Digital Scholarship: Applications of GIS in Society I

Digital Scholarship: Applications of GIS in Society I

A geographic information system (or GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geog... 12:17 PM

A geographic information system (or GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographical data related to positions on Earth’s surface. GIS can be used in data visualization, network analysis and statistical analysis, and therefore, GIS has become a common buzzard, heavily cited by scholars, city planners and journalists.

The Rising Trends of Data Visualization through Mapping

There are various ways of applying GIS in our society, enriching our understanding and imagination of the world order. Besides the traditional statistical graphing, like pie chart and scatter graph, the journalists and social scientists like to use GIS to represent the electoral data in geographical dimensions. The use of GIS could help capture the spatial variation across the nation and enable further analysis of the impacts of different socio-economic variables - a kind of what we now call "infographics".

Below are some examples of social application of GIS:

I. Electoral Studies

The journalists and social scientists would like to apply GIS into Electoral Studies. Surrounding the controversial US presidential in 2016, there has been an influx of election maps analyzing the electoral data with spatial dimension. One interesting work is “How the Electoral Map Would Look If Only [X] Voted” created by Ste Kinney-Fields published on October 31, projecting the election results if only one demographic group voted:

Source: 2016 US Presidential Electoral Map If Only [X] Voted, http://brilliantmaps.com/if-only-x-voted/

The CityLab from Atlantic Media has also created an interesting 3-D map specifically charting the broad patterns of the 2016 presidential results across America’s metro areas. Donald Trump performed better with more red on the map, although Hilary Clinton scored big victories in the Boston-New York-Washington Corridor and the border metros:

Source: Mapping How America's Metro Areas Voted http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/12/mapping-how-americas-metro-areas-voted/508313/ 

II. Community Research

Apply mapping techniques with GIS, the social scientists could also explore the socio-spatial ethnic segregation.  Jill Hubley, a Brooklyn web developer, has mapped New York’s languages, ranging from the tongues of African nations to Korean to Yiddish:

Source: The Ultimate Map of New York's Non-English Languages: http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/11/languages-spoken-in-new-york-city-map/506054/

III. Art

It can be very beautiful to visualize data to graphics and the use of GIS can be a medium of such innovative art. Dorothy, the London studio, has published an art map, 'The World Song Map'. The printed names on the creative map are actually music references:

Source: Every Single Name on This Entrancing Map Is a Music Reference https://www.wired.com/2016/11/every-single-name-entrancing-map-music-reference/

The above are just some examples in using GIS to visualize non-textual or even textual data in a beautiful way.  In the next post we will introduce some projects done in CUHK.

Open Access Day (24 Oct 2016)

Open Access Day (24 Oct 2016)

The Open Access Day is to share with the University community the benefits of opening up research. Themed as “ Open in Action – Enhancin... 10:44 AM

The Open Access Day is to share with the University community the benefits of opening up research. Themed as “Open in Action – Enhancing Research Impact @CUHK AIMS”, the event is tied in with the International Open Access Week to highlight the needs of taking action now to open up research through the new Academic Information Management System (AIMS) and the institutional repository Research Portal. This new system provides a new avenue for the dissemination of research outputs, showcasing the research excellence of the University and facilitating international networking and collaboration. Opening and sharing research is the means to reap these benefits.
A mixture of programmes are organized below running from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on that day. The Opening Ceremony will be held at the Beacon and officiated by Prof. Benjamin Wah, Provost, Prof. Fanny Cheung, Pro-Vice-Chancellor / Vice-President, Prof. Lutz Christian Wolff, Dean of the Graduate School, Prof. Walter Ho, Director of ORKTS, and Ms. Louise Jones, University Librarian. You are welcome to register at here.

Open Access Day Programme

Time	Program	Speaker(s) / Officiating Guests	Venue
10:00-17:00	Exhibition on Open Access (On display until 31 October 2016)		Self Service Area, G/F, University Library
	Hands-on trial of AIMS		Seminar Room, Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library
10:00-11:00	Open Access Publishing Talk - Global Trends on Open Access Publishing – the view from Taylor & Francis	Ms. Lyndsey DIXON Regional Journals Editorial Director, APAC, Taylor & Francis	User Education Room 1, G/F, University Library
11:00-11:45	Open Access Publishing Talk - Cambridge University Press and Open Access - A University Publisher’s Perspective	Mr. Joe NG Acquisitions Editor for Law and Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press
12:00-12:30	Opening Ceremony	Officiated by Professor Benjamin W. WAH Provost  Professor Fanny M.C. CHEUNG Pro-Vice-Chancellor/Vice-President Professor Lutz-Christian WOLFF Dean, Graduate School Professor Walter K. K. HO Director, Office of Research and Knowledge Transfer Services  Ms. Louise JONES University Librarian	Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library (FaceBook Live Broadcast)
12:30-13:00	A Dialogue between Provost and University Librarian – Open Access in Action	Professor Benjamin W. WAH Provost Ms Louise JONES University Librarian
14:30-15:30	Open Access in Different Perspectives – Experience Sharing with CUHK Faculty	Professor Chi Tim LAI Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts Professor Jyh-An LEE Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law Professor Edmund Anthony Severn NELSON Clinical Professional Consultant,  Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine Professor C. M. Jimmy YU Head, United College Professor, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science	Visualisation Room, Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library
16:00-17:00	Repositories - institutional, subject and social – conflict or connectivity?	Mr. Aaron TAY Manager, Library Analytics & Research Librarian, Accounting, Singapore Management University Library	Visualisation Room, Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library (Webinar)

Workshops on AIMS and Research Portal (Oct to Nov 2016)

Workshops on AIMS and Research Portal (Oct to Nov 2016)

The Library is pleased to arrange a series of AIMS and Research Portal workshops for researchers and postgraduate students. CUHK researchers... 4:36 PM

The Library is pleased to arrange a series of AIMS and Research Portal workshops for researchers and postgraduate students. CUHK researchers and staff are all welcome to join the workshops. Interested postgraduate students are also welcome to attend.

Managing your Research Output in AIMS
AIMS is the new Academic Information Management System of CUHK. This workshop aims at demonstrating to you:

• What is AIMS and its public interface Research Portal
• The easy way to use AIMS for managing your research outputs
• Significant features of Research Portal

20 Oct (Thu) 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon Click here to register
25 Oct (Tue) 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Click here to register
22 Nov (Tue) 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Click here to register
28 Nov (Mon) 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon Click here to register

Archiving Research Outputs in AIMS’ Research Portal
There are lots of benefits in depositing the full text of your research outputs in AIMS that can be openly accessed in Research Portal. These include showcasing excellence of your research, increasing the chance of getting more citations for your output, more discoverable in the research community, etc. This workshop is to demonstrate:

• The easy way of depositing the full text of your output
• The right copy of full text that should be used for depositing
• Ways of handling copyright issues that may arise

27 Oct (Thu) 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon Click here to register
24 Nov (Thu) 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Click here to register
29 Nov (Tue) 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Click here to register

Open Access and Scholarly Publishing
As a new model of scholarly publishing, open access (OA) is widely discussed in the academic community. This workshop will introduce to you:

• Concepts, types and importance of OA publishing model
• Pros and cons of OA
• OA and AIMS
• Publishing in OA journals

18 Oct (Tue) 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Click here to register
21 Oct (Fri) 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Click here to register


Venue: ITSC Training Room 2, Pi Ch’iu Building (Room 103 + 105)
Medium of Instruction: Cantonese (English might be used if users require.)

Migration of CUHK Electronic Theses & Dissertations Collection into CUHK Digital Repository

Migration of CUHK Electronic Theses & Dissertations Collection into CUHK Digital Repository

We are delighted to announce that CUHK Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETD) Collection is now accessible at the newly launched ... 3:32 PM

We are delighted to announce that CUHK Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETD) Collection is now accessible at the newly launched CUHK Digital Repository.

On this new platform, about 2,500 volumes of doctoral dissertations that were previously available in microfiches were added to make the Collection a complete set of theses and dissertations produced by our research postgraduate community. In addition, users are able to browse and search in this Collection by author, degree, department/division and year, or across all collections in the Repository. We believe this will enhance your online experience.

Please feel free to contact us for any enquiries.

«香港中文大學博碩士論文庫»的平台已轉至全新的香港中文大學數碼館藏供讀者參閱。

新平台新增約2,500冊由縮微膠片數碼化的博士論文，令本論文庫更為完整。此外，讀者亦可選擇以論文作者、學位、學系/學部及年份進行瀏覽或搜索。我們希望藉此提升讀者使用數碼館藏的閱覽體驗。

如有疑問，歡迎查詢。

The Soft-launch of Chinese Medicine Texts Collection

The Soft-launch of Chinese Medicine Texts Collection

The Chinese Medicine Texts Collection is now accessible at the CUHK Digital Repository ( http://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collection... 10:03 AM

The Chinese Medicine Texts Collection is now accessible at the CUHK Digital Repository (http://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collection/chimed). The Collection was established in close collaboration with the School of Chinese Medicine. It contains some very rare Chinese Medicine titles such as 《秘傳眼科龍木醫書總論》,《丹臺玉案》and 《景岳全書》. As at today, there are over 280 volumes and more will be added to grow the collection. You are welcome to visit the collection now.

"中醫古典文庫"現可於中文大學數碼典藏(http://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/tc/collection/chimed) 閱覽，文庫由中文大學中醫學院及大學圖書館緊密協作整理。當中藏書極為珍貴包括《秘傳眼科龍木醫書總論》，《丹臺玉案》及《景岳全書》。直至現在, 已上載了超過280冊，我們將陸續上載更多藏書，歡迎立即行動閱覽這文庫。

The Launch of CUHK Digital Repository

The Launch of CUHK Digital Repository

After more than a year of preparation, our CUHK Digital Repository was launched on 17 March 2016 together with the opening of our Digit... 9:49 AM

After more than a year of preparation, our CUHK Digital Repository was launched on 17 March 2016 together with the opening of our Digital Scholarship Lab mentioned in our previous blog.

This new Digital Repository is built based on a platform called Islandora. It is an open source framework to manage and showcase the digital objects using a best practices framework. Islandora is popular in Northern America where active user communities have been developed. We are proud to implement and localize the platform as the first known installation in Asia. 

Dr. Louisa Lam, our Head of Research Support and Digital Initiatives, has been interviewed by the Islandora Foundation. The interview is published in the Islandora Show & Tell. On 27 April 2016 10 PM HKT, we will also work with Discovery Garden, our service consultant, to conduct a webinar about the building of our repository platform, please feel free to register at this link.

In the coming weeks, our blog will be updated with our major collections and items that are of interests to readers. 

Research Café on Culture and Translation @ Digital Scholarship Lab (24 March 2016)

Research Café on Culture and Translation @ Digital Scholarship Lab (24 March 2016)

The sixth  Research Café   will be held at the brand new Digital Scholarship Lab . The theme will be on  Culture and Translation . The ... 5:37 PM

The sixth Research Café  will be held at the brand new Digital Scholarship Lab. The theme will be on Culture and Translation. The Research Café organized by the Library is to provide a series of informal and engaging events for research postgraduate students to get together, present their research, exchange ideas across disciplines, network, and polish presentation skills.   CUHK postgraduates, academics and researchers are all welcome to attend!  This Café will consist of a sharing talk on modern Chinese literature and translation by Prof. Connie Kwong of Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature, and two presentations by research postgraduate students on culture and translation.  Dr. Benson Lee of The Independent Learning Centre, will provide feedback on student presentation skills.

Date: 24 March 2016 (Thu)
Time: 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library
Languages: Chinese and English
     Light refreshment will be provided.

I. Short Talk: Modern Chinese Literature and Translation
   Speaker: Prof. KWONG Ho Yee Connie, Associate Professor, Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature

II. Presentations:

·         The Demon as Poetic Metaphor and “Mahayana” of Art: Tian Han’s Transcultural Reflections of Charles Baudelaire (Presentation in Putonghua)
By Yiyang XI, Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

·         Translation as Research: William H. Nienhauser’s Translation of the Shiji in Chinese and Western Historiographical Contexts (Presentation in English)
By Li LI, Ph.D. Student, Department of Translation

Moderator: Prof. KWONG Ho Yee Connie
Feedback on Presentation Skills: Dr. Benson LEE, Lecturer, The Independent Learning Centre

Register to attend: Complete the Online Registration Form

Just a few hours to go: The Digital Scholarship Lab will open officially on March 17 at 3:00 p.m.

Just a few hours to go: The Digital Scholarship Lab will open officially on March 17 at 3:00 p.m.

In these few weeks, the team members of Research Support & Digital Initiatives stayed in the Digital Scholarship Lab days and nights to ... 2:34 AM

In these few weeks, the team members of Research Support & Digital Initiatives stayed in the Digital Scholarship Lab days and nights to prepare for the opening of the Lab.

We are all excited about this great day, but we are also nervous and worrying.  Time is the biggest enemy. The site was handed over to the Library on March 7; there are only 10 days to prepare not just for the opening ceremony but also the ongoing operation right after the opening ceremony. More were done, but many more still coming, and many are unexpected!

Yet, the whole team work hand-in-hand to achieve this finally. We have spent weeks to discuss how to modify the interface of the control program to make it as intuitive as possible so that users will find it easy to use, it was only completed one day before the opening. We attended the training on the use of the digital display wall, yet still not familiar until the last two or three days. New computer equipment cannot be delivered until the last two days. Color tuning of the LED TV can only be completed one day before the opening because one of the TV was defective and need replacement.

Many hours of work were used to design the program for unveiling the digital display wall; still much more time was used to select the digital content for display and how to design the flow so that the demonstration can be as smooth and stunning as possible. A lot of mathematical calculation was needed to ensure that the digital backdrop can be projected to the wall without any distortion and in high quality. The technical set up of the digital display wall need to be changed to meet the needs of the opening ceremony. We have to adapt to the new setting, and even during rehearsal, we did not know why some setting did not work. We worried about the late arrival of furniture, yet good news coming that they can be delivered one week before, so much help with this.

We would like to share a few photos here showing how the lab grows. From construction to the installation of the digital display wall to the physical set up of the lab to the preparation of the opening, every step is new to us and every step enhances our belief that the Lab will be useful to our users.

The construction site

The frame for the digital display wall

The digital display wall is on testing

Early arrival of furniture

Easily configurable tables and chairs for discussion and collaboration

Replacement of a defective LED TV

Vendors helping to set up the site for the opening ceremony

Inside the server rack

Setting up the equipment for demonstration at the opening ceremony

Preparing the installation of physical backdrop

The stunning physical backdrop was installed

The digital backdrop also ready now

Setting the lab for the opening ceremony

Specialist software for digital scholarship research on high-performance computers

The digital display wall and the 80-inch interactive white board

The Lab is the place to innovate, to experiment, to immerse in research, to get together, and many more. It is actually the place for you.

We have prepared.  Your turn now to use this Lab!

Please join us in the opening ceremony on March 17, 2016 at 3:30 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab.