The digital music library project isn't the only high-tech research program drawing funds and attention to SLIS. Since August, four SLIS researchers have been awarded more than $680,000 in grants for projects ranging from explorations of e-commerce and virtual reality to the training of school media specialists.
A fifth project, on scientific communication and knowledge networks, is in the third year of a four-year grant of more than $380,000.
The influx of research moneys at a time when science funding is particularly competitive is a sign of the vitality and currency of SLIS's research efforts, saysDean Blaise Cronin.
"External funding is an important indicator of the perceived quality of a faculty's research," he says.
The most recent grants include:
Analysis of online biological literature: Information Technology Research, a division of the National Science Foundation, awarded $494,000 to a team that includes SLIS Associate Professor Javed Mostafa. ITR funds innovative, high-payoff research that explores new scientific, engineering, and educational areas in information technology. Mostafa's project is led by Snehasis Mukhopadhyay, an assistant professor of computer and information science at IUPUI. The project aims to provide personalized information to biologists by analyzing biological literature as it appears on the World Wide Web and in databases.
School media specialist training: In the Indianapolis area alone, there will be a projected 150 new positions for school library media specialists through 2003. The Indiana Department of Education has awarded more than $130,000 to school districts in Washington, Warren, and Perry townships in Indianapolis to attract certified teachers to fill some of those positions. The townships have contracted with a group that includes SLIS Professor Danny Callison to recruit and train up to 30 teachers as school media specialists for the Indianapolis market.
iUniverse, a collaborative information universe for IU: SLIS Assistant Professor Katy Borner was recently awarded a High Performance Network Applications Program grant of about $20,000 to develop iUniverse, a sophisticated interface technology for desktop computers at IU. iUniverse uses a "3D Virtual Reality Chat and Design Tool" that enables the construction of multimodal, multiuser, navigable 3-D worlds. Students in Borner's L578 course this fall collaborated with faculty from the School of Education and the Kelley School of Business to create teaching areas that provide access to instructional and Internet-based materials as well as course-specific communication and collaboration. For more information, see http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~katy/iUni/.
Teaching and learning ecommerce in a virtual economy: Assistant Professor Howard Rosenbaum has taught a class in virtual economy since 1996. To keep up with the ever-changing world of e-commerce, he constantly looks for ways to update and improve the course, in which students construct and manage virtual stores. Rosenbaum recently received a grant of about $30,000 from Sun Microsystems to support the course. He will use the funds to install a new server dedicated to the e-commerce program. The server will enable students to run complex applications that mirror storefronts on the World Wide Web [see ecommerce Student Projects or take a virtual economy class tour]. Rosenbaum is also the recipient of one of three Ameritech teaching fellowships at IU, which he will also use to develop the virtual economy course.
Scientific communication and knowledge networks: Knowledge networks consist of nodes, or forums, that include meetings, data archives, and documents, such as journals. Through these networks, scientists gather and exchange information. In recent years electronic media have brought about significant changes in the creation and structuring of scientific knowledge networks. SLIS Professor Rob Kling is in the third year of a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to analyze the reasons behind the structures of knowledge networks in six areas of science, including particle physics, human-computer interaction, and molecular biology.
Related SLIS NEWs stories:
SLIS Takes Leading Role In Digital Music Library Project
IU Receives $3 Million Grant To Create Digital Music Library
Posted December 12, 2000