August 2024 – Page 2 – DigitalKoans

Electronic Records Archivist at U.S. House of Representatives

Full time position in the Office of the Clerk’s Office of Art and Archives provides archival services and outreach related to records of the U.S House of Representatives, particularly electronic records. Accessions, verifies, and describes electronic records and manages their transfer, along with related descriptive data, to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Provides expertise in records management and preservation of electronic records to committees, Members, and staff of the House. Works collaboratively as an integral part of a small team in a non-traditional archival setting. Grade level at the time of appointment is determined by experience and designated level of responsibility.

https://tinyurl.com/4tajk74v

"Artificial Intelligence Assisted Curation of Population Groups in Biomedical Literature "

Curation of the growing body of published biomedical research is of great importance to both the synthesis of contemporary science and the archiving of historical biomedical literature. Each of these tasks has become increasingly challenging given the expansion of journal titles, preprint repositories and electronic databases. Added to this challenge is the need for curation of biomedical literature across population groups to better capture study populations for improved understanding of the generalizability of findings. To address this, our study aims to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 as an AI curation assistant for the task of curating biomedical literature for population groups. We conducted a series of experiments which qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the performance of OpenAI’s GPT-4 in curating population information from biomedical literature. Using OpenAI’s GPT-4 and curation instructions, executed through prompts, we evaluate the ability of GPT-4 to classify study ‘populations’, ‘continents’ and ‘countries’ from a previously curated dataset of public health COVID-19 studies.

Using three different experimental approaches, we examined performance by: A) evaluation of accuracy (concordance with human curation) using both exact and approximate string matches within a single experimental approach; B) evaluation of accuracy across experimental approaches; and C) conducting a qualitative phenomenology analysis to describe and classify the nature of difference between human curation and GPT curation. Our study shows that GPT-4 has the potential to provide assistance in the curation of population groups in biomedical literature. Additionally, phenomenology provided key information for prompt design that further improved the LLM’s performance in these tasks. Future research should aim to improve prompt design, as well as explore other generative AI models to improve curation performance. An increased understanding of the populations included in research studies is critical for the interpretation of findings, and we believe this study provides keen insight on the potential to increase the scalability of population curation in biomedical studies.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.950

Digital Preservation Specialist at Brigham Young University

The Digital Preservation Specialist has the responsibility of ingesting digital content from across campus and the library into the library’s digital preservation repository. This position performs pre-processing work on materials as needed to prepare materials for ingest into the digital preservation repository. After ingest, the position verifies, audits, and monitors preserved content. The incumbent will also participate in tool and system development for the digital preservation unit and the born-digital file transfer and pre-processing station.

https://tinyurl.com/2s3dxxmk

"Lawmakers Raise New Licensing Concerns over White House Open Access Mandate"

While Republican appropriators in the House have previously tried to entirely block the White House’s open access policy, now appropriators in both chambers of Congress have advanced legislation that would block federal agencies from limiting authors’ ability to choose how to license their work. . . .

This language used in the House report and Senate report regarding researcher choice is identical, though the House goes further by advising federal agencies not to “exert broad ‘federal purpose’ authority over peer reviewed articles” or “otherwise force use of an open license.”

House Republicans also propose that the White House be prohibited from using any funding to implement the policy, as they attempted in last year’s legislation.

https://tinyurl.com/46y42ecr

Integrated Library Systems Officer at Library of Parliament of Canada

We are currently looking for an Integrated Library Systems Officer to provide expert technical support for the operational performance and maintenance of the Integrated Library System (ILS) and work closely with the Integrated Library Systems Librarian.

https://tinyurl.com/22s97es8

Digital Archivist at University of Cambridge (Term)

The Cambridge University Libraries (CUL) is due to complete a 5-year Digital Preservation Programme by July 2026, which will result in the development of a Digital Preservation Service, including infrastructure, tools, and guidance to support digital preservation. . . .

At this exciting and critical juncture, we are hiring a Digital Archivist for three years initially to aid the completion of the Digital Preservation Programme and transition its services to ‘business-as-usual’, working closely with the Archives and Modern Manuscripts and Digital Preservation teams.

https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/47852/

"Unfolding the Downloads of Datasets: A Multifaceted Exploration of Influencing Factors"

Scientific data are essential to advancing scientific knowledge and are increasingly valued as scholarly output. Understanding what drives dataset downloads is crucial for their effective dissemination and reuse. Our study, analysing 55,473 datasets from 69 data repositories, identifies key factors driving dataset downloads, focusing on interpretability, reliability, and accessibility. We find that while lengthy descriptive texts can deter users due to complexity and time requirements, readability boosts a dataset’s appeal. Reliability, evidenced by factors like institutional reputation and citation counts of related papers, also significantly increases a dataset’s attractiveness and usage. Additionally, our research shows that open access to datasets increases their downloads and amplifies the importance of interpretability and reliability. This indicates that easy access enhances the overall attractiveness and usage of datasets in the scholarly community. By emphasizing interpretability, reliability, and accessibility, this study offers a comprehensive framework for future research and guides data management practices toward ensuring clarity, credibility, and open access to maximize the impact of scientific datasets.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03591-8

"NVIDIA: Copyrighted Books Are Just Statistical Correlations to Our AI Models"

Earlier this year, several authors sued NVIDIA over alleged copyright infringement. The class action lawsuit alleged that the company’s AI models were trained on copyrighted works and specifically mentioned Books3 data [a database of over 180,000 pirated books]. Since this happened without permission, the rightsholders demand compensation. . . .

The company believes that AI companies should be allowed to use copyrighted books to train their AI models, as these books are made up of “uncopyrightable facts and ideas” that are already in the public domain. . . .

“[AI] Training measures statistical correlations in the aggregate, across a vast body of data, and encodes them into the parameters of a model. Plaintiffs do not try to claim a copyright over those statistical correlations, asserting instead that the training data itself is ‘copied’ for the purposes of infringement,” NVIDIA writes [to the court hearing the case].

According to NVIDIA, the lawsuit boils down to two related questions. First, whether the authors’ direct infringement claim is essentially an attempt to claim copyright on facts and grammar. Second, whether making copies of the books is fair use.

https://tinyurl.com/mpa6e8jj

Researcher in Residence – Artificial Intelligence at ARL

In collaboration with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), ARL seeks an exceptional colleague to further the Association’s research, advocacy, and tracking of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and generative AI. The Researcher in Residence will be a member of ARL’s Scholarship and Policy Team, which advances a portfolio of initiatives to bridge research policy and institutional practice through engagement with research partners, cross-sector stakeholders, and decision makers–resulting in opportunities to collectively inform and shape the research and learning ecosystem. The Researcher in Residence will play a key role in the ongoing collaboration between CNI and ARL around AI/ML technologies and applications.

https://tinyurl.com/33djay7f

"Curation is Communal: Transparency, Trust, and (In)visible Labour "

Research about trust and transparency within the realm of research data management and sharing typically centres on accreditation and compliance. Missing from many of these conversations are the social systems and enabling structures that are built on interpersonal connections. As members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a consortium of United States-based institutional and non-profit data repositories, we have experienced first-hand the effort required to develop and sustain interpersonal trust and the benefits it provides to curation. In this paper, we reflect on the well-documented realities of curator and labour invisibility; the importance of fostering active communities (such as the DCN); and how trust, vulnerability and connectivity among colleagues leads to better curation practices. Through an investigation into data curators in the DCN, we found that, while curation can be isolating and invisible work, having a network of trusted peers helps alleviate these burdens and makes us better curators. We conclude with practical suggestions for implementing trust and transparency in relationships with colleagues and researchers.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.938

Associate Director of VIVA at George Mason University

Reporting to the VIVA Director, the VIVA Associate Director (AD) contributes directly to the strategic direction and overall administration of an innovative organization dedicated to improving and expanding access to academic library resources and services for students and researchers across the Commonwealth of Virginia. The AD oversees key program areas and contributes to the development, analysis, and promotion of consortial approaches to collaborative collection development and open access initiatives, resource sharing, and open and affordable programs on behalf of Virginia’s higher education institutions. The AD coordinates with VIVA central staff, VIVA committees, and member institutions to implement project management plans for consortial initiatives that empower Virginia’s academic libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/m6u2jafp

"Infra Finder: a New Tool to Enhance Transparency, Discoverability and Trust in Open Infrastructure"

This paper describes Infra Finder, a new tool built by Invest in Open Infrastructure to help institutional budget holders and libraries make more informed decisions around adoption of and investment in open infrastructure. Through increased transparency and discoverability, we aim for this tool to foster trust in the decision-making process and to help build connections between services, users, and funders. The design of Infra Finder is intended to contribute to ongoing discussions and developments regarding trust and transparency in open scholarly infrastructure, as well as help level the playing field between organizations with limited resources to conduct extensive due diligence processes and those with their own analyst teams. In this work, we describe the landscape analysis that led to the creation of Infra Finder, the use cases for the tool, and the approach IOI is taking to create and foster use of Infra Finder in the open infrastructure environment. We also address some of the principles of trust in open source and open infrastructure that have informed and impacted the Infra Finder project and our work in creating this tool.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.927

Metadata Librarian, Librarian at Michigan State University

Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries invites applications for the position of Metadata Librarian. The innovative, dynamic, and collaborative professional is responsible for creating, maintaining, and enriching metadata of MSUL’s digital collections of maps, posters, photographs, audio/visual, serials, monographs, ETD, etc., primarily housed in the digital repository.

https://tinyurl.com/y2jjs32u

"’Academic Publishing is a Business Interest’: Reconciling Faculty Serials Needs and Economic Realities at a Carnegie R2 University"

Introduction: This article explores faculty conceptions of academic publishers, their willingness to circumvent paywalls and share content, and their understanding of who holds the responsibility to pay for this body of scholarly work to which they all contribute.

Methods: The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 faculty at their Carnegie R2 university to explore scholars’ perspectives with respect to the costs of serials and the responsibilities of the University and library in support of scholarly publishing.

Results: Participants reported a broad spectrum of perspectives with respect to circumventing publisher paywalls and offered nuanced practices for interacting with paywalled content. They explained which library services work well and offered suggestions on how best to support faculty needs for serial literature. Although most participants agree that the University has the responsibility of making academic literature available to the community, they differ in their conceptions of academic publishers as good-faith partners in the knowledge enterprise.

Discussion: The results suggest a great deal of ambiguity and diversity of beliefs among faculty: some would support boycotting all commercial publishers; some understand academic publishers to be integral to the dissemination of their work, not to mention tenure and promotion processes; and many acknowledge a variety of tensions in what feels to them an exploitative and fraught relationship. These findings have implications for library services in acquisitions, collection management, scholarly communication, discovery, and access.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16232

Associate University Librarian, Open Scholarship at Concordia University (Extended)

We are creating the new role of Associate University Librarian, Open Scholarship, to grow the open initiatives established in the Library, and to integrate and operationalize recommendations cited in Concordia’s Open Science Working Group’s report. Now is the time to make the most of the momentum towards openly accessible scholarship. As part of the Library’s senior leadership team, the AUL Open Scholarship reports directly to the University Librarian. They will lead a team focused on technology infrastructure across all Library services and on scholarly communication initiatives, many increasingly dependent on such infrastructure

https://tinyurl.com/mr23r73k

"Closing Gaps: A Model of Cumulative Curation and Preservation Levels for Trustworthy Digital Repositories "

Curation and preservation measures carried out by digital repository staff are an important building block in maintaining the accessibility and usability of digital resources over time. The measures adequate to achieve long-term usability for a given audience strongly depend on scenarios of (re)use, the (intended) users’ needs and skills, the organisational setting (e.g., mission, resources, policies), as well as the characteristics of the digital objects to be preserved. The assessment of curation and preservation measures also forms an important part of existing certification procedures for trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) as offered, for example, by the CoreTrustSeal foundation, the nestor network, or ISO.

The digital curation community is presented with the challenge of finding community-, organisation-, and object-specific approaches to curation and preservation at the same time as defining the minimum level of curation and preservation measures expected from a TDR in sufficiently generic terms to ensure applicability to a wide array of repositories. Against this backdrop, this paper discusses the need for and benefits of community-agreed levels of curation and preservation to address this challenge, and considers the tiered model proposed by the CoreTrustSeal Board as an example.

The proposed model is then applied in an analysis of successful CoreTrustSeal applications from 2018–2022 in an effort to better understand the capacity of the curation and preservation levels to capture the respective practices of repositories and to identify potential gaps.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.926

Data and Visualization Librarian at Duke Kunshan University

Reporting to the University Librarian, working closely with other library staff including Data and Visualization service staff at Duke University Libraries (DUL), the Data and Visualization Librarian position provides important role in developing, designing, and implementing data and visualization resources and services to support faculty, students, and other researchers on campus. The incumbent will use a variety of technologies, along with excellent communication and interpersonal skills, to provide the best possible knowledge and experience for library patrons in data and visualization practice.

https://tinyurl.com/2cwjhtx9

"Ten Simple Rules for Recognizing Data and Software Contributions in Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure"

The ways in which promotion and tenure committees operate vary significantly across universities and departments. While committees often have the capability to evaluate the rigor and quality of articles and monographs in their scientific field, assessment with respect to practices concerning research data and software is a recent development and one that can be harder to implement, as there are few guidelines to facilitate the process. More specifically, the guidelines given to tenure and promotion committees often reference data and software in general terms, with some notable exceptions such as guidelines in [5] and are almost systematically trumped by other factors such as the number and perceived impact of journal publications. The core issue is that many colleges establish a scholarship versus service dichotomy: Peer-reviewed articles or monographs published by university presses are considered scholarship, while community service, teaching, and other categories are given less weight in the evaluation process. This dichotomy unfairly disadvantages digital scholarship and community-based scholarship, including data and software contributions [6]. In addition, there is a lack of resources for faculties to facilitate the inclusion of responsible data and software metrics into evaluation processes or to assess faculty’s expertise and competencies to create, manage, and use data and software as research objects. As a result, the outcome of the assessment by the tenure and promotion committee is as dependent on the guidelines provided as on the committee members’ background and proficiency in the data and software domains.

The presented guidelines aim to help alleviate these issues and align the academic evaluation processes to the principles of open science. We focus here on hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, but the same principles apply to other areas of academic evaluation at institutions. While these guidelines are by no means sufficient for handling the complexity of a multidimensional process that involves balancing a large set of nuanced and diverse information, we hope that they will support an increasing adoption of processes that recognize data and software as key research contributions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012296

Library Systems Technologist at Georgia Institute of Technology

Partnering with library stakeholders and technologists, the Systems Librarian will serve as an administrator and main technical lead for the Library’s collection management and discovery systems, primarily Ex Libris’ Alma/Primo. Working both independently and collaboratively, lead projects and initiatives to improve workflows, implement integrations, assess Library tools, and find creative solutions to improve upon the management and discovery of library resources. This role has responsibility for maintaining optimal system performance for users and the development of services based on the functionality and capabilities of Alma and Primo.

https://www.library.gatech.edu/about/jobs

"Transparent Disclosure, Curation & Preservation of Dynamic Digital Resources "

This paper explores an enhanced curation lifecycle being developed at the UK Data Service (UKDS), with our Data Product Builder. Through a Graphical User Interface, we aim to provide the researcher with a tailored digital resource. We detail the threefold motivation behind this initiative: data dissemination scalability, researcher satisfaction and the reduction of nationwide duplication of research effort.

Subsequent sections detail the technical components and challenges involved. In addition to more standard data subsetting, filtering and linking components, this data dissemination platform offers dynamic disclosure assessments – identifying combinations of variables that present a potential disclosure risk. All components are underpinned by the Data Documentation Initiative’s new Cross-Domain Integration standard (DDI-CDI), designed to handle the many structures in which data may be organised.

Ever conscious of the scale of the task we are embarking on, we remain motivated by the need for such advances in data dissemination and optimistic of the feasibility of such a system to meet the needs of the researcher while balancing the data disclosivity concerns of the data depositor.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.937

Electronic Resources Licensing Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington

Reporting to the Head of Acquisitions in the Technical Services Division, the Electronic Resources Licensing Librarian will provide leadership and expertise in managing all aspects of library electronic resources licensing. They will play a pivotal role in the IU Libraries’ efforts to meet current and emerging information needs and provide access to a broad and diverse collection of scholarly content. The successful candidate will collaborate with colleagues across the Libraries, the Bloomington campus, and the Indiana University system of campuses to support the IU Libraries licensed electronic resources program. The successful candidate will also be a primary liaison with publishers, content providers, and consortia to support electronic resources licensing and management for Indiana University Libraries.

https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/25404

"Artists Claim ‘Big’ Win in Copyright Suit Fighting AI Image Generators"

In an order on Monday, US district judge William Orrick denied key parts of motions to dismiss from Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. The court will now allow artists to proceed with discovery on claims that AI image generators relying on Stable Diffusion violate both the Copyright Act and the Lanham Act, which protects artists from commercial misuse of their names and unique styles. . . .

While Orrick agreed with Midjourney that “plaintiffs have no protection over ‘simple, cartoony drawings’ or ‘gritty fantasy paintings,'” artists were able to advance a “trade dress” claim under the Lanham Act, too.

https://tinyurl.com/yd27cvar

"Trade Dress Infringement"

"Linked Data Editors: Where Are We Now, Challenges and Considerations"

With the growing recognition of the advantages offered by linked data within the library community, libraries have made a lot of effort to support cataloging and metadata professionals in transitioning to linked data, which has led to the development of linked data editors. Although the available editors facilitate linked data-based input templates and output formats, these tools nonetheless have room for improvement. In this Communication on Practice, the authors compare two notable linked data editors based on their supported features and functions. They then delve into considerations when designing user-friendly and ontology-agnostic linked data editors. Finally, the authors address the challenges encountered by libraries during the transition to linked data production and examine the broader implications of this transition for information organization professionals.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.68n3.8226

Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Columbia University Libraries

The Digital Scholarship Coordinator supports digital scholarship activities and library spaces and is engaged in the work of programming, space planning, and outreach. Reporting to the Director of Digital Scholarship the position also closely collaborates with colleagues in Access Services, Communications, and other parts of the library. The position manages the day-to-day operations of the Digital Humanities Center and Butler Studio and works with the team to coordinate the logistics of Digital Scholarship (DS) activities such as Foundations for Research Computing, Open Access Week, open workshops, and other events.

https://tinyurl.com/2cvnzz7k

"The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery"

One of the grand challenges of artificial general intelligence is developing agents capable of conducting scientific research and discovering new knowledge. While frontier models have already been used as aids to human scientists, e.g. for brainstorming ideas, writing code, or prediction tasks, they still conduct only a small part of the scientific process. This paper presents the first comprehensive framework for fully automatic scientific discovery, enabling frontier large language models to perform research independently and communicate their findings. We introduce The AI Scientist, which generates novel research ideas, writes code, executes experiments, visualizes results, describes its findings by writing a full scientific paper, and then runs a simulated review process for evaluation. In principle, this process can be repeated to iteratively develop ideas in an open-ended fashion, acting like the human scientific community. We demonstrate its versatility by applying it to three distinct subfields of machine learning: diffusion modeling, transformer-based language modeling, and learning dynamics. Each idea is implemented and developed into a full paper at a cost of less than $15 per paper. To evaluate the generated papers, we design and validate an automated reviewer, which we show achieves near-human performance in evaluating paper scores. The AI Scientist can produce papers that exceed the acceptance threshold at a top machine learning conference as judged by our automated reviewer. This approach signifies the beginning of a new era in scientific discovery in machine learning: bringing the transformative benefits of AI agents to the entire research process of AI itself, and taking us closer to a world where endless affordable creativity and innovation can be unleashed on the world’s most challenging problems.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06292