AISTI Seventh Annual Miniconference (in alphabetical order):

2D and 3D Information Visualization: The Next Big Revolution
This presentation will discuss 2D and 3D information visualization, how it is almost ready to hit the general marketplace, why it is important for information organizations to know about and begin experimenting with this technology, and what is currently out there in terms of experiments and softwares. The author has recently written 3D Visualization Techniques for Library Technology Reports (January/February 2005), as well as Innovative Digital Projects in the Humanities (July/August 2005), and wants to share this amazing technology and current experimentations with information organizations. Ways to begin experimentation in this technology, both with the OPAC and with the Web, will be suggested as well.

Alternative Metrics of Scholarly Impact
The scholarly process is now largely evaluated by means of citation-based metrics such as the journal Impact Factor. Although this is commonly accepted as the standard by which to judge the status of scholarly journals, the LANL Research Library Prototype Team research has focused on the definition of alternative usage-based metrics of scholarly status which can augment and in some circumstances replace citation-based evaluation metrics. Johann discusses their work on digital library architectures to record and aggregate large-scale usage data, analyze the resulting data sets and produce assessment of scholarly quality which are more compatible with concepts of status as they have been studied in social network analysis for decades. He outlines recent results of this approach, including prototypes developed to demonstrate potential digital library end-user services and how they may augment the scholarly process.

Building a Karst Information Portal: A Unique Collaboratorium. Despite the emerging critical nature of world karst terrains, the literature of caves and karst remains largely inaccessible. In collaboration with AISTI, the University of New Mexico, the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the University of South Florida are developing the Karst Information Portal (KIP) to promote open access to karst, cave, and aquifer information and linkages among karst scientists. This project aims to respond to disciplinary needs by integrating individual scientists into a global network through the karst information portal. Projects of this scope face unique challenges, but provide the opportunity for librarians/information scientists to develop unique means to promote linkages among scientists and promote knowledge discovery. This talk will focus on the need for the project, the emerging partnership among librarians and scientists, the challenges we face, our initial efforts, including an institutional repository of images, and future plans.

Building the Library of Tomorrow
The game has changed. Information technology is vastly different than it was even just ten years ago. What are the new kinds of technologies we must employ to be more effective? How can we decide what must be done and what can be ignored so that we can best focus our efforts? How, in the end, can we build the library of the future, now? These and other questions will be addressed in a rollicking look at what it means to work toward tomorrow's library today.

The Champion Within
Cary will take us on a roller coaster ride - from the agony of defeat, to Olympic competition and World Cup victory. Cary believes in 'championing greatness', in ourselves and in others. He shares success strategies from the high performance world of sport. You will take away concrete tools to assist you to become the best you can be - HOW to WIN in both your professional and personal life. Through a deliberate process, David meets Goliath, the underdog wins and the kid next door becomes an Olympian and World Cup Champion!

NetGen Technology - Are you ready to play?
Here we look at the information technology tools NetGen are already comfortable with and how this impacts what they might expect from the library of the future. Advances in gaming, downloading music, podcasts, etc. are changing the way our society thinks of accessing information. Libraries can take a proactive role in many new ways by integrating some of these tools such as utilizing podcasts, rss feeds and new ways of looking at information with tagging software(like del.icio.us, flickr, and others) and mashups. Though some of these technologies are still very new and proprietary, collaborative software such as wikis and blogs already have had a significant impact on knowledge creation where new ideas and communities can be formed.

Science in an Exponential World
The amount of scientific information is doubling every year. This exponential growth is fundamentally changing every aspect of the scientific process - the collection, analysis and dissemination of scientific information. Our traditional paradigm for scientific publishing assumes a linear world, where the number of journals and articles remains approximately constant. The talk presents the challenges of this new paradigm and shows examples of how some disciplines are trying to cope with the data avalanche.

Services Architecture and Semantic Practices Used in the CHRONOS Cyber-infrastructure Effort.
Services oriented architectures (SOA's) have allowed CHRONOS to develop agile and flexible components to address the needs of the geosciences community it is serving. A description of this approach will be given in this presentation. Additionally, how this architecture is being used to enable semantic and social networking capacity to the CHRONOS environment will be presented. Approaches to the syndication of data and content using this environment of services and semantics will also be demonstrated.