Purpose: The purpose of this exploratory study is to provide modern local governments with potential use cases for their open data, in order to help inform related future policies and decision-making. The concrete context was that of the Växjö municipality located in southeastern Sweden. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology was two-fold: 1) a survey of potential end users (n=151) from a local university; and, 2) analysis of survey results using a theoretical model regarding local strategies for implementing open government data. Findings: Most datasets predicted to be useful were on: sustainability and environment; preschool and school; municipality and politics. The use context given is primarily research and development, informing policies and decision making; but also education, informing personal choices, informing citizens and creating services based on open data. Not the least, the need for educating target user groups on data literacy emerged. A tentative pattern comprising a technical perspective on open data and a social perspective on open government was identified. Research limitations: In line with available funding, the nature of the study was exploratory and implemented as an anonymous web-based survey of employees and students at the local university. Further research involving (qualitative) surveys with all stakeholders would allow for creating a more complete picture of the matter. Practical implications: The study determines potential use cases and use contexts for open government data, in order to help inform related future policies and decision-making. Originality/value: Modern local governments, and especially in Sweden, are faced with a challenge of how to make their data open, how to learn about which types of data will be most relevant for their end users and what will be different societal purposes. The paper contributes to knowledge that modern local governments can resort to when it comes to attitudes of local citizens to open government data in the context of an open government data perspective.
Libraries hold a long history of a multidimensional focus on collecting, storing, organizing, preserving and providing access to information resources for various types of users. Data is nothing new to Library and Information Science (LIS) and Big Data presents a quantitative expansion of an already well-known object of study. Scholarly communication, data sharing and data curation are three areas related to data in LIS and are discussed in this paper in the light of current developments as well as from the perspective of attaining the research area relevance in the discipline over time. Big Data, new technologies and networked research environments will continue to increase both in numbers and size. LIS is rapidly developing tools to meet the opportunities arising - through educational initiatives and the development of new research areas such as data curation and altmetrics. Since social and political demands for open data grow, these issues are pressing.
INTRODUCTION Today we live in a rapidly evolving environment supported by high-quality technology and fast communication, which has impacted professional, commercial and academic aspects of the society. In higher education there is a constant need to keep respective fields up-to-date with the changing needs of the society. A comprehensive approach to address this challenge is the creation of interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary programmes. The field of Digital Humanities (DH), lying at the intersection of humanities and computing is such an example which may be instrumental in creating the change by serving as a platform for novel interdisciplinary connections to address societal challenges. DH has been identified as a tool that assists in furthering research, studies and collaboration between distantly related fields which have not been connected conventionally in the discipline of humanities (e.g., Kirshenbaum, 2010). Further, higher education and its array of offerings is influenced by market economies. For example, Newman, Couturier and Scurry (2010) study the dynamics of market influences on higher education and point to the inevitable transformations due to agendas of political parties, public policies, corporate goals and market structures. Recent EU political discussions emphasize the need for addressing societal needs through fields like DH, where Humanities and Social Sciences are viewed as "essential to maximise the returns to society from investment in science and technology" (European Commission, 2016). Higher education is viewed as central to the objectives of public and private institutions and related economic development, employment, skills development and talent acquisitions. The development of new courses with a unique course offering helps to position the universities and higher education institutions differently from the others and helps counter global competition. The local community stakeholders can provide assistance in identifying the required set of skills for the job market. They can guide on how interdisciplinary connections can be built up so as to expand the possibilities. Not the least, courses and programmes informed by actual needs will enable the highly skilled professionals, whose education has been markedly enhanced by practice-informed education and joint, cross-sector innovation, to address future societal challenges. All this is applicable to the field of humanities and the newly evolved Digital Humanities. METHODOLOGY The paper reports on a pilot study undertaken with the purpose of informing the developments of DH courses at Linnaeus University (LNU) in the way that reflects actual societal needs, based on input from the relevant stakeholders in the LNU region encompassing south-eastern Sweden. To this purpose, a focus group interview of representatives from relevant public institutions and organizations was conducted. While the invitation was sent out to 9 representatives from the LNU's DH Initiative network (https://lnu.se/en/research/searchresearch/digital-humanities/), 4 were able to attend the focus group interview, and 1 provided his views via an email interview. The five participants represented: Kulturparken Småland (encompassing the biggest group of local cultural venues, http://www.kulturparkensmaland.se/1.0.1.0/108/1/) in Växjö, Kalmar Castle (http://www.kalmarslott.se) in Kalmar, Det fria ordets hus (The House of Free Speech, http://www.vaxjo.se/-Det-fria-ordetshus-/Om-Det-fria-ordet-hus/) in Växjö, and AV Media Region Kronoberg (publically financed institution for media and IT in schools, http://avmedia.kronoberg.se). The focus group interview and the email interview were of a structured type and comprised 11 questions, grouped around the following 4 subsections: Views about DH as a general topic and as the specific LNU initiative; Relevance of DH to the Linnaeus University region; The skills and talent pool in the market in relation to DH; and, Points of attention for the DH project to aid needs of the society and local industry. RESULTS The participants largely agreed that DH is a very broad topic that needs concrete references to applications in order to relate it to various industries. DH can be both a method and a way of thinking and can be used in optimal ways to engage people and customers in their work and social engagement; for the latter, it is important to devise new modes of participation of end users in order to collect their ideas and interests, and create new content. The LNU DH Initiative was hailed as an excellent idea allowing for cross-sector collaboration, and for humanities to connect to computing and business disciplines more substantially. The overall perception was that the Linnaeus University region needed to be developed in many sectors, ranging from business, culture, education, innovation etc. The project could contribute to and engage with society through schools, museums and other public platforms. Sustainability of the DH Initiative would need to be addressed. The respondents had a consensus that strategic thinking, though very important, was largely lacking in the overall societal development and in the related plans in the local municipal bodies. The DH programme was therefore recommended to include education related to strategy and strategic thinking. The DH programme is also expected to include communication skills building and working in multidisciplinary teams. Finally, the respondents pointed out that as a higher education provider in Sweden it was important to remember that the DH programme needs to keep the three pillars of Education, Research and Engagement with Society as primary in their course development. REFERENCES European Commission. (2016). Horizon 2020: Social sciences & humanities. Available at https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/area/social-sciences-humanities. Kirschenbaum, M., 2010. What is digital humanities and what's it doing in English departments? Debates in the digital humanities, ADE Bulletin, 150, pp.1-7. Newman, F., Couturier, L., & Scurry, J. (2010). The future of higher education: Rhetoric, reality, and the risks of the market. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons
Libraries hold a long history of a multidimensional focus on collecting, storing, organizing, preserving and providing access to information resources for various types of users. Data is nothing new to Library and Information Science (LIS) and Big Data presents a quantitative expansion of an already well-known object of study. Scholarly communication, data sharing and data curation are three areas related to data in LIS and are discussed in this paper in the light of current developments as well as from the perspective of attaining the research area relevance in the discipline over time. Big Data, new technologies and networked research environments will continue to increase both in numbers and size. LIS is rapidly developing tools to meet the opportunities arising - through educational initiatives and the development of new research areas such as data curation and altmetrics. Since social and political demands for open data grow, these issues are pressing.
Libraries hold a long history of a multidimensional focus on collecting, storing, organizing, preserving and providing access to information resources for various types of users. Data is nothing new to Library and Information Science (LIS) and Big Data presents a quantitative expansion of an already well-known object of study. Scholarly communication, data sharing and data curation are three areas related to data in LIS and are discussed in this paper in the light of current developments as well as from the perspective of attaining the research area relevance in the discipline over time. Big Data, new technologies and networked research environments will continue to increase both in numbers and size. LIS is rapidly developing tools to meet the opportunities arising - through educational initiatives and the development of new research areas such as data curation and altmetrics. Since social and political demands for open data grow, these issues are pressing.
Purpose To explore the potential of applying the Dewey Decimal Classification as an established knowledge organisation system for enhancing social tagging, with the ultimate purpose of improving subject indexing and information retrieval. Design/methodology/approach Over 11,000 Intute metadata records in politics were used. 28 politics students were each given 4 tasks, in which a total of 60 resources were tagged in two different configurations, one with uncontrolled social tags only and another with uncontrolled social tags as well as suggestions from a controlled vocabulary. The controlled vocabulary was Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) comprising also mappings from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Findings The results demonstrate the importance of controlled vocabulary suggestions for indexing and retrieval: to help produce ideas of which tags to use, to make it easier to find focus for the tagging, to ensure consistency and to increase the number of access points in retrieval. The value and usefulness of the suggestions proved to be dependent on the quality of the suggestions, both as to conceptual relevance to the user and as to appropriateness of the terminology. Originality/value No research has investigated the enhancement of social tagging with suggestions from the Dewey Decimal Classification, an established knowledge organisation system, in a user trial, comparing social tagging only and social tagging enhanced with the suggestions. This paper is a final reflection on all aspects of the study.
Cultural events are of increasing importance as value creators in our society. They can serve to promote the attractiveness of a region, to increase social interactions and the quality of life and, not the least, to boost local economies. The ultimate purpose of our research is to significantly increase awareness of cultural attractiveness in Småland using innovative web technologies, both for its inhabitants as well as tourists. Reporting on the first stage of the project, this paper focuses on the exploration of requirements to design a mobile application and a website of cultural events in the region with contemporary art as a use case. Our methodological approach involved three major steps. First, interviews with cultural event providers, with focus on contemporary art, were conducted in order to identify initial needs and requirements for building the two types of interfaces.The interviews were conducted with two representatives of a governmental institution promoting contemporary art in the region, called Nya Småland (in English New Småland, http://www.nyasmaland.se/9/). After the first round of interviews, initial mock-ups of the interfaces were built, followed by another round of interviews to gain insights and feedback on those designs. Themes in the interviews addressed requirements and functionalities, both from perspectives of cultural event providers as well as those of user groups. The interviewees agreed that it is generally important to make contemporary art galleries and their activities visible to a wider audience through a good-quality app and a web site. It is often hard to reach the public with cultural events; one reason could be lack of money for advertising. In conclusion, the interviewees consider a quality app and a website for cultural events on contemporary art an important way in which to increase visibility of cultural events in the region and beyond. In addition, preserving information about past events for future uses is considered important, especially for journalists and politicians. Future research efforts will focus on developing an interactive prototype and acquiring feedback from content providers and a range of potential end user groups.
BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION The particular exploration of new ways of interactions between society and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) with a focus on the Humanities has the potential to become a key success factor for the values and competitiveness of the Nordic region, having in mind recent EU and regional political discussions in the field of Digital Humanities (European Commission, 2016; Vetenskapsrådet's Rådet för forskningens infrastrukturer, 2014). Digital Humanities (DH) is a diverse and still emerging field that lies at the intersection of ICT and Humanities, which is being continually formulated by scholars and practitioners in a range of disciplines (see, for example, Svensson & Goldberg, 2015; Gardiner & Musto, 2015; Schreibman, Siemens, & Unsworth, 2016). The following are examples of current areas of fields and topics: text-analytic techniques, categorization, data mining; Social Network Analysis (SNA) and bibliometrics; metadata and tagging; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); multimedia and interactive games; visualisation; media. DARIAH-EU (http://dariah.eu), is Europe's largest initiative on DH, comprising over 300 researchers in 18 countries, thereby opening up opportunities for international collaboration and projects. Of Nordic countries, Denmark is the full partner with four universities, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg and University of Southern Denmark. Danish DARIAH activities are facilitated by the national DH Infrastructure DIGHUMLAB, hosted at the DARIAH-DK coordinating institution, Aarhus University. Sweden's first university, Linnaeus University, joined in May 2016 as a collaborative partner. Finland (University of Helsinki) and Norway (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) have taken action to join by the end of 2016 also, as collaborative partners. The idea of forming the Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU has been recently brought forward by Mike Mertens, the Head of DARIAH-EU. It was met by enthusiasm among the representatives of the listed universities, who would at this panel like to present and discuss possible joint opportunities and challenges in Nordic DH. With its tradition in supporting the Humanities research and development, Nordic countries may serve as a bastion for (Digital) Humanities. The Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU may pay the way forward towards reaching that aim. CURRENT EFFORTS (PROJECTS, R&D AND EDUCATION) Koraljka Golub and Marcelo Milrad will present and analyse the cross-sector and cross-disciplinary Digital Humanities Initiative at Linnaeus University along the axes of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Their long-term vision is to create a leading education in this field and to establish a leading research regional centre that combines in novel ways already existing expertise from different departments and faculties working in close collaboration and co-creation with people and different organizations (both public and private sector) from the surrounding society. Marianne Ping Huang will present the Danish DIGHUMLAB, with specific focus on the DARIAH-related activities with the national DH research infrastructure, which is now bidding for its second period on the DK road map for research infrastructures. The presentation will include a presentation of the Danish participation for DH and open cross sectorial innovation with DARIAH Humanities at Scale (2015-2017) and how this intersects with Aarhus being European Capital of Culture 2017. Mikko Tolonen and Inés Matres will present the ongoing development at the University of Helsinki (and in Finland) regarding digital humanities. This includes the recently launched Heldig (digital humanities centre https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/helsinki-digital-humanities) and how it can relate to collaboration in Dariah. Matres will also discuss a survey about Finnish needs about networking within Dariah that she has been mapping before Växjö conference. Andreas Bergsland will discuss the role of digital humanities (DH) at NTNU, a technology and science university with an explicit mission of public humanities. He will present several ongoing initiatives: the ARTEC interdisciplinary task force, DH projects in linguistics, print and sound cultures, digital storytelling and performance, archives, and pedagogy. Bergsland will conclude by reflecting on the opportunities and challenges of promoting critical, sustainable, ethical, and interdisciplinary DH at NTNU in partnership with academic and nonacademic actors and local and global networks such as DARIAH. PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES Major opportunities in DH in Nordic countries lie in the collaborative democratic tradition that supports re- combining already existing expertise and resources encompassing 1) different universities, 2) various disciplines, and 3) the wider community through input from related public and private sectors. These points serve to unite and consolidate already existing expertise in order to create new constellations for collaboration leading to new knowledge and products (expertise, education, research, public and relevant commercial services). Possibilities to collaborate across Nordic countries can take place at a number of levels, including joint research and innovation, education efforts, expertise and experience exchange, bringing in international views to address more regional challenges. Ensuing important value for the general public could be a (re)-affirmation of the value of humanities in particular, and academic practices in general. Challenges would be discussed in terms of the emerging job market, the low number of students pursuing carriers in humanities at the Master level (e.g., in Sweden), and the fact that DH as a field is still in its infancy, leading to it being quite difficult to get funding and grants to carry out long-term research that sustain our efforts over time. Not the least, epistemological, conceptual and terminological differences in approaches by the different disciplines and sectors may present further challenges and therefore may require additional resources to reach an understanding. Further, while there is a strong collaborative spirit across Nordic countries, there will certainly be administrative issues with cross-university collaboration as the current working structures are based on individual units. REFERENCES European Commission. (2016). Horizon 2020: Social Sciences & Humanities. Available at https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/area/social-sciences-humanities Gardiner, E. and Musto, R. G. (2015). The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vetenskapsrådet's Rådet för forskningens infrastrukturer. (2014). Områdesöverikt för forskningens infrastrukturer. Available at http://www.vr.se/download/18.2302fa711489c4798d4a35fa/1411461229423/Samtliga+områden+infrastruktur.pdf Schreibman, S., Siemens, R., and Unsworth, J. (2016). A New Companion to Digital Humanities. (2nd ed.). Malden, MA; Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Svensson, P., and Goldberg, D. T. (Eds.). (2015). Between Humanities and the Digital. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press.
