I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be presenting an accepted paper called “Lookin’ for a sound that’s gonna drown out the world”: Resolving musical emotional ambiguity in U2’s POPVision” at the U2 Conference (U2CON 2018). It’s taking place from 13-15 June in Belfast. Follow @U2Conference for conference updates.

This past weekend, I presented an invited talk, “Searching for the right feelings: emotional metadata in music” at the Annual Study Weekend of the International Association for The UK & Ireland Branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. They live tweeted the conference, including my talk, at @IAML_UK_IRL. I had a fabulous time. My favourite talk was about the history of written music for the Highland Bagpipes and its associated bibliographic control. Also, the conference offered us tours of special music collections at the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections, as well as the amazing musical instrument museum at St Cecilia’s Hall. Here are a couple of photos I took on the tours:

 

 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is music information research to be done…

I’m excited to announce my newly won grant, “Finding solutions to advance digital health for addressing unmet needs in relation to self-harming behaviours.” The Scottish Funding Council /European Social Fund is funding the project. I will be working in collaboration with Edinburgh-based charity Health in Mind.

Read more about it in the University of Strathclyde’s press release!

I am so excited to announce that I have signed a contract to co-edit a book! Below you will find a call for chapter proposals. Please consider submitting a proposal, and feel free to circulate this call to your colleagues:

Book title: Social tagging for linked data across environments

Publisher: Facet

Editors:

Dr. Louise Spiteri. Associate Professor, School of Information Management, Dalhousie University.

Dr. Diane Rasmussen Pennington. Lecturer in Information Science, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde

Synopsis:

This book will explore how social tags can serve to link content across a variety of environments. Most studies of social tagging have tended to focus on discrete applications, e.g., library catalogues, blogs, social bookmarking sites, and so forth. Hashtags, in particular, can provide this level of linked data. Since hashtags are now used across different platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, WordPress, Instagram), it would be interesting to explore the role of hashtags as a form of linked data without the complex implementation of RDF and other Semantic Web technologies; for example, a hashtag on a specific topic such as #PublicLibrariesInScotland could link to a conference on this topic, the research done by academics in the field, blogs from practitioners, newspaper articles, and so forth.

This book will explore social tagging behaviour. Most studies of this topic have focused on the types of tags that people assign to resources. Our interest is to examine how people interact with, and use, social tags to access and create resources and networks in linked environments.

It should be noted that, for the context of this book, the term “social tags” is used to include hashtags and geotags.

We welcome book chapter contributions centred (but not exclusively) on the following themes:

• Social tagging and the creation of social networks.
• The use and effectiveness of social tagging recommender systems.
• The role of social tagging in information behaviour activities.
• Social tagging behaviour in different domains.
• Semantic or syntactic stability of social tags.
• The role of social tagging in linked data applications and the Semantic Web.
• The use and re-use of social tags for information discovery.
• The role of social tagging in the formation of community networks.

Intended readers include practicing library and information professionals who implement electronic access to collections such as cataloguers and systems developers. Information architects and web developers would also have a particular interest in the book, as well as students in information management and cognate disciplines.

Submission Procedure:

Chapter proposal submissions  are invited  from researchers  and practitioners. Proposals should be limited 1000 words, explaining the mission and concerns of the chapter and how it fits into the general theme of the book. Please submit proposals to Louise.Spiteri@dal.ca by June 30, 2017.

Timeline

Chapter proposals:                                               Submission deadline:  June 30, 2017

Review proposals & contact authors:                By July 31, 2017

Chapters due:                                                        By  September 30, 2017

Review of chapters:                                              By December 31, 2017

Editing of chapters after review:                        By February 28, 2018

Submission of first draft to Facet:                      By March 31, 2018

Review of proofs & creation of index:               By April 30, 2018