Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Iowa Flood Of 2008: Putting The Disaster Response Plan To The Test, Paul A. Soderdahl

Paul A Soderdahl

In the summer of 2008, the rivers in eastern Iowa rose to historic levels, prompting a major evacuation and shutdown of the University of Iowa campus and resulting in nearly $750 million in damage, particularly to the buildings that housed the fine and performing arts. The art library reopened in late 2011, and the music library will be in temporary quarters for several more years. Though the main library received only minor flooding in the basement, the building was closed for several weeks even while campus reopened and classes resumed.

The library's data center, located in the main library, needed …

Data, Data Use, And Scientific Inquiry: Two Case Studies Of Data Practices, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Data are proliferating far faster than they can be captured, managed, or stored. What types of data are most likely to be used and reused, by whom, and for what purposes? Answers to these questions will inform information policy and the design of digital libraries. We report findings from semi-structured interviews and field observations to investigate characteristics of data use and reuse and how those characteristics vary within and between scientific communities. The two communities studied are researchers at the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) and users of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. The data practices of …