Please register here: 
http://ola.aacc.edu/mcapd/conference.html

PROMISE at UMB invites all to a special Fall Kick-off & Social Hour.

Friday, September 4, 2015, 3 pm

University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB)

Bressler Building, Hostick Lecture Hall

Featuring Dr. Nirmal Joshi, MC Chief Medical Officer for Pinnacle Health System

Transportation

Driving:

Google Directions

(Additional information will be placed in the comment section of this post.)

By bus:

A shuttle leaves at 1:30 PM and 2:30 PM from UMBC  and arriving at UMB 1:50 PM and 2:50 PM

More about PROMISE at UMB:

http://www.graduate.umaryland.edu/Current-Students/PROMISE-Program/

https://umbconnect.umaryland.edu/organization/promise

Today's post is written by Emily Somach, a recent graduate of the College of Information Studies at College Park. Emily has been working in Special Collections this year as part of an NHPRC funded grant project; you can read more about her work with EAD-XML in a previous post. As part of this project she also wrote descriptive records for collections that had not previously been described. This blog post was inspired by Collection 156. Thank you, Emily!

Looking at cute pictures of cats is not a new pastime. The advent of the internet has certainly made it a more widespread form of entertainment, but far before the World Wide Web people were finding ways to satisfy their desire for cute kitten pictures. Most people do not realize that the most popular and effective method for admiring representations of felines was once the scrapbook, a hobby that appeared in the early 19th century and that many Victorian women greatly enjoyed.

According to Collectors Weekly, “In response to the scrapbooking trend, 19th-century bookmakers designed blank albums with elaborate, tooled-leather covers, gilt paper edgings, and engraved clasps” and materials were “explicitly produced as die-cut ‘scrap’ for decorating homemade albums.” With access to abundant scraps as well as blank-paged books, it is no wonder that the practice of scrapbooking grew so quickly in popularity. An excellent example of a scrapbook from this time period is the one seen below, from the shelves of UMBC’s Special Collections. As you can tell from the photographs, the hobby was truly a serious pursuit.

This particular album from Special Collections is a very standard example of a scrapbook from the 1800s. It is chock full of playful kittens and cats of all colors and sizes, as well as some anthropomorphized felines performing human activities (such as eating cake at a table). The images vary from the cat memes and gifs with which our modern eyes are now accustomed, but they seem to fill the same niche.

Elspeth Rountree, the co-founder of the Know Your Meme website, explains, “They're the perfect distraction from our hectic lives. You don't need any explanation or prior knowledge to understand the slapstick humor that animals provide. Cat videos and images are a quick hit of pure, unfettered 'cute.' They're also entertainment in easily digestible doses.” Who wouldn’t smile after looking at a tangle of playful kittens chasing a ball, or popping out of a snare drum?

Ben Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network, elaborates on the appeal of cat pictures when he states, “Cats have very expressive facial and body expressions, so they are a perfect canvas for human emotion.” This reason helps to clarify why humans used to, and still do, portray animals in clothing or place animals in human situations. After viewing scrapbooks from previous centuries, it becomes undeniable that the desire to gaze on adorable, furry felines has long been a part of human culture. The desire transcends time and space, and persists in spite of new technologies and trends.

Cited sources:

"The Million Dollar Question: Why Does the Internet Love Cats?" Mashable, accessed August 27, 2015, http://mashable.com/2010/10/21/why-does-the-web-love-cats/.

"Scrapbooks and Paper Die-Cuts," Collector's Weekly, accessed August 27, 2015, http://www.collectorsweekly.com/paper/scrapbooks.

Sisters in the Dissertation House #Legacy @PROMISE_AGEP #TeamGetItDone #Reloaded #ThinkBigDiversity @drwestmoreland pic.twitter.com/SG38NGhj0Z

— Alexis Williams (@alexisinc) August 15, 2015

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

One post describes the event. It was a banner evening for the “Sisters in the Dissertaton House” discussion on Friday, August 14, 2015.

PROMISE also thanks its partner at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) for sponsoring the Dissertation House for the SSI, August 13-14, 2015.

Hi! I’m Emily Somach, a graduate student at University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. I am working towards my Master of Library Science degree, specializing in Archives, Records, and Information Management, and work as a Graduate Assistant in the UMBC Special Collections.

For the past six months, I have been working on an exciting project to create Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for Special Collections’ archives. The project is funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC) through the grant opportunity entitled “Documenting Democracy: Access to Historical Records Projects.”

What is EAD?

Well, the short answer is that EAD is a standard; it is used to encode data and information about personal papers or corporate records (i.e. archival materials). EAD is also an XML schema called EAD-XML, which means that an EAD record is written using the markup language XML (which is very similar in structure to the more familiar HTML). Lastly, an EAD record is also a type of finding aid.

And what, you may ask, is a finding aid? A finding aid is the archival term for an index or guide to a collection. It is useful to both archivists and researchers; it helps the former gain intellectual and physical control over collections, and allows the latter to find and use materials relevant to their work.

Essentially, EAD allows archivists to create platform independent records (or finding aids, the two are synonymous when discussing EAD) that are more dynamic and versatile than a word document or content management system record. EAD finding aids are easy to represent online and share between systems; they allow the public to find and access information about archival collections through online catalogs or discovery tools. Ultimately, collections represented in EAD become far more accessible and easy to locate and use.

How to Create EAD

EAD can be created by hand or through automated processes, but manually creating an entire record from scratch in XML is very time consuming and cumbersome. Luckily, for this project, we did not have to start from scratch or do everything by hand. Instead, we opted to repurpose the data we already had in PastPerfect, the content management system used by Special Collections. We developed a workflow that allows us to extract this data from PastPerfect and convert it into EAD-XML. While some post-processing and manual edits are required, the large majority of the workflow is automated.

PastPerfect records and data can be exported in a variety of formats, including PastPerfect’s own flavor of XML. For the purposes of our project, we decided to export records in this PastPerfect-XML format, which meant that we would eventually be transforming one type of XML into another, i.e. PastPerfect-XML into EAD-XML. We decided that such a transformation would be easier and more straightforward than any other, as it only requires one transformation and one language.

The Workflow

Stylesheet Creation

Upon starting the project, I worked closely with Dmitri Rudnitsky, an Information Systems undergraduate student at UMBC skilled in computer programming. Dmitri and I learned as much about EAD, XML, and XSLT as we could in two weeks, then set to work on the most technical aspect of the project: the XSLT stylesheet. XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language that is used to transform one XML file into another XML file. Not to get too technical, but we used this language to write functions that would take data from the PastPerfect-XML and rewrite it in the form appropriate to EAD-XML. Since Dmitri had to leave at the end of April, we wanted to utilize his expertise on this part of the project prior to his departure. By the time he left the project, I hoped to have learned enough to carry on with the rest of the work myself.

Fortunately, we had a working version of the stylesheet by the time Dmitri left. By this time, I also felt comfortable tweaking, streamlining, and editing the stylesheet on my own as the work progressed and I learned more about XSLT. This stylesheet is available on the project's GitHub space: https://github.com/UMBC-Library/EAD-XML/blob/master/stylesheets/PPtoEAD_withComments.xsl. A few months later I was able to create two more stylesheets for the project: one that splits a batch file into individual files and one that transforms the EAD-XML into HTML for web display. 

Data Cleanup

Once we completed the initial version of the stylesheet, I shifted gears and started focusing on the data export from PastPerfect. Before we could extract any data, we had to ensure that it was as standardized and error-free as possible. Using the descriptive rules outlined in the Society of American Archivists’ Describing Archives: A Content Standards (DACS), we developed our own set of guidelines and standard forms for each field in PastPerfect. We then checked and edited each field in each record to adhere to the guidelines and ensure a uniform output.

Occasionally, in order to correctly fill in a field, I had to physically locate a collection and identify or verify certain features. Most frequently this meant counting the number of boxes and calculating the equivalent linear footage, or checking to see what condition the collection was in and if it required conservation. Other times, it meant checking accession paperwork and describing how, when, or from whom we had acquired a collection.

Prioritization of Records

After the records were cleaned up, we prioritized all of them (about 150) into three groups: high, medium, and low. Prioritization was based on how complete they were or how much further editing they required. We added all of this information into a spreadsheet to track each record’s priority ranking, required edits, data cleanup status, and export status.

Export

Fortunately, after much brainstorming, trial, and error, I was able to create a batch processing tool that not only transforms one PastPerfect-XML file into EAD-XML but also splits it into multiple files. The result is a folder of files: one EAD-XML finding aid per record. Once I had the batch tool working, I exported all records from PastPerfect classified as highest priority into a batch file.

Transformation and Post-Processing

After export, I ran the batch tool on the PastPerfect-XML batch file which contained records for 38 collections. After about one second, a folder appeared containing 38 EAD finding aids.

As discussed earlier, it was not possible (or within the scope of my expertise) to automate every aspect of the EAD creation. This meant that a few aspects of each EAD file needed some manual edits. Most notably, the source and classification of subject terms and people names had to be added (i.e. if it was a Library of Congress subject heading or a local term, if a subject was a geographic location or a genre, etc.). Samples of these records are available on Github.

HTML for Web Display

The final step was to make the now complete EAD finding aids displayable on the internet. This meant using another stylesheet to transform the EAD-XML into HTML. To do this, I ran all of the new EAD-XML files through another batch tool, resulting in 38 HTML files. I then created a cascading stylesheet (CSS) to style the HTML, ensuring consistency with the new UMBC Special Collections website. While not complete, the final product will be an individual webpage for each collection that displays EAD data in a readable way and also links to the raw XML file as well as a printable PDF version of the EAD finding aid. The current templates for both of these processes are available through Github. Here is an example of how the EAD finding aid might display online:

Thank you for this thorough description, Emily! Although Emily is leaving UMBC very soon, the EAD project will continue into 2016. Have questions? Contact Lindsey Loeper, Special Collections Archivist, at lindseyloeper@umbc.edu or 410-455-6290.

“Funding Your Graduate Education”

An Annual “Special Saturday Success Seminar”

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Saturday, September 12, 2015

UMBC Sherman Hall, Room 003

(First floor Lecture Hall. Sherman Hall is between the Administration Building and the University Center. It is across the walkway from the Sondheim Building.)

Speakers:

Dr. Frances D. Carter-Johnson, AAAS S&T Fellow at the NIH Center for Scientific Review

Dr. Patricia Ordóñez, Department of Computer Science, University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras

_________________________________

Our speakers, UMBC Alumni and former NSF GRFP winners, bring their award winner seminar back to UMBC! This seminar has been presented at the National Science Foundation’s HBCU-UP national conference, the American Association for the Advancement in Science’s  Emerging Researchers Network national Conference, Harvard, MIT, Spelman, Clemson, and at others universities in Puerto Rico, Texas, and DC. Our speakers have been part of MIT’s Tech TV series, and continue to be sought-after speakers on the topic of graduate funding. 

_________________________________

Dr. Carter-Johnson is a graduate of UMBC’s Department of Public Policy and formerly served as a STEM Policy Analyst at Westat.  Dr. Carter-Johnson has degrees in Public Policy, Applied Physics, Pure Physics, and Mechanical Engineering from UMBC, Georgia Tech, and Spelman College. She has received research support and fellowships from NASA, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), SREB, The Department of Education, GEM, the American Evaluation Association, NIH, and MIT. Dr. Carter-Johnson completed her postdoctoral training at the Teaching and Learning Laboratory at MIT, and is a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She currently designs studies and analyzes data to develop policy solutions to enhance diversity in the biomedical workforce at the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health.

_________________________________

Dr. Ordóñez  is a graduate of UMBC’s Department of Computer Science. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras. Dr. Ordóñez has degrees from Johns Hopkins University and UMBC in Hispanic and Italian Studies, and Computer Science respectively.  She has taught several classes at UMBC and was a Technical Trainer for UMBC’s Training Centers, focusing on JAVA Computer Programming Certifications and curriculum development. Dr. Ordóñez  was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and has received fellowships and/or recognition from Xerox, Verizon, Google, The Ford Foundation, The Hispanic Scholarship Fund and UMBC. Dr. Ordóñez is the Leader of Biomedical Informatics Function for the Puerto Rico Clinical and Translational Research Consortium, and her research is   focused on applying machine learning, data mining, and data visualization to big time series data for the purpose of improving medicine and on developing assistive technologies for programming. Dr. Ordóñez also presents this workshop on graduate research funding in Puerto Rico in Spanish.

_________________________________

Our speakers’ work on the topic of graduate funding was presented at the “Understanding Interventions” national conference in 2012, and was published in a paper by the American Association of Engineering Education in 2013. This year, in addition to their annual workshops in Boston, their seminar, “The $10 Million Dollar Plan: Increasing Graduate Funding and Diversity in Computing” was presented at the 2014 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, in Seattle, WA. Their list of winners continues to grow, and participants who have taken their workshops have won the prestigious NSF GRFP Fellowship and other awards,  totaling more than $1 million of fellowship money! 

_________________________________

Learn how to apply for the NSF GRFP Fellowship, learn about the nuances of submitting a fellowship to NSF, have terms deciphered, and start your application on Fastlane – NSF’s computer system.

• Please feel free to take a look at information that was posted for seminars in the past.  Information from the 2012 seminar: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/how-to-fund-your-graduate-education-dr-ordonez-rozo-and-dr-carter-johnson-promise-alumni-present-their-award-winning-seminar-on-saturday-sept-15-2012/
• Information from 2013 seminar (take a look at the comments for some great tips on saving money, shared by graduate students): https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/

_________________________________

PLEASE RSVP (Breakfast refreshments and lunch will be served): 

• UMBC’s students: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/34284
• If you are not a student at UMBC, RSVP by posting in the comment section at the bottom of this message with your name, school, and discipline (academic department)/major.

Graduate students and undergraduates from all schools in the region are invited to attend this seminar. All current LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate Fellows are required to attend the workshop, and are required to apply for the NSF GRFP.

Directions and Parking:

http://about.umbc.edu/visitors-guide/directions/

See the “Comments” section below for more details.

The National GEM Consortium’s GRAD Lab is coming to UMBC on Saturday, September 19, 2015. This page will serve as the host website for the event. Please stay tuned and visit regularly for updates, as the program content develops.

FREE WORKSHOP FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL PREPARATION

The GEM Getting Ready for Advanced Degrees (GRAD) Lab is a program for people who are considering graduate study in STEM fields. While most of the participants in the national GEM GRAD Lab programs are undergraduates in their junior and senior years who are seeking graduate admission at either the M.S. or doctoral level, UMBC also invites freshmen and sophomores who want a head start, M.S. students who are seeking tips for Ph.D. admission, and career professionals who are considering a return to school to earn any graduate STEM degree. Special invitations are further extended to undergraduate students who attend institutions within the University System of Maryland, and students who participate in programs such as NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), the National Society of Black Engineers  (NSBE), the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the American Indian Science and Engineering Society  (AISES), the Society for the Advancement of Chicano and Native American Scientists (SACNAS), and McNair scholars.

The 2015 GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC will be principally sponsored by PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC follows the 2015 PROMISE AGEP Summer Success Institute (continuing PROMISE theme for 2015-2016: #ThinkBigDiversity), and is part of the AGEP’s programming to encourage diverse STEM students to prepare for and apply to graduate school.

Co-sponsors include Penn State University, Binghamton University – State University of New York (SUNY), the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park, University of Virginia, and Howard University. The Intel Foundation is a national sponsor for the GEM GRAD Lab.

Here are basic facts for the GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC:

Time and Location

Date: Saturday, September 19, 2015

Time: 8:00 AM – 3:30 PM

Location: The Engineering Building Lecture Hall & Atrium (ENGR 027 – Lecture Hall 5)

Directions and Parking: UMBC Guide/Directions, Google Map Street View Image, Google Map Coordinates: 39.254657, -76.713960

• Parking Lot 8: Participants driving personal cars (right in front of the Performing Arts building on Hilltop road)
• Parking Lot 22: For buses.

Follow the signs! We will have several for parking and to get to the building.

Please follow the link to see the parking map of the UMBC campus.

Parking map: http://about.umbc.edu/files/2012/08/2015-2016-Parking-Map.pdf

Lodging

If you are arriving on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, and checking out on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, please consider our preferred hotel, The Hotel at Arundel Preserve, http://hotelarundel.com/, which has a special UMBC rate of $139/night + tax for this event. The UMBC room rate (for two queen beds or a king bed with a sleeper sofa) is available until Friday, September 4, 2015.

AGENDA

Registration

Registration is now open. Please register here, via the GEM program’s official process: https://egem.gemfellowship.org/events/ViewEvent.aspx?contextID=10167

Please note that all student participants must register via the website above. The PROMISE AGEP is not able to take a list of students nor email notifications in lieu of the registration process that is outlined within the link above. Thank you for following this procedure. 

Registration is free. To share this page and its contents, feel free to use the shortened version of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/UMBC-GEMGRADLab

Transportation

• Frostburg students: To reserve a bus seat you must email Wendy Wilson in the Office of Graduate Services at wwilson@frostburg.edu
• College Park students: Contact Taifa Simpson, Director, LSAMP in the Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering for bus information, tsimpson@umd.edu.
• Penn State students: Contact Wayne Gersie, Director, Multicultural Engineering Program, Office of Engineering Diversity, wgersie@engr.psu.edu
• Binghamton students: Contact Shanise Kent, Director of Diversity Programs & Initiatives, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering & Applied Science, Binghamton University
• UMES students: Contact Tracy Bell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biology, Department of Natural Sciences, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, tdbell@umes.edu
• Howard students: Contact Kamla Deonauth Ph.D., Director, Graduate School, Howard University

The Graduate Fair

The lunch activity will include a graduate school fair that will feature colleges and universities who are interested in talking with students about applying to their graduate programs.  Schools that are interested in sharing their graduate programs with guests are invited to reserve a table at the “Lunch & Graduate Fair” by emailing promisestaff@gmail.com, with the subject “GEM GRAD Lab Lunch Fair.” This free table space is limited. Priority will be extended to co-sponsoring schools, and institutions within the University System of Maryland.

The PROMISE AGEP is led by UMBC, the University of Maryland Baltimore, and the University of Maryland College Park. All of the universities within the University System of Maryland are part of the PROMISE AGEP. Read more about PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation (AGEP-T) here: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/about/about-promise-the-agep-for-maryland/

Official Flier: 2015 GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC

We had a wonderful time at the 2015 PROMISE SSI! Will you join us for some memories?

• Photos: http://www.ndemay.com/p865338520 (available for viewing and for purchase)
• Join us on Twitter! View the #ThinkBigDiversity feed and contribute thoughts about faculty diversity, applaud your faculty mentors, identity diverse faculty aspirants, etc.! #ThinkBigDiversity Tweets. The video tab on this feed will show participants’ video capture of Rosie (Dr. Williams’ humanoid robot) and her yoga moves!
• Dr. Andrew Williams’ summary of his 2015 PROMISE SSI keynote address: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/think-big-diversity-advice-for-aspiring-stem-ph-d-graduate-students-postdocs-and-junior-faculty/
• Hard copy of the program: SSI Booklet – Final Version – August 2015

• 

  Feedback: Now that some time has passed, please let us know what you have taken away from the conference. Please tweet your response, continuing to use #ThinkBigDiversity as your hashtag.

  

  To remain engaged: Please subscribe to the PROMISE website: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/

  Events: There are several events coming up. Please mark your calendars and check back with the PROMISE website for updates:

  • September 11, 2015: PROMISE Opening Meeting at UMBC
  • September 12, 2015: PROMISE “How to Fund Your Graduate Education” seminar at UMBC
  • September 14, 2015: Deadline for applying for the October SREB conference
  • September 19, 2015: GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC (inviting all undergraduates to learn more about graduate school)
  • November 20, 2015: PROMISE Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park
  • February 12, 2016: PROMISE Research Symposium & Professional Development Workshop at College Park
  • May 7, 2016: PROMISE Cookout in Columbia, MD
  • August 20, 2016: PROMISE SSI 2016

  This is a small subset of events. There will be several other events throughout the year. Other ways to engage:

  Events at UMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise; Contact promisestaff@gmail.com

  Events at UMCP: http://www.gradschool.umd.edu/admissions/choose-maryland/diverse-campus-community/graduate-diversity-initiatives; Contact Christopher Perez: cperez6@umd.edu

  Events at UMB: https://umbconnect.umaryland.edu/organization/promise; Contact LaNette Parson, lparson@umaryland.edu

  As we post event pages, some of the events above will be updated and hyperlinked to the appropriate registration pages. Thank you for joining us!