Shall We Become Two-headed Monsters? Mashcat Boston University of Washington Libraries Katherine Deibel, PhD University of Washington 1 Cross-Disciplinary and Multiliteracy Perspectives for #mashcat's Goals raarrr graarr Mashcat is about bringing together two traditionally separate library disciplines: Technologists and Catalogers Mashcat Boston Go ahead, its not that deep! No, you first, I insist! This talk offers some perspectives on how Mashcat can go about bridging these domains. Two concepts frame this discussion: Cross-Disciplinarity and Multilteracies Mashcat Boston Do you hear snoring? I think I see a city of interesting geometries! Where Im Coming From Im a technologist. Im a Web Applications Specialist at the University of Washington Libraries. Im relatively new to the library world (only 1.5 years). Ive had a quite varied career in academia working within and across many disciplines Mashcat Boston Mashcat Boston Undergraduate at Butler University as a Math/English dual major (dont ask). Wrote for the lampoon, met Erin Leach, went to Budapest. Graduated with dual Computer Science/Math B.S. Graduate school at University of Washington in Computer Science & Engineering. Early focus on Theory (very hard). Switched to Artificial Intelligence. Did Masters work in Artificial Intelligence on systems for supporting independent living. Found greater interest in human side of computing and switched to HCI. Joined CS grad students interested in teaching and learning. Participated in the birth of the CS Education Research field. Realized I was more an education researcher than a computer scientist. Took graduate courses in educational psychology. Started cross-disciplinary CS/Education thesis involving reading science. Got curious about dyslexia from a news article. Started researching learning disabilities and assistive technologies. Became active in disability advocacy and local community. Integrated disability studies into research. Became proponent for inclusive education. Which all culminated in a dissertation that combined: Computer Science Reading Education Disability Studies Communication Studies Value Sensitive Design and more To answer: Why adults with dyslexia tend not to use assistive reading technologies Mashcat Boston But thats a different story (that I will happily talk more if you let me). Lets dive into the actual substance of this talk Mashcat Boston Cross-Disciplinarity Mashcat Boston What is a Discipline? An artificial construct that separates the knowledge, questions, motivations, and work in human inquiry. Essentially, a box containing everything that matters. Mashcat Boston Figure 1. A discipline. A Box? Within a discipline, many scholars are more than happy to only think inside the box. Mashcat Boston Zut alors! I must conquer all in my discipline! Breaking free of the box does happen Figure 2. A scholar content in their discipline. Some scholars do go outside the box because of: Intellectual curiosity The box runs out of questions (discipline death) Administrative prodding When this happens, we get: Cross-Disciplinarity Mashcat Boston Terminology Stew Cross-disciplinary is the generic term for any effort or collaboration that involves one or more disciplines. Depending on the nature of the collaboration, different terms can apply: Multidisciplinary Interdisciplinary Transdisciplinary Mashcat Boston To better understand these terms, consider the fairly new field of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics grew out of collaboration between: Mashcat Boston Computer ScienceBiology Initially, the collaboration involved splitting up the problem under study: Mashcat Boston CSBio CSBio And then working independently on their halves: Multidisciplinarity Multidisciplinary collaboration is the most basic: The problem is split among disciplinary lines Each discipline works independently This approach does not challenge any existing disciplinary boundaries or knowledge. Mashcat Boston CSBio CS As multidisciplinary collaboration continues, dividing the problem becomes increasingly more complex: Mashcat Boston Mashcat Boston To the point it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where the two disciplines begin and end I think that pinkish purple-y bit is yours It looks more Prussian Blue to me you do it! At the same time, the Computer Scientist and Biologist are also changing THEY ARE LEARNING THE OTHERS FIELD! Mashcat Boston Two Heads?!? The visual metaphor comes from Dr. Gerhard Fischer, a researcher of design and creativity. The larger head contains ones disciplinary expertise. The smaller head contains some domain knowledge that allows for cross-disciplinary communication. Mashcat Boston In reality, we all have many little heads representing our various collections of domain knowledge, but visualizing them all at once makes a person look like some creep macroscopic image of a fungus. Mashcat Boston Why yes, I do know a little about both mycology AND digital cameras Interdisciplinarity Two heads (one big, one small) is the hallmark of what is interdisciplinary collaboration: The problem space transcends both disciplines Scholars must learn each others fields jargon Work is typically integrative or gestalt in nature This work may even lead to knowledge unknown to both disciplines. Mashcat Boston But this learning across disciplinary boundaries can continue unabated until Mashcat Boston Wait, am I doing CS or biology? I have to check my CV every morning the knowledge demands make all heads equal! Academia despises two-headed monsterism! Mashcat Boston Fortunately, Thomas Kuhn descends from on high And the new discipline of bioinformatics is born!!! Mashcat Boston PARADIGM SHIFT!! So is this the future for Mashcat? Will Library Technologists and Catalogers beget a new disciplinary role of Cataloger Coders? Mashcat Boston My Opinion: Say No to Cataloger-Coders Merged disciplines dont even everyone out. People will tend to favor one component field over the other: Disciplinary paradigm shifts take time. Cataloger- coders will not solve todays library issues. Education/Training: How do you combine two curriculums? What do you keep? Cut? Mashcat Boston Adding yet another discipline is not the answer we need a different perspective! Mashcat Boston Multiliteracies (with a small stop at transdisciplinarity) Mashcat Boston Transdisciplinarity Transdisciplinarity is a relatively new concept and multiple scholarly definitions for it exist. There are some common themes: Expanding focus beyond academia and facilitating collaboration in societys divisions as well Becoming blind or willfully ignorant of artificial academic disciplinary boundaries Focusing on meta-communication to address barriers to cross-disciplinary communication Mashcat Boston So how many heads? I dont have a good visual metaphor yet for transdisciplinarity, but how about .an inverted head space amoeba thing? Mashcat Boston I am of all disciplines and yet I belong to none Applying Transdisciplinarity to Mashcat Instead of viewing cataloging and library technology as separate disciplines. what if we consider them as distinct literacies? Mashcat Boston Defining Literacy Literacy is often defined simply as the ability to read and write but that does that entail? Prior to World War I, basic literacy did not include reading comprehension: Literate meant being able to read aloud common texts like the Declaration of Independence Mechanization of warfare necessitated the need for soldiers who could read instruction manuals Mashcat Boston Further Redefinitions As comprehension gained more focus, research on reading showed that literacy was not simply a singular concept. Novice-Expert studies showed that experts bring more than domain knowledge/jargon to bear: Have explicit assumptions that certain elements should be present in texts from their field Have advanced comprehension processes to target and test for those desired features Mashcat Boston Defining Multiliteracies In 1996, the New London Group of scholars coined the term multiliteracy to account for these findings: A multiliteracy is the ability to read and write to the expectations within a specific genre or discipline. Examples: Reading and writing APA journal articles Reading archival texts for historical authenticity Writing scripts for staging a play Mashcat Boston Multiliteracies in the Digital Age Due to the increasing variety of communication media, the definition has since been expanded: A multiliteracy is the ability to read and write to the expectations within a specific genre or discipline using the appropriate technologies and media. Examples: Texting / instant messaging / tweeting / etc. Posting a vlog (video blog) series Debugging ICT systems (i.e. thinking in code) Mashcat Boston Code is a Literacy? Yes! Thinking in code (algorithmic thinking) is about the transformation of data via a limited set of operations in a logically determined sequence and being able to diagnose why errors occur The difference between reading Java versus Python is more comparable to reading French versus English. Regardless of programming language, there are motifs and other expectations for code. Mashcat Boston Viewing code as a literacy enables us to make the following observations: Computer Science, IT administration, and other fields are disciplines involving code Achieving expertise in these disciplines involves becoming literate in code / algorithmic thinking Are these disciplines the ONLY path to becoming code literate? Mashcat Boston Have any of you ever used this software before? Mashcat Boston What about OpenRefine, MarcEdit, XSL, etc.? All of these are data transformation tools. You are applying specific processes based on logic. Youve had attempts go wrong, determined why, and figured out how to fix it usually. THIS IS CODING! Impressive coding if you ask me! Mashcat Boston Many technologists sadly have trouble seeing this: Wheres the programming language? (XSL doesnt count apparently) Data munging isnt a real programming problem! (Despite most AI work being exactly that.) Real coders dont use high-level tools (I physically manipulate electrons on my CPU) So what! Its the same process! Mashcat Boston Implications for Technologists: Technologists, like many discipline-oriented groups, are bad at recognizing non-traditional practices. We need to recognize the quality work catalogers do. They are master data mungers (possibly better than many AI programmers). Just as much as we encourage them to learn to program, we should learn their tools as well. Mashcat Boston Implications for Catalogers: Many of you are coding literate already. Recognize it. But what if you want to learn more? How far you go is up to you. Should you take programming classes? If you want, but most programming classes teach syntax, not thinking in code. Should you join an open source project? If you want, but only if its of interest and you want to learn practices in that community. Mashcat Boston Theres also the potential observation that cataloging (in some form) is a literacy as well. My limited knowledge of cataloging prevents me from saying anything more definite. Mashcat Boston Implications for Both Sides: We are two disciplines that are nearly connected through at least one common literacy. The hardest part of building a bridge is getting the first span in place. Mashcat Boston Maybe we should use a higher gauge wire? This step is not accessible! Shall we become two-headed monsters? Personally, Im already some weird multi-headed transdisciplinary inverted space amoeba But if you ask me: Let your extra head (cataloging or coding) grow as much as you want Dont succumb to heavenly Thomas Kuhns demand to paradigm shift our community Encourage the idea of code thinking as a literacy and think about how we can best teach it Mashcat Boston That last one is a monstrous task, but I think we can handle it Mashcat Boston W3C! marc bad Readability of standards varies by the readers background Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following for this talk The UW Libraries for travel funding and opportunities The #mashcat twitter community Christina Harlow, Erin Leach, and Becky Yoose for encouraging me to bring my cuckoo thinking to Mashcat and the library world And Gerhard Fischer for once suggesting that Im a multi-headed monster in a good way Mashcat Boston Recommended References Balsinger, P.W. (2004) Supradisciplinary Research Practices: History, Objectives, and Rationale, Futures 36, pp Fischer, G. (2005). Social creativity: Making all voices heard. In Proceedings of the HCI international conference (HCII). Hillsdale, New Jersey, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kist, W. (2004). The new literacies movement: Reading and writing in the digital age. Independent School, 63(4), 2836. Klein, J.T. ( 2004) Prospects for Transdisciplinarity, Futures 36, pp Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Munroe, R. (2014). What if?: Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 6092. Mashcat Boston