VIVO: Connecting People,
Creating Communities
M. Devare, J. Corson-Rikert,
B. Caruso, B. Lowe, and the
Life Sciences Working Group
(K. Alpi, h.a. brown, K. Chiang, J. Powell,
L. Solla, M. Schlabach, and S. Whitaker)
5th “Reference in the 21st-Century”
Symposium at Columbia University
New York City, March 9, 2007
What is VIVO?
• single point of access for information on scholarly
activity in the life sciences
• uses entity – relationship model to organize and
present an integrated view of Cornell life sciences:
- People
- Research
- Education
Goal
Present the depth and breadth of research and scholarship at Cornell,
Across the life sciences,
Independently of Cornell’s administrative structure
For:
Researchers
Students
Administrators
Prospective students
Prospective faculty
Donors
Legislators…
Background
Genomics (1997) and New Life Sciences (2002/2003)
Initiatives launched
Aims:
– promote collaboration among faculty
– recruit competitive faculty and students
– attract donors
The problem
Access to information
– Potential collaborators
– Competitive faculty/student candidates
– Donors
CUL Approach
Development of life sciences charge
- Life Sciences Working Group
Creation of new position – area of expertise
- Bioinformatics and Life Sciences Specialist
Creation of web site targeted to NLSI needs
The solution: VIVO
(http://vivo.library.cornell.edu)
Andy Goldsworthy
Sample VIVO faculty profile
VIVO as harvester and distributor
Central course
Faculty updates
Cornell
directory
Cornell News Service RSS feed
Central
course
listings
listings
Grants,
Workshops
publications
Cornell events calendar Departmental seminars
Sources of
Content
Sources of
Content
OHR – name & title
Student/librarian entry
OHR - appointments
Student/librarian entry
OSP data warehouse
Potentially from
Registrar’s database
Student/librarian entry
Sources of
Content
Annual faculty reporting
Potentially available
via faculty reporting
Student/librarian entry
Annual faculty reporting
VIVO: Research Tools, Facilities
VIVO search
The typical search engine
VIVO
Andy Goldsworthy
Sample search in VIVO: “proteom*”
Future?
Expansion of the VIVO-life sciences model to include all
Cornell faculty
Phase I focus on most likely early partners/consumers
– Social Sciences (CHE, A&S, Hotel, ILR…)
– Physical Sciences and Engineering (CoE, A&S, CALS…)
– International-themed research (all colleges)
– Weill Cornell Medical College
Phase I efforts
Expansion to full faculty
– HR data with appointments
– OSP grants for all colleges
– Publications (via PubMed, Web of Science, Biosis)
– Graduate field affiliations
Increase in data gathered via faculty reporting
– VIVO providing an impetus to faculty reporting group
Integration of additional automated feeds as available
– News
– Events (depending on calendar task force)
Phase II efforts
Data acquisition
– Courses
– CCTEC patents
Individual-specific curation (ideally via college faculty
reporting; self-update)
– Additional publications (book chapters, tech reports)
– Discipline, geography-specific elements
– Keywords
– Select data from CVs
THANK YOU!
Phase I manual curation efforts
Cross-cutting
– International activities, Ithaca-WCMC collaborations
Subject area specific
– Research centers, institutes
– Research areas, special initiatives
– Major equipment and facilities
Individual specific
– Photos
– Faculty profile, lab/research group URLs
– Research descriptions
– Association with research areas, centers, facilities, initiatives