My other interests include: Information Policy | Library and Information Science | Electronic Publishing

Avocations

My curriculum vitae.

With the Learning Technologies Group since mid-1992, I came to Academic Technologies (formerly Academic Computing and Network Services, or ACNS) with 20 years' background in librarianship here at Northwestern University (1980-1992) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1972-1980). The move has provided me the opportunity to continue my ongoing interests in the support of education through information systems development.

Early in my career (1973), I began developing instructional programs to help students better take advantage of periodical indexes, catalogs, and library organizational structures to get their papers done. Today I work on the same sorts of things, but in an electronic environment. My first serious exposure to computing was in 1972, when online searching of literature citations was first commercialized; since then I've been exploring how computing applications can make life easier for library users. I now work with faculty and my LTG colleagues toward the same end: to make information more accessible to students and to help empower them to manage effectively the information they gather.

Current Projects

Conferencing at NU

Student participation in processing knowledge through open discussion and mutual criticism can often advance their learning as much or more than completing structured responses to teacher assignments. Within an increasingly networked learning environment at Northwestern, traditional classroom settings can now be supplemented with conferencing systems which allow different modes of student participation. I coordinate the use of FirstClass, a fairly full-featured conferencing system which offers threads, attachments, and sub-conferences through a Mac and PC graphical user interfaces. I also help users with listserv and news.

Campus-Wide Information System (CWIS) Development and Electronic Publishing

I did the initial organizing work to create NUInfo in 1989-90, where I saw Campus Wide Information Systems as a logical extension of academic library functions. More recently I've been helping to develop document delivery systems built on the Internet gopher and World Wide Web protocols common to CWIS's, using cross-platform document formats such as Acrobat and Replica. I did the original design work for the University Library's Electronic Reserve System as a gopher-based interface, and continue to work on its support.

Internet Training

I've worked on a number of Internet training projects within Academic Technologies, including the Internet module of the TiLT program, faculty seminars, and the Medill Curriculum Project. My special interests have been in search tools for the Internet, and the development of new Internet resources to address issues raised initially through training efforts, such as the Library's Siege of Paris exhibit. Involving endusers in Internet resource development will be critical for the Internet's longer term sustainability.

Interests

How, as a society, we decide to consider and resolve issues of information distribution touches on core values of democracy and humanism. Access to ideas, images, and the resources to disseminate them further -- from printing presss to library to schools -- is as much a source of contention today over the emergent Information Superhighway as it was at the time of Milton's Areopagitica and the framing of the Bill of Rights. I am especially interested in how librarianship's perspectives on information service provision can inform policy development in academic computing centers and the public service computing networks likely to emerge in the next few years. Among the specific areas we will have to contend with are censorship, copyright, federal regulatory policy, whether we should charge for certain services, public awareness and training, and "electronic archiving policy" -- what in the print-on-paper world was always considered a library function, but which now is somewhat chaotic. Here are some resources which address these kinds of issues: MIT Research Program on Communications Policy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Communication Association Columbia University ILT Copyright Policy page, NII Home Page, The File Room, a resource on censorship worldwide.

Library and Information Science

I entered librarianship in 1971 (I've worked in libraries since 1963) to pursue an "alternative" academic career that reflected my interests in education and the furtherance of democratic values. Some Text Archives

Electronic Publishing

Whether the Network can reconstruct the declining social system of paper-based scholarly publishing is a question of import to the future of all publishing. In addition to the projects in which I'm involved, I keep abreast of general developments in this area, through such discussions as VPIEJ, alt.etext, and the web. How economic issues will be sorted out between network providers, publishers who require financial profit, libraries, scholarly societies, will likely influence the media landscape more broadly as internetworking pushes these institutions to re-think many of their most fundamental processes. There is a growing interest in these issues on the web: Electronic Publishing Research Group , Johns Hopkins University Press

Avocations

Blues, bluegrass,

Last Updated: June 27, 2005

Brian Nielsen

	Information Technology | Academic Technologies Northwestern Home | Calendar: Plan-It Purple | Sites A-Z | Search Academic Technologies  NU Library 2East  1970 Campus Drive  Evanston, IL  60208-2300 Phone: (847)491-2170 E-mail for ETD Issues: b-nielsen@northwestern.edu Last updated 10/1/03  World Wide Web Disclaimer and University Policy Statements  © 2003 Northwestern University