DRUW Gets Going

As mentioned in our previous blog post we are developing an institutional data repository here at UW. We are joining the Hydra community and building our digital repository using the Hydra framework, which pulls together various components and platforms, including Blacklight, Solr and Fedora. More about the technologies in a later post! This project is a partnership between the Libraries and UWIT, the data will live on UWIT’s lolo filesystem.

How did we get here? A few years ago, the Data Services team conducted a survey 323 campus researchers, found that a strong need on our campus was for a place where researchers could store their data for the long term. This, coupled with funder mandates for providing public access to data meant that providing a data repository service at UW just made sense. Luckily, the Libraries administration agreed with us!

Since getting the go-ahead on the project, the majority of our time has been spent on (other than sorting technologies - to be discussed later) ensuring that we make a system that people are going to want to use and that meets their needs. The best way to do this, of course, is to figure out what those wants and needs might be. For this, we used a couple of approaches. First, we had two different standing library committees, the Data Services Committee and the Metadata Interest Group, create user stories. User stories are a technique from agile software development for defining system requirements from the perspective of the people who will use the system. There are different ways to write them, we chose to create each of ours from the skeleton sentence: “(a user type) wants to (their want) so that (why they want it)”. An example user story that was generated from this exercise: “A data depositor wants to not have to contact a librarian to upload a dataset, so that depositing can be done when they want to.” This particular story lead to a desired system feature for self-deposit of datasets. Our most common user types were “Data depositor,” “Researcher” and “Librarian.”

While these were being developed focus groups were held, which brought together researchers from across campus to discuss what they would want out of a data repository. Specifically, the questions asked of the focus groups were intended to identify potential barriers to use, so that we can be aware of those from the beginning and do our best to minimize or eliminate them. These conversations were summarized and then further distilled into the user story format. In total, 71 unique system features were identified. We are currently working on prioritizing the different features, determining what features we have the capability to include now, and what we can perhaps work towards in a future development phase of the repository project.

UW Libraries Forms Team to Develop Data Repository

The University of Washington Libraries is excited to announce the formation of a team to develop a Data Repository. The Data Repository at UW (DRUW, pronounced droo) will provide a secure, long-term location for UW faculty to store and share their research datasets. This repository will support UW researchers in meeting federal and private funder data management mandates and will promote the principles of open access and data sharing, while providing a convenient place to archive and discover datasets from research done at UW.

DRUW builds upon the Libraries existing Data Services offerings, which include assistance with data management plans, locating and acquiring research data, data curation and archiving, and data reference assistance. It also joins our ResearchWorks Services, which has been providing curation and archiving of digital research outputs for more than a decade. DRUW will allow campus researchers to archive their research data in a secure, reliable digital repository and allow users from off-campus to discover their work.

Data Repository Librarian Mahria Lebow has recently joined the Data Services Unit at the UW Libraries, and carries project management responsibilities for the repository. Updates and information about the project will be available here on the Data Services Blog.

For more information, contact Mahria Lebow, mahria at uw dot edu.

ICPSR Data Fair On Election Data

ICPSR will be hosting their online 2012 Data Fair on October 1-3.  This year's theme is "Analyzing Election Data with ICPSR" and "the series of webcasts will focus on election data held in ICPSR's archives, and how to use them for analysis and teaching."

From the announcement:

The event is designed for the social sciences data community at large including researchers, librarians, teaching faculty, students, and policymakers from around the world who are interested in the use of social science data.
The first day will provide an orientation to ICPSR's services, including a tutorial on navigating our newly redesigned Web site. Other topics will include the American National Election Studies, minority voting behavior, and using election data in classroom instruction.

The event is free and open to everyone. The tentative schedule of sessions, with links to register for the webcasts, is available here (NOTE: all times are Eastern):

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/membership/datafair/schedule.html

Databib: A Registry of Data Repositories

Thanks to funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Purdue University Libraries, there is now a tool to help you identify and locate online repositories for research data.

From the announcement:

Over 200 data repositories have been cataloged in Databib, with more being added every week. Users and bibliographers create and curate records that describe data repositories that can be browsed and searched.

• What repositories are appropriate for a researcher to submit his or her data to?
• How do users find appropriate data repositories and discover datasets to meet their needs?
• How can librarians help patrons locate and integrate data into their research or learning?

For more information or to check the listing out for yourself, go to: http://databib.org