publication was provided free of charge to keep all Chinese Americans informed and connected with the greater community.
Thanks to a generous gift from the Avery-Tsui Foundation, all 13 volumes will be digitized, preserved, and made available to the UC San Diego community, outside researchers, and the public through the Library’s Digital Collections. “As a Chinese American born and raised in San Diego, the newspaper volumes are an important part of one of the oldest ethnic groups in the United States,” said Natasha Wong, WongAvery’s daughter. “These volumes tell the story of the Chinese in San Diego on a social, economic, and political level. Because UC San Diego holds a special connection to our family and is one of the world’s leading public research universities, it is most appropriate that UC San Diego preserves these volumes for future generations.” The digitized collection, known as the Sally T. WongAvery Collection of Chinese Materials, will be available in Fall 2020. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit lib.ucsd.edu/east-asia-collection to learn more about the Library’s Chinese and East Asia Collection.
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