Webinar on Text Mining

The Center for Research Libraries is hosting a webinar on text-mining in a few weeks.  It will explore trends in text mining and how publishers and libraries are responding to the challenges that come with it.  Topics to be addressed (from the announcement):

• the types of resources being “mined”, including e-journal databases and digitized newspapers and archives
• recent text-mining projects
• the challenges and issues these present for database publishers
• what role, if any, libraries can play to support these activities
• what new services are envisioned and what is in the pipeline

The webinar will take place online Tuesday, Nov. 13th 11a - 12:30p Pacific Time.  You can register here (may need to sign up for free account first): http://www.crl.edu/events/8391

CNI data-related videos from Spring Meeting

CNI has posted some videos from its Spring membership meeting and I thought several would be of interest to data-minded folks:

Linked Data for Libraries: Why Should We Care? Where Should We Start (J. Bowen & P. Schreur)

Reinventing the Research University to Serve a Changing World (J. Duderstadt)

Archiving Large Swaths of Digital Content: Lessons from Archiving the Occupy Movement (Besser, et al)

National Status of Data Management: Current Research in Policy and Education (Halbert, et al)

Building the Grateful Dead Archive Online: The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion (V. Steel & R. Chandler)

Special Report About Missing Data in Clinical Trials

New England Journal of Medicine just released a special report titled "The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials".  The research indicated that trial design, flexible treatment regimens, better follow-up and use of more scientific methods to adjust for missing data could improve results for clinical trials.

To read a review of the article: 

U Mich News Service "Better care must be taken to prevent or account for missing data in clinical trials."

Here's the citation for the original study: N Engl J Med 2012; 367:1355-1360; October 4, 2012 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsr1203730

UW subscribes to NEJM and you can access the study from a campus computer or through the Libraries proxy server.

(Thanks, Cynthia)

New Tool to Help Manage Data: DataUp

Microsoft announced the release of a new open-source tool to help researchers "document, manage and archive" tabular data.  Best part is that it can be used as a web app or as an add-in for Microsoft Excel.

Per the release, whether you go for the Excel extension or the online app, DataUp can help you with four main tasks:

1. Perform a best-practices check to ensure good data organization
2. Guide users through creation of metadata for their Excel file
3. Help users obtain a unique identifier for their dataset
4. Connect users to a major repository, where their data can be deposited and shared with others

Read more about the tool and check it out for yourself here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msr_er/archive/2012/10/02/dataup-data-curation-for-the-long-tail-of-science.aspx