AASHTO RAC TKN TF
June 4thConference Call
Conference Call: (360) 709-8060, access code 1072626
DRAFT MEETING NOTES
Attendees: Leni Oman, Dale Steele, Barbara Post, Sandy Brady, Kathy Szolomayer, Alexandra Fox, Ron Curb, Lynn Matis, Rita Evans, John Cherney, Dawn Vanlandingham, Marie Manthe
Unavailable today: Bob Johns, Amanda Wilson, Maggie Sacco,
What’s the status of the scan proposals?
NCHRP scan request not funded, TCRP panel meets June 5
Leni has requested feedback on the NCHRP proposal
AASHTO ISFollowUp–Tweaked email to send to AASHTO IS committee:
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about the AASHTO Research Advisory Committee (RAC) Transportation Knowledge Networks Task Force (TKN TF).
The TKN Task Force is in veryinterested in partnering with you to support the delivery of Transportation Knowledge Networks.Some areas we could collaborate on are:
Advocacy –Making sure we have a common voice about why and how we want to retain and share transportation information through Transportation Knowledge Networks.
Developing standards that facilitate data and information sharing (findability, useability, aggregation).Activities might include assessing current state of the practice and developing near term and longer range solutions.
Developing networking and resource sharing tools. Identify the most promising tools, understanding the risks of tools such as social networks, open source technologies, and document management systems. Activities might include a risk assessmentonproviding access to more information sites and networking tools within intellectual property considerations.
I've attached the presentation I gave as well as the Goals and Objectives of the RAC TKN TF and a briefing paper on NCHRP 20-75 Implementing Transportation Knowledge Networks. Additional information, includinga draft business plan, can be found at .
In theoverall climate facing the transportation industry and the possible loss of valuable knowledge, we share a common goal ofcapturing, storing, and making that information accessible--through systems,and other means.We hope members of your committee will joinusin developing solutions to these issues facing all transportation agencies.
TRBState Rep Meeting–Outline fine, some concepts we want the audience to take away are provided below the outline.
TRBState Representatives Meeting Knowledge Network Session Working Outline
What's a knowledge networkand why are we here – 20 min - Frances Harrison, Spypond Partners,
Purpose:
·set a longer term agendafor knowledge networks but alsoto identify near term development opportunities
·begin to identify priority topics for whichwe should to improve organization
NCHRP 20-75 findings/examples
Improving connectionswith organizational network analysis – 10min - Leni Oman, Director, Office of Research & Library Services, WSDOT
What is it?
How might we use it for transportation research
Getting the information you need –10min - Amanda Wilson, Director, National Transportation Library
Organizinginformation
Limitations
Actions, opportunities, and needs
Communities of Practice
Discussion - 10min - All
Wrap up/ next steps – 5 Mark
Take away messages:
There is a need for interdisciplinary information resources to support the breadth and depth of the information needed to support transportation research and planning (and more). We do have several “free” resources but there are also many fee-based resources that provide valuable information (will provide some examples). In this time of constrained resources, no one agency can afford to purchase all the materials. The TKNs help us overcome this by networking resources. Through the TKN, we can develop a collection management strategy that makes available critical resources through individual member organizations. This network relies on organizations to make their publications and data accessible on a reliable basis. Intellectual property, copyrights, and subscription license agreements must be followed.
While the transportation community has good resources that are seemingly free, some of them are, in fact, funded through sponsorships (such as TRIS), memberships (AASHTO publications), and public funds (public agencies and universities – NTL, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, state DOTs and all the resources we provide). In addition, individual partner organizations subscribe to fee-based information resources and their license agreements define the users that may access the material.
Some think that web search engines replace the need to organize information but, these search tools rely on organized and accessible information resources that can be indexed for use.
The bottom line is – information is not free and more funding is needed to support the information resources needed in the transportation community.
We will also develop a message about information organization/tagging, limitations, opportunities, and needs. This will address metadata, TRT, indexing (including journal article indexing). (Alexandra will look for articles that may help articulate this issue, Rita’s recent article in TR News. Leni will share the glossary of terms and findability paper)
Dale Steele raised a question about whether gray literature should be captured. The discussion suggested that there is a need to capture some of this. Work to understand user expectations and information needs would help clarify which documents to capture. Dawn askedwhether the grey literature we were talking about includes blogs, wikis, etc., and wondered about a definition.She noted thatlately,in discussions and references, those types of items, in addition to memos and emails also have been mentioned. She forwarded the following Web site dedicated to the grey area, which liststypes of documents consideredgrey literature now:
We’ll also develop a message about the need to clarify what information we are capturing. A specific question is: do we need to capture gray literature?
- Is gray literature increasing as more people can publish on the web?
- Need a definition of gray literature (find Bonnie Osif’s article)
- Do we want to systematically capture and make available this information?
- Some of this is analysis of an organization’s information, consultant’s reports…
- What’s a research publication and what’s not?
- This information is fairly ephemeral
- Broad, multi-disciplinary nature makes this challenging.
Outreach and Advocacy materials
AASHTO requested information to support the reauthorization requeast for TKN funding. Leni and Maureen Hammer (VDOT) provided a response. Leni will work with Maureen to turn this into a speak point summary.
We reviewed the resources we have related to TKN TF goals. A few new documents were identified and will be forwarded to Leni:
- John – 1987 President’s Council info (President's Task Force of the Value of the Information Profession (1987) Special Libraries Association)
- Bonnie Osif’s gray literature article
- NCHRP 20-07 scoping study (Leni has this)
Additional documents to develop
How will the TKN help with:
Impacts on the environment – climate change, sustainability, and more
What do we have
What do we need
Could help highlight breadth of info needs and beyond
Relationship between transportation and economy (Ron will draft)
Job stimulation
Economic stimulation
Multidisciplinary nature
Revenue?
What do people need for information to facilitate better capture, organization, findability.
Documents to help articulate this issue will be collected for review. The following were provided by Leni, Ron, and Alexandra.
From Alexandra: First, I believe the point you would like to convey to your developer community is the fact that structure around content (unstructured or structured) enhances it. Commercial sites do this well because of the added structure at various levels (e.g., eBay, Amazon, Bing, Ask.com etc). Second, there is a lot of work in the LIS community (and outside it) on linked data and semweb these days. However, I suspect these activities are to be addressed further down the road by TKN? Also, Knoodl.com, an ontology repository has been out for several years. The last time I checked, I did not see transportation ontology. I believe demonstrating the value of sharing is essential, a use case, to convey the value of the network. Lastly, here are a few (non-library specific) articles on the value and use of structure to improve findability in a variety of IM applications.
7. July
Currently scheduled for July 2nd,8 am Pacific Time.
Meeting tasks: Last minute support for TRB Representative presentation
AASHTO IS Email
The TKN Task Force is in veryinterested in partnering with you to support the delivery of Transportation Knowledge Networks.Some areas we could collaborate on are:
Advocacy –Making sure we have a common voice about why and how we want to retain and share transportation information through Transportation Knowledge Networks.
Developing standards that facilitate data and information sharing (findability, useability, aggregation).Activities might include assessing current state of the practice and developing near term and longer range solutions.
Developing networking and resource sharing tools. Identify the most promising tools, understanding the risks of tools such as social networks, open source technologies, and document management systems. Activities might include a risk assessmentonproviding access to more information sites and networking tools within intellectual property considerations.
I've attached the presentation I gave as well as the Goals and Objectives of the RAC TKN TF and a briefing paper on NCHRP 20-75 Implementing Transportation Knowledge Networks. Additional information, includinga draft business plan, can be found at
In theoverall climate facing the transportation industry and the possible loss of valuable knowledge, we share a common goal ofcapturing, storing, and making that information accessible--through systems,and other means.We hope members of your committee will joinusin developing solutions to these issues facing all transportation agencies.