UMD iSchool Advanced Information Collaboratory (AIC) Launched: a Letter From Dr. Richard Marciano
iSchool Colleagues and Students,
I am very pleased to announce the founding and launching of the AIC Collaboratory (“Advanced Information Collaboratory”) on Feb. 28, 2020! After founding, starting up, and running the DCIC (Digital Curation Innovation Center) five years ago, I have now moved on to new innovative research ventures in the iSchool. The AIC’s goal is to further expand on my collaborative Computational Archival Science (CAS) research agenda and is, simply put, an international “community network” of partners interested in exploring the opportunities and challenges of “disruptive technologies” for archives and records management.
The DCIC, started by former U. Maryland iSchool Dean, Jenny Preece, and co-implemented with Dr. Michael Kurtz, was based on the concept of “Integrating Education and Research” and creating a hands-on project-based experiential and learning lab for graduate and undergraduate students in the iSchool.
Inspired by Duke University’s Bass Connections program, where I was part of the inaugural 2013 project “Making Data Matter” with Cathy Davidson (former Duke Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies), Molly Tamarkin (former Duke Associate University Librarian for Information Technology), and community leader Priscilla Ndiaye, the philosophy was to form interdisciplinary teams of graduate and undergraduate students working on societally impactful projects while collaborating on cutting-edge research and embedded in and mentored by interdisciplinary faculty teams.
My appreciation to the over 300 students from all over the UMD campus who got involved in a dozen grant-funded projects, co-wrote papers, and presented at public events! Continue to follow us at https://ai-collaboratory.net.
Some of my currently and formerly funded projects include: (1) UK-US International Research Collaboration Network in Computational Archival Science [AHRC-funded], (2) Developing a Computational Framework for Library and Archival Education Research [IMLS-funded], (3) Developing a Digital Asset Management System for the National Park Service [NPS-funded], (4) DRAS-TIC Fedora (“Improving Fedora to Work with Web-Scale Storage and Services”) [IMLS-funded], (5) Brown Dog (“Making Sense of Billion-Record Archives” with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications) [NSF-funded], (6) Japanese-American WWII Camps [UMD FIA-funded], (7) Applying Archival Analytics to the MSA Legacy of Slavery Project [students funded through the Kurtz Foundation], (8) Redlining in America [IMLS-funded], (9) Urban Renewal and The Human Face of Big Data (w. M. Lee) [NSF-funded], (10) International Research Portal for Holocaust-Era Cultural Property (led and funded by Michael Kurtz), and (11) Curate Cloud (which led to the creation of the Virtual Computing Lab VCL software and the creation of the DCIP Digital Curation for Information Professionals certificate program) [IMLS-funded].
All the best,
Richard
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Richard Marciano, Ph.D.
Professor, College of Information Studies (iSchool)
University of Maryland