Information

Peter Organisciak

Education

PhD in Library and Information Studies

August 2010-present | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

MA in Humanities Computing – Library and Information Studies

September 2008-August 2010 | University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

  • Thesis: Why Bother? Examining the Motivations of Users in Large-Scale Crowd-Powered Online Initiatives

Honours BA in Communication Studies and Multimedia

September 2004-June 2008 | McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Work Experience

Research Assistant – Digital Collections and Content

August 2010-present  | Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois | Champaign, IL

Supervised by Carole Palmer and Miles Efron.

Research Assistant

September 2008-June 2008  | Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Alberta | Edmonton, AB

Supervised by Stan Ruecker and Geoffrey Rockwell. Current projects:

Freelancer

March 2008 – August 2008 | Hamilton, ON

Various Projects in programming, design, and academia. Including:

  • Spectator Map Generator – Hamilton Spectator – Tool for creating custom maps for online articles.
  • SmartTexts – Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell – Project visualizing a tool for archival of web projects.
  • “The Body Snatchers“:Trench Raid at Roclincourt – Dr. Kathy Garay – Animation of WWI trench raid. Funded by the Peace and War in the 20th Century project.

Instructor – “Crowdsourcing”

January 2009 – July 2009 | Metroland West Group | Hamilton, ON

  • Private sector instructor and course designer. 1-hour course, “Crowdsourcing”, taught every week to editorial, marketing, and advertising employees at newspaper publisher.

Instructor – “Web Development”

December 2007 – June 2008 | Metroland West Group | Hamilton, ON

  • Private sector instructor. 2-hour course “Web Development” taught to newspaper employees from creative and news departments.

Teaching Assistant

September 2007—December 2007 | Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia – McMaster University | Hamilton, ON

  • Course topic is Introduction to Digital Media in the Humanities.
  • Areas covered revolve around introductory web design, particularily XHTML, CSS, usability and online media.

Assistant Photographer

Fall 2007 – Present  | Chappell Studios | Toronto, ON

  • Photographer at University of Alberta and Grant McEwan convocations, October 2008 – Present
  • Photography of McMaster University convocations, November 2007 – June 2008

Instructor – “Mashups”

November 2007-December 2007 | Metroland West Group | Hamilton, ON

  • 2-hour course “Mashups” taught to newspaper employees from creative and news departments.
  • Course designed by me in August 2007.
  • Topics covered included history of content on the internet, practical uses of mashups, and hands on introduction to creating mashups.

Website Designer

June 2007—present | Mixed Media | Hamilton, ON

  • Website redesign for the James Street North Art Crawl.
  • An example of the future site can be found at http://www.porganized.com/JameSt.
  • Coded in CSS and PHP, uses WordPress as a content management system.

Graphic Designer

July 2004—July 2006 | Hayden Industries | Hamilton, ON

Graphic Designer

July 2004—September 2004 | Crawford and Associates | Hamilton, ON

  • Graphic design for computer software interfaces.

Academic Experience

Journals

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stéfan Sinclair, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak. “Ubiquitous Text Analysis.” Poetess Archive Journal, North America, 2, Dec. 2010. Available at: http://paj.muohio.edu/paj/index.php/paj/article/view/13. Date accessed: 05 Apr. 2011.

Papers

Efron, Miles, Peter Organisciak, and Katrina Fenlon. “Building Topic Models in a Federated Digital Library Through Selective Document Exclusion.” ASIS&T Annual Meeting. New Orleans, USA. October 2011.Best paper award. (Details)

Organisciak, Peter. “When to ask for help: Evaluating projects for crowdsourcing.” Digital Humanities 2011. Stanford University, Stanford, USA. June 2011. Shortlisted for young scholar award.

Organisciak, Peter, Garry Wong, Calen Henry, and Lucio Guiterrez. “Pico Safari: Active Gaming in Integrated Environments.” SDH-SEMI 2011. Fredericton, Canada. May 2011. Best student paper award.

Organisciak, Peter. “Why Bother? Motivations of Users in Large-Scale Crowd-Powered Online Initiatives.” Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science. Evanston, IL, USA. November 21-22, 2010.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak, Megan Meredith-Lobay, Kamal Ranaweera, Stéfan Sinclair. “Analyzing A Day in the Life of Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities 2010. King’s College London, UK. July 7-10, 2010.

Organisciak, Peter, Kathleen Reed, and Alicia Hibbert. “Shortcuts and Dead Ends: Control Issues With Online User-Generated Content.” Information Science: Synergy through Diversity. Canadian Association for Information Science. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. June 2-4 2010.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak, Megan Meredith-Lobay, Kamal Ranaweera and Julianne Nyhan. “What do we say about ourselves? An analysis of the Day of DH 2009 data.” Society for Digital Humanities. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. June 2-4 2010.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak, Megan Meredith-Lobay, Kamal Ranaweera and Julianne Nyhan. “What do we say about ourselves? An analysis of the Day of DH 2009 data.” Society for Digital Humanities. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. June 2-4 2010.

Organisciak, Peter, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stéfan Sinclair, and Stan Ruecker. “Text Analysis for me Too: An embeddable text analysis widget.” Society for Digital Humanities. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. June 2-4 2010.

Organisciak, Peter. “Collecting Crowds: A Survey-based Introduction to Crowdsourcing.” HuCon 2010: Current Graduate Research in Humanities Computing. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. February 26, 2010.

Ruecker, Stan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Brown, Stéfan Sinclair and Peter Organisciak. “Mashing Texts: Supporting collections level text analysis”. Digital Humanities 09. University of Maryland, USA. June 22-25, 2009.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak, Stéfan Sinclair. “Ubiquitous Text Analysis”. Digital Humanities 09. University of Maryland, USA. June 22-25, 2009.

Varnam, Christine, Peter Organisciak, Kathleen Reed, Alicia Hibbert, and Diana Keto. “Invasion of the And-Ors: Applying Active Learning Principles in the Development of a Flash-based Boolean Search Tutorial and Game.” Canadian Association for Information Science / l’association canadienne des sciences de l’information (Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences). Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. May 26-29, 2009.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, and Peter Organisciak. “A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities.”  Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l’étude des médias interactif 2009 (Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences). Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. May 22-25, 2009.

Rockwell, Geoffrey, Stan Ruecker, Peter Organisciak, Susan Brown, and Stéfan Sinclair. “Mashing Texts: Exploring New Possibilities in Rapid Research Document Management.” Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l’étude des médias interactif 2009 (Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences). Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. May 22-25, 2009.

Organisciak, Peter, Kathleen Reed, Alicia Hibbert, Christine Varnam, and Diana Keto. “Invasion of the And-Ors: The Development of a Flash-based Boolean Search Tutorial and Game.” Beyond Analogue: Current Graduate Research in Humanities Computing. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Feb 13, 2009.

Conference Panels

Radzikowska, Milena, Stan Ruecker, Susan Brown, Peter Organisciak, and the INKE Research Group. “Structured Surfaces for JiTR.” Paper presented at the Digital Humanities 2011 conference. Stanford, June 19-21, 2011.

Ruecker, Stan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Peter Organisciak, Jean-Guy Meunier, Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Alan Galey, Aimee Morrison and Ray Siemens. “Graduate Education in the Digital Humanities.” Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l’étude des médias interactif 2009 (Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences). Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. May 22-25, 2009.

Poster Sessions

Fenlon, Katrina, Peter Organisciak, Jacob Jett, and Miles Efron. “Semi-automated Collection Evaluation for Large-scale Aggregations.” ASIS&T Annual Meeting. New Orleans, USA. October 2011.

Stéfan Sinclair, Dave Beacon, Susan Brown, Stephen Downie, Carlos Fiorentino, Patrick Juola, Peter Organisciak, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Schreibman, Kirsten Uszkalo. “TADA Research Evaluation Exchange: Winning 2008 Submissions”. Digital Humanities 09. University of Maryland, USA. June 22-25, 2009.

Varnam, Christine, Kathleen Reed, Peter Organisciak, Alicia Hibbert, and Diana Keto. “Invasion of the And-Ors: Applying Active Learning Principles in the Development of a Flash-based Boolean Search Tutorial Game.” Faculty of Education Poster Fair: A Celebration of Graduate Student Research in Progress. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Mar 18, 2009.

Invited Talks

Organisciak, Peter. “Usability and Design.” Digital Libraries. Prof. J. Stephen Downie. Guest Lecture. University of Illinois. March 28, 2011.

Svenson, Stephen, Peter Organisciak and Cory Ruf. “Life and Death in New Orleans : Disaster Tours Imagined.” X Marks the Spot: Cryptographies of the City. Culture of Cities Centre, Toronto, Canada. April 9, 2008.

Academic Contests

Organisciak, Peter. “Bookmarklet for Immediate Text Analysis.” 1st Place in Best Idea for Improving the Interface of the TAPoR Portal. 2008 T-REX (TADA Research Evaluation eXchange). McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. 2008.

Volunteer Experience

Collaborator

June 2010—present | Mozilla Labs

  • Part of Mozilla Labs “Crowdsourcing Crowds” team, investigating future collaborative services from Mozilla Labs.

Layout Editor

June 2005—June 2008| Between the Lines | Hamilton, ON

Club President

September 2006—June 2008 | McMaster Multimedia Students Society| Hamilton, ON

  • prior to President, held the position of Treasurer, August 2005-April 2006.

Residence Rep

September 2005 | McKay Hall | Hamilton, ON

Faculty Rep

September 2005, September 2006 | McMaster Humanities Society | Hamilton, ON

First-Year Representative

September 2005—April 2006 | McMaster Humanities Society | Hamilton, ON

  • Position representing the interests of the first-year students of a university faculty.

Awards

  • Ian Lancashire Graduate Award (Best student paper, SDH-SEMI 2011)
  • Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship (2009)
  • McMaster Dean’s Honour List (2007, 2008)
  • The Bank of Montreal Humanities Multimedia Scholarship (2007)
  • Time Magazine Person of the Year (2006)
  • St. Joseph’s Community Scholarship (2004, 2006)
  • Queen Elizabeth II Aiming for the Top Scholarship(2004)
  • McMaster University Entrance Scholarship (2004)
  • Honour J: “For Excellence in academic and extra-curricular activities at Saint John’s College” (2004)
  • Silver Medal – Skills Ontario Animation Competition (2004)
  • Runner-up – Notmad Skin Design Contest (2003)
  • Saint John’s College Honour Roll (2002, 2003, 2004)
  • 1st Place City Standing in Cayley Mathematics Competition (2002)
  • 1st Place City Standing in Pascal Mathematics Competition (2001)

Interests