Reports from Open Repositories 2013 and IASSIST2013

Two UW Libraries Data Services Team members were able to attend recent conferences related to data services: Open Repositories 2013, and the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology 2013. 

OR2013 was held on Prince Edward Island from July 8th-11th. Stephanie Wright attended two workshops looking at the future of institutional repositories and how institutional repositories deal with data. Plenaries by Victoria Stodden and Jean-Claude Guedon were inspiring and both were focused (in different ways) on research reproducibility and scholarly communications and altmetrics.  The tweets were flowing so if you'd like to read the thoughts of attendees, check out the Twitter hashtag #OR2013, or you can check out the summarized version on Storify, and a summary of the conference from an IASSIST perspective at http://www.iassistdata.org/blog/or2013-open-repositories-confront-research-data. 

Jennifer Muilenburg attended IASSIST2013 in Cologne, Germany, from May 28-31. Presentations included several on training researchers on research data management, different approaches to institutional repositories, issues around data collection in university libraries, access to restricted data, and lots more. A brief summary of the conference can be found here: http://www.iassistdata.org/blog/ich-bin-ein-iassister. Due to spotty wifi, the tweets were lacking, but some of what made it through includes links to presentations.

Upcoming Conferences and Sessions and Workshops, Oh My!

Since beginning to follow groups and conferences relevant to data management issues for information professionals in November 2012, I've known that there is always something upcoming in the not-too-distant future that looks fascinating and informative. There is a panoply happening right now, though, that could have us all booked out of the office for the bulk of 2013 (given inexhaustible travel budgets, that is). Here are a few upcoming events that have caught my eye:

• Happening right now is Open Repositories 2013 (#or2013) in Prince Edward Island, CA, July 8-12. I've been following the twitter feed via the hashtag and Storify; lots of interesting talk going on around data policies, data curation methods and technologies, the research lifecycle...
• The University of East London has been training various types of staff on research data management over the last year. They're summarizing some of their work at a daylong workshop, "Support for support: training those in RDM support roles," July 16, London, UK. I'm currently working my way through some of UEL's online curriculum offerings for librarians, and very much wish I could be there for this session.
• For those interested in the metadata side of scientific data, Camp-4-Data in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 6, will be exploring many facets of metadata standards used to manage scientific data. This is being held just before iPres, the 10th International Conference on the Preservation of Digital Objects, and DCMI, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. Head in a whirl yet?
• The HathiTrust Research Center UnCamp 2013, September 8-9, Urbana, IL, is targeted to digital humanities tool developers, researchers and librarians of HathiTrust institutions, and will include hands-on coding and demonstration, use cases, and community building in an un-conference programmming format. Register early to help form the program.
• Data Information Literacy Symposium, West Lafayette, IN, September 23-24. This workshop will "explore roles for practicing librarians in teaching competencies in data management and curation to graduate students." Registration for this is currently full, but following via twitter should be interesting.
• The Digital Humanities Data Curation Workshop is being held in College Park, MD, October 16-18. Their resource guide is a great place to start if you can't attend one of their workshops.
• The 2013 Digital Library Foundation Forum, November 4-6 in Austin, TX. Proposed sessions include one on using a CRM tool to track data management services in an academic library, one on the influence of faculty rank on attitudes toward research data management, several presentations on encouraging better and more specific use of metadata, fostering a culture of data sharing among researchers, data management education for librarians and researchers...

I'm sure there are others out there that I missed; if you have a suggestion, please add it in the comments below.

Data-related Sessions at ALA

Many thanks to Lynda Kellam at UNC-Greensboro for compiling a list of data-related sessions on the schedule for #ALA2013. These cover data curation, GIS, scholarly impact, information literacy and more! If you have anything else to add, please do so in the comments.

Data, E-Data, Data Curation: Our New Frontier
Saturday, June 29, 2013 - 8:30am to 10:00am
McCormick Place Convention Center S501bcd
Moderator: Abigail Goben, Asst Information Services Librarian, University of Illinois Chicago
Moderator: Sarah Sheehan
Speaker: Dorothea Salo
Speaker: James Mullins
Speaker: Joan Starr
Speaker: Robert Sandusky
Data management and curation may be a great new opportunity but how are libraries tackling it? We already know how to archive traditional materials but what do we do with terabytes of faculty research data? How do we manage that data set for our students' research? Join us for a big picture view of the issues surrounding e-data collection and access from Joan Starr, Jim Mullins, Dorothea Salo, and Robert Sandusky. Bring questions to help you identify opportunities and challenges already happening on your campus.

Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT)/GODORT GIS Discussion Group
Saturday, June 29, 2013 - 8:30am to 10:00am
McCormick Place Convention CenterS504a
Moderator: Angela Lee, Libraries and Museums Manager, ESRI
Moderator: Tracey Hughes, Librarian, CMC Alpine Campus Library
The GIS Discussion Group begins at 8:30 am and focuses on topics related to geographic information systems (GIS). In addition to discussion topics brought forward by session attendees, there will also be a focused topic discussion on education for geospatial librarians. This is a co-sponsored meeting with GODORT.

The Research Footprint: Libraries Tracking and Enhancing Scholarly and Scientific Impact
Saturday, June 29, 2013 - 8:30am to 10:00am
McCormick Place Convention Center N427bc
Speaker: Cathy Sarli, Scholarly Communications Specialist, Becker Medical Library
Speaker: Jason Priem, Impact Story, UNC Royster Scholar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Speaker: Kristi Holmes, Bioinformaticist, Becker Medical Library
Speaker: Rush G. Miller, The Hillman University Librarian, Director of the University Library System & Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Increasingly, libraries are building services designed to assess and improve the impact of their institutions' research activities. This is an increasingly important, but complex task as more and more scholarship is digitally shared and accessed through traditional and non-traditional pathways.
This program will offer knowledge about:
*The data and expertise libraries are using to track and enhance research dissemination.
*Library programs built upon this data and expertise.

The Census, your patrons and the DataFerrett
Saturday, June 29, 2013 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Burnham 23A-C
Speaker: Kendra Morgan
Speaker: Stephen R Laue
A hands-on workshop on Accessing Census Statistics (American Community Survey) with officials from US Census Bureau to learn how to use the DataFerrett which is an analytical and visualization tool that searches and retrieves data across federal datasets, and creates complex tabulations, business graphics and thematic maps. This workshop will demonstrate how to: browse the datasets accessible via The Data Web; select variables form datasets; create new variables from existing ones; and produce customized analyses using tables, graphs, and maps.

Numeric and Geospatial Data Services in Academic Libraries Interest Group (ACRL)
Saturday, June 29, 2013 - 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Hyatt Regency Chicago Skyway 269
Moderator: Lynda Kellam
This is the annual meeting of the Numeric and Geospatial Data Services in Academic Libraries Interest Group (Association of College and Research Libraries)
Hashtag: #DIGdata

Digital Curation Interest Group (ACRL)
Sunday, June 30, 2013 - 1:00pm to 2:30pm
McCormick Place Convention Center N135
The Digital Curation Interest Group is a group of mainly library- and archives-based practitioners who meet to discuss challenges, tools, user needs, use and reuse, etc., related to lifecycle management of digital data and content.
Hashtag:
#dcig13

Building Financial Literacy Reference Skills
Sunday, June 30, 2013 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm
McCormick Place Convention Center Hall A, Exhibit Floor
Poster session
Author: Kristin McDonough, Director, New York Public Library
Author: Marzena Ermler, Manager of Professional Development, New York Public Library
Author: TJ Woods, Learning & Development Specialist, New York Public Library
This poster session will demonstrate the training methodology NYPL has developed in conjunction with financial experts to increase the financial education awareness among library staff and users. We will present the programmatic goals of the Money Matters Training Program that educate staff on core concepts of financial education and related reference sources. The program launched in February 2012 and the evaluative data collected indicates that staff members who participated in the program increased their comfort level in providing reference services in financial education, focusing on areas such as banking, credit, identity theft, and investing . The program also equips our staff with information about how to conduct financial education training in their communities. Visitors to our poster session will leave with access to a complete staff training curriculum including trainer’s guides, participant worksheets, ppt. presentations, and online e-learning modules that can be used to seamlessly replicate the Money Matters Pro financial literacy training at their own libraries. During the poster session we will present the Money Matters Pro website, clips of training classes, success stories, and samples of the training materials.

Connecting the Dots: Defining Scholarly Services in a Research Lifecycle Model
Sunday, June 30, 2013 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm
McCormick Place Convention Center Hall A, Exhibit Floor
Posters
Author: Andrew Todd, Regional Campus Librarian, University of Central Florida
Author: Sai Deng, Metadata Librarian, University of Central Florida
Librarians at the University of Central Florida (UCF) Libraries have created a visual model depicting the cycle of research at an institutional level while embedding scholarly services into the flow. The Research Lifecycle is used as a basis to build a framework for the faculty research process and gain both support and funding for new infrastructure and services.
The UCF Research Lifecycle includes four sub-cycles: a planning cycle, a project cycle, a publication cycle and the 21st century digital scholarship cycle. In each cycle, supporting services are added to the research flow. Amid the existing services provided by different university units, potential services are added to bridge the missing links in the lifecycle. Some of these missing services include data hosting, research computing and an institutional repository. The center of each cycle shows corresponding activities related to sponsored or grant-funded research, which form an important part of the institution’s scholarly research activities.
This project was initiated by the university library’s Scholarly Communication Task force. During its development, librarians collaborated with other campus departments, including the Office of Research and Commercialization, the Institute for Simulation and Training, and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. The lifecycle graphic and its related services are available at: http://library.ucf.edu/scholarlycommunication. Taskforce members also solicited feedback from teaching faculty, which yielded a wide variety of constructive comments and were incorporated into the model. The lifecycle at its current state has received widespread campus attention and generated interest from University administrators.

How to Teach and Assess Discipline-Specific Information Literacy (ACRL)
Monday, July 1, 2013 - 10:30am to 11:30am
McCormick Place Convention Center N427a
Speaker: Christina Connor, Instruction and Emerging Technologies Librarian, Ramapo College of New Jersey
Speaker: Nicholas Salter, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Ramapo College of New Jersey
Discipline-specific information literacy is an essential topic for all students to understand. Using Psychology courses as an example, this presentation will discuss faculty-librarian collaborative teaching approaches based on skill and age-level. This approach uses the new ALA/ACRL Psychology Information Literacy Standards. Quantitative assessment data will be discussed. Suggestions from this presentation will help all fields teach discipline-specific information literacy.

Public Comment on Access to Federally Supported Research and Development Data and Publications

In response to both the recent OSTP memorandum and the proposed bill (FASTR) that call for increased public access to data and publications resulting from federally funded research, a group of cooperating agencies and the National Research Council have organized two planning meetings held May 14-17 to gather stakeholder input (also included are "brief introductory addresses by a select few experts and summarizing commentary by equally few rapporteurs").

Two meetings will be held, one focused on publications (May 14-15) and the other on data (May 16-17). The public is invited to attend in person (at the National Academy of Sciences in DC) or via webcast, but registration is required. Attendees may also request time to present a verbal or written statement.

Sponsoring Agencies:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Technical Information Service
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Department of the Interior
United States Geological Survey
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution

Thomson Reuters' Web of Science Presents: The Data Citation Index!

Last October, Web of Science (WoS) launched a new service known as the Data Citation Index (DCI). It allows users to track and discover data from tons of research projects. The DCI covers info for datasets from multidisciplinary and international repositories, and is housed within the WoS we already know and love. Researchers comfortable looking up papers in WoS can find related datasets, or vice versa. Collocating research data and papers is great step toward making datasets more discoverable.

Data discoverability through the DCI is good for researchers and librarians. Tracking citations of datasets gives researchers better and more consistent context of work relevant to their own. That enlarges their scope of understanding, reach of influence, and reduces the chances of performing redundant research. By tossing tons of data citations in together, the DCI also creates a context of metadata and attribution facets used for datasets. That helps data librarians create better data management plans for their repositories.

Citation tracking is a great thing for data management, but some crinkles still need to be smoothed out. An evaluative report by the University of Minnesota on their trial of the DCI highlighted some pros and cons. The metadata for different but apparently similar datasets contained equally ambiguous terms, for example. That musses up the sense of proper context and standardization the DCI intends to provide. Datasets themselves, however, are eminently discoverable thanks to WoS’s preexisting search and results refinement functions.

The DCI is notable step for data management and exposes some of its major challenges, such as: reining in variation between metadata, aggregating interdisciplinary repositories, and discoverability.

Guest Bloggers

You will see a few new names attached to the blog posts in the near future.  Jenny and I have opened up blog posts to interested bloggers from the University of Washington iSchool.  The first such post will be by Tal Noznisky posting a review on the Data Citation Index by Thomson Reuters.  Welcome, Tal!

Global Health Data Exchange Updates

The Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) has announced a relaunch with enhanced navigation and additional features, including improved navigation, background information on countries, data series, and organizations. The advanced search allows users to search specific queries by geography, time, data type, keyword, and data source. Data can also be sorted on whether the actual research data is publicly and freely available. An announcement about the new features in version 2 is available online.

In addition, search results can now be sorted by the year that data collection started, and can be easily exported. Geographies now have a time component to reflect historical changes to country names or boundaries over (e.g., the Soviet Union).

Launched in March 2011 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the GHDx is the world’s largest catalog and repository of health-related data. It currently contains more than 8000 records with carefully researched information about data, including a standardized English title, local-language title, geography and time covered by the data, a suggested citation and information about current data providers. In addition, detailed keywords provide information about the topics that are covered by the data. Many datasets can be downloaded directly from the GHDx.