The Digital Library as a Catalyst for Collaboration: Voyages Across Disciplinary and Institutional Boundaries with SIOExplorer

Stephen Miller
Scripps Institution of Oceanography

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     Last modified: November 14, 2007

Author Bio
Stephen P. Miller is the Head of the Geological Data Center at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His first introduction to sea floor was a lead line survey for the Sea Lab II Habitat, while a student at La Jolla High School. Since then he has participated in 30 expeditions, exploring the sea floor with more modern equipment such as the submersible Alvin and with multibeam swath mapping sonar systems. One of the highlights was the first discovery of 350 degree Celcius Black Smoker hot vents on the East Pacific Rise 21 degrees N in 1979. After graduate school (MIT) most of his career has been in academia, at SIO and the University of California, Santa Barbara, although seven years were in the private sector. With SeaBeam Instruments, the manufacturer of multibeam sonar systems, he developed software products to visualize and map the seafloor. While at SAIC in Newport, RI, he was part of a team that designed more than 363 fiber optic cable routes to connect 171 countries. He returned to SIO in 2000 where the main emphasis has been on expanding access to scientific data for both research and education, with a series of collaborative projects involving SIO, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and the UCSD Libraries. The team does more than teleconference, as it conducted a “Floating Digital Library Workshop” from New Zealand to Samoa on the R/V Melville in 2002.