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The Library Technology Innovation Profile Series spotlights academic librarians who promote technological innovation in their community

IGI Global Profiles Digital Library Programmer, Devin Higgins of Michigan State University

By IGI Global on Feb 29, 2016

In effort to support the advancement of library technologies and services, IGI Global has implemented the Librarian Profile Series as part of our Library Technology Innovation Program. This series features the profiles of today's leaders and specialists in knowledge management advancement and technologies. For our next several profiles, we are spotlighting some of the tech specialists at Michigan State University. Our first innovator is Digital Library Programmer Devin Higgins.

IGI Global Profiles Digital Library Programmer, Devin Higgins Of Michigan State University

Library Programmer Devin Higgins, relaxing and innovatingName: Devin Higgins
Position: Digital Library Programmer
Library: Michigan State University

How do you consider yourself a technological innovator?

I would consider myself a technological innovator very cautiously and with a healthy amount of reluctance! The difference between ³invention² and ³innovation² is often conceived of as the difference between the creation of something completely new, and the introduction of a significantly new feature, aspect, or use of a thing that already exists; both invention and innovation, though, are set apart from the more modest idea of ³novelty², by the gap between the local and the global: Invention and Innovation (both capital ³I² ideas) stipulate the arrival of something previously unknown in the world, either a totally new invention or a sufficiently new innovation, while the humbler novelty represents something just ³new to me:² As innovations on a personal scale, novelties lead, ideally, to more and better novelties by "expanding the adjacent possible".[1] To the extent that we embrace change, we cycle through novelties to find better ways of working. In rare cases, better left to the judgment of others than ourselves, I think, elected novelties come to be considered innovations.

[1] http://www.nature.com/articles/srep05890

What programs are you currently involved in?

One of the efforts I¹m most excited to be a part of is a development of our data services to include textual resources for computationally focused research. The access to raw text for such projects is often limited, and even when not, the restrictions on its use or republication are murky. Librarians can help to clarify the process. I¹ve been interested in developing tools that help even novice users assemble and download collections of raw text and metadata to be used for text and data mining, while my colleagues have worked to impose common-sense copyright guidelines for users.

Publishers and vendors increasingly cater to the interests of text and data miners but with vastly different approaches. I¹m interested in harmonizing these data offerings through the library¹s mediation and building our own shareable data access tools when feasible, whether that means writing to code to harness APIs, or building user-friendly web access points. Cooperation between libraries could help make these tools more widely available, even when resources can't be offered publicly.

What areas of technological innovation do you consider the most exciting?

Given its potential for radically transforming not only our libraries, but our society and notions of self, I feel inspired to remark on artificial intelligence. Confining myself to the information-oriented uses for AI I can imagine happening on campus around me, I¹m stunned by the possibility that the, from one perspective, still rudimentary text mining tools we use today will be rendered increasingly obsolete as innovations in machine learning make machines capable of engaging in an activity much closer to human reading. Will it be possible to one day harness an intelligence that has read all of literature, and cause it to conjure some heretofore unfathomable insights? The answer is "probably not anytime soon," but the gradations along the way will be thrilling in themselves. When we use a technique like topic modeling to automatically uncover the topical content of documents, we're witnessing the lower steps on a ladder that one can imagine leading to the development of a much more robust and _mindful_ analysis.

What technology-related projects do you see librarians implementing in the future?

When I look around me, I see librarians at the forefront of movements in instructional technology. As educational trends come and go, it will be ever more incumbent on librarians not only to implement technologies, but to assess the impact of information delivered in new forms; to keep in mind how changes in methods of access to information, and differently mediated classroom experiences, create and transform the most crucial ideas and practices in information literacy, such as the constructedness of authority and the navigation of scholarship as a conversation. It will take librarianly knowledge to develop critical and forward-thinking approaches to implementing technologies in instruction sessions, where, essentially, the medium of information transmission is being transformed more than the message.

What advice would you share with a librarian looking to become a leader in supporting technology advancements?

Looping back to the first question, I would say stay curious (but critical)! Think in terms of goals rather than "technologies" per se, both as a way to be skeptical of the allure of the latest thing and so as to make strong arguments to colleagues about the features, functions, and results that new technologies might bring or encourage. It's invaluable, I think, to create a workplace-culture that preserves some measure of freedom: to stray from user-guided development, to follow false leads and allow them to fail, and to give time enough to other projects to let them succeed, if not immediately then gradually. No guarantees!

About Devin Higgins: Devin is part of the Michigan State University Libraries Digital Humanities team, which works in partnership with faculty, students, organizations, and centers to grow and sustain Digital Humanities research and pedagogy. The Digital Humanities team specializes in text analysis, image analysis, network analysis, visualization, digital preservation, and data curation.

Calling all innovators! Click here to participate in IGI Global's Library Technology Innovation Survey and share how your library strives to meet technology demands.

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IGI Global Profiles McGill University Research Commons Director, Sara Holder
IGI Global Profiles Technology Librarian Cindy Hart of Tidewater Community College

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