UW Students: Win a $75 UW Bookstore gift card at this year’s UW GIS Day!

UW GIS Day is coming up fast, with a full day of events planned for Wednesday, November 18. GIS Day is an international event that showcases how GIS can be used to make a difference in society. UW students have the chance to win a $75 UBookstore gift card by participating in the student presentation session.

All you need to do is give a 5 minute lightning talk at UW GIS Day. We're looking for 8 students who have used GIS in a project or as part of their undergraduate research to give lightning talks. Audience members will vote on their favorite based on style and content. The winner will receive a $75 UW Bookstore gift card!

Submit your proposal for a lightning talk here: www.bitly.com/uwgisdaytalks.

Wednesday, November 18th is GIS Day and the University of Washington will highlight and celebrate the transformational role of Geographic Information Science (GIS) by hosting a day-long event in the UW Libraries' Research Commons. Updated event information is posted here: www.bitly.com/2015uwgisday. It's a fun and fast-paced day of GIS goodness that covers a wide variety of disciplines.

Contact Matt Parsons at parsonsm@uw.edu for more information.

We hope you will join us!

Data Sharing Issue of Journal of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication

Hot off the presses: a new special issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (Vol 3, Iss 2, September 2015) is dedicated to research data sharing. Articles include topics such as accessible research data, institutional data polices, data sharing practices, data citation and data management plans, as well Amanda Whitmire's write up "Implementing a Graduate-Level Research Data Management Course: Approach, Outcomes and Lessons Learned." In addition, data from the article is included in the JLSC's dataverse. Looking forward to checking out many, if not most of these articles in the very near future.

Data Webinars, Live and Recorded

Needing a refresher on data your data reference skills? Looking for background information on a particular type of data? Check out the following webinars focused on data and data reference:

On August 18, data librarians Hailey Mooney and Jen Darragh will present a webinar aimed at helping you answer patrons' data and statistics questions. "Data for the Non-Data Librarian" will be held from 11PST/2EST, and will hit topics such as the difference between data and statistics, search strategies for both, ways of finding local area data, and how to leverage free and paid data resources. Register at http://ow.ly/QMAOR.

Earlier today, the Government Resources Section of the North Carolina Library Association hosted the latest in their "Help, I'm an Accidental Government Information Librarian" webinars. Kristin Partlo presented "Accessing Datasets for the Data Curious," which included information on helping patrons download data, exploring the relevance of a dataset, and alerting patrons to common pitfalls and patterns. This series of webinars is archived online: other webinars covered court records, environmental data, the National Archives, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, geocoding, and many (many!) more, most of which have the slides and recorded session available.

IASSIST2015 Research Data Management Sessions

The International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST2015) upcoming conference (Bridging the Data Divide: Data in the International Context) is highly focused on data, with tracks on research data management, data services professional development, and data infrastructure and applications. It draws an international crowd that skews social science, but other types of data librarians/curators/managers are also in attendance in large numbers. There are typically multiple sessions in each block that a data librarian might want to attend, and trying to pick through based simply on track might have you missing some excellent offerings in another area.

That said, my job is "data curriculum and communications librarian," so my interests lie primarily in data services, policy, marketing and communications, and teaching and education. I've picked through the schedule and am sharing here the sessions I plan on attending. And though there's a large number of posters and pecha kucha talks I'm interested in, I highlighted the ones that best matched my primary interests.

Check out the list here goo.gl/BQ5Zvw, and feel free to share your own list in the comments below.

ALA 2015 Research Data Management/Curation Programming

ALA hasn't historically been known for a heavy dose of data librarian-related sessions or presentations, but it's worth taking a look at this year's annual conference (#alaac15). There's a small but topical group of sessions that will be of interest to data librarians/curators, including a data management plan preconference, a two-part session on data visualization in the library, and a panel presentation from DCIG titled "Conversations with Digital Curation Practitioners," with talks from three speakers and a chance for Q&A.

If you're heading to San Francisco, check out the list of data-related sessions here https://goo.gl/PStgkZ. If I've left anything off, please let me know in the comments. And make sure to tweet as you conference! We'll be watching the hashtag for data-related comments.

Upcoming data speakers on UW Campus

Several upcoming speakers on the UW campus will be of interest to local data folks:

• Tuesday, April 28 @ 1:30, Data Science Studio, 6th floor Physics/Astronomy Tower. Tony Hey will speak on Physics and Computing: Open Science Decoded. Abstract: "The talk will start with the OSTP memo on open access, and then go on to discuss executable papers and best practice for reproducibility of computational physics research. After looking at computing for Big Physics (e.g. the ATLAS collaboration at the CERN LHC), for Medium-scale Physics (with the UK's Collaborative Computational Projects), and for Long Tail Physics, the paper ends with some comments about open source, scientific software quality and career paths for scientific software developers."
• Wednesday, April 29 @ 2pm, Allen Auditorium, Allen Library. Data Librarian Jenny Muilenburg will address Data Management Plans: Reading, Writing, and Sharing. Topics will include some of the different agency requirements around DMPs, some local resources to help create DMPs, and some examples from different disciplines.
• Wednesday, April 29 @ 3:30pm, Data Science Studio. Cesar Hidalgo from the MIT Media Lab, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies. Abstract: "The universe is made of energy, matter and information; but information is what makes the universe interesting. Without information, the universe would lack the shapes, structures, and order that gives the universe both its beauty and complexity. But where does information comes from and what are the natural, social, and economic mechanisms that help information grow? In this talk I will describe the growth of physical order—or information—from atoms to economies by explaining the physical mechanisms that allow order to exist, and the social and economic mechanisms that allow order to prevail in our society and economy."
• Tuesday, May 5 @ 4pm, Data Science Studio. There will be an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT)Info Session and Reception, useful for those wanting to know more about the Big Data IGERT PhD fellowship or the PhD program. Brief presentations from several IGERT students on current research will be features, as well as a Q&A session.

Data Management Plan Learning Session: 4/29, 2-3:30pm

On Wednesday, April 29, data librarian Jenny Muilenburg will lead a learning session titled "Data Management Plans: Reading, Writing and Sharing," from 2-3:30pm in the Allen Auditorium (Allen Library, University of Washington). During this 90 minutes, attendees will spend time learning about the different disciplinary and/or agency requirements for data management plans (DMPs), and will look at some examples from different disciplines. Tools and resources available to UW patrons will also be introduced, including DMP consults by librarians and DMPTool.

If you're unfamiliar with data management plans (or research data management in general), these very short videos from the University of Minnesota are a great introduction, and will be good preparation for the session.

This workshop is the last in a series began last fall. The first two were "Data Librarianship: Skills and Definitions," and "Archives & Repositories." See the workshop links here: http://staffweb.lib.washington.edu/units/Research-data-services/news/monday-april-20-2-3-30pm-data-management-plans-reading-writing-and-sharing.