University of Michigan: Undergrad Degree in Informatics

I routinely check the Library Cloud email, it notifies us of new comments, legitimate inquiries and information, and a plethora of intriguing spam. Who knew there were so many different ways to make money and order pharmaceuticals? This morning we had a message from Frank DeSanto, Communications, School of Information at the University of Michigan. Here, in part, is his email announcement:

Sept. 8, 2008
Contact: Frank DeSanto, (734) 647-7313, fdesanto@umich.edu

Ann Arbor, Mich.: The University of Michigan, the first to offer a master's specialization in social computing, is now opening up the opportunity to undergrads with the launch of a new undergraduate major in informatics that features a social computing track.

Students in the social computing informatics track will build and evaluate social software applications and study the influences of these systems on society.

Informatics is the study of information and the ways information is used by and affects people and social systems.

Experts in this field design information technology tools for scientific, business, and cultural needs, and study how such tools are used. Informatics specialists, for example, might help develop the systems that let your doctor quickly share your medical records with a specialist while still ensuring your privacy.

"The program offers students an opportunity to develop the skills to be leaders in an information-centric world," says Martha E. Pollack, Dean of the School of Information at Michigan. "Think of the analogyto biology: biology majors are experts in living organisms; informatics majors will be experts in information, in all its forms."

"Tremendous progress in computer science and communications is radically changing the way we do medical science, share and retrieve information,access services, and form communities," adds Professor Farnam Jahanian,chair of Computer Science andEngineering. "Informatics students will apply principles from computer science, statistics, and user-centered design to provide the expertise needed to shape these changes."

Key to the new concentration is its bringing together of both technological and social perspectives to study information. U-M's cross-disciplinary approach gives students a solid grounding in computerscience, mathematics, and statistics, combined with study of the ethical and social science dimensions of complex information systems.

"To understand how information technology interacts with social systems,you need to know something about both," says Associate Professor of Information Paul Conway, chair of the new program's steering committee."Our students explore the ways information and information technology are embedded in society, influencing our economic, political, and cultural systems."

After completing a common set of core courses, informatics students choose one of four concentration tracks:

• computational informatics, in which they design and evaluate usable computing solutions;
• information analysis, in which they analyze and visualize massive datasets;
• life science informatics, in which they apply computation and statistics to problems in life science and biomedical research; or
• social computing, in which they build and evaluate social software applications and study the influences of these systems on society.

I first posted about the University of Michigans Social Computing Specialization in March of last year. To learn more about informatics, and this new program, visit their website @ http://informatics.umich.edu .

ALA Conference: Technical Services 2.0

Though not a technical services librarian, cataloger, systems librarian or any meaningful derivative thereof, I am an academic librarian interested in wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social bookmarking and various other technologies included in the program description for the last session I attended at ALA Annual; Technical Services 2.0: Using Social Software for Collaboration, sponsored by Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALACTS) and Acquisitions Section (AS) was held Monday, June 25th from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. Moderated by Rick Lugg of R2 Consulting, this session featured:

• Matt Barnes, VP of Sales & Marketing, Blackwell Book Services
• Beth Picknally Camden, Director, Goldstein Information Processing Center, University of Pennsylvania Library
• Elizabeth L. Winter, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Acquisitions, Georgia Institute of Technology

All three speakers were well versed in their subject areas and presented appealing information regarding the use of 2.0 technologies in libraries. However, I have to admit I was most interested, actually intrigued is more accurate, with the library social bookmarking project presented by Picknally Camden.

Penn Tags is “a social bookmarking tool for locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources. Members of the Penn Community can collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, and records in Franklin, our online catalog and VCat, our online video catalog.”(About Penn Tags)

Developed in-house at UPenn, anyone may view the project but only authorized users, UPenn login is required, are able to create and maintain tags. This process promotes a sense of ownership and responsibility for individuals involved in the folksonomy of tagging. As with many social bookmarking products, the more people using any given tag, the larger font used to display it within the over all tag cloud (at the time of this post, items in the cloud were tags used at least 66 times). It was my understanding that the project has yet to undergo a serious marketing push, but users have found it via the best grass roots marketing tool possible, word-of-mouth. What a great indication that Penn Tags has filled a niche within the 2.0 library.

Tags: ALA conference, Technical Services 2.0, Penn Tags, ALCTS, ALCTS, AS