LIS 7410 - Digital Libraries
Spring 2009 -- Section 01
Project (Research Track)


For the project in the Research Track, read below.
For the project in the Professional Track, click here instead.

What is the project about?

This is supposed to be a research project. In computer science (CS), a good research project must (i) define a problem, (ii) propose a solution, (iii) implement the solution (simulated or real) and (iv) evaluate against any applicable existing solutions or related work. In library and information science (LIS), a good research project must (i) define research questions (or one research question), (ii) propose a methodology to investigate the research questions, (iii) collect data, (iv) analyze the data, and (v) draw a conclusion. Remember, good research always teaches other researchers something new.

Your research project can take one of the following manifestations:

Work individually, in pairs or groups of three (maximum). Note that grading criteria for projects will not differ between projects based on manpower; individuals and teams of two are often better coordinated than teams of three, especially in short projects.

Some useful software and data:

Choosing a project

Below you will find a list of possible final projects. Since you have selected the research track, I expect and demand that each individual or team achieve some novel research development or finding that is not a rehashing of the existing literature. The survey paper is intended to foster this understanding and encourage you to poke into new territories.

You are welcomed and encouraged to propose alternate projects. Your topic should blend together your strengths from your background, experience and current coursework, yet be applicable to digital libraries research. Teams that have taken projects that interest them and/or have relevance to their research or jobs seem to always do best. Some of the possible project ideas include (but are not limited to):

You may find it helpful to view past projects by previous students at NUS in a similar course, Special Topics in Computer Science.

Project write-up, presentation and grading

Here are some slides on how to do your project proposal.
[ .pdf ] [ .htm ]

Part of the skills that you should practice in a project-based graduate class is how to report your work. Expert researchers will tell you that half (if not most) of your time on a project will involve polishing your paper so it is easy to read and straightforward. Generally, filling up the page limit is easy, but deciding what to omit and how to succinctly express your idea is difficult.

Your team's write-up will take the form of a research paper intended for a conference submission with a 10 page limit. You should use an ACM proceedings style (You can follow the instructions for WWW 2004, for example). You may supplement this with a reference to your project's website / blog (if one was created) and any amount of appendices that you feel will help determine a grade. Selected final projects will be asked to submit their work to a relevant conference or journal, such as the ones listed on this page.

Grading for the project's final report and presentation are likely to follow similar weights as NUS' digital libraries course.

Final Workload Disclaimer

The project is the primary method in which you will be assessed for your course. The workload throughout the rest of the course is purposely light to ensure that you have enough time to produce high-quality research in the project. As such you need to budget your team's time wisely and ensure that you have appropriately scoped your project and covered the topic with enough detail and with appropriate evaluation. Part-time students with other commitments need to be particularly aware of this, as past cases have shown this problem crops up with part-time students most often.

Some students inevitably start the project too late or mismanage their time and neglect such open-ended courses, in order to advance in other classes that have more concrete assessment milestones. I warn you now to budget your time between classes wisely. You are advised to spend at least 9 hours per week on the course, including 3 hours in class. You should invest about 8 weeks * 6 hours/week = 48 hours on your project, excluding the survey assignment.

Information about the project presentation and a complete listing of projects at NSU can be found here.

Submit your paper either as a hard copy or a PDF/PS/MS-Word document by either posting it on your course Website or sending it as an email attachment. The due dates for project paper & deliverables, and presentation are indicated on the syllabus page.


Acknowledgement to Min-Yen Kan.

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Yejun Wu