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November 1st, 2020
ILS 49500: Information Skills for Health Sciences Professionals
Meeting Times: TR 9:30am-10:20am (Online) 1st 8 weeks
Instructor: Jane Yatcilla
So you want to go to medical school or veterinary school, or become a chiropractor, dentist, public health specialist, osteopath, occupational therapist, physical therapist, physician’s assistant, or get a PhD and do clinical research. Take this course to develop critical information skills to support your professional goals and prepare you for graduate or professional school. Show up on day one of professional or graduate school knowing how to navigate PubMed and other databases, differentiate between various types of research articles, and save and organize articles so you can easily locate them, “cite while you write,” and share articles with your classmates or research group.
Learning Outcomes
October 30th, 2020
ILS 695: Introduction to Computational Text Analysis in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Meeting Times: TR 3:00-4:15 (Online)
Instructor: Trevor Burrows
Computational analysis of textual data has become increasingly important in the world of digital humanities, digital history, data science, and computational social science. This course provides an introduction to the methods, debates, controversies, and tools of computational text analysis (CTA) specifically crafted for the humanities and social science graduate student. Students will explore the central theoretical debates in CTA while also learning practical hands-on skills in corpus creation, OCR, text mining, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and other methods. They will learn how CTA relates to established interpretative practices in the larger histories of the humanities and social sciences and the broader context of their own disciplines, and will consider both the possibilities and the limitations of CTA in their own work. While the course is designed for a beginner with little technical training, students will become familiar with the basic elements of coding/ scripting using the programming language R and other tools. Upon completion of this course, students will understand the challenges of CTA, be conversant with major theoretical discussions around CTA, and have a foundational understanding of the steps required to incorporate CTA into their regular research practices and particular projects.
Learning Outcomes
1. A firm grasp of the basic steps required to perform CTA for both exploratory and analytic purposes, and an understanding of its potential applications and limitations
2. Understanding of critical debates around CTA, its use in humanities and social science research, and its use in the student’s own discipline
3. Understanding of CTA’s relationship to broader histories of language, interpretation, and both qualitative and quantitative research methods and epistemologies (i.e., philosophy of language, history of the book, critical theory)
October 29th, 2020
ILS 29500: Truth, Lies, and Trust: Credibility, Authority, and Quality in a Digital Age
Meeting Times: Thurs 2:30-3:20pm
Instructor: John Fritch
This course examines concepts of trust and authority and uses them to promote critical thinking and assessments regarding credibility. Authoritative information sources, evaluative criteria, and technical tools will be enumerated and discussed as students work through a research issue of personal interest. Topics include: what is trust and why is it significant, what types of authority exist and what specifically is cognitive authority, how is in-person trust and authority different from digital trust, when does credibility matter and what are criteria for determining credibility, how and where is quality information found, techniques of the nefarious (cons, scams, spam, phishing, etc.), considerations of a skeptical consumer.
October 28th, 2020
ILS 39500: Digital Cultural Studies
Meeting Times: DIS
Instructor: Matt Hannah
We live in a technologically complex time, a time in which our access to and experience with technology has dramatic effects on our lifeworld. Digital cultural studies is an interdisciplinary and creative approach to understanding, theorizing, building, and critiquing the human experience of technology. In this course, students will encounter the theories, topics, and artifacts that constellate our technological world, including films, books, art, scholarship, media artifacts, games, social media, interfaces, and platforms. Students will think critically about a variety of topics, engage in thoughtful discussions, respond creatively, and build original projects.
Learning Outcomes
October 26th, 2020
More than 10 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s disease.1 A diagnosis of this incurable disease is as disorienting as it is devastating. Purdue University Press has recently published two new books that will serve as essential resources for patients, their loved ones, and caregivers to help make sense of what comes next after such a diagnosis. The Complete Guide for People With Parkinson’s Disease and Their Loved Ones and Everything You Need to Know About Caregiving for Parkinson’s Disease by Lianna Marie are now available in print and e-book formats from all major retailers.
A trained nurse, Lianna Marie served as her mother’s caregiver and advocate for over twenty years through the many stages of Parkinson’s disease. Through and because of this experience, she founded AllAboutParkinsons.com, an online community that has connected and helped thousands of people with the disease, their families, and their caregivers.
“My greatest motivation for writing these books was a conversation I had with my mom in her fifteenth year of living with Parkinson’s.” Marie said in a recent interview with the Press. “She told me back then she wished there was more information available to help her understand and deal with her disease as it was progressing, written in a way that she could understand.”
The Complete Guide for People With Parkinson’s Disease and Their Loved Ones will serve as the go-to book for comprehensive, easy-to-understand information for those affected by Parkinson’s disease. Providing useful tips and advice, the book aims to help patients better understand their role in their treatment so that they may continue to lead happy and hopeful lives.
Everything You Need to Know About Caregiving for Parkinson’s Disease concentrates on those providing care for Parkinson’s patients. The job of caregiving comes with many challenges, and often caregivers will neglect their own health and well-being in the process. This book was inspired by the author’s own journey, using real-life experience to provide caregivers the resources they need to care for themselves and their loved ones.
“The caregiving book resulted from many years of witnessing the toll caring for someone with Parkinson’s can have on a person if they don’t have the right help and tools.” said Marie. “My ultimate goal is to help caregivers feel less alone and give them hope that they can make it through this often-challenging Parkinson’s journey with their loved one.”
The author, a native of Toronto, Canada and now living outside of Seattle, Washington, draws upon over twenty years of education, research, and direct experience to provide advice ranging from nutrition and exercise to alternative and complementary therapies, dissecting hard-to-understand medical information and presenting it in a clear and convenient manner. Both books will prove to be essential resources for those on their Parkinson’s journeys.
Receive 30% off The Complete Guide for People With Parkinson’s Disease and Their Loved Ones and Everything You Need to Know About Caregiving for Parkinson’s Disease by ordering directly from Purdue University Press and entering the code PURDUE30 at checkout.
Writer: Matthew Mudd, marketing and outreach specialist, Purdue University Press, mmudd5@purdue.edu
Source: Lianna Marie, founder of AllAboutParkinsons.com and author.
Citation: 1 Statistic from Parkinson’s Foundation: https://www.parkinson.org/Understanding-Parkinsons/Statistics
Filed under: press_release, PurduePressOctober 22nd, 2020
By: Sandi Caldrone, Data Repository Outreach Specialist
The Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) has published over 1,100 open access datasets from Purdue researchers – no small feat – but we want to do more. How can we make more of Purdue’s cutting-edge research data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable? We’re starting at the beginning with Findable.
PURR’s published datasets are already very easy to find. They are all freely available on our website, indexed by search engines like Google Dataset Search, and identified with unique and persistent Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). This works great for digital datasets that are small enough to download quickly over the web, but what about other types of datasets? What about datasets big enough to be measured in terabytes, or sensitive datasets that can only be shared upon request? PURR has a plan for them.
PURR is developing new functionality that will expand our repository to also include a data registry. What does that mean? Researchers will be able to register datasets that, for whatever reason, cannot be downloaded through the PURR website – big data, sensitive datasets that require sharing agreements, and even physical specimens. Registered datasets will receive a DOI, and will be indexed by PURR and every other search engine that catalogs PURR’s datasets. Each registered dataset will come with an accessibility statement explaining how to access the data and who to contact with questions.
So much research data is available for reuse if only you knew where to find it. With the new registry, PURR is hoping to bridge the gap between data user and data author – making more freely available datasets truly accessible. Registry functionality should be up and running later this academic year. Stay tuned to Purdue Libraries for more details.
Filed under: general, OAWeek2020, Open_Access, servicesOctober 21st, 2020
Announcing the second episode in the Diversity and Making Podcast and Video Series, a collaboration between Libraries and School of Information Studies and the Purdue University Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center:
In this episode, we talk with Kristina Mok from Makers Making Change. The motto of the organization is ‘empowering people with disabilities through technology’. Kristina discusses the ways in which they achieve this through community based Makers, Occupational Therapists and Volunteers to develop and deliver affordable open source assistive technologies. Check out the episode at https://www.lib.purdue.edu/diversity-and-making, then pick up materials to make your own raindrop switch at WALC on Oct. 26, 5-8 PM!
October 20th, 2020
By: Mark Puente, Associate Dean for Organizational Development, Inclusion and Diversity
The theme for the 2020 Open Access Week is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.” The theme is timely in light of the structural inequities that have come to light in recent months with the global pandemic as well as the world-wide protests and social unrest that have been a product of the killing of George Floyd in June. Although, at the surface, it might be difficult to see any connection between these phenomena and structures related to scholarly output and dissemination, it serves as a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of things like research output and the commodification and corporatization of higher education.
I think many of us know that our current systems in this realm are not sustainable and that they privilege organizations and institutions that have long benefited from the “usual” ways of doing things to the detriment or disadvantage of other stakeholders. But how does “open” help to address these broader structural inequities? Is it a panacea or simply a cog within a larger mechanism that needs significant overhaul and restructuring in order to run efficiently while accomplishing the function intended? It may be the latter, but with an understanding that no complex mechanism can run if it has a critical, structural piece missing.
Perhaps, in some ways, open access to scholarly content and educational resources can serve as a model for delivering on the promise of equity as we engage in critical analysis of broader educational and societal systems that must be reimagined and rebuilt. Open Access Week provides an excellent opportunity to explore these issues and to imagine what we might be able to accomplish collaboratively if we think boldly about making structural change.
Join us as we explore important questions like these in a special Open Access Week virtual panel event:
October 19th, 2020
Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies is proud to announce the 2020 winner of the Leadership in Open Access Award, Professor Nicholas K. Rauh. Since 2010, the Leadership in Open Access Award has been awarded annually to a member of the Purdue community who demonstrates an exceptional commitment to broadening the reach of scholarship by making publicly-funded research freely accessible online through Purdue e-Pubs. This year, we honor Dr. Rauh, an Open Access champion who has long-partnered with both Purdue e-Pubs and the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR).
Dr. Rauh is a Roman archaeologist, teaching in the classics program in the College of Liberal Arts School of Languages and Cultures. He conducts survey archaeology in Turkey, exploring the ancient lives of Cilician pirates, who flourished in the eastern Mediterranean between 139 and 67 BC. For more than 70 years, these pirates waged economic war with neighboring Hellenistic realms, and most particularly, with the forces of the Roman Republic and its far-flung provincial empire. The material remains they left behind offer a rich, varied look at the ancient civilizations they regularly antagonized.
During his annual summer course, Dr. Rauh engages his students in the scientific process. In addition to collecting potsherds, the researchers collect GIS data for each artifact, bridging the gap between ancient sites and modern technology. Dr. Rauh has been working with Libraries’ data curator, Standa Pejša, for a number of years, curating this data and drafting reports for the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey, a systematic surface survey of a 60 kilometer strip of Western Rough Cilicia, on the southern coast of Turkey. These reports are openly available in Purdue e-Pubs. The data itself is available in PURR; however, this project goes a step above—integrating the GIS data with the individual artifact data.
“He has been pushing content online since 1996,” Pejša said of Dr. Rauh’s commitment to Open Access. “Public and free, he has been practicing it. If there were more people like him, we would not need all those obfuscating monikers for open access – it would simply be access.”
At 11:00 am (EST) on Wednesday, October 21, 2020, Dr. Rauh will be one of four faculty panelists at a special virtual event in honor of Open Access Week. “Purdue Open Scholarship: Impacts and Implications” will be moderated by Libraries’ Associate Dean for Organizational Development, Inclusion and Diversity, Mark Puente. Registration is free and open until the event concludes at 12:00 pm (EST). All are welcome to attend.
Learn more about Dr. Rauh and his research:
https://purr.purdue.edu/groups/roughciliciasurvey
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/rcas/
Filed under: events, general, GIS, OAWeek2020, Open_Access, press_release
October 19th, 2020
By: Nina Collins, Scholarly Publishing Specialist
As we begin our celebration of Open Access Week 2020, it is important to define what Open Access means and why it matters at Purdue University.
Open Access, in the broadest sense, is free and immediate access to scholarly literature, coupled with re-use permissions. Open Access does not require subscription fees. Anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, or re-use Open Access scholarship, regardless of whether or not they have the ability to pay subscription fees. Open Access content is immediately available to everyone. This immediacy helps to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and creation of new scholarship. In this way, Open Access also helps to encourage innovation and enrich education.
According to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), “Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education form a broad Open Agenda that is critical to accelerating the way we discover knowledge and unlocking our potential to solve big problems and make new discoveries.”
Never has the necessity to accelerate scientific discovery and solve big problems been more important than it is in 2020. “On 30 March 2020, UNESCO hosted an online meeting of representatives of science ministries of 122 countries to exchange views on the role of international cooperation in science and increased investment in the context of COVID-19. During the meeting, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay called on governments to reinforce scientific cooperation and integrate open science in their research programmes to prevent and mitigate global crises”. (reference) On April 7, 2020, the Executive Committee of the German Commission for UNESCO released a statement calling for global open scientific cooperation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The release emphasized that open science is a question of survival and is necessary to overcome the pandemic (reference).
The benefits of Open Access scholarship reach beyond the pressures of discovering solutions to the current pandemic. Open scholarship has numerous advantages for teaching and learning. If an educator cannot access scholarly works, they can’t teach it. If students cannot access it, they cannot learn it. A 2015 report from UNESCO, titled, Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good, stated, “. We must consider not only how knowledge is acquired and validated, but also how access to it is often controlled and, therefore, how access to it can be made commonly available”(79).
At Purdue, Open Access helps fulfill our land-grant mission. Open Access Scholarship can more readily be accessed and taught, it can speed up discovery and innovation, and can help with engagement by ensuring access to all. To support the myriad benefits available to scholars who publish their work openly, Purdue Libraries established Purdue e-Pubs, our institutional repository for scholarly works. Launched in 2005, Purdue e-Pubs currently hosts more than 76,000 Open Access documents. These works have been downloaded more than 22 million times across the world. With the current focus on virtual teaching and learning throughout the world, Purdue e-Pubs downloads have increased more than 25% this year.
Filed under: general, OAWeek2020, Open_Access