Issues for Science and Engineering Researchers in the Digital Age (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
A Digital Infrastructure to Support Tomorrow's Research Communities
A Digital Infrastructure to Support Tomorrow's Research Communities
Pages 24-37
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From page 24... ...
and extended communities more than they value the crucial social organization of departments, schools, and universities? Will the increasing remote use of instruments reduce the power of academic institutions, as researchers organize themselves in virtual institutions centered 24
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From page 25... ...
The large disparity between advanced and developing nations also raises concerns about the capability of researchers to participate in international projects. Bridging this divide, nationally and internationally, will bring benefits by ensuring diverse participation in research activities and enabling previously marginalized researchers to contribute.
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From page 26... ...
are responsible for local infrastructure (such as campus networks and libraries, personal computing resources for students, faculty, and staff, and access to specialized resources such as supercomputers or virtual reality environments)
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From page 27... ...
Faculty development programs will need to provide graduate students and faculty members with the research and teaching skills needed for success in a digital environment. While many young researchers are highly knowledgeable about computing and how to use it for their research, many senior faculty members lack the knowledge and skills to operate confidently in the digital environment, and find the marvelous new tools of information technology to be baffling sources of job stress (Science, 19991.
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From page 28... ...
For some it is vital; fortunately powerful software tools and high-tech languages are available to make this task easier. Local Area Networks To nurture the digitally mediated research communities of tomorrow, universities will need to provide students, faculty, and staff with robust, high-speed networks.
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From page 29... ...
The most obvious sign is the proportion of library information that is now available in digital formats. Online catalogs and information services have almost totally replaced card catalogs and printed indexes.
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From page 30... ...
Advocates often imply that multimedia and virtual reality are replacing text as the medium of communication and that digital libraries in the near future will supply tools for navigating oceans of information, provide researchers immediate access to all relevant literature and allow them to search by concept rather that conventional text-based retrieval. All of these concepts have been demonstrated in research laboratories, but the real world is more prosaic.
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From page 31... ...
Today, the federal government continues to support research in the technology of information processing and communications, but the Internet is almost entirely a commercial enterprise. Funds for specific disciplines are provided through numerous agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and others.
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From page 32... ...
. Placed on oceanographic buoys, spacecraft, and many other platforms, these sensors output their data to computers on the global network, so that a scientist or engineer at a desktop workstation anywhere can obtain direct information about environmental or physical conditions anywhere, in nearly real time.
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From page 33... ...
This new tool raises ethical and methodological questions involving privacy, informed consent, protected populations, and other considerations. Access to these new resources is controlled in the traditional manner, by the government agencies and other organizations that own them.
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From page 34... ...
They will increasingly use remotely sited automated instruments and facilities. Standards for communications protocols, data acquisition and data processing software, and data preservation must be applied globally, to ensure that data and results are comparable, reliable, and verifiable.
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From page 35... ...
Other collaboratories include the following: · The NSF-sponsored Graphics and Visualization Center, founded in 1991, includes some of the most advanced work in virtual reality applications and shared virtual environments. In particular, the center's Telecollaboration Project aims to "develop a distributed collaborative design and prototyping environment in which researchers at geographically distributed sites can work together in real time on common projects." Research is underway to provide both the hardware and software required.
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From page 36... ...
, have made it possible for the Internet to flourish. The national standard Z39.50, and the corresponding international standard ISO 23950, enabled the WAIS service to flourish briefly just prior to the emergence of the World Wide Web, and have supported broad access to library catalogs.
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From page 37... ...
With so much research depending upon software, researchers will save enormous amounts of time if they make investments in purchasing reliable and relevant tools, or adopting free and helpful software (e.g., Linux, or that from the GNU project) , as they pursue particular solutions.
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