41. Suellen Jackson-Boner Interview (29:56)

Date:
2015-12-06
Main contributors:
Indiana Disability History Project
Summary:
"The initiative on livable communities is one that I was super excited about, because I think to me that's where the disability community should be." Suellen Jackson-Boner discusses the direction that the Indiana Governor's Council for People with Disabilities was taking when she retired in 2015. Interviewed in that year, Suellen had been the Council's executive director for 35 years. She recalls the early days of the agency, which is mandated by the 1975 Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, but was strictly an advisory body at that point. After effecting a funding transition that allowed the agency to become independent in its activities, community employment was an early focus. "At that time, supported employment was just beginning across this country" and the goal was "to show that this was very viable, that people with severe disabilities could actually work." The cooperation of four state agencies to create this initiative in the early 1980s was remarkable, Suellen points out. Early group homes, another Council emphasis, were an important vehicle for getting people out of institutions. The Council went on to serve as a catalyst for supported living and home ownership by people with disabilities. Suellen talks about how the Council has promoted leadership among people with disabilities, building their capacities to make change, through support of early self-advocacy groups and such programs as Partners in Policymaking. Prior to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, "the staff was heavily involved in working toward organizing people" to effect its passage. Then it sponsored trainings to educate people, particularly people with disabilities, about what the legislation entails and how to use it as an advocate. Count Us IN was a 2002 Council project surveying the accessibility of polling places. Employing people with disabilities as surveyors, thousands of polling places were assessed on election day, with support and follow-up from the Secretary of State's office. The Council's annual statewide conference on disability "has grown year after year and brought in a lot of people from all over the state and sometimes even neighboring states," Suellen recounts.

42. Suellen Jackson-Boner - Early Initiatives of the Indiana Governor's Council for People with Disab... (07:08)

Date:
2015-12-06
Main contributors:
Indiana Disability History Project
Summary:
"At that time, supported employment was just beginning across this country" and the goal was "to show that this was very viable, that people with severe disabilities could actually work." Suellen Jackson-Boner, the Indiana Governor's Council for People with Disabilities Executive Director for 35 years until she retired in 2015, discusses several projects the Council was involved in over the years. In addition to supported employment, the Council funded housing initiatives starting in the early 80’s. The Council staff organized people in Indiana too work towards the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Count Us IN was a project centered on the right to accessible polling places for people with disabilities. The Council was an early supporter of promoting leadership among people with disabilities. Suellen states, “There are a lot things the Council was at the very forefront in helping to fund or get started and to get organized, which is really, I think exciting.”

43. David Mank - History of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD Act) (04:15)

Date:
2015-03-19
Main contributors:
Indiana Disability History Project
Summary:
“The history of why there's the University Center for Excellence…is somewhat unique,” states David Mank. David was director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community when he was interviewed in 2015. He shares the story about President Kennedy preparing his State of the Union address in 1962 and realizing there was a lack of information about the quality of life for people with disabilities. President Kennedy shared this information with his sister, Eunice Kennedy, and Bob Cooke, a pediatrician who specialized in developmental disabilities. From their discussion, an idea developed that every state should have a center that could provide data on the status of people with disabilities. This idea grew into the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD Act) of 1963. The legislation also defined the development of State Councils on Developmental Disabilities and Protection and Advocacy in every state.

44. David Mank Interview (1:13:00)

Date:
2015-03-19
Main contributors:
Indiana Disability History Project
Summary:
"I think it's extremely important that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities be a continued and increasingly strong voice in developmental disability issues of the day. And be in the rooms where decisions get made about funding, services, and issues for people with developmental disabilities." When David Mank was interviewed in 2015, he had been director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University (IIDC) since 1996. David describes the history of University Centers for Excellence on Disabilities in the U.S. and, more extensively, the history of the IIDC. He focuses on the quarter-century directorship of his predecessor Dr. Henry Schroeder, and on the Institute's work in the areas of special education (with its movement towards integrated and inclusive practices), as well as the areas of supported employment, autism, early childhood, and aging. He talks about the Institute's relationship with its sister organizations (the Indiana Governor's Council for People with Disabilities and Indiana Disability Rights) in promoting self-advocacy and livable communities. David shares an anecdote about the occasion when vocal attendees at a 2008 national self-advocacy convention in Indianapolis led to the removal of the "R" word from the name of an Indiana commission. Recognized as an expert in the area of employment for people with disabilities, David discusses best practices in transition from high school to adulthood, promoting integrated employment, and the growing opportunities for post-secondary education of individuals with intellectual disabilities. As a former member of the "317 Commission," he recalls its origins during a time when an expose of abusive conditions at New Castle State Developmental Center was broadcast, and the good outcomes that developed out of the commission's report in 1998. David Mank retired as director of the IIDC in 2016.

45. Connie Ferrell - Did Supported Employment Stagnate? (05:18)

Date:
2015-04-28
Main contributors:
Indiana Disability History Project
Summary:
“I haven't really seen progression in supported employment since the 1990s,” recalls Connie Ferrell. She was hired as a field coordinator for the new Indiana Employment Initiative in 1992. In her 2015 interview, Connie explains why she feels supported employment plateaued in the state after the 1990s. One theory is the loss of block money to be creative in reaching individuals. It was also a time when Indiana moved from hourly billing to result-based funding. Connie sees stagnation in employment across the country. She feels disability service agencies have pulled away from people with the most intense support needs because they're afraid the agencies will lose money. Somebody once told her that when they saw what could be done, they stopped thinking about reasons why it couldn’t and found a million reasons why they had to. Connie states, “I think unless that happens, supported employment looks like a risky business.”

46. Metadata's Next Top Model: RDF and Its Impact on Digital Library Technology (53:34)

Date:
2015-02-18
Main contributors:
Hardesty, Juliet
Summary:
Metadata standards at Indiana University are well-established for many of our digital library collections. These standards have been expressed, for the most part, using XML - it's easy to store, easy to read, easy to update, and easy to share. Newer forms of digital library technology, however, are expanding/enhancing the way that data is stored with and about digital objects, using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) to construct relationships, descriptions, and digital objects that are more semantically connected to the web. This new way of standardizing metadata has presented many challenges: introducing a new model midway through projects, migrating content from older models to RDF models, and figuring out in general what it means to use an RDF model for digital library collections. This talk will discuss what has happened in the IU digital libraries with RDF to-date and the challenges and opportunities from this work.

47. OLE! Exploring Our Upcoming Community Source Library Management Solution (59:06)

Date:
2015-04-22
Main contributors:
Feddersen, Mark, Waldrip, Jain, Fitzwater, Matt
Summary:
Kuali Open Library Environment is the first Library Management System designed by and for academic and research libraries. Focused on the management and delivery intellectual information, it's being built by a community of higher education partners working together and supporting each other. In this discussion we'll review the LMS itself as well as a quick demonstration of the base application. Additionally we'll talk about where Kuali OLE is with its current release, where Kuali OLE is with current implementations, where Kuali OLE is going with future releases. Discussion will include the progress and lessons learned thus far using this application.

48. Digital History: From Design to Construction to Management to Maintenance (1:03:56)

Date:
2015-09-23
Main contributors:
Dierks, Konstantin
Summary:
I have been the principal investigator for an ongoing digital history project entitled ‰ÛÏGlobalization of the United States, 1789-1861.‰Û As a trained historian I have had a steep learning curve in turning my historical vision into digital reality. This learning curve has involved many more steps and levels than I ever imagined. Indeed, now that the foundational website for this project is nearing stability, the maintenance phase is immediately presenting new technical challenges. This presentation is meant to walk through this learning curve from the perspective of a faculty scholar initiating and then overseeing a long-term digital history project. I shall start, necessarily, with the historical vision, digital ignorance, and management naivete I initially brought to the project. I shall then scrutinize each subsequent phase of the project: what had to be learned, what help was needed, what resources had to be marshaled, et cetera. We might ask ‰ÛÏhow was everything actually done each step of the way?‰Û but the important unavoidable fact is that I can only answer this question from a limited perspective. I thus can represent one portion of a digital history project: the faculty scholar with heavy research and teaching responsibilities who contributes their mite to a collaboration where all participants have heavy responsibilities of their own. For my part, I had to learn how to translate historical research into a digital format; I had to learn arcane technical vocabularies; and I had to learn how to manage a network of necessarily part-time work.

49. Archives Online: Bringing the past to the present by way of the future (50:57)

Date:
2015-12-09
Main contributors:
Hardesty, Juliet, Clarke, Erin
Summary:
Archives Online (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/findingaids) is a portal for accessing descriptions of Special Collections and Archives - ones chiefly containing materials other than books - from libraries, archives, and other units at Indiana University Bloomington and from other institutions around the state of Indiana. Collection descriptions (also called finding aids) in Archives Online at IU are encoded according to the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format. Since 2005 we have been publishing finding aids encoded in EAD2002 (http://www.loc.gov/ead/) using XML templates edited in the Oxygen XML Editor. IU currently hosts more than 1,000 finding aids online with over 35,000 digitized objects connected and viewable through these collection descriptions. This system has worked very well for us but there is an ever-increasing backlog of archival and special collections and potentially quicker ways to produce these encoded descriptions. Additionally, the Society of American Archivists officially adopted EAD3, the next version of the Encoded Archival Description metadata standard, as the new standard in July 2015. This new version of EAD provides new ways to encode archival description for increased sharing and access online. We'll discuss our investigations into quicker production of encoded collection descriptions as well as our plans for implementing EAD3 at Indiana University.

50. Bibliography's Place in Modern Humanities Research: A Case Study from The Chymistry of Isaac Newt... (50:44)

Date:
2015-04-15
Main contributors:
Beck Sayre, Meridith
Summary:
Over the course of the 20th century, scholars took up categories of knowledge constructed through classification work done in the library and archive, but methods of analytical bibliography were never well integrated into the academy. As scholars increasingly read and work with digitized texts, however, there is renewed and critical need for bibliographical skills in order to understand how texts have changed over time, especially vis-à-vis their material form. In addition to making a case for bibliography as an essential skill for the modern humanities scholar, I will describe my recent work on creating a TEI bibliography of Isaac Newton's alchemical sources. This project, part of "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" seeks to reconstruct a comprehensive list of the hundreds of alchemical texts that Newton read and employed from over 5000 fragmentary citations in his manuscripts. Because Newton was a lifelong and extensive alchemical reader, reconstructing a bibliography based on his annotations provides an ideal test case for how alchemical texts were studied in the seventeenth century. As such, this bibliography will be a substantial contribution to modern scholarship on Isaac Newton and the history of science more generally, underscoring the argument that bibliography has an important place in modern humanities scholarship.