[Asis-l] NSF Grant for National Statististical Network

[Richard Hill]

E-NEWS RELEASE

UNC Faculty to Lead Team Charged With Creating National Statistical Network

CHAPEL HILL, NC -- Professors Gary Marchionini and Stephanie Haas at 
UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science (SILS) will 
lead a joint university/government effort to make government statistics 
available over the Internet more accessible and understandable by the 
general public.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Marchionini, Haas, and 
their team a three-year, $1.3 million grant to lay the foundations for a 
national statistical knowledge network. UNC-Chapel Hill will be the lead 
institution on the project and will coordinate the nationwide effort to 
link state and federal statistical resources and develop user interfaces.

Other team members include researchers from the University of Maryland at 
College Park (Catherine Plaisant and Ben Shneiderman) and Syracuse 
University (Carol Hert), and representatives from a variety of federal and 
state statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, Social Security 
Administration, National Agricultural Statistical Service, and the North 
Carolina Office of Information Technology Services.

The project, formally titled "Integration of Data and Interfaces to Enhance 
Human Understanding of Government Statistics: Toward the National 
Statistical Knowledge Network," builds upon studies of how people seek and 
use statistical information and human-computer interface designs done in 
collaboration with these agencies over the past five years. Based in the 
SILS Interaction Design Laboratory (IDL) in Manning Hall, the project's web 
site can be found at 
<http://www.ils.unc.edu/govstat>http://www.ils.unc.edu/govstat.

"Federal, state and local governments gather large amounts of statistical 
data to help public servants and the general public understand our world 
and make informed decisions," said Marchionini. "This project will help 
people without specialized training use the Internet to find, and 
understand, the statistical data they need."

The School of Information and Library Science is home to approximately 225 
master's degree students, 40 doctoral students, 75 undergraduate minors and 
19 full-time faculty members. The school offers master's degrees in 
information science and library science, a certificate of advanced study, a 
doctor of philosophy in information and library science and an 
undergraduate minor in information systems. A new major in information 
science was recently approved and will be offered to students beginning 
this fall.


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David MacDonald
Director of Communications
School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB#3360, 100 Manning Hall
Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3390
(919) 843-8337, fax (919) 962-8071
macdonald at ils.unc.edu
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Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD  20910
FAX: (301) 495-0810
PHONE: (301) 495-0900

http://www.asis.org