I.  Announcements

No Announcements

II.  Agenda Items

4:05- 4:30 – Library Infrastructure Updates, Tim McGeary (15 minute presentation, 10 minute discussion)

What it is:  The Duke University Libraries are the shared center of the university’s intellectual life; providing a place for self-education and discovery, promoting scholarship and good citizenship through information literacy, acquiring organizing, preserving and delivering information resources and assisting users in their effective use.

Why it’s relevant: The Libraries’ Strategic Directions include improving the user experience, providing digital content, tools & services, developing new research and teaching partnerships, supporting university priorities and enhancing library spaces.  Tim will provide an overview of the infrastructure updates that help fortify these strategic directions.

Tim McGeary presented an Information Technology Services (ITS) infrastructure update for Duke University Libraries.

Overall Storage:  Between 2009 and 2013 there was very little change in used storage (~50TB) which is hosted by OIT on 81 VMS and 3 physical servers.  Since 2013 there has been exponential growth with current used storage around 450TB and a projected growth to 600TB in 2017.  Storage includes locally managed data as well as cloud and includes protected and encrypted storage.

Core Services:  Core Services include desktop support, systems and application administration and library general technology operations. 

    • Since November 2015, OIT has been triaging front-line support calls and tickets.  ITS Desktop Support, staffed with 4 FTEs, provides second level and library specific technical support.  This change has been well received by customers. 
    • ITS Desktop Support provides support for 474 staff and operations workstations, 126 public computing workstations (expected to decrease over time), 17 ePrint stations including 9 brand new Lexmark all-in-one stations, 18 public scanners throughout library locations, 49 training lab workstations and 115 security cameras located within the libraries (not part of the Duke University Police Department security cameras).  Trinity Technology Services is contracted to provide first line support for 47 A/V spaces.

Enterprise Services:  Enterprise Services include campus-wide services and project portfolio management, including discovery services and digital repository services.

    • Duke Digital Repository (DDR) – The DDR provides long-term preservation and access of Duke scholarly work and research, datasets and Duke University Libraries collections. Current functionality and features include:
      • Open Access Policy promoted and supported,
      • user initiated submission of articles (DukeSpace – repository in place since 2010 when the Open Access Policy was created will move to DDR in the next few months),
      • TRAC (Trusted Repositories Audit and Certification) minimum requirements met,
      • tiered access (open, partial, restricted, sensitive-restricted) plus a separate Protected Digital Repository,
      • DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and ARK (Archival Resource Key) generators for citation,
      • National Science Foundation (NSF) data management plans requirement fulfillment,

Digital Projects and Production Services (DPPS): Digital Projects and Production Services include digitization services for the preservation of rare, unique and significant collections as well as web application development services.  DPPS provides public access to over 80 digital collections and uses innovative digital collections interfaces including Tripod 2 and Tripod 3 (locally developed applications to present materials), WordPress, Drupal and Omeka. 

The Digital Production Center (DPC) provides digitization support for manuscripts, books, photographic materials (including negatives and slides), video tape (VHS, Umatic, Betamax, Hi-8) and DV, and audio tape (cassettes, ¼” reel), DAT and LPs.  Since 2010, the DPC has digitized more than 1,169,019 still images, 5,000+ audio files, 1,500+ video files and is approaching 200TB of storage.  Audio and video captioning capability to meet accessibility guidelines will be added later in 2016.  The Duke Chronicle years 1959-1989 have been digitized, years 1904-1959 are underway.

The Edge:  The Edge is a collaboration space for research and technology.  Open collaboration space and project rooms can be reserved for interdisciplinary, data-driven, digitally relevant and team-based research.  All interior walls are writeable.  Data and Visualization Services Lab is located in The Edge.

Data and Visualization Services (DVS):  Data and Visualization Services include consulting, instruction, and services for data planning, data management, data analysis, geographic information System (GIS) and visualization.  A second visualization specialist has been added.

    • Data and Visualization Lab:  The Data and Visualization Lab, located in The Edge, provides a platform for data-driven research and consultation.  We are currently evaluating Docker container technology to allow virtual/remote access to lab resources.  The lab contains 12 workstations with the latest data and visualization applications, each with 1TB of open storage and 16GBs of memory, 3 dedicated Bloomberg Professional workstations in partnership with Duke Economics and a large data visualization screen for showcasing data research and events.
    • Data and Mapping Collections:  Provides hosting services for collections of data specifically licensed for the Duke community that cover topics from global maps to Latin American opinion polls to surveys on the changing nature of the American workplace.
    • DVS Workshop Series:  Holds approximately 20 workshops per semester on topics like ArcGIS, R, Tableau, Stata, OpenRefine, Advanced Excel and Webscraping and provides consultation services for data planning and management.

Questions and Discussion

Question:  How does Duke’s digital collections compare in size to peer institutions.

Answer:  Compared to our peers (excluding Yale and Harvard), we have more digital collections.

Question:  Are there sample plans or templates for data management plans?

Answer:  The Data and Visualization Services has a link on their page (http://library.duke.edu/data/guides/data-management) to a Data Management Guide that includes samples and templates.  They should be used as guides.  The actual plan should be proposal specific.

    • 50TB storage used (data deposits will bring large growth),
    • built on Hydra and Fedora Commons Projects, both higher-education open source, community supported projects, and
    • later this year DuraCloud, an open source platform in the cloud for on-demand storage and services for digital content, will be added to meet our repository certifications needs.
    • Managing Library Resources - Aleph software is used to manage the acquisitions, cataloging, circulation and access data for the collections of all Duke Libraries.  ITS is leading an open source next generation project called Open Library Environment that should be implemented in the near future.  Endeca software and Summon software are used for search and discovery.  The Library Service Center (LSC) uses Library Archival System for off-site storage.

Question:  How are we measuring how effective The Edge is at the faculty level?

Answer:  We currently don’t have a measurement; however, the majority of reserved spaces includes at least one faculty member.

Comment:  Space typically cannot be exclusively reserved across time so that no other groups have access to the space and materials can be left out.  However, there have been special circumstances when this has been approved but it is kept to a minimum to optimize project space usage.

Question:  What is the percentage of faculty vs. students who use the Data and Visualization Services?

Answer:  The lab is mostly used by students, but the usage of the Data and Visualization Services as a whole are fairly evenly distributed among graduate students, Faculty and undergraduate students.  User demographics is becoming more evenly balanced between social sciences and humanities.

Question:  Should The Link Service Desk provide assistance to Faculty? 

Answer:  The Link Service Desk which is co-managed by OIT and TTS should triage anyone needing support before referring them to their local IT support.  The Link Service Desk and the local IT support should work together to provide a seamless handoff.

Question:  Do you have an unlimited storage budget?

Answer:  No, but we’ve received a donation to set up an endowment for digital collections.  Shortly, we will be able to market and sell the digitization of individual collections to offset storage costs.

Question:   If the Library data repository services was listed on someone’s Data Management Plan, can they store and archive all of their data there?

Answer:  If the data storage is in the low TBs then it might be approved; however, the guidelines are not fully established yet.

 

4:30- 4:55 – Duke MOOC Specialization-Java Programming: An Introduction to Software Specialization, Dr. Andrew Hilton, Dr. Owen Astrachan (15 minute presentation/10 minute discussion)

What it is:   The Java Specialization covers the fundamentals of software development, focusing on a beginner-level introduction to rigorous problem-solving approaches while still embracing and extending traditional methods of computer science and software engineering.

Why it’s relevant:  Coursera’s university partners have come together to bring learners hundreds of new courses as part of a comprehensive selection of Specialization in business, computer science, and data science.  Drew and Owen will provide an overview of the Java Specialization.

Java Programming:  An Introduction to Software:  This is the second Coursera specialization within the computer science and data science categories created by Duke University.  This specialization was developed over a 6 month period between late June 2015 and early January 2016.  It consists of 4 courses and a Capstone Project (similar to a senior project).  The entire course consists of 217 video lessons (18+ hours), 66 quizzes (both practice and graded containing over 500 questions), and 2 peer review assignments.  There have been 3,000 learners that have paid for one or more courses and 643 learners have paid for the full series of courses including the Capstone Project through the bulk pay option.

Enrollment and Student Reviews: 

Course

# of Users

User Reviews

(Out of 5 Pt. Scale)

Course 1

Programming and the Web for Beginners

30,000

4.4

Course 2

Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software

17,000

4.5

Course 3

Java Programming: Arrays, Lists, and Structured Data

7,500

4.6

Course 4

Java Programming: Principles of Software Design

5,700

4.6

Capstone Project

Recommender Systems

125

4.7

Demographics from Course 1: Programming and the Web

Based on 35,367 Learners:

    • The countries with the highest learner representation were the United States (33%) and India (11%). 

Based on 2,559 Learners:

    • The majority of learners were male (72%). 
    • The age range most represented was 25-34 (40%). 

Based on 2,543 Learners:

    • 36% had a Bachelor’s Degree and 30% had Master’s Degree as their highest education level.
    • 52% were employed full-time.
    • 67% were non-students (part-time nor full-time).

Future Activities:  The team that developed this specialization will be making revisions/additions to the content over the summer.  Dr. Andrew Hilton along with some CIT staff will be attending the Coursera conference in late March.  Dr. Hilton will be participating on a panel that will be evaluating the time-frame and resources needed to complete a specialization. 

Questions and Discussion

Question:  Why was Java chosen over Python? 

Answer:  Another university had already created a specialization on Python. 

Question:  Would it take less resources to create another specialization in Python or another language now that the Java specialization has been created?

Answer:  Yes, the language agnostic course material in the first course could be reused. 

Question:  How much of the video content contains a human presence. 

Answer:  Almost always unless content won’t fit on the video.  Coursera said learners like to see a human face.

Question:  How much time would have been adequate to create this specialization without being all-consuming for the developers?

Answer:  Twice the amount of time, 1 year, would still be aggressive but would be reasonable.

Question:  How can we increase the percentage of female learners?

Answer:  We’ve tried to improve the percentage of female learners by having female representation as instructors.  We also had guest lecturers that were female.

 

4:55-5:15 – Lecture Capture Update, Todd Stabley, Glenn Setliff Sr. (15 minute presentation/5 minute discussion)

What it is:  Duke Capture is a class recording service that has operated centrally through OIT since 2004 and is available to all members of the campus community.  It currently features a product called Panopto, and includes scheduled recording through designated Site Administrators in 120 classrooms as well as self-service software for Mac, PC, and mobile devices.  Mediasite is a similar lecture capture system currently being used in a few schools related to medical education. This update will offer the latest information on both OIT’s and the School Of Nursing’s efforts to improve and expand the lecture capture service.

Why it’s relevant:  Our students, faculty, and staff have benefitted from access to nearly 50,000 recordings since 2010, and they have come to expect that when needed the activities they are a part of can be recorded for later viewing and/or streamed live. 

Lecture Capture Update:  DukeCapture is a central service for lecture and event recording in the classroom.  It’s been around since 2005.  Since 2010, we’ve been using Panopto for lecture capture and have recorded approximately 50,000 videos to date.  Panopto appliances are available in approximately 120 classrooms across campus.  The biggest users of DukeCapture are Fuqua, Trinity and Law Schools.  In addition to lecture capture, there is software recording capabilities for MAC, PC and mobile devices. 

What’s New? 

    • OIT Media Technologies Lecture Capture Survey:  Some of the findings of the recent Lecture Capture Survey include a strong focus on active learning and resisting the term “lecture capture” which suggests someone is just standing in front of the room being recorded.  Some of the active-learning features that already have been integrated into Pentaho include note-taking and study tools, integrated Q&A for live broadcasts and detailed analytics and assessment tools (including hotspotting).  Integrated quizzing and polling/student response systems will soon be available.  The survey also revealed that users are generally satisfied with Panopto as the tool so no changes in vendor will be recommended.  The main reasons they are satisfied include exceptional responsive support, scalability, Panopto’s partnership with Duke and low cost given a competitive feature set. 
    • Accessibility: Duke provides options for video captioning capabilities and three new video captioning vendors are being evaluated include 3Play, SpeakerText and Cielo24.
    • Panopto Upgrade: Panopto will be upgraded to version 5.0 in May.  New features include being able to start a recording in the classroom from a phone, improved Mac Recorder and the capability to have a DVR-like experience (pause, rewind) for live broadcasts.
    • Service Growth:  We’ve seen exponential growth in FY 2016 in HD recordings.  As a result we’ve had to add processors, RAM and CPU cores.  Recently, we’ve seen this growth plateau, mainly due to limiting the promotion of the service directly to faculty and students in order to manage the demand on local IT and AV staff.  Service growth is also slowing because the vast majority of top tier classrooms and auditoriums are already outfitted with Panopto appliances.

We are looking at ways that we can continue to grow and promote the service without having an increase in demand on local IT and AV staff.   Strategies for encouraging future growth include:

    • pushing Panopto to provide non-mediated access to recording -- i.e., auto provisioning of accounts for anyone with a valid Duke NetID (like Warpwire) ,
    • possibility for direct end user support through Panopto,
    • building community around our Site Admins where we can collectively brainstorm about challenges to growth, and
    • faculty, staff and students surveys to identify unmet needs.

 

Duke University School of Nursing Lecture Capture:  Duke University School of Nursing (DUSN) uses Mediasite, an alternative to Panopto for lecture capture.  The Medical Center has 3 separate instances of Mediasite:  School of Nursing, School of Medicine and DHTS.  Studio B is a self-service production studio that has all of the tools to produce video including a green screen, video teleconferencing, single or dual cameras and a teleprompter.  A new course design team is evaluating ways to improve courses.  With almost half of the courses online and an anticipated growth in distance education, video will be an important part of the evaluation.

Major Initiatives:  Upcoming initiatives through the fall semester include:

    • gleaning student engagement information from the metrics reporting we receive from Mediasite,
    • more and improved automation for closed captioning,
    • searchable media repository,
    • best practices in video presentation and school-wide presentation standards,
    • student use of Mediasite to showcase their own videos,
    • quizzes within a lecture (should have in summer), and
    • responsive design improvements – activity-based pauses and/or branching.

Questions and Discussion

Question:  Have there been many requests to use DukeCapture by non-Duke lecturers?

Answer:  It happens occasionally by special request.  

Question:  Are all of the rooms that are outfitted with Panopto appliances large rooms like auditoriums? 

Answer:  Some smaller classrooms with 20-25 seats have also been outfitted with appliances.  Mobile carts with all of the necessary equipment (HD capabilities) are also available that can accommodate any room.  These can be requested by calling the local AV group.  The local AV group can help set up the room.

Question:  What technologies do you use for quizzes within a lecture?

Answer:  Mediasite will be releasing this new functionality in May and will be implemented in the School of Nursing in the summer.

 

5:15-5:30 – Software & Lab Services Update, Glenn Setliff, Jr. (10 minute presentation/5 minute discussion)

What it is:  OIT’s Software & Lab Services group provides physical and virtual computing labs, specialty facilitates such as the Multimedia Project Studio and Innovation Studio, licensing servers, software imaging, contract negotiations, and discounted or free pricing on many popular software offerings such as Microsoft, Adobe, SAS, Matlab, and more.

Why it’s relevant:  Campuses continue trending towards a “bring your own device” environment.  Improvements to computer lab metrics software is better enabling OIT to make decisions based on usage and ensure funds are allocated to the most beneficial facilities.  We will provide updates and information on these tools, as well as share how those savings translate to expansion of other services and recent success stories from students and faculty at Duke.  We will also cover some frequently asked questions regarding Duke’s new Adobe agreement.


LabStats: We have been using LabStats for more than 5 years to collect computer lab usage statistics. We can track the number of total logins, concurrent logins, length of sessions, applications accessed and more.  Over the past few years, we’ve been reducing the number of residential computer labs in order to free up operational funds for new, more popular services.  LabStats 5 was recently upgraded to LabStats 6 and put on its own VM with its own database.  Departments still using LabStats 5 will need to upgrade before the end of summer.

Interesting Projects from Innovation Studio:  

    • Protein Folding Funnel:  With the help of the Innovation Studio (IStudio), Dr. Terrence Gilbert Oas created a 3-D printout of a protein folding funnel.  He exported the Mathematica 2-D image as a .stl file which was then sent to a 3-D printer.  The purpose of the 3-D representation was to demonstrate to students how proteins go from being unfolded at the top of the funnel to being folded at the bottom and how they get caught along the way in various “local minima”.  Using ball bearings to represent protein molecules and the 3-D printed protein folding funnel, Dr. Oas demonstrated how this happens by dropping the ball bearings into the funnel.  Below is a 2-D representation in Mathematica and the actual 3-D printout of the protein folding funnel.
    • Weasley Clock: Student Trey Bagley created a working replica of the Weasley Clock from “Harry Potter” (the hands point to where the children are at any given time).  Bagely used a laser cutter in the Innovation Studio to etch the design on the wood surface and a Particle Photon in conjunction with an ‘If This Then That’ app to create the clock

  • Homo Naledi: Duke Paleontologist Doug Boyer used MorphoSource, a database of 3-D fossil scans, to download a 3-D image of a Homo Naledi skull.  The skull was printed on a 3-D printer.

New Specialty Lab Partnership:  OIT is partnering with Housing, Dining, & Residential Life (HDRL) to open a Virtual Reality Room near The Bolt, a gaming room located in Edens Quad dorm.  The plan is to have an HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset which will be released later this year.  The device is designed to allow users to navigate naturally within a room and use motion tracked handheld controllers to interact with the virtual environment.  To allow users to easily move around the room, we are hoping to have a high performance PC suspended from the ceiling.  There also will be external monitors so that others can see what the user is seeing.  We are hoping to have a demo by the end of April.

Software Licensing Trends:  OIT purchases software licenses in bulk to redistribute across the University using a cost-recovery model.   Below are a few software trends.

    • Adobe Create Cloud and Acrobat Pro:  At the beginning of the fiscal year, OIT purchased 1,000 licenses each of Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Acrobat Pro to be distributed throughout the University.  So far, we have distributed 418 Creative Cloud and 416 Acrobat Pro licenses.  The remaining licenses should be distributed by the end of the fiscal year, and we are expecting volumes to be higher next year for each of the products.
    • Graphpad:  The demand for Graphpad prism, software mostly used in research publications for analyzing, graphing and presenting scientific data, has been increasing year-after-year since FY13.  In its first year available, FY13, we distributed 98 licenses.  So far in FY16 we have distributed 532 licenses.  The price should drop as its popularity and use increases.
    • Stata and SPSS:  Stata software has been growing in popularity, overtaking SPSS as the most popular data analysis and statistical software. So far in FY16, 433 SPSS and 815 Stata licenses have been distributed.  The price should drop as its popularity and use increases.