Reading: From A to <A> Keywords of Markup

On the way to Colombia I started to read this book in order to review it - more on that to follow. I've only read four chapters so far and it is a fascinating read. A collection of essays each deals with a particular HTML tag and each so far provides new insights for me and resources.

When I came across the invitation for reviewers I read through the index. HTML 5 was not there so I thought the book might suffer from the rate of change in the interval from original conception to publication. Well HTML 5 is not in the index (just HTML), but it is in the text. Drupal and Ruby on Rails also get a mention.

Of particular interest is chapter 4 'alt' by Colleen A. Reilly which combines accessibility and definitions of disability.

I'll start writing the review soon for the Journal of Community Informatics trying to be more concise than previous efforts (I volunteered to learn too). As for W2tQ I've already found several interesting quotes too, such as the example below. This struck me because it's possible to describe h2cm as a keyword collage ...

<A> evokes collagist writings, "interesting networks that open up a conceptual map" McLuhan (258).
Indeed, collage often is the focus of this type of educational/digital education or writing that asks students to merge texts and ideas. <A>, as a social space, though, is not a collage. As a network, <A> builds relationships while also becoming relationships. To enact a pedagogy of <A>, I have to imagine a social software logic as opposed to connection or merging among things. That logic is not bound to a specific platform, such as the Web, but instead informs institutional practices through the generation of large-scale spaces.p.61.

Call for Papers: Special issue on Community Informatics for Health - Journal of Community Informatics

Abstract submissions due 14 March 2011

A special issue of the international Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is going to be devoted to Health. Community Informatics (CI) is the study and the practice of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). This special issue will focus on how the social application of ICTs can empower and enable communities towards improving health. The issue is expected to be published in late 2011. The Journal of Community Informatics is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.

The field of community informatics seeks to explore the potential of information and communication technologies and their applications for social and economic development efforts at the community level. It particularly seeks to ensure that marginalized individuals and communities can benefit from the opportunities that ICTs can provide. In the area of health, this is all the more important since those with poorer health status and poorer health outcomes are usually those with less (or no) access to ICTs, or are those who have fewer skills to make use of and benefit from ICTs.

For this special issue of the Journal on Health, we are inviting submission of original, unpublished articles. We welcome research articles, along with case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged - these will not be peer-reviewed.

Please read the full Call for Papers and more specific information on the intended 'flavour' of the issue at: http://www.flinders.edu.au/medicine/sites/southgate/research/projects/digital-tech-health/

Guest editors:

*  Lareen Newman PhD, Southgate Institute for Health Society & Equity, Flinders University - Australia
*  Ali Al Sanousi MD, King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, Riyadh - Saudi Arabia

Contact for queries and abstract submissions:  lareen.newman AT flinders.edu.au

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for abstracts: 14 March 2011
Notification of successful abstracts:  9 May 2011
Deadline for submission of full papers/articles: 31 August 2011
Estimated publication date: November 2011

----------------------------------------
Dr Lareen Newman, DipEurLangs (Hons), BA (Hons), PhD
Senior Research Fellow
Southgate Institute for Health Society & Equity
Flinders University - Adelaide, South Australia
Personal page: http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/lareen.newman
Program page: http://flinders.edu.au/medicine/sites/southgate/
CRICOS Provider Number: 00114A

Additional link: h2cm in community informatics ....
Jones, P. (2004) The Four Care Domains: Situations Worthy of Research. Conference: Building & Bridging Community Networks: Knowledge, Innovation & Diversity through Communication, Brighton, UK.

KT-EQUAL future events - Ageing Research and Design 4 Health Conf.

Dear colleague,

KT-EQUAL is planning lots of interesting events in the next few months focused on aspects of ageing research.

Below are a few upcoming events that may be of interest to you, more information can always be found on our website.

Upcoming workshops include topics such as -

• digital inclusion
• ethical dilemmas
• and creative societies.

A flyer is available with more information about these exciting free events.

The I'dgo consortium has also confirmed the full programme for their seminar on An international perspective on the Built Environment for an Ageing Population: Issues in maintaining access to outdoor places on the 16th February 2011.

Another upcoming conference which is still accepting papers* is the Design for Health Conference in Sheffield Hallam University on the 13th-15th July 2011
http://www.design4health.org.uk/

We look forward to seeing you at some of our events in the future.

Best Wishes

Helen Haigh
KT-EQUAL Co-ordinator
University of Sheffield

PJ adds: *Kirsty Christer at SHU contacted me re. D4H to advise that submissions are open until 7th Feb.

Links of interest c/o HIFA2015 list

The following links appeared in recent HIFA2015 Healthcare Information For All posts:

AuthorAID: http://www.authoraid.info/ is a global research community that provides networking, mentoring, resources and training for researchers in developing countries.

IICD - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Development: http://www.iicd.org/

Education for Health: http://www.educationforhealth.net/ an Open Access Journal.

Scientific Eletronic Library Online: Scientific Eletronic Library Online

Welsh Annual Conference 2010: http://www.welshconfed.org/WelshAnnualConference2010.htm

Welsh Information Literacy Framework: http://www.library.wales.org/index.php?id=7498

PLoS journal on Neglected Tropical Diseases: http://www.plosntds.org/home.action

Knowledge 4 Health eToolkits: http://www.k4health.org/toolkits

NCBI.NCI Paper: Poor reporting and inadequate searches were apparent in systematic reviews of adverse effects http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394536

Health Speaks: pilots result in 266 new local language health articles http://blog.google.org/2010/12/health-speaks-pilots-result-in-266-new.html

ERMED: Electronic Resources in Medicine Consortium http://www.nmlermed.in/

Global Health and Prevention calendar: http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec40851/index.htm

Report: Open data, democracy and public sector reform

From: Tim Davies tim@practicalparticipation.co.uk
Date: Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:35 AM

Open data, democracy and public sector reform is a report based on a recent MSc dissertation taking a look at the policy and practice of using open government data from data.gov.uk. It's now up as an online document at -
http://practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/report/

In looking at how open government data is being used in practice it draws out a number of themes, including:

Data is not just for developers
- there is a tendency to focus on machine-readable data for large scale visualisations and mash-ups; but data can be useful to individual citizens or local citizen activists, finding facts within spreadsheets and campaigning for change locally.

Open government data changes the gatekeepers, and the role of civic actors
- now mainstream media, independent citizens, companies and different levels of government are all afforded the possibility of advancing their own interpretations of data. Government, however, retains some (significant?) gate-keeping power by setting the categories and structure in which data is recorded and released. Debates over the meaning of data become more important - and the capacity of local democratic actors to be part of those debates again needs to be developed.

Open government data can support innovation in public services
- predominantly through improving the 'markets' for public service innovation - allowing social and commercial entrepreneurs to work with government data, and preventing exclusive access to data being an anti-competitive advantage for certain firms. However, the research didn't find cases where open government data was successfully facilitating 'citizen led' forms of public service innovation involving local communities discussing and debating how services operated.

A focus on digitizing government underlies much open government data supply and use, and can lead to concerns of politics, power and justice being under-valued in the development of open government data infrastructure
- and we need more articulation and focus on real-live civic use-cases of open government data to inform the development of open data infrastructures.

All comments and feedback on the report welcome - particularly to help shape thinking about what to do with the research next.

http://www.timdavies.org.uk
@timdavies

Co-director of Practical Participation:
http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk

My source:
ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net

iConference 2011

From: Jonathan Grudin
Subject: A personal view on iConference 2011

Hello,

Please publicize iConference 2011, which will be in Seattle February 8-11 and has a submission deadline of August 30.

I’d like to add special encouragement. Some people including me see this as a possible turning point for the Information Conferences. The “iCaucus” has rapidly expanded to include over 25 schools in Europe, Asia, and North America, but more to the point, this iConference is the first to reach outside that community. It has a large, varied, illustrious conference and program committee, whose members have said they will attend. It was organized further in advance. The next conference, in Toronto, is already being planned as well.

Some people note that it feels like CHI in 1983 or CSCW in 1988, a coalescing and opportunity. It may or may not turn out that way, but an astute student or senior person, while not abandoning CSCW or CHI or other venues, might be well-advised to also participate in an iConference or two. (Starting with this conference, proceedings will be in the ACM Digital Library.) When universities ramp up again, iSchools are likely to be hiring. I’ve expressed my vote of confidence by publishing a short paper that I liked a lot in iConference 2010, despite it not being in the ACM DL.

At the end of a recent NSF sociotechnical research symposium, Geoff Bowker gave a spirited exhortation to participate and form the vanguard of the iConference series. In that spirit, please forward this to people who might be interested, encouraging them to consider submitting and to attending.

Cheers – Jonathan

(full disclosure, I’m co-chairing the conference with Harry Bruce – but the conference and its opportunity was the work of those who came before; Geoff was responding the conference as it already exists)

My source: CI researchers list

HIV/AIDS and Rights - Social Networking - The Vienna World AIDS Conference

To: Members of The CI Community Interested in HIV/AIDS and Communication
From: Warren Feek

Peter - Please Join: "HIV/AIDS Future Strategy" network at
http://groups.comminit.com/node/306528 - if you have not done so already.

Many best wishes.

I am writing in advance of the Vienna World AIDS Conference (July 18-23 2010) - an event summarised on The CI website - http://www.comminit.com/en/node/310758/347 - with an invitation to participate in dialogue on the themes of this important conference...whether you will be in Vienna or not!


The CI's Development Network Group called "HIV/AIDS Strategy: Future Directions" - http://groups.comminit.com/node/306528 - is the hub for our communication and media focused networking pertaining to the conference. This group presently has 489 members. This is complemented by the relevant HIV/AIDS Rights Knowledge within the HIV/AIDS theme site at http://comminit.com/en/hiv-aids.html

If you are not already one of them, please join the conversation! You can register here - http://groups.comminit.com/user/register - or, if already registered, join the group by going here - http://groups.comminit.com/node/306528 - and clicking on the red words "Request membership".

Thanks - it will be excellent to have you engaged.

To view communication- and media-related events happening at the Conference, please visit the HIV/AIDS Strategy: Future Directions Group's July calendar: http://groups.comminit.com/groups_calendar/306528/2010/07/all

Click on each event's name to read a description of what will be happening, where, and when. (Please note also the hyperlinked word "more"...click there to see the entire list of C4D-related events taking place each day). And please do add your own event description: Once logged in, just click on "Submit an Event" in the box on the right-hand side of the screen.

You can learn, for example, about:

* "Is AIDS Activism Dead?" (Monday July 19 2010, from 11:00-12:30, in Global Village Session Room 1)
http://groups.comminit.com/node/319719

* "Distance Based Learning Technologies: E-Health and Social Media for Clinical HIV" (Monday July 19 2010, from 14:30-18:00, in Mini Room 8)
http://groups.comminit.com/node/319802

* "'I Want My Rights Now" - A Toolkit for Young People to Advocate Successfully" (Monday July 19 2010, from 11:00-12:30, in Mini Room 3)
http://groups.comminit.com/node/319795

* and many more...

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

This call for papers is for a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on ICTs and Older Persons. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

If you have an article (or an idea for one) contact
Geneloeb Aronin, Ph.D. by July 15th geneloeb at gmail.com.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Community Informatics (www.ci-journal.net) is inviting submissions of articles for a special issue on community informatics and elderly. Community Informatics is concerned with the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to enable and empower local communities including for personal, social, cultural or economic development of and within communities.

There has been a recent a surge in the use of ICTs involving the geriatric community, elderly and those associated with their care or needs. This activity has taken several forms, including: the elderly communicating with others by computers and other technologies; technical devices used to monitor needs or send warnings; information from governments is now available online including training programs for older people to access such information; and the use of ICTs to support community caregivers for the elderly, self-help and self-care for the elderly, and as an infrastructure for the development of virtual community connections among the elderly and between the elderly and others are burgeoning areas of community care and in some places part of the public health system. We would very much welcome explorations and systematic (and other) accounts of these processes and others.

Now is the opportunity to examine model practices of ICT to benefit communities of older persons and their families, to support their care and their caregivers within communities and to suggest new ways in which ICTs can be used to maximize community based initiatives and opportunities.

Articles in the planned issue will focus on the use of ICTs for personal, social, cultural or economic development of, and within, communities for the elderly. We would look to include paradigms for reaching out to elderly people who can not yet access ICTs for these benefits; demonstrate improved technical frameworks for community based ICT applications; show the effectiveness of applications and new ways technology may be applied. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

What other ideas and suggestions do you have? Email the co-ordinator for this issue,
Geneloeb: geneloeb at gmail.com

With Best Wishes for an Even Better Day

Gene-loeb
Gene-loeb Aronin, Ph.D.

Ensuring You Have Nursing Skills Through 2030 ...

In Computing 20 May 2010 Andrew Charlesworth (p.24-26) writes about a report from Gartner the IT industry advisory group warning of a gap in mainframe skills due to the imminent retirement of experienced IT staff. The report notes:

"Increased focus needs to be to be on the preservation of detailed and specialised expertise that goes well beyond basic knowledge."

Nursing faces its own challenges in terms of skill gaps and loss of skills due to retirement. In contrast to the mainframe IT market the skills needed is in the orchestration of basic nursing care.

This is an ironic state of affairs as there are many forces acting to deprofessionalise nursing. Demographic trends is one. This is happening amid decades of specialisation and the production of - profession establishing - models and theories of nursing (care). Some of these are, however, quite complex and removed from the rudiments and tenets of basic nursing care.

The real irony here though? Well, as the demographic wave washes over many nurses themselves, the care they may subsequently need and receive will - just like mainframe skills - be the harvest from seeds they have also cast, or are sowing right now.

Ensuring You Have Mainframe Skills Through 2020, Gartner, Mike Chuba, Research VP.

International Journal of User Driven Healthcare (IJUDH) CfP

Dear Mr. Jones

In view of your work in patient-centered care, I’d like to invite you and/or your colleagues to submit a paper to this Special Issue of the new journal described further below and via the web link provided. I think our global readers would be very interested in your thoughts (and projects) on innovative ways to get relevant healthcare information into the hands of ‘users’ (both patients and providers), within the user-driven EBM paradigm, per below.

Please also share this call for papers with your colleagues.

Thanks for your consideration,

Susan Ross, MD

International Journal of User Driven Healthcare (IJUDH) Call for Papers

Editor-in-Chief:
Rakesh Biswas,
Center for Scientific Research and Development (CSRD),
PCMS Campus, India

Published: Quarterly

Call for Papers - Special Issue:

Submission Due Date: July 1, 2010
Special Issue On User Driven Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine

Guest Editors:
Susan Ross, MD, FRCPC

Introduction

User Driven Healthcare (UDH) is part consumer-driven healthcare, part narrative medicine, and part Health 2.0. It stems from a concept of participatory healthcare whereby all stakeholders, enabled by information, software, and cyber-community, focus on healthcare value. But where does Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) fit into this framework? It is sometimes forgotten that EBM is a three-legged stool, comprised of the triad of evidence +provider expertise + patient preferences. In this EBM framework, provider expertise is needed to bridge the inferential gap between population-based evidence and the individual patient. And each patient's values and preferences should narrow that inferential gap further. But since the introduction of EBM nearly two decades ago, the primary focus of EBM proponents has been on Evidence, at the expense of patient preferences and provider expertise. Perhaps this is why the promise of EBM to foster the most efficient and high quality healthcare has not yet been realized.

Objective of the Special Issue

This Special Issue will focus on the following questions: Is the recent emergence of User Driven Healthcare really a new, post-EBM paradigm for healthcare, or just an overdue consideration of the other two legs of the original EBM stool? How might this trend affect all stakeholders?

Recommended Topics

Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Developing valid patient-level evidence using the Web
• Evidence generation—clinical research strategies using social media and mobile technologies
• Examples of UDH to a) help formulate the right questions to ask in EBM; b) develop answers to those questions; c) disseminate the answers to patients and providers with a need to know; and d) test the impact of UDH-generated Evidence on patient outcomes
• Helping online patients sift the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’—information management for patients in an EBM world
• How to incorporate patient preferences and values into ambulatory care decision-making (i.e., into the 10 minute visit)
• Measuring the impact of UDH on patient outcomes
• Patient-level decisions vs. population-level evidence (bridging the inferential gap)
• Pharmaceutical communication strategies using social media—impact on healthcare quality and costs in an EBM framework
• Place of social media in EBM—patient and physician online communities
• Practice of UDH vs. EBM around the world
• Regulatory issues of evidence dissemination by industry using social media in healthcare Statistical and other evaluative methods to assess the validity and reliability of evidence developed using social media and mobile technologies
• Trends in N-of-1 studies, and their relevance to EBM and UDH
• Use of collective intelligence to solve healthcare problems for individuals and communities

Submission

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this special theme issue on User Driven Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine on or before July 1, 2010. Submissions received after this date will be reviewed for possible publication in subsequent issues of the journal. All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. INTERESTED AUTHORS SHOULD CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guide.asp. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind, peer review basis. Papers must follow APA style for reference citations.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

Susan Ross, MD
Guest Editor
Email:sdross720@gmail.com

Holistic interferometry

Since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the moon, the instrument has evolved with bigger lenses and mirrors. Despite additional advances in optics, physical constraints eventually prompted development in other directions. Rather than one optical or radio telescope, why not combine the inputs of several, tens, hundreds... ?

The health career model can act as an interferometer
for health across the care spectrum*.

We desperately need holistic interferometry for the personal, social, community (urban, rural and nomadic), national and global health care challenges we face.

* Which includes much of the electromagnetic.

Links:

Interferometry: Space.com

Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI)

Allen Telescope Array

SETI@home

Seti Inst.

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory

Image source: Seti League
http://www.setileague.org/array2k/array2kb.jpg

Development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads

The following very interesting item was posted on the Healthcare Information For All by 2015 [HIFA2015] list (I have added some formatting and links).

Dear All,

We received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant (a Gates Foundation initiative) for the development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads whose access to health service has always posed a concern. A robotic health assistant was constructed using aluminum casing. The device has three components: an interactive non-replaceable section that processes information and provides output. A replaceable laboratory containing supplies for qualitatively distinguishing between fevers associated with malaria and those that are non-malaria and a second replaceable component, a dispensary containing analgesics, ant malaria [*] and antibiotics for treating different types of fevers. The user communicates with the device using three buttons and receives feedback in Fulfude the nomadic Fulani language. The device interviews the user, processes the user’s responses and gives instructions. The accuracy of the information provided by the patient (user), and the ability of the user to carry out the instructions are critical to illness outcome. The device is solar-powered, is able to repeat previous instructions as many times as the patient desires, and provides referral.

Ten such robotic health assistants (ROBODOCs) were deployed among two main groups of nomads (those with previous experience using communication devices such as handheld mobile phones and those without such experience). The volunteer user was given basic information on the use, the switch-ON button, charging the device, and replacing the components. The user contacts a Field Assistant with hand-held mobile phone who in turn alerts the Research Supervisor whenever a case is managed. The Supervisor holds a phone interview with user and beneficiary patient at the end of the consultation with Robodoc as part of the quality assurance.

Robodoc was withdrawn after three months of deployment. Members of the community, beneficiaries and users were interviewed. Each device was examined for durability in the field. The ten units managed more than 80 cases of fever and appropriately diagnosed and treated 90% of them. Previous experience with using a modern communication device was not an important factor in the use of the Robodoc. The nomads found the device very useful and made suggestions on how it may be used for the management of several other health problems besides fevers.

We are keen to publish the findings from testing the device in a peer-reviewed journal. Does anyone have an idea of any journal that may be interested in this sort of research?

Oladele Akogun

HIFA2015 profile: Oladele Akogun is a professor of public health parasitology at the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria and Principal Scientist at the Common Heritage Foundation/Nigeria. He has spent over 24 years carrying out research and community service on access of community populations to health care delivery among marginalized populations. He is a pioneer researcher and contributor to the development of the community directed intervention approach to health service delivery now used in onchocerciasis control in Africa. With a Grand Challenges exploration (GCE) grant from The Gates Foundation, he is leading a team to develop a robotic health assistant for the management of malaria among nomads. He sits on two committees of the WHO/African region and on 5 committees at the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria. He has worked at various times as consultant to Constella-Futures, Africare and WHO where he worked for a year as Technical Adviser. He has made presentations to the African Regional Ministers forum on Primary Health, the US Congressional subcommittee on international aid and PAHO. He holds a PhD (1991) from the University of Jos and a Master of Public Health (2008) from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Some of his views are expressed in http://blog4globalhealth.wordpress.com/bios/akogun1/
akoguno AT yahoo.com

[*Notes from HIFA2015 moderator:
1. I think this should read 'antimalarials'.
2. A picture of the device in action is available on the Gates Foundation website at:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/grand-challenges-explorations.aspx
'Oladele Akogun of the Common Heritage Foundation in Nigeria is testing a 'fever kit' for use among nomadic populations. The device is equipped with simple diagnostic tools and prerecorded treatment instructions in the native language to help nomadic caregivers accurately diagnose and treat fevers in a way that reduces mortality and drug resistance.' Thanks, Neil PW]
(In re-posting I have added the image at left.)

Scholarship for PhD/DBA in Development Informatics at University of Manchester

Here is a scholarship opportunity at the University of Manchester shared by Mr. Richard Heeks and Mr. Brian Nicholson, Directors of the Centre for Development Informatics:

The Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester is seeking high-quality PhD and DBA candidates to research topics on ICTs/information systems and socio-economic development. Some scholarships are available for those starting in September 2010; deadline dates vary but many require application before end February or end March 2010.

My source: Community Informatics list

Additional links:

http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/postgraduate/research/areas/researchopportunities/

ERCIM News No. 80 published - Special Theme: "Digital Preservation"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 80 has just been published at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

Special Theme: "Digital Preservation"

- coordinated by Ingeborg Solvberg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Andreas Rauber, Vienna Technical University

- featuring a keynote by Pat Manson, Head of Unit "Cultural Heritage & Technology Enhanced Learning"; European Commission Information Society and Media Directorate-General

Next issue: April 2010 - Special Theme:

"Computational Science/ Scientific Computing: Modelling and Simulation for Research and Industry"

(see call for articles)

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Best regards,
Peter Kunz

This issue includes:

• The CARA Approach for Long-Term Preservation and Exploitation of Medical Images and Reports by Hanan Bouzid, et al..
• Designing a Trusted Distributed Long-Term Archive for Health Records by Frej Drejhammar
• Providing Web Accessibility for the Visually Impaired by Barbara Leporini, et al..
• ICASE Project: New Challenges in Computer-Based Assessment by Thibaud Latour and Sandrine Sarre.

ERCIM News
is published quarterly by ERCIM, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics.
The printed edition will reach about 10,000 readers.
This email alert reaches over 5,000 subscribers.

---

Advertising in ERCIM News
By advertising in the ERCIM News printed edition, your company or institution will be able to speak to a highly qualified audience: You can reach over 10,000 researchers, scientists and decision makers in the field of information and communication technologies.
For rates and conditions, see http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/advertise

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About ERCIM
ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading research institutes from twenty European countries are members of ERCIM. ERCIM is the European host of W3C.
http://www.ercim.eu/

Sahana OSS response in Haiti

My source: Community informatics list [ciresearchers]:

Sahana Software Foundation
Haiti Earthquake Response
Status Report #1
January 17, 2010 00:00 UTC

The Sahana Software Foundation and the Sahana community responded with a massive voluntary effort immediately following the earthquake that has devastated the poor country of Haiti. Working around the clock, we have set up a hosted instance of Sahana (the first deployment of SahanaPy following a disaster!) on a public website that is already filling gaps in the information management requirements of the massive relief operation.

Major Accomplishments

We have a Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal - a live and active website up at http://haiti.sahanafoundation.org which contains a feeds from many of the relief agencies and links to Sahana modules that are actively being used to help coordinate the relief effort.

We have a Sahana Haiti wiki page where we are tracking all of our and others' activites at: http://wiki.sahana.lk/doku.php/haiti:start

We have a requirements page where we record all the modification, configurations, and changes to Sahana based on the mission requirements at: http://wiki.sahana.lk/doku.php/haiti:requirements

The Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal provides the following functionality:

1. An Organization Registry - serves to track organizations and offices working on the ground in Haiti. Organizations are encouraged to self-register and report their office locations - alternatively, individual organization office or lists of offices can be e-mailed to haiti-orgs@googlegroups.com and we have volunteers to assist with data entry and to aggregate lists from other sources. We have entered data from pre-disaster lists of organizations working in Haiti available from UN OCHA. We can assume that these organizations will be working on the relief efforts, but expect that most of their office locations will be different as most organizations have been forced to move into tents given that few buildings remain standing and usable in the capital. We are working to validate these lists with the organizations directly.

The site serves up both KML for Google Earth users and GeoRSS for everyone else, and will generate reports of organization activities and the gaps (uncovered sectors by geographic location). This site will hopefully become the main resource for accurate information about the organizations working on the ground, where they are located, and what activities they are engaged in, and the resources in terms of staff and equipment that they have available to them. (Currently, data is admittedly sparse but we expect more details to become available as the coordination efforts take root on the ground). We are coordinating with UN OCHA, Google and others on sources of accurate lists and updates.

What are the gaps in our information collection? We have a large and we think accurate list of organizations, but not much office location information. Without this, it becomes hard to generate data that can be used as a layer in a GIS system. We are encouraging people to report this information - preferably by GPS coordinates, but any location information that we can use to manually geo-reference the office is valuable. We hope to be able to enhance our capabilities such that we can produce polygons showing organization's areas of coverage by sector. Please direct organizations working in Haiti to our site to register their offices and activities!

2. A Missing Persons Registry / Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) Registry - we are working with Google and others on an agreed common standard for the exchange of Missings Persons data using the PFIF standard. The Google site at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/ is the main aggregator collecting all missing and found persons reports and we are encouraging all people to send data to that site. [We are struggling a little as Google's feed is not fully PFIF compliant and the lack of unique record identifiers makes it more complex to set up true synchronization without the creation of duplicate records. We continue to work with Google on this and hope to have a resolution and solution within the next few hours.] We will also be embedding Google's widget on our site for collecting missing person information. Google will be making their data available via a PFIF feed and we will be importing it into Sahana's Missing Persons registry. From there, Sahana can add value to the simple lists being collected.

In particular, Sahana's Disaster Victims Identification registry - or DVI - which is used to management the handling and tracking and tracing of the deceased, dead bodies and their identification. There is currently no other known application for this and we hope that those working in this area will find Sahana extremely valuable. Sahana will have the ability to cross-reference missing persons information with the identified and unidentified deceased, thus facilitating reconciliation efforts. The Sahana Missing Persons registry has additional physical description information fields and we hope to be able to utilize some of the image matching capabilities available to extend these capabilities further. Organizations interested in utilizing these capabilities (which will not be made open for public use) should contact the Sahana team at
sahana-haiti@lists.launchpad.net.

Any updated missing persons status information will be pushed back to the main Google repository from Sahana.

3. Situation Mapping - Sahana's site is able to map all of the geo-referenced data within Sahana - primarily the organization data, but we have also manually entered a data layer of hospitals and medical facilities. Sahana has worked with members of the OSGeo community to obtain a fast tiled set of the current imagery being made available by Digital Globe. Sahana is also leveraging the constantly updated set of Open Street Map tiles. These are acting as backdrop for the offices that are being entered as part of the Organization Registry. Other data sources that are ready and available to be leveraged by Sahana and SahanaPy for other deployments include reports from Ushahidi, various point layers from Open Street Map, location names, USGS earthquakes, and locations from GeoNames. We will continue to build out these capabilities further as relevant layers are made available.

Capabilities we are working on:

The following capabilities are in the process of being developed and we expect will soon be available:

4. Request Management: We are working with the US State Department, Ushahidi and some other voluntary efforts on a project to process SMS messages with requests for assistance sent from survivors in Haiti. SMS text messages sent to a short code in Haiti will go into Ushahidi, who will have volunteer translators to add some structure to the message, identifying the sender's name, location (to the extent possible), and category of the message - a missing persons report, a request for assistance, etc. The message will go into a Ushahidi GeoRSS feed that will be captured by Sahana and fed into a simple Request Management system where the requests for assistance (such as "send water" to a certain village or neighborhood) can be made visible to relief organizations working on the ground. Organizations can fulfill or claim requests for handling and message the person back that assistance is coming. (Missing persons information will be captured by Google).

5. Translation: In addition, our translation project is now set up for Kreol and French translation and we may utilize a pool of Kreol-speaking volunteers being set up by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to help in these efforts. Interested translators should be directed initially to:
http://translate.hfoss.eu/wiki/Translation to become oriented in the process.

6. Shelter Registry and Disaster Victims Registry: In the coming days, we expect that there will be a requirement to start tracking the location of temporary shelters now being established, and possible registration of the survivors. We will prepare Sahana's existing registries for such purposes, which will produce further consumable data layers as well as additional missing persons reconciliation capabilities.

If you want to help:

We are using the IRC #sahana channel on freenode as our main coordination tool. Join the chat room to volunteer for tasks and someone from our core volunteer team will direct you - this room is actively staffed on a 24x7 basis.

But first, please check out the wiki pages to see what are the current requirements and areas of focus. We have a lot of volunteer Python and PHP programmers already working on the codebase, but we can probably use more. Please review the requirements page in particular to see where you might help.

We also have a large need for non-technical help - particularly for documentation support - user guidelines and instructions in particular - including some nice screenshots. See
http://trac.sahanapy.org/wiki/UserGuidelines to get started.

We also need help with Bug & Functionality testing. Please submit bug reports and feature request to: http://trac.sahanapy.org/newticket

For documentation and testing efforts - please use the development site at
http://haiti-orgsdev.sahanafoundation.org - NOT THE LIVE SITE PLEASE.

Finally, we could use help maintaining our own wiki - both the main page and requirements... much of this can be culled from the chat room logs - and helping to update some of the common public repositories of information about similar efforts, such as the crisis commons wiki at
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake, although they are doing a pretty good job at tracking us ourselves.

Remember to add yourself to the wiki as part of team, and what you are doing.

Acknowledgements

Personally, I have never been a part of such a collaborative and cooperative effort on the part of different organizations to come together and to help each other and to not replicate efforts. The Sahana community has worked closely and constantly with InSTEDD, Ushahidi, haitianquake.com, Google, the Crisis Camp participants, and others I apologize for not mentioning and we wouldn't have been able to accomplish all that we have without this, and for this I am very grateful.

The around the clock efforts of many of the Sahana community are too numerous to mention here, and at risk of leaving anyone out, I would just like to thank everyone for all that they have done and been able to do while juggling responsibilities such as full-time jobs and families.

This has been a new model for Sahana deployments - rather than waiting for a specific customer to come forward to take ownership of Sahana, we have self-deployed and I think this will be a likely successful model for the future. More and more, technology projects are stepping forward and doing good directly.

So go forth and do good.

Best regards,
Mark
==========
Mark Prutsalis
President & CEO
Sahana Software Foundation
Tel 860-499-0332
Fax 801-697-8731
mark at sahanafoundation.org
http://www.sahanafoundation.org

Call for papers: IFLA Health and Biosciences Libraries Section open session

Colleagues from around the world are invited to submit an abstract for consideration for the HBS Open Session:

Health and Biosciences Libraries Section


Aim and Scope of the Session

It is hoped that papers will cover a wide range of areas - for example:

• Partnerships and collaborations that support free access to health information.
• Health libraries/health information professionals role in promoting open and / or equitable access.
• How health information is disseminated to the general public?
• How useful is free health information? Is it evidence based?
• How evidence based information is incorporated into freely available health information?
• Is there a decline in the use of health information that is not freely available e.g. library subscriptions?
• How do consumers prefer to access health information e.g. mobile devices, magazines, newspapers?
• What role health information literacy may have in health information?

It is anticipated that presentations be 15 minutes with time for questions at the end of the session.

Important dates:

February 1st 2010: Deadline for submission of abstract
March 1st 2010: Notification of acceptance/rejection
May 1st 2010: Deadline for submission of text

Submission Guidelines:

The proposals must be submitted in an electronic format and must contain:

Title of paper
Summary of paper (250 - 350 words maximum)
Speaker's name, address, telephone and fax numbers, professional affiliation, email address and biographical note (40 words)

Submissions are to be submitted before February 1st 2010 by email to:

Paivi Pekkarinen
National Library of Health Sciences
Haartmaninkatu 4
FI-00290 Helsinki, Finland
paivi.pekkarinen@helsinki.fi
www: http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi

Regrettably IFLA's Sections do not have funds available to pay for speakers expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation.

http://www.ifla.org/en/calls-for-papers/1930

Paivi Pekkarinen
IFLA Health and Biosciences Libraries Section / Secretary
National Library of Health Sciences
Haartmaninkatu 4
FI-00290 Helsinki
email: paivi.pekkarinen at helsinki.fi

HIFA2015 profile: Paivi Pekkarinen is Head of the WHO Information Service Centre, National Library of Health Sciences, Finland. Professional interests include:

• To enhance equal access to health information, in particular in the WHO European Region;
• To enhance collaboration and networking of the Public Health Special Interest Group of EAHIL http://www.eahil.net/PHISIG-page.html;
• and knowledge management issues.

Click here to read online.

HIFA2015: Healthcare Information For All by 2015 www.hifa2015.org
With thanks to our 2009 Sponsors: *British Medical Association, ePORTUGUESe, Network for Information and Digital Access, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing*

To join or unsubscribe from HIFA2015, email:
hifa2015-admin at dgroups.org
To join our sister group CHILD2015 (child health), go to:
www.hifa2015.org/child2015-forum
To join our sister group HIFA2015-Portuguese, go to:
www.hifa2015.org/hifa-pt

My source:

HIPNet Listserv hjohnson at jhuccp.org

Call for Papers for Special issue on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics

Please forward as appropriate. Thanks!

Dear all, a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) will be devoted to ´Linking the Local with the Global within Community informatics`, guest-edited by Liisa Horelli and Doug Schuler.

The Journal of Community Informatics is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers. The field of community informatics seeks to explore the potentials of ICTs and their applications for economic, ecological and socio-cultural development efforts at the community level. It seeks to ensure that individuals and communities can take advantage of the opportunities that these technologies can provide.

For this special issue of the Journal, we are inviting submission of original, unpublished articles. We welcome research articles from different disciplines, case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged. These will not be peer-reviewed.

You can find the full Call for Papers below. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Warm wishes, Liisa and Doug

------------------------------------------

Journal of Community Informatics:

Call for Papers for Special issue on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics

Guest editors: Liisa Horelli and Douglas Schuler

The Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, Community Informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.
We invite submissions of original, unpublished articles for a forthcoming special edition of the Journal that will focus on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics. We welcome research articles from different disciplines, case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged. These will not be peer-reviewed.

What is Community Informatics?

Community informatics

...links economic and social development efforts at the community level with emerging opportunities in such areas as electronic commerce, community and civic networks and telecentres, electronic democracy and online-participation, self-help and virtual health communities, advocacy, cultural enhancement, and e-planning among others....is concerned with carving out a sphere and developing strategies for precisely those who are being excluded from this ongoing rush, and enabling these individuals and communities to take advantage of some of the opportunities which the technology is providing. It is also concerned with enhancing civil society and strengthening local communities for self-management and for environmental and economically sustainable development, ensuring that many who might otherwise be excluded are able to take advantage of the enormous opportunities the new technologies are presenting.

- Michael Gurstein in Community Informatics:
Enabling Communities with Information and Communications

Why a special issue on Linking Local with the Global within Community Informatics?

Community informatics (CI) is the study and practice of information and communication systems (especially involving networked digital systems) in the community. Regardless of the agreement on the broad definition, there are inherent tensions within the CI community and with the CI perspective itself. The "simple" idea of community is the source of one tension since there are a multiplicity of definitions and usages of the word "community", many of which are semantically loaded or ambiguous. Is, for example, a "virtual community" a real community?

Another source of tension is between the local and the global, the focus of this special issue. What's local and what's global? What is their significance in terms of our focus on "community"? How do we define the two terms so that they are meaningful and useful to our work? Perhaps these terms distract us from conceptualizing our enterprise in ways that are more useful? What characterizes phenomena or artifacts as belonging to one or the other (and how do they influence each other)? Interestingly, the community of community informatics researchers, practitioners, and activists itself is part of a new hybridity that blurs local and global.

The term glocalization has been coined to focus on the intermixing of local and global influences which are present and active everywhere. Although the phenomenon is not new, it has intensified in recent years due to the Internet, mass communications, mobile telephones, air travel, war, migration, economic interdependence, environmental impacts, and other aspects of 21st century mobilities. But identifying and naming a phenomenon is only the beginning. We must not mistake our use of a new term for understanding. For example, how would glocalization help us understand a network of local communities?

The availability of urban and community ICT could allow people to understand the larger impacts of their everyday decisions. It could also enable people to understand and promote not only the particularities of the local but also commonalities of the global, and to engage with the broader global “sphere”. Consequently, people could become actors who are engaged in the glocal networks of mobile people, goods and information.

However, glocal influence or interaction could be directed from the top-down, laterally, or from the bottom-up. CI implicitly embraces the tension between the local and the global. On some level, global and local pit two types of forces against each other. How does CI consider this clash or intermingling of forces? Does it advocate larger barriers, shelters, or hiding places, from these forces or does it inspire or promote the type of collective intelligence that goes beyond "using ICT?" The recent debate on the CI-research list brought up the idea that CI could be used, in addition to the benefit of communities, to the benefit of global communities. This debate raised arguments that both supported and questioned the claim. On the one hand, there is the risk that glocalisation can dilute (and downgrade) the "community" to some larger (and less individually significant) whole. In that case, it may be important to preserve the 'local' as it maintains the community's domains of control and power over the circumstances that impacts it. It can be reasoned that greater globality essentially removes self-control and self-governance.

On the other hand, glocalisation provides new strategic options for movements who seek resources and support far beyond national boundaries, such as the Chiapas, in Mexico. The global opportunities even begin to play part in the way local activists frame the issues they raise locally. Thus, the "outside world" affects communities, but communities exert forces outwards as well. Local communities can also share experiences and strategies, thus mutually strengthening each other. We need to figure out, how we are going to make the glocal or translocal connections work most effectively. This special issue is intended to help surface the opportunities, challenges, and risks around this theme.

These issues give rise to a large number of research questions. Some of these are listed below but there are many yet to be identified and researched. What processes underlie the forces of globalization? Which are forces of localization? How are people affected by each? How do these forces originate, diffuse, and make their effects felt? Do these forces affect all communities equally or are gender, ethnicity, or other features significant factors? And what should CI researchers / practitioners do in relation to those forces? Is the issue trying to help communities use ICT more effectively, or is it working in a general way to develop communication systems that will help local communities intelligently address the problems that they (and the rest of the world) face? In some situations, for example, this means helping to develop collective problem-solving tools so people can more effectively resist oppression or fight the status quo. Or should their inhabitants be full citizens of the world with the rights and responsibilities that accompany that status? How can we characterize the new diversity of global / local relationships? What patterns exist? In what ways might (hyper?) localism breed parochialism and isolationism? Can we embrace CI without unnecessarily valorizing the local community? What are the opportunities (and what should the limits be) to our research and activism on behalf of and with the local community?

Because CI is a brand new field of research and practice we have the rare opportunity to define our field. Is it useful — or even possible — to conceptualize a social enterprise that is relevant today without explicitly acknowledging climate change, environmental degradation, oppression, poverty, human rights, war and militarism, and other "global" problems that face us all, however indirectly. How should these manifest "global" concerns be factored into our enterprise? And how does the role of information and communication, the foundations of our enterprise, change — if at all — the way we answer these questions? This positioning of our enquiry at such a point should enable a new set of opportunities. CI integrates research and engagement. So its view of localism and globalism needs to be informed through those perspectives.

We invite authors to submit in English both full articles for peer-review, as well as short pieces on specific experiences and/or policy and regulatory issues, to be reviewed by the guest editors.

Please note the deadlines:
Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2010
Deadline for submissions: 30 May 2010
Publication date is forthcoming

For information about submission requirements, including author guidelines, please visit:
http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

For further information, clarifications, comments or suggestions, and to send abstracts of papers for consideration, please contact:

Dr. Liisa Horelli Helsinki University of Technology Centre for Urban and Regional Studies liisa.horelli at tkk.fi
Douglas Schuler The Public Sphere Project and The Evergreen State College douglas@publicsphereproject.org