Center for Information as Evidence Housed at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
April 2004
- National Library Workers Day...
- Vote @ Your Library...
- Upcoming Continuing Education Programs in Southern California...
- Susan McGlamery to be honored with LITA award...
- Dragons and Deeds: Toward a National Summer Reading Program...
- ALA Honorary Member Nominees Sought...
- Center for Information as Evidence Housed at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies...
The new Center for Information as Evidence at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies was officially launched during an opening celebration at the school's building. More than 90 professors, librarians, archivists, students and members of the community came from Australia, Canada, England and across the United States to attend the event.
Following opening remarks by Anne Gilliland, director of the Center for Information as Evidence and a UCLA information studies associate professor, and Aimee Dorr, dean of the school, professor Sue McKemmish, head of the School of Information Management and Systems at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, delivered a keynote paper, "Evidence of Us ... Always in a Process of Becoming," discussing the importance of records, both traditional and digital, as evidence in contemporary society.
"Professor McKemmish was a perfect speaker for the event. She picked up on the three themes of the center accountability, advocacy and artifacts as she drew from an Australian incident that was "mis-reported" in the heat of a political campaign and posed intriguing questions about the various contexts within which evidence is situated and evaluated," Gilliland said.
The Feb. 27 event also provided an opportunity to showcase a variety of current projects being undertaken by the center and its partners, including:
Museums and the Online Archive of California User Evaluation Project, www.gseis.ucla.edu/~moac/ a two-year research project examining the use and usability of digital museum content in education and research.
Information Technology and Policy Curricula for Electronic Records Management and Preservation Project, www.gseis.ucla.edu/itpc/index.html a multidisciplinary curricular development project for graduate and undergraduate education addressing the need to broaden the base and increase the level of expertise in the area of electronic records.
The International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems Project, www.interpares.org this international and interdisciplinary project addresses problems involved in creating, maintaining and preserving authentic electronic records in government, scientific and artistic domains.
Preserving Interactive Digital Music an international collaboration of information scientists, musicologists and archivists addressing the preservation of digital music.
Create Once, Use Many Times, The Clever Use of Metadata in eGovernment and eBusiness Recordkeeping Processes in Networked Environments, www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/rcrg/ an Australian-based project devoted to developing a prototype to demonstrate how metadata can be created once in particular application environments, then used many times to meet a range of business purposes.
The Center for Information as Evidence, www.gseis.ucla.edu/cie/index.htm, serves as an interdisciplinary center addressing the ways in which information objects and systems are created, used and preserved as legal, administrative, documentary, technological, procedural, scientific, cultural, political or historical evidence.
"Issues of evidence are integral to many people's lives and research agendas and have achieved particular prominence in our increasingly digital environment," Gilliland said. "We have set up a rubric where interested individuals can affiliate from around the campus and from the wider community. A researcher from one area might be thinking about doing a project but they need a collaborator. The center can provide a networking community, not just within UCLA but throughout the world."
Additionally, the center will sponsor lectures and discussion forums and issue a watchdog report on world record-keeping.
One of 11 professional schools at UCLA, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies consists of two academic departments, the Department of Education and the Department of Information Studies. The Graduate School of Education was founded in 1939 and was UCLA's first professional school. The Graduate School of Library Service was founded in 1958. The two schools merged in 1994, forming the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. UCLA is the only major research university in the country that combines departments of education and information studies. The school shares its findings with practicing educators and information professionals through classes, seminars and workshops offered at UCLA and in the community, and through reports, studies and articles featured in publications nationwide.