Kathleen O'Brien

Technological advances are moving everyday tasks online – including banking, shopping, communicating, and refilling prescriptions – and many seniors can't keep up.

So researchers at ��οare looking at ways to help them avoid social isolation.

Cosmin Munteanu, an assistant professor at ��οMississauga’s Institute for Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information, has teamed up with first-year master's student Hiba Rafih to research the issue.

They are analyzing and assessing seniors, their relationship to technology, and their access to information online.

“Many older adults are marginalized digitally,” says Munteanu, co-director of the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab (TAGlab). “Facilitating their online participation may lead to a reduction of their social isolation, which will lead to several other indirect benefits," such as improving their health or finances.

But research into the extent of the problem is limited, he says.

Rafih explains that there's often a lack of data on senior citizens. For those aged 65 and over, their digital knowledge and habits increase their feeling of isolation, she says.

As they become socially isolated, it may become more difficult for them to reach out for help in navigating the Internet. Senior citizens’ social circles are typically small, or for older seniors, can be non-existent. This means that asking for assistance, or even knowing how to articulate a question regarding technology, can be a major roadblock for seniors attempting to use the Internet for social interaction, information, or tasks, Rafih says.

Society cannot fix the problem, she warns, until we identify who is vulnerable, and until then “the divide will continue to widen between seniors with low digital literacy and the exponential advancements made in technology.”

In Canada for the first time in our history, the number of people aged 65 years and older exceeds the number of children aged 0 to 14 years. In 2014, those aged 65 years and older were approximately four times the growth rate of the total population, demonstrating that senior citizens are a rapidly growing segment of the Canadian population.

Munteanu began collaborating with Rafih when she was an undergraduate student at U of T Mississauga’s Institute for Communication, Culture, Information and Technology last year.

While the research project is in the pilot stage, the duo hope to identify major barriers, and what society might do to address seniors’ lack of access to technology, and how that affects their social circles, and quality of life. Munteanu hopes their research will reduce adults' digital marginalization, spread cyber safety awareness and knowledge, and increase online participation among seniors.

��οpreserving environmental websites in response to Trump presidency

ullahnor — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 20:35:19 +0000

��οpreserving environmental websites in response to Trump presidency

ullahnor Wed, 12/14/2016 - 15:35

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump holds summit with technology industry leaders in NYC today (Drew Angerer/Getty)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Topic

Faculty of Information

Faculty of Arts & Science

With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump selecting several climate-change deniers to his cabinet – new Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt and Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State – some scientists fear environmental data now available online could disappear.

University of Toronto faculty, librarians and students are working with the Internet Archive's End of Term project to help preserve at-risk U.S. government websites with plans to capture crucial scientific and environmental websites before they vanish.

This push to preserve information before the incoming Trump administration takes control of U.S. federal agencies has spurred a full-day “Guerrilla Archiving Event: Saving Environmental Data from Trump” hackathon scheduled to take place Dec. 17 at the Faculty of Information. Participants will flag information for the non-profit organization Internet Archive, which archives Internet pages and makes them publicly available.

The hackathon is being organized by the Faculty of Information's Patrick Keilty, an assistant professor and a member of U of T’s Technoscience Salon and Research Unit, History and Women and Gender Studies Professor Michelle Murphy and Matt Price, an instructor in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Faculty of Information. Sam-chin Li is a ��οGovernment Publications and Reference Librarian at Robarts Library. Her team archived the Aboriginal Canada Portal site before the Canadian government shut it down.

Their work is making headlines here at home and around the world:

Read the Toronto Star story

See the BBC story

See the CBC story

Writer Kathleen O'Brien spoke with them about capturing online information.

Michelle Murphy, Matt Price and Patrick Keilty are part of the Faculty of Information (photo by Kathleen O'Brien)

The Canadian government's program to print government publications ended in 2014, yet no ministry is responsible to archive government websites. How have people at ��οbecome involved in preserving government websites? What can ��οteach our neighbours to the south? Why is this role important, especially at this time?

Murphy: Our event welcomes anyone with research and technical skills to join us. Not only are there people with needed research and tech skills at U of T but in Toronto generally. We know this is important to do because of the lessons learned from what happened to environmental research and public access to data during the Harper administration here in Canada.

The Trump transition team for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been explicit about goals to dismantle programs and have, at times, taken public positions against evidence-based environmental policy so we expect to see similar practices of making data less accessible in the U.S. Our effort is networked with colleagues planning similar events in the U.S. in Philadelphia and New York City. So we are in collaboration with U.S.-based colleagues who are also taking action. Our atmosphere, water ways and lives are connected across the continent. What happens to the environment and climate change in the U.S. will affect us all.

Li: Library and Archives (LAC) stopped their web archiving of Canadian Government web sites around November 2007 and only relaunched the program after lobbying by the academic community in October 2013. ��οstepped in to archive the Aboriginal Canada Portal and a lot of other federal sites from December 2007 to 2015 to fill the gaps. Collaboration is important in archiving government web sites as many of them are huge and need more people to dig deep for at-risk materials. We put out a call for librarians to nominate resources to archive when we learned that about 1,500 websites would be reduced to eventually one government website.

Will you help preserve online information in other vulnerable areas (religious freedoms, human rights, reproductive rights, gun statistics)?

Keilty: Our event focuses on environmental websites and data. This is a priority area because the Trump transition team has consistently identified these programs as ones to cut immediately.

We have a few goals we hope to achieve at our event. First, we need to identify vulnerable programs and then seed their URLs to the webcrawler of the End of Term project, which will make copies of those webpages. Second, we are researching and evaluating the many data repositories that the EPA has online: some of this data we know will be backed up and protected by laws, some data will be archivable at the Internet Archive through their webcrawler, and yet other sources of data will need to identified as in need of saving at a library. Libraries, such as at the University of Pennsylvania, are arranging to become repositories of this kind of vulnerable data not easily preserved. We will be passing on what we build and research to our colleagues in other cities so that they can pick up where we have left off.

Li: Yes. University of Toronto Library has many web-archived collections including of Canadian political parties and interest groups for more than 10 years. Other collections include: federal election candidate sites from 2015, politics in Hong Kong, the Toronto mayoral election in 2014 and many others.

Which U.S. agencies do you believe are vulnerable and should be archived?

Price: Assessing the answer to this question is one of the tasks of our event. It is not whole agencies that are most at risk, but programs in them. Here, it is important to research what the Trump transition team has identified as programs and regulations they want to dismantle.

From there, we work back to the websites and publicly available data sources associated with those programs. However, there is data that is not publicly available, and so this is something that colleagues in the U.S. are thinking through how to access and preserve. There is a time urgency to the project of preserving publicly available data. While the new administration may not directly delete data, it takes funding, personnel and effort to maintain publicly available data. So one of the ways data may become less accessible is by starving its maintenance of resources.

Li: I think the Environmental Protection Agency is vulnerable and should be archived.

How will you make information gleaned available and accessible to the public?

Murphy: The End of Term project has a webcrawler that they are using to make copies of .gov webpages, and these pages will be stored and made publicly available on the Internet Archive website. On a technical level, our event is helping the webcrawler get to materials it might not otherwise collect and also to assist the webcrawler in making certain websites a priority for saving. If people are interested in this project, and cannot make our event, they can nominate URLS to the End of Term project directly.

Li: Members of the public can access our web-archive collections.

From Yad Vashem to U of T: the importance of gathering and sharing Holocaust stories

sgupta — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 10:47:17 +0000

From Yad Vashem to U of T: the importance of gathering and sharing Holocaust stories sgupta Wed, 12/09/2015 - 05:47

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Tourists from around the world visit Yad Vashem in Israel to see stories and documentation from the Holocaust (photo courtesy James Lanthier)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Features

iSchool

Faculty of Information

Alumni

Subheadline

“It’s our moral duty to provide access to all knowledge and data and have it be free,” says IP Sharp Lecturer

Documenting and collecting stories, memories, and testimonials of the Holocaust is one of the most significant intergenerational and international initiatives of our time, Haim Gertner says.

Gertner, the director, Archives Division and Fred Hillman Chair of Holocaust Documentation, Yad Vashem, Israel, was the IP Sharp guest lecturer on Dec. 2 at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.

He described how the largest collection of research, education, and commemoration of Holocaust documents in the world – in Israel’s Yad Vashem – is still expanding.

“We have to gather huge pieces of the puzzle,” Gertner said, as “fragmented pieces of knowledge are a huge challenge for any historian.”

Gertner is leading an extensive project to collect all historical and personal Holocaust-related documentation, and make it openly accessible to the public through an innovative amalgamation of content and technology.

He said that although fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors remain each year, five teams from Yad Vashem still take video testimonies every day, and produce about 1,200 videos annually. Archivists are digitizing and translating these spoken testimonies from 41 languages into English, as well as documents written in 60 different languages.

One of the lecture attendees, Faculty of Information alumna Helen Katz, said she is grateful for the translations because her parents’ family history is there, written mainly in Yiddish and Hebrew. “Yad Vashem is a special place in Jewish hearts,” she said.

Yad Vashem is making agreements with thousands of organizations to survey and find more Holocaust narratives and documents, is gathering copies of collections around the world, as well as mapping where all information centres are located.

These efforts have resulted in Yad’s online collection of180 million pages, a half million photos, 125,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies, and other saved treasures, such as a Jewish man’s diary detailing life for 450 orphaned Jewish children in an Israel housing facility.

“We have the ability to see what we have, and make meaningful connections somehow. It’s our moral duty to provide access to all knowledge and data and have it be free,” Gertner said.

Katz (pictured at right, with her husband) agreed, and said she hopes one day Yad Vashem will be the one place to house all memories.

“The speaker ‘s real life examples showed us how bits and pieces of information could make lost family stories more complete. I am positive it has reunited families,” she said. “This is what family and connections mean to Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors.

“Yad Vashem means that the leaves on the family tree may be gone, but not forgotten.”

Gertner showed audience members how the fortitude of survivors like Rosemarie Gold, who kept cellophane-wrapped family photos hidden in a sandwich, enabled later familial connections to be made.

Katz experienced this personally. Her parents, Harry and Molly Lewkowicz, were in their twenties when they were sent to work camps. Liberated in 1945, Harry went back to Poland to find his six siblings, only to learn that none survived. Molly located only one of her four sisters.

They moved to Germany, married, and in 1949 immigrated to Canada where they raised two children and lived full lives, with Harry reaching 90, and Molly 92.

In Poland, there was nothing to commemorate the existence or memory of their families. But Harry ensured the names of both his family and his wife’s family appear on their tombstones in Canada.

“Archives are powerful,” said Faculty of Information Dean Seamus Ross, who was recently re-appointed to the Advisory Board of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure project.

“If you didn’t realize that, I’m sure you get it now,” Ross told the audience. “In the hands of creative archivists and knowledge managers, we can reconstruct stories and bring materials together that transform lives.”

(Photo of Dean Seamus Ross and Haim Gertner by Kathleen O'Brien)

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Undergrads, professors collaborate to develop state-of-the-art leg brace for student with cerebral palsy

sgupta — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 15:51:10 +0000

Undergrads, professors collaborate to develop state-of-the-art leg brace for student with cerebral palsy sgupta Thu, 08/27/2015 - 11:51

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Engineering students Shakthi Seerala, Lakmini Perera, Kayatri Rangarajan and Elizabeth Sumitro, with Tom Garsides (photo by Marit Mitchell)

Kathleen O'Brien

Cooper Long

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien and Cooper Long

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Back to School

Subheadline

iSchool, Engineering, Kinesiology & Physical Education work together to enhance student's mobility

Robotic exoskeletons have long been a staple of science fiction.

Now, Master of Information student Thomas Garside has collaborated with iSchool Professor Matt Ratto and a team of Engineering students and motion specialists from the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education to make such a device a reality.

A full-time student concentrating on critical information policy studies and knowledge management, Garside has limited mobility because of cerebral palsy. Normally he gets around with a cane, wheelchair or motorized scooter.

When he arrived at U of T, he knew that more advanced mobility aids were under development – and that their price put them out of reach.

Garside was also familiar with Ratto’s work as director of the iSchool’s Critical Making Lab, and in particular his application of 3D printer technology to the problem of producing prosthetic sockets and limbs for Ugandan children.

“Even before being accepted into the iSchool I was impressed by the work he had done,” Garside says.

The student decided to approach his professor of only two months about the possibility of creating a powered assistive device to help him, and others with mobility challenges, walk better.

After consulting iSchool Dean Seamus Ross, they enlisted final-year engineering students Shakthi Seerala, Lakmini Perera, Kayatri Rangarajan and Elizabeth Sumitro to work on the electrical controls and sensor systems necessary for a mechanized leg brace.

The circle of collaborators continued to widen: Garside sought out the expertise of Professors Luc Tremblay and Tyson Beach, sensorimotor control and biomechanics specialists from the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education. Using state-of-the-art 3D motion-capture and force-measurement systems, Beach analyzed Garside’s gait.

Meanwhile, the Tetra Design Group charity connected Garside with a volunteer who was able to fabricate the mechanical components of the brace. Using off-the-shelf radio-controlled motors, the Engineering team finished a functioning prototype at a cost of only $1,000.

Last spring Garside got to strap on the result of all this multi-disciplinary hard work. The prototype works by measuring the pressure exerted by the foot, detecting what part of the stride cycle he is performing and helping him flex his leg to complete the appropriate movement.

“I have been amazed by the quality of the brace,” Garside says. “And I have been delighted to see how well the Master of Information program can help in the development of physical devices. The training I’ve received on design from faculty like Colin Furness has really been well applied to hardware.”

Apart from enhancing his mobility, the project has given Garside useful experience in project management.

The next steps are to work with Engineering and Tetra to improve the brace’s control system and look at different structural materials. Then, create a brace for his left leg.

The results of this collaboration could have worldwide impact.

“Besides the enhancement of the prototype,” Garside says, “we’re all excited to continue to show the world that exoskeleton technologies are now mainstream technologies capable of solving issues of mobility for the disabled and elderly.”

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Edward Snowden Archive: University of Toronto project gives you access to all leaked NSA documents

sgupta — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 10:50:22 +0000

Edward Snowden Archive: University of Toronto project gives you access to all leaked NSA documents sgupta Mon, 04/13/2015 - 06:50

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden as depicted in Ai Weiwei exhibit at Alcatraz (photo by duluoz cats via flickr)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

At risk: preservation of new and historical material in Canada's libraries, archives, museums and galleries

sgupta — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 09:21:58 +0000

At risk: preservation of new and historical material in Canada's libraries, archives, museums and galleries sgupta Wed, 02/04/2015 - 04:21

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Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institution (image used by permission of the Council of Canadian Academies)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Matching top students with opportunities in Canada's top library system

sgupta — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:38:53 +0000

Matching top students with opportunities in Canada's top library system sgupta Wed, 01/28/2015 - 06:38

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Carolyn Pecoskie (left) is working closely with professional librarian Maria Buda (right) at the Faculty of Dentistry library (photo by Kathleen O'Brien)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Subheadline

TALint program aims to transform the student librarian experience

It’s an opportunity for mentorship and the chance to experience the real-world challenges of a contemporary librarian, from data management to communications: working in Canada's top-ranked library system.

To enhance the student experience and prepare high-performing students for leadership roles in the library field, the Faculty of Information (iSchool) and University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) have launched the Toronto Academic Libraries Internship program, or TALint. (Read about how U of T's library sytem is ranked one of the top three library stems in North America.)

“While many part-time positions in libraries augment students’ educational and professional development, often they do not provide structured learning about libraries beyond the role,” says Professor Wendy Duff. “Through UTL and the TALint program, ��οis transforming education for our interns as they now have the opportunity to not only increase the quality of their learning, but strengthen the profession.

“We are creating future leaders who will meet the complexities inherent in the libraries, archives and records management fields.”

Under the TALint program, 19 first-year and second-year Master of Information students are now well into working with professional librarians in such areas as the university archives, Media Commons, engineering library, and outreach and student engagement. For the 2015-16 academic year, TALint positions are open to full-time, incoming MI students.

Enhancing the Student Experience

A TALint student in her first year of studies at the iSchool, Carolyn Pecoskie is working closely with professional librarian, Maria Buda, at the Faculty of Dentistry library.

Pecoskie is running a literature search and interviewing lab directors to investigate data sharing, archiving and management in health science laboratories at Dentistry. She will analyze the results in a report.

“So much of what I have been learning in my classes has been reinforced or expanded upon by what I have seen or done at Dentistry,” Pecoskie says. “It’s been very valuable to gain the practical experience alongside my more theoretical coursework.”

Another tangible benefit is gaining not just reference desk experience ‒ like most student library positions ‒ but having one goal. “This project is focused on data management, an increasingly relevant topic for librarians. It is something I would not see unless I was trying it in reality.”

Buda predicts data management will become a priority for academic institutions, and with the TALint student’s help, the library will be prepared. “Smaller libraries struggle to keep up with the demanding goals. We rely on a part-time staff member to tackle special projects, which the TALint program allowed this year,” she says.

The TALint intern gets almost double the hours of a typical student library position, and as a result, Buda says, students get more exposure.

“Spending more time at the library is beneficial for them to learn our policies, service and collections quicker, thus getting a much more comprehensive understanding of the operation of a small academic library, as well as the professional development activities of academic librarians,” Buda says.

Recently, Pecoskie took advantage of another perk where TALint students job shadow librarians throughout the ��οlibraries system.

“I have already met and spoke to many librarians doing a wide variety of jobs within UTL, which has been invaluable. Gaining some insight into the operations of such a reputed library system is such a privilege,” Pecoskie says. “I came into the iSchool thinking that I wanted to be a librarian, but not sure where I would work. Now the experience I am gaining would be applicable for work in a health library setting, but also in any organization that plans to expand their services into the realm of data.”

How the TALint Program Works

Students gain exposure to and hands-on experience in many aspects of the information field in their courses, but this program goes further. By design, the program allows students to obtain specialized training in libraries, directly matching their specific courses or area of studies.

Incoming MI students who will study full-time and hold a minimum A- grade average compete for the internships each spring. They get paid for 15 hours per week and can hold the position for up to 20 months. In addition, interns have access to 10 to 14 hours of professional development opportunities, such as specialized technical and leadership training.

The goal is to provide outstanding students with: (1) hands-on learning opportunities from library and records tasks; (2) seminars, tours and other learning opportunities that complement their courses of study; (3) soft skills necessary to the development of leaders in the profession; and (4) overall enrichment of the education experience via mentoring and exposure to real workplace issues and situations.

“By working with UTL on this initiative, we are helping to train students for a career and field that is needed in today’s society,” says iSchool Dean Seamus Ross. “These leaders will be equipped to meet the emerging challenges of the Information profession.”

Putting Theory into Practice

Bridgette Kelly, another first-year TALint student, says working at the OISE Library is allowing her to see first hand how to address the information needs of library users in the ��οcommunity and beyond. “It requires us to develop a skill set that is very much rooted in the ‘in-demand’ competencies of the profession that we’re learning about in class,” she says.

Already Kelly has drawn upon skills in communications, project management, content expertise, knowledge of digital environments and information systems. And Kelly says the job has taught her about the context of practice, adding it is one thing to hear about skills associated with being an information professional, and quite another to be involved in a real life workplace situation.

“I’m learning more about where my skills fit best in the profession and which courses might serve me well at the iSchool in order to meet my career goals. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of fun.”

Julie Hannaford, deputy chief librarian for the humanities and social sciences, says UTL supports the program continuing to grow and develop in the coming years. “We see the TALint program as a terrific opportunity to mentor and work with our future information professionals. We are excited by all the possibilities.”

Kathleen O'Brien is a writer with the iSchool at the University of Toronto.

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��οteam takes second place in IBM Watson challenge

sgupta — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 07:16:41 +0000

��οteam takes second place in IBM Watson challenge sgupta Wed, 01/14/2015 - 02:16

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Members of the team and their advisors at the competition in NYC (photo by Steve Engels)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Faculty of Information

Computer Science

Collaboration

The University of Toronto team that built a virtual legal research database for the IBM Watson Cognitive Computing Competition made it to the final round of the top three before finishing the competition in second place.

“When the final deliberation took place, the panel couldn't decide who should occupy the top spot,” said ��οlecturer Steve Engels, who travelled with the team to New York City. “They argued for a long time, even sending somebody out to apologize for the delay.”

But, in the end, the panel awarded first place to the University of Texas at Austin, Engels said. The University of California, Berkeley placed third.

The contest began when International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) asked 10 elite schools, including Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and U of T, to put together teams at each university using its famous Jeopardy-playing super-computer, named Watson. ��οwas the only Canadian institution invited to participate; its computer science department was recently ranked among the top 10 computer science departments worldwide in the prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. (Read more about the decision to bring Watson to U of T.)

In December, through a computer science course taught by Engels, Mario Grech and Helen Kontozopoulos, five ��οteams competed against each other in a challenge to develop an entrepreneurial intelligence-based legal application, using Watson’s cognitive computing engine through its cloud computing system.

Students from the department of computer science and the Faculty of Information – Jimoh Ovbiagele, Shuai Wang, Akash Venkat, Pargles Wenz Dall'Oglio and Andrew Arruda – triumphed after successfully pitching their business model, an electronic paralegal system called “Ross” that is aimed at assisting lawyers with case research. Judges for the ��οcompetition said the team won for its use of the technology and its succinct business plan. (Read more about the Watson challenge at U of T. Read the Globe and Mail article about the team.)

The team said its ultimate goal is to build a great Canadian company.

The iSchool Connection

Wang and Venkat agree that the artificial intelligence competition taught them valuable business skills that will serve them well no matter what they do in their careers.

Kelly Lyons, a professor at the Faculty of Information (iSchool) and department of computer science, said she was not at all surprised that the team ��οsent to New York was a collaboration involving iSchool and computer science students.

“Designing and building a sophisticated, useful and important application requires the diversity and breadth of knowledge delivered through our finely-tuned programs.”

Wang, a first-year iSchool student, and Venkat, a second-year student, say their education at the university, especially a course taught by iSchool Professor Eric Yu, helped them bring the skills they learned in class to their project.

“These exemplary entrepreneurs are leveraging leading-edge technology to fuel their career goals,” said Professor Yu. “I am proud to have iSchoolers in New York representing our city and university in the first-ever Watson Challenge.”

How it Works

Helping lawyers reduce research time is key to the functioning of Ross, the students said. All teams were given access to Watson on the cloud, which allowed them to feed the computer program large amounts of text from Ontario corporate law decisions and statutes as reference material.

The super computer Watson then processed that information and the students’ application, Ross, made that data accessible to lawyers and legal researchers. Ross can, for example, predict the outcome of court cases, suggest readings or answer a wide variety of legal precedent questions, at any point in a legal process. It even provides a percentage number rating how confident it is on the accuracy of search results. Ross also alerts the user to new cases or results on their smart phone.

According to the inventors, Ross takes seconds to spit out legal research that might take others hours to gather.

“Lawyers could use Ross’ artificial intelligence to transform the practice of law, and that’s what we’re hoping to achieve,” said Venkat.

The student inventors warn, though, that Ross doesn’t make lawyers unnecessary; it's just that clients may need to hire fewer of them.

See the demo video below:

Kathleen O'Brien is a writer with the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.

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UNESCO director-general visits U of T, tours historic insulin collections

sgupta — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 15:29:15 +0000

UNESCO director-general visits U of T, tours historic insulin collections sgupta Fri, 12/12/2014 - 10:29

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UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova (photo by Kathleen O'Brien)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Topic

It’s a collection that demonstrates “the University of Toronto’s role as a custodian in the process of cultural heritage preservation,” says UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

On a recent visit to U of T, Bokova pored over papers and photos from the 1920s – and examined the Nobel Prize awarded to the University of Toronto researchers who discovered the treatment for diabetes.

“I was really moved by this wonderful exhibition,” Bokova said. “We saw the personal notes of Frederick Banting, John Macleod, Charles Best and James Collip as well as patient letters, children’s photographs, notebooks and – particularly moving – were the letters of children that were saved, the patients of Dr. Banting.”

The Discovery of Insulin Collections at U of T’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library was inscribed last year into UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program Register – one of only four Canadian collections to receive the distinction.

On campus to deliver that evening’s Faculty of Information’s I.P. Sharp lecture, Bokova spoke about the wide-reaching “human impact” of the collection. Her tour included a viewing of Banting’s notebooks, scrapbooks and early experiment charts, and she spent some time speaking with Banting’s great grand-nephew, Bob Banting.

“Seeing the collection was a really personal experience for me, very moving,” she said.

During her lecture, held in partnership with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO on November 18, Bokova spoke about how the world watches cultural artefacts and treasures get destroyed through war, social unrest and lack of resources – and how it is more important than ever to preserve them for future generations.

“The Memory of the World Program is anchored in the human experience,” she said. “It’s difficult to think critically about something until it’s actually gone or in the past.”

But, she added, documents can be significant markers and reminders of the environment in which they were created.
Despite vast cultural differences that may exist between Canada and other countries, Bokova said, all citizens have the same duty to protect and preserve cultural heritage materials, whether they are documents, manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials or archival holdings. This goal is at the core of the Memory of the World program, established by UNESCO in 1992.

“At UNESCO, heritage is not just a document, but a value system,” she told the audience.

It’s important to ask how we use material culture to construct narratives about our existence, and how they inform us of the past and help us prepare for the future, Bokova said. This is especially important today, she added, when societies are becoming more digitized through technology advances. Countries need to adapt and to work together, she said.

“All cultures are different, but human is a single community.”

Bokova had high praise for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, headed by alumna Christina Cameron, calling it “vibrant, dynamic and forward-thinking” for its contributions toward saving cultural heritage. She also recognized the work of the Faculty of Information, as a leading academic institution in the field of knowledge management and information sciences, empowering students with the tools to preserve world heritage.

UofT iSchool Dean Seamus Ross said Bokova brilliantly illustrated how the initiatives UNESCO is leading are widening public understanding of our informational and cultural heritage.

“Our Faculty is proud that our students and scholars are contributing to facilitating the future of our documentary heritage and its narrative potential,” said Ross. “Ms Bokova drove home the value of what they are doing.”

Professor Meric Gertler, president of ��οsaid, “Cultural heritage is a matter of the greatest importance to universities, and we play a key role in preserving, understanding and transmitting it for the good of society and for future generations.

“The University of Toronto is proud of the outstanding contributions made by the iSchool and University of Toronto Libraries in this crucial cause, and we commend Ms Bokova and UNESCO for their global leadership.”

The I.P. Sharp Lectureship was established at the Faculty of Information Studies in 1989 with an endowment from Reuters Information Services (Canada) Limited in honour of its founding president and former chief executive officer, Ian P. Sharp. It is intended to bring internationally-renowned people to the campus to explore the transformative effects of information practice. The lectures, which are open to the profession and members of the public, are delivered every three to four years by a distinguished figure in information science and related fields.

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What is a book?

sgupta — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:38:40 +0000

What is a book? sgupta Mon, 07/07/2014 - 05:38

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Art from an Altered Book" by carving the pages into a series of three-dimensional illustrations (all photos by Kathleen O'Brien)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O’Brien

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Understanding and transforming the content and structure of books

Faculty of Information instructor Greta Golick wanted her students to think about what form books take, how the content is presented, and create something new, using text and/or an image to remake the book.

The result is a stunning collection of book-inspired art created by 45 Faculty of Information (iSchool) students, in the display cases in the north atrium of Robarts Library (130 St. George Street, second floor, adjacent to the iSchool entrance).

Students played with the book’s writing surface, applied hand- and machine-printing techniques, painted or constructed images, and incorporated new themes, all adding further dimensionality and functionality to their books – with no or minimal experience or equipment.

(At right, Master of Information student Wendy Banks playfully explores how two people can occupy different mental worlds with a pop-up game of chess, in which she intertwined pages from a love story and murder mystery, in “Chess: A Love Story/ Chess: A Murder Mystery.”)

“No prior bookbinding experience was necessary. I wanted students to take books in a new direction, to tap into their own creativity, and to make something with their hands,” Golick says.

The workshop’s purpose, she says, is to engage readers and viewers to question their own experiences with the form and the function of books in their lives. “It gives them a chance to play with new concepts and to explore what a book is and can be.”

Golick curated the exhibit, entitled “Book Works 2014,” as a collection of the students’ final project for the six-week workshop course, “De/Constructing the Book,” taught during the winter 2014 term.

To begin, students examined small press books and artists’ books in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library collection, which challenged their traditional views of the book as object.

In the workshop they constructed accordion books, meander books, and pamphlets in three styles: saddle stitch, stab stitch, and dos-à-dos.

Second-year Master of Information student Catherine Lamoureaux was inspired by the Fisher Antiphonary [MSS 09700], a 15th century illuminated manuscript. (Above, right, Lamoreaux imposes pop singer George Michael’s song, “Careless Whisper,” into the ecclesiastical manuscript form and features calligraphy and initial letters illuminated with acrylic paint and nail polish for her project, "Never Gonna Dance Again".)

The exhibition, installed by John Toyonaga and Christy Thomasson, will be on display until September 2014.

Kathleen O'Brien is a writer with the Faculty of Information or iSchool at the University of Toronto.

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Kathleen O'Brien

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