G. Sayeed Choudhury will give the Spring 2009 Windsor Lecture, "The Perfect Storm". This year the Windsor Lecture is being presented in conjunction with the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) inaugural e-Research Roundtable.
Abstract:
The National Academy of Sciences report "Preparing for the Revolution" speculates that the higher education community may be suffering from a case of macromyopia-overestimating the short-term impacts while underestimating the long-term impacts. With previous transformative changes such as the introduction of the automobile, there was a time of hybrid environments when both automobiles and horse-drawn carriages shared the existing infrastructure. Eventually, for societies that experienced tremendous gains in productivity, new systems developed and merged into a new, cohesive infrastructure.
The convergence of our current economic crisis, the lowering of transaction costs and democratization of higher education, and the advent of data infrastructure represents a perfect storm that will present both significant challenges and opportunities. Our community and individual institution decisions about infrastructure development will have profound implications for the future. There are emerging developments in data-intensive scholarship across a range of disciplines that might represent the inflection point in terms of transformation. While much of the attention in this regard has focused on science and engineering, there are notable developments in the social sciences and humanities as well that highlight a shift from a collection-centric view to a data-centric view.
A 5-minute video by Choudhury is highly recommended as background for the lecture.
A
second video by Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration is also recommended.
Biography:
Sayeed Choudhury is the Associate Dean for Library Digital Programs and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. He is also the Director of Operations for the Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) based at Johns Hopkins. He is also a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins, a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Senior Presidential Fellow with the Council on Library and Information Resources. He received both his MSE in Civil Engineering and his BSE in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
For those unable to attend, the Windsor Lecture will be broadcast. The Live Session will be held in the GSLIS Auditorium.
You will need to use your NetID and GSLIS Domain password to enter the live session. If you do not remember your NetID or password, you can call the GSLIS Help Desk at 1-800-377-1892 or 217-244-4903 for assistance. They are open Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Please also review the Live Session Tutorial.
If you can't tune in, the lecture will be archived and available on the GSLIS Guest Lectures page.
This event is free and open to the public. A light reception will follow the lecture.
