FACULTY NEWS & RECOGNITION

Building a library on the moon

When the spacecraft Beresheet crashed into the surface of the moon in April, it scattered debris that included a small nickel disc bearing a huge trove of information. This Lunar Library was the latest effort by the Arch (pronounced Ark) Mission Foundation to preserve and disseminate humanity’s knowledge across time and space.

SILS Professor Paul Jones is an advisor to the founders of the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF) and helped curate the contents of the Lunar Library. Because of Jones’ involvement, SILS is listed as a named partner on the foundation’s website.

One of the AMF’s co-founders, Nova Spivack, came to Carolina on September 13 to deliver the 2019 Lucille Kelling Henderson Lecture, “Building a Library on the Moon.” “The idea is to create a permanent record of all human knowledge that lasts for at least a billion years,” Spivack explained in his talk. “And it’s in so many places that somebody someday will find it, at least some of these will get through. We’re building the billion-year archive, which treats the solar system as a library where the buildings and stacks are the planets and moons.”

To ensure their archives can survive harsh conditions and endure for billions of years, the AMF is recording information using new technologies and materials, including quartz, nickel, and DNA. The Lunar Library was recorded on nickel-based Nanofiche, which is 4,800 times more space efficient than microfiche. With Nanofiche’s capacity and durability, Spivack said organizations like the Library of Congress could convert their microfiche to a non-degradable format that would take only a fraction of the space and energy to maintain.

“With Nanofiche, you can turn buildings into shelves,” he said.

Nova Spivack

Watch a recording of Nova Spivak’s talk at go.unc.edu/lunar-library to learn more about the Arch Mission Foundation and how it placed a quartz disc with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy in the glove compartment of a Tesla Roadster that is now orbiting the sun.

Nova Spivack (far left) shows storage devices used by the Arch Mission Foundation to students, faculty, and other audience members who attendend the 2019 Henderson Lecture .

SILS PROFESSOR PAUL JONES discusses his contributions to the Lunar Library and his 40 years of information science and journalism instruction in a “Newsmaker” profile by American Libraries. Read the Q&A at http://bit.ly/jones-newsmaker. Popular Mechanics tapped Jones for a November article exploring how the internet will evolve in the next 50 years. Read the predictions at http://bit.ly/pop-mech-jones. Carolina’s Well Said podcast interviewed Jones about the first radio broadcast streamed over the internet in 1994. Listen at go.unc.edu/wxyc-simulcast.

STORYTELLING WITH TECH-INFUSED BOOKS

Students from Assistant Professor Maggie Melo’s Information Professionals in the Makerspace course used laser cutting, 3D printing, augmented reality, circuitry, and other makerspace skills to transform old books into new, techinfused stories. They showcased their creations on Oct. 16 in Wilson Library. Melo and several of the students have been documenting their progress and work on other projects for the class on Twitter using #INLSMakes.

Top right photo:

Zeynep Tufekci in Hong Kong

SILS Associate Professor Zeynep Tufekci has made multiple trips to Hong Kong in recent months to observe the protests there and has been chronicling her visits on Twitter @zeynep. She has also written columns about the protests for Wired and The Atlantic, which appointed her a contributing writer in September. Read “The Hong Kong Protesters Aren’t Driven by Hope” at http://bit.ly/hong-kong-hope.

Zeynep Tufekci visiting Hong Kong in October.

INFORMATION SHARING

Publication and presentation highlights from SILS faculty and graduate students in 2019. Assistant Professor Amelia Gibson gave the keynote address at the Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Conference in May at the University of Michigan. Her talk, “Justice, Equity, or Charity? Ethics and Responsibility in Inclusive Library Design,” is on YouTube at http://bit.ly/btaa-gibson. Professor Barbara M. Wildemuth, Dean Gary Marchionini, Xin Fu (PhD ’08), Jun Sung Oh (PhD ’10), and Meng Yang (PhD ’05) co-authored “The Usefulness of Multimedia Surrogates for Making Relevance Judgments about Digital Video Objects,” published in Information Processing & Management, 56(6), Article 102091. doi: 10.1016/j.ipm.2019.102091. PhD student Kelsey Urgo co-authored a paper with Associate Professors Jaime Arguello and Rob Capra. Urgo presented the paper, “Anderson and Krathwohl’s Two-Dimensional Taxonomy Applied to Task Creation and Learning Assessment,” at ICTIR 2019 in Santa Clara, Calif., on Oct. 4. doi: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3341981.3344226. Associate Professor Brian Sturm had two publications appear in recent issues of the Journal of Tar Heel Tellers: “How Much Description Is Too Much?” (2019) 25, 2, 9-12, and “The Paradox of Participation” (2018) 25, 1, 9-10. 2019 iConference, March 21-April 2, Washington, D.C. “Automating Documentation: A Critical Perspective into the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Documentation,” paper presentation by Associate Professor Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi and Matt Willis from the Oxford Internet Institute. “Investigating Health-Self Management among Immigrant College Students with Depression,” paper presentation by SILS grad Jordan Dodson (BSIS ’18) and other i3 program scholars. “Understanding Change in a Dynamic Complex Digital Object: Reading Categories of Change out of Patch Notes Documents,” paper presentation by Ayse Gursoy, doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, Karem M. Wickett of University of Illinois, and SILS Associate Professor Melanie Feinberg. “Algorithmic Management and Algorithmic Competencies: Understanding and Appropriating Algorithms in Gig work,” paper presentation by Associate Professor Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi and SILS graduate and current University of Washington PhD student Will Sutherland (MSIS ’17). “Information Science Beyond the Information Age,” panel with ASIS&T Chair Elaine Toms, Lynn Silipigni Connaway at OCLC Research, Professor Javed Mostafa, and Diane Kelly from University of Tennessee. “Lessons Learned from the Investigation of Academic WeChat Official Accounts,” poster presentation by SILS PhD candidate Shenmeng Xu and Associate Professor Bradley M. Hemminger. “Unmapped Privacy Expectations in China: Discussion Based on the Proposed Social Credit System” paper presentation by SILS PhD student YuanYe Ma.

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2019 ALISE Conference, Sept. 24-26, Knoxville, Tenn. “Dark Arts: Artists’ Information Practices in the Care of Digital Artworks and Archives,” poster presentation by SILS PhD candidate Colin Post. Nina Exner (PhD ’19) presented her poster, “Development of Research Competencies Among Academic Librarians,” and served on a panel titled “Innovative Pedagogies SIG: Exploring Innovative Pedagogies in a Global Information Context.” “They Don’t Even See Us/I’m Afraid All the Time: Intersectional Approaches to Understanding Disability in LIS,” poster presentation by Assistant Professor Amelia Gibson and PhD student Kristen Bowen. “Technologies in LIS Education: Developing LIS Curricula for Information Professionals in Library Makerspaces,” presentation by Assistant Professor Maggie Melo. ASIS&T Annual Meeting, Oct. 19-23, Melbourne, Australia PhD candidate Megan Threats won the ASIS&T SIG HLTH student poster competition for her poster, “The Information Practices of HIV Positive Black Gay Men Post-Diagnosis.” Leslie Thomson (PhD ’19), Amy Vanscoy (PhD ’12), Associate Professor at the University of Buffalo, and Jenna Hartel, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, received the 2019 Elfreda A. Chatman Research Award from ASIS&T SIG USE for their paper, “Information and the Lens of Leisure: Needs, Practices, and Resources Over the Serious Leisure Career.” Professor Javed Mostafa presented a tutorial on developing successful publications for peer-reviewed forums and served on a panel about data science education. Mostafa, SILS Assistant Professor Fei Yu, and UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media Associate Professor Laura Ruel presented a panel, “Innovative UX Methods for Information Access Based on Interdisciplinary Approaches: Practical Lessons From Academia and Industry.” Fei Yu also presented a poster, “Research on Voice Search Behavior in the Last 10 Years.” Shenmeng Xu, doctoral candidate, organized a workshop, “Metrics 2019: Workshop on Informmetric and Scientometric Research,” and presented a paper, “Understanding the Peer Review Endeavor.” PhD student Yuanye Ma presented two papers, “Lack of the Normative Lens: Discussions on Research on Micro-Targeted Ads Explanation of Facebook” and “Relational Privacy: Where the East and the West Could Meet.” PhD student Kristen Bowen presented a poster, “Health Information at Intersections: Toward More Inclusive Personal Health Records for Marginalized Users.” Yukun Yang, Master of Science in Information Science (MSIS) student, presented a paper “When Power Goes Wild Online: How Did a Voluntary Moderator’s Abuse of Power Affect an Online Community?”

VACLab researchers Arlene Chung, Bryce Morrow, and David Gotz following Morrow’s presentation of their award-winning paper at IEEE VIS 2019.

VACLab wins best paper at IEEE VIS

The Visual Analysis and Communication Laboratory (VACLab) team from UNC-Chapel Hill won the Best Short Paper Award at the IEEE VIS 2019 Conference in October.

SILS Associate Professor David Gotz leads the VACLab and co-authored the winning paper with Bryce Morrow, a master’s student from the UNC Computer Science department, Arlene E. Chung from the UNC School of Medicine, and Trevor Manz and Nils Gehlenborg from Harvard Medical School.

The paper, “Periphery Plots for Contextualizing Heterogeneous Time-Based Charts,” proposes a new approach for more effective data visualization in time-based charts. The periphery plot framework enables users to see how multiple categories of data change over time, and to see changes at multiple timescales.

VACLab researchers also presented two journal articles at the conference. Learn more about the VACLab at vaclab.web.unc.edu.

In addition to his roles with SILS and the VACLab, Gotz is Assistant Director of the Carolina Health Informatics Program (CHIP). He was recently appointed to the Editorial Board for the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) journal.

Mary Grace Flaherty talks health promotion with Public Libraries

SILS Associate Professor Mary Grace Flaherty discusses some of the findings and recommendations in her book, Promoting Individual and Community Health at the Library (ALA Editions 2018), in the July/August edition of Public Libraries. Flaherty talks about the many ways that public libraries can assist patrons who want to improve their health or become more knowledgeable about medical conditions.

“While we’re not doctors, we are information providers,” Flaherty says. “Our patrons are looking for health information and visit libraries in search of reliable and authoritative resources. While we can’t provide medical advice, we can easily steer folks to no-cost, credible consumer health resources.”

Flaherty’s book had previously received positive reviews in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science and Medical Reference Services Quarterly, which highly recommends the book for “all academic, hospital, and public libraries that field healthrelated information requests and inquiries.”