Library and Information Science Commons^™

Fall Town Hall On Research Data Management, Megan Hurst, Christine Madsen, Kristi Thompson

Western Libraries Presentations

This Town Hall was held to share recommendations for Research Data Management at Western that result from a gap analysis to understand the RDM needs at Western, conducted by Athenaeum21, a strategy and technology consultancy engaged by Western for this work. The recommendations will inform the implementation of Western’s Research Data Management Strategy, which shapes Research Data Management at Western for all researchers, grant funded or not, student or faculty, regardless of discipline.

Discourse, Power Dynamics, And Risk Amplification In Disaster Risk Management In Canada, Martins Oluwole Olu-Omotayo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The domain of disaster risk management is rife with discursive contentions, whereby dominant discourses amplify the powers of risk actors to precipitate and reinforce political, economic, and environmental inequalities that predispose different sections of the population to unequal disaster risk vulnerabilities. This thesis identified important actors (government, risk experts, media, and NGOs) that shape the power dynamics in disaster risk management in Canada and explained their roles, influences, and the dimensions in which their powers negotiate each other through risk discourses. The patterns of these power dynamics in the three aspects of power –communication, assessment, and social trust –were also …

Safe Sharing For Sensitive Data, Kristi Thompson

Western Libraries Presentations

This workshop focused on the question of when and how human subjects' data can be safely shared. It introduced the basics of data anonymization and discussed how to tell if a dataset has been de-identified. Case studies of successful anonymization and some spectacular failures were shared

Getting Started Analyzing Data In Spss, Kristi Thompson

Western Libraries Presentations

SPSS is a popular package for analyzing data. This session will discuss how to get started on a simple quantitative analysis project using SPSS. Topics covered will include getting summary statistics, creating and modifying variables, creating graphs, running simple analyses, and interpreting SPSS output.

A Qualitative Look Into Repair Practices, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This research poster is based on a working research paper which moves beyond the traditional scope of repair and examines the Right to Repair movement from a smaller, more personal lens by detailing the 6 categorical impediments as dubbed by Dr. Alissa Centivany (design, law, economic/business strategy, material asymmetry, informational asymmetry, and social impediments) have continuously inhibited repair and affected repair practices, which has consequently had larger implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) on ourselves, our objects, and our world. The poster builds upon my research from last year (see "The Right to Repair: (Re)building a better future"), this time pulling …

Understanding The Enumerated World: Making Sense Of Data As An Information Source, Kristi Thompson, Elizabeth Hill, Alexandra Cooper

Western Libraries Publications

Chapter in ACRL publication The Data Literacy Cookbook.

This recipe is a guide to preparing an instructional session aimed at postsecondary students in the social or health sciences or related disciplines on locating, evaluating, and using secondary data sources as information resources. Who collects data? Where can you access them? Why are data available on some topics and not others? Why are some statistics available at a detailed level of geography and others only nationally? What are some key limitations of official statistics, and where can information be found to fill in the gaps? This recipe uses these questions to …

Making Sense Of Online Public Health Debates With Visual Analytics Systems, Anton Ninkov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Online debates occur frequently and on a wide variety of topics. Particularly, online debates about various public health topics (e.g., vaccines, statins, cannabis, dieting plans) are prevalent in today’s society. These debates are important because of the real-world implications they can have on public health. Therefore, it is important for public health stakeholders (i.e., those with a vested interest in public health) and the general public to have the ability to make sense of these debates quickly and effectively. This dissertation investigates ways of enabling sense-making of these debates with the use of visual analytics systems (VASes). VASes are computational …

Rdc Data Alternatives: Conducting Research During Covid-19, Kristi Thompson, Elizabeth Hill

Western Libraries Presentations

Recent physical distancing protocols pertaining to the COVID-19 Pandemic have meant that RDC researchers need to find alternatives ways of carrying out their research. The Real Time Remote Access (RTRA) program offers one alternative way to access confidential Statistics Canada data. Other options include using the Statistics Canada public use files and analyzing data from other sources.

The presenters, data librarians from Western Libraries will discuss the differences between the data that can be accessed through the RTRA the RDC. RTRA data is a very useful option for some types of questions but also has some important limitations. We will …

Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide, Ocul Data Community (Odc) Data Rescue Group

Western Libraries Publications

he aim of the Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide is to provide an accessible and hands-on approach to handling data rescue and digital curation of at-risk data for use in secondary research. We provide a set of examples and workflows for addressing common challenges with social science survey data that can be applied to other social and behavioural research data. The goal of this guide and set of workflows presented is to improve librarians’ and data curators’ skills in providing access to high-quality, well-documented, and reusable research data. The aspects of data curation that are addressed throughout this …