By Jean Sack

The 44th Annual Conference included 13 speakers in 8 sessions. Jean Sack offers notes about some of the speakers. -Ed.

Keynote

Kristen Purcell’s Keynote “Information 2.0 and Beyond” (kpurcell@pewinternet.org) began with a description of the Pew Internet Project as a “fact tank” in collecting communications information about American Adults 18+ and USA teens 12-17, using cell phone surveys. Her presentation was extraordinarily fluent and fun! The 2011 Pew surveys revealed that 85 percent of American own cell phones with 25 percent of their homes functioning without landlines.  Some 74 percent of adults use Internet and 93 percent of teens with 65 percent using the web via broadband.  Only half of people with disabilities use the web, however, but African-American adults are the most active mobile Internet users with 40 percent of Hispanics using the web now. Because on-line access via mobile phones has sharply declined in price, low income populations use phones for web. About 61 percent of online adults use social networks with elders (above 50 years) rising in use of Facebook and other networks. Only 8 percent of on-line adults use Twitter (especially 14-17 year old girls) but many more use apps as a form of information highway bypass to pull in information, including getting geo-locations, games, social networks, news / weather, and games. Who is evaluating information when 70 percent of adults feel overwhelmed by free news vs. broad information overload? Who is teaching digital literacy and judging depth of user satisfaction with Google searches? Kristen ended her review of the past Pew Internet Surveys with a salute to the essential role of librarians as human information filters because they are trusted experts and good storytellers who can explain and customize how information relates and is relevant to the seekers.

1. Curators who use portals to aggregate links and recommend sources for “deep dives”
2. Become a living node in a network to make information open and available
3. Community builders in connecting people and forming free focus groups around facts
4. Lifesavers in providing timely information
5. Tour guides into worlds of knowledge (like museums) and data (Census and beyond)

International Datasets

Peter D. Johnson of the US Census Bureau used a screen capture PowerPoint slide show to review the International Database (IDB) and International Data Resources available on line, including some survey follow-ups such as Mozambique’s sample of deaths with verbal autopsies. Although there were no IDB handouts, Census Bureau folders with US 2010 timetables were brought in later, by Louisa Miller, on Wednesday afternoon.

Ivana Bjelic’s (ibjelic@unicef.org) careful review of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) generated by UNICEF was quite stimulating. Three MICS survey sets with 200 surveys taken in 100 countries have followed the original 1990s household surveys done for the World Summit for Children in 1995. The MICS4 given from 2009-2011 is in 43 countries whose governments select the menu modules that they desire in order to fill in gaps in their health and economic data for policy decisions. Each county implements the survey packages with funding from UNFPA, UNDP, USAID, Global Fund and UNICEF supplying technical and training help. Eighty-five percent of funding flows through the UNICEF local country offices although several countries have self-funded with average past costs of $300,000 per country. Governments form MICS teams who are trained in regional workshops in data processing & analysis as well as administration of the surveys and dissemination of results. Reviews of all questionnaires and standard methods result in each country customizing their MICS surveys and contracting with local country survey agencies for capacity building. UNICEF technical advisors return to the country at critical times during the surveys. DHS added household income survey questions from MICS to determine child well-being. Each survey takes a household sample, face to face interviews with individuals, women, children and men (new module for males). Only female interviewers can survey women and they also survey men. Follow up health checkups are given.

The MICS4 pilot was done in Mombasa, Kenya in Feb. 2009. The Early Childhood Development Index is targeted for PreS literacy, numeracy, physical / social / emotional and learning within the household. Medical screening follows for children in sample and a disability survey. Attitude questions are being added to MICS, including standard questions about child discipline and domestic violence.  It is possible to compare certain modules of MICS between rounds and countries. A module on Child Health contains questions about immunization coverage, ORT, and care-seeking for pneumonia. The Household questions are given to women 15-49, mothers of children under 5, and men 15-59 collecting demographics, identifying orphans, education, water / sanitation, dwelling information places family in wealth quintiles, malaria queries include collecting statistics on use of ITN bed nets or spraying, and includes questions about child labor, hand washing, and food (salt iodization test is made). The women’s module includes questions on literacy, fertility, age at marriage, access to mass media, birth histories (child mortality), illnesses in children, contraceptive use, postnatal checks, female genital cutting, life satisfaction, maternal mortality, use of tobacco / alcohol. The newest module for men is similar to that for women but includes male circumcision, contraceptive usage and sex behaviors as well as questions about HIV / stigma and shame. The median number of household visits per country is 7,000 but can be up to 62,000.

Collected MICS data are disseminated in-country in preliminary reports, a final report is issued and a country action plan developed. Most data is mounted on the MICS website for public use. The State of the World’s Children utilizes data from MICS as do the UNICEF Countdown reports, Millennium Development reports, and the Global Poverty Index. Datasets are downloadable and free from www.childinfo.org and via www.micscompiler.org with tables, graphs, maps. Only a few countries have participated in each MICS round (Serbia and Gambia), since many governments rotate between with DHS (Ghana & Sierra Leone). Mali is participating for the first time in MICS4 while many of the African countries are now nearly finished with MICS4 data collections.

Ivana handled many questions very adroitly during her PowerPoint presentation. MICS information was distributed on UNICEF CDs to APLIC members in addition to spiral notebooks, fact-sheets, postcards, opaque rulers and mouse pads.

Note : Jean sent these notes to us in a very timely fashion in April; the editorial team will try in future to be more responsive.

APLIC members gathered in Washington DC in late March for three eventful days of presentations, special events, and catching up with old friends. The nation’s capital provided some wonderful moments outside the session rooms.

Enjoy a brief slide show . . . .

It is maintained by a private foundation and a dedicated director lives on site. The house is large, but the tours have an ‘initmate’ feel.  You can schedule a private tour on a Wednesday or walk-in at their scheduled times Thursday, Friday or Saturday (11:30 and 1 each day, with an added 2:30 tour on Saturday).

For years I drove past this mansion (located at the intersection of 20th and New Hampshire in northwest DC) on the way to my hotel in Georgetown and never knew what it was. Finally this summer I planned a visit.  It is within easy walking distance of Dupont Circle.  If you enjoy historic homes, this is a real treat. The history is fascinating, including romance and tragedy. The local DC brewery was located at the site of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts  (another gem, but not hidden).  A blog post on the brewery has some interesting anecdotes.  And a little bit about the beer can be found at Foggy Bottom.com .

I thought it might be fun for the membership (locals and tourists) to share information on some of the un-ordinary and sometimes extra-ordinary sights that APLIC visitors to DC might want to check out when they attend the conference in DC next March. [APLIC 44th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, March 28 - 30, 2011] 

I will plan on posting a new location each week.

The membership will be able to add new places of interest as a comment to my posts or as new blog posts.  New blog posts should use the category: APLIC conference

All the “gems” will be collated for a handout at the conference.

Tsui, a professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, began her talk by saying that APLIC president Claire Twose has been “invaluable” to her research.

Tsui continued talking about research infrastructure, saying it is not often you get money to develop research capacity for the long term – but she got just that from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Tsui is director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, which works with African universities to develop research and training programs.

The institute focuses on multi-country, large-scale research projects and working with universities on curricula to train the next generation. They also helps partners organize their own conferences. Tsui said that in order to keep training programs alive, they have to focus on building research capacity.

Tsui described a typical faculty visit to Johns Hopkins. Visiting faculty audit courses, take training on electronic databases, work on a systematic literature review or data analysis exercise, and give a seminar presentation. Tsui noted that these faculty do not have access to the same level of resources in their home universities – for example, the bibliographic databases and journal subscriptions that Hopkins pays millions of dollars for, reliable internet and electricity, and training in statistical software. “If they had the kind of access that we have here, the speed of  change would be that much faster,” Tsui said.

Tsui went into detail about a research project in Africa, delivering home based family planning counseling and HIV voluntary counseling and testing to couples in rural Malawi. The project faced a number of hurdles, including a year-long wait for IRB approval (due to fears of domestic violence following testing and counseling – but no incidences were reported), the need for confidential referrals, polygamous households (excluded from the study), and community misconceptions.

So far, the project has resulted in a manuscript under review and a submitted NIH proposal, in collaboration with the University of Malawi.

Presenters : Allison Burns, Family Health International; Tara Murray, Population Research Institute, Penn State University; Kay Willson, Futures Group

Put two information professionals in a room and you know that eventually they will begin trading stories about what may be the biggest headache we face every day : getting our beloved researchers to help us help them.

Allison Burns, Tara Murray, and Kay Willson gave three perspectives on this vexing issue, looking at some useful tools, how the tools fit the need, and getting participation.

Family Health International was using email and an intranet for collaboration among 2,500 staff in 55 countries worldwide. Problems arose from “email fatigue” and some email policies that restricted what could be shared, as well as accessibility to the intranet on the part of staff in infrastructure-challenged environments. Allison Burns finally settled on a Wiki installation (Confluence) that provided some impressive functionality that could be accessed anywhere an internet connection was available. It was inexpensive, flexible, and included an alert feature and interactivity.

Specifically, it allowed library staff to easily edit and upload documents and to create documents using a rich-text editor. For the users, anyone within the organization who wished to track new documents being uploaded could simply put a watch on the pages that interested them and, of course, it supplemented other forms of communication.

At the Population Research Institute, Tara Murray was working with data archives and a range of users who needed varying degrees of access. Some users would need access simply to the data archive; another group would need access to confidential datasets or other restricted information; finally, a dedicated area for staff collaboration was desired. Her audience comprised students, faculty, peer researchers not at PRI, and staff – all with varying degrees of computer literacy.

Tara implemented an open source web server (Plone) to manage roles and access to the data. It provided simplified search, granular definition of user permissions and workflow, and a way to wrangle the numerous gatekeepers and their priorities. Plone is a content management system, and the interface for creating new documents is easy to learn and not too different from what most MS Office savvy individuals are used to. One benefit of having a staff-dedicated area ended up being greater ease collating staff meeting notes, which are often taken by a different person at each meeting.

Kay Willson has been working for one or another version of Futures Group for many years. Her recent task has been to roll out a Sharepoint collaboration tool. During a previous Futures Group incarnation, a Knowledge Management initiative resulted in an implementation of Sharepoint, mostly to support communities and repositories. Because most users did not enter metadata the result was a multiplicity of sites with no common template – a kind of “Sharepoint for silos,” as it were. On top of that, there was a preconceived idea that Sharepoint was hard to use. “You can’t just tell them it’s easy; you have to stand there and make them do the process (like uploading a file) – that’s the only way it sinks in,” Kay noted.

Kay drew on the book Influencer : The power to change anything* for tactics to create real change. There is a matrix of six strategies for creating influence. The key is to “overwhelm” by implementing at least four of the strategies: 1) on the personal level, make the undesirable desirable and push your limits; 2) on the social level, harness peer pressure and find safety in numbers (of others supporting the cause); 3) on a structural level, design rewards and demand accountability and make whatever alterations to the environment that might encourage the new behavior.

So: Did they log in ? Results are mixed. Kay reported decent results, especially because of strong support from a key stakeholder; Tara reported improvements but no revolution; and Allison is still waiting to find out.

_{* Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler (McGraw-Hill 2007, 288pp).}

This was my first conference and, truth to tell, my heart was not beating especially fast knowing I would be spending five days in Dallas, Texas. Preconceived ideas, you see.

So – conference hotel, the usual story: big spaces without intimacy and a maze of meeting rooms spread out on two or three levels. You spend the first day just figuring things out. At some point you forget about the environment and remember that the meeting is about people. Folks who are doing something like you do and who may have some insights. Folks who end up being fun to know, too.

At any rate, the 2010 planning group hit a home run with this year’s banquet.

There’s always a banquet at these kinds of things – I’ve been to so many they all run together in a blur. Of course, you’re there to enjoy each other’s company and maybe gab about things beyond the profession, common interests, or maybe give an award or two. Nobody pays attention to the food, certainly not the chefs who shovel it out by the hundredweight. Let’s be honest – most conference food is boring. In a place like the Hyatt it’s not bad quality but it won’t make you sit up and take notice.

Leave it to APLIC to think outside of the box – or, in this case, the hotel. We held our banquet outside the facility at a very unique local restaurant named . . . Local.

In my other life I translate a restaurant guide to the South of France called the Guide Gantié. For 20 years Jacques Gantié has been writing up restaurants large and small all over Nice-Provence-Cote d’Azur and I get to create the English language edition every year. Yum. His criteria are simple: welcome, service, food, décor. So, in the spirit of the South (France or USA) here’s a Gantié-style look at Local :

“More than one person wondered what Tracy Miller was thinking when she purchased the old Boyd Hotel deep in the Deep Ellum district at 2936a Elm in 1998. Almost 12 years later the results speak for themselves: Clean modern lines from Dallas designer Alice Cottrell, classic Eames walnut chairs, pine floors, 16-foot ceilings; thoughtful arrangements create intimacy in numerous discreet areas within a complex space. It’s comfortable and trendy but we come here most of all for the playful and tasteful New American cuisine of Tracy Miller. Fried green beans with creamy thyme and garlic-infused dipping sauce for an amuse-bouch; appetizers like roasted roma tomato soup with two baby farmhouse cheddar cheese sandwiches or lettuces of endive, radicchio and frisee with haricot vert, blue cheese, crisp pancetta and lemon-shallot vinaigrette; main courses like cornflake-panko crusted seabass, spring pea-lemon risotto, herb beurre blanc and sauté of sunburst squash; grilled grass-fed tenderloin filet, panko crusted tater tots, baby arugula toss and tawny port balsamic finish; special vegan preparation of small vegetables, swiss chard, and fragrant sauce… are all prepared with the utmost care using the best products, presented with delight, and served briskly. The chef’s signature “chocolate constructed” dessert features a seemingly bottomless chocolate soufflee, two small, crunchy brownie-type cookies, and a thimble-sized “milkshake” of ovaltine-chocolate malt ice cream, complete with straw. While occasionally tipping her hat to Thomas Keller, Tracy Miller’s cuisine is anything but derivative. She creates, crosses flavors, seeks the essence of the product, and plays with our memory. Welcome is warm and efficient, service is impeccable, and wines and beers have been carefully selected to match the food. One regret: it’s too bad the entry-level price on wine doesn’t get lower than $44 a bottle (white). At evening’s end, however, we really don’t mind, because we have been treated so well and had such fabulous adventures with the food.”

Wish you were there ? It’s not too early to start planning for next year in Washington.

—submitted by William Fennie

Register today – mail-in registration closes March 15!