Digital Commons Network^™

Making The Transition From Text To Data Repositories, Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Robert Schwarzwalder

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) has been a national leader in developing repository strategies for digital text and image files. Stanford University Libraries began work on long-term preservation and access to geospatial data over five years ago after being awarded a Library of Congress grant through the National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The desire to build on this expertise led to an initiative two years ago to develop a strategy for acquiring, preserving, managing and providing services for a broader range of scientific and technical data. Progress to date has included: a better understanding …

Creating A University Research Data Registry: Enabling Compliance, And Raising The Profile Of Research Data At The University Of Melbourne, Simon Porter, Anna Shadbolt

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

The University of Melbourne is one of the richest sources of research data in Australia making it a highly desirable contributor to Australia’s emerging Research Data Commons – an initiative of the nationally funded Australian Research Data Service (ANDS). This paper will outline how The University of Melbourne partnered with (ANDS) to test a framework for exposing a number of research data collections from a variety of research communities at the university. It will identify how the project evolved with multiple agendas including;

1) The need to enable university research data and records policy compliance.

2) Participation in the national …

E-Science And Data Support Services: A Survey Of Arl Members, Catherine Soehner, Catherine Steeves, Jennifer Ward

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

After working for several years to promote research library support for e-science and e-research, the Association of Research Libraries E-science Working Group surveyed member libraries in the Fall of 2009 to gather data on the state of engagement with e-science issues. ARL members include the largest research libraries in the US and Canada and collectively support a substantial proportion of the North American research enterprise. The survey provides a current snapshot of data curation and e-science support activities, documenting a range of approaches and strategies evolving at research institutions and among research libraries.

The research libraries reported on widespread planning …

Data Curation: Just In Time, Or Just In Case?, Michael Lesk

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Fourth Plenary Session, Theme: Collaborations

Datastar: A Data Staging Repository To Support The Sharing And Publication Of Research Data, Gail Steinhart

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

The opportunities for new discoveries made possible by the widespread availability of large amounts of data are much in the news, as are the challenges associated with sharing research data and preserving it for the long term. Cornell University Library is engaged in a pilot project (funded by the National Science Foundation) to test the feasibility of a local “staging” repository to support data sharing among research collaborators while research is in progress, and to provide tools and support to publish data to permanent disciplinary or institutional repositories. DataStaR (short for “Data Staging Repository”) aims to leverage local support and …

Building A 'Data Repository' For Heterogenous Technical Research Communities Through Collaborations, Jeroen Rombouts, Alenka Princic

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

The paper describes the project ‘3TU.Datacentrum’, an initiative of the libraries of the three Dutch Technical Universities. Its aim is to build a data curation facility for the improvement of data management, providing data curation services for data producers of the Technical Universities and enabling data reuse.

The libraries initiated this project in their function as information- and knowledge brokers in emerging e-science. Playing a role in the management of research data offers an opportunity to get more thoroughly involved in the scientific process and to interconnect research data with all other sources managed by the libraries.

The project builds …

Leveraging Institutional Partnerships And Individual Expertise To Support Translational Science: An Extension Of The Informationist Model, Layne Johnson, Julie Jacko, Linda Watson

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

In Fall 2009, the Health Sciences Libraries (HSL) and the Institute for Health Informatics (IHI) at the University of Minnesota jointly recruited a new position titled Translational Science Information Specialist and IHI-Library Fellow to serve as library liaison to the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, to co-direct the graduate program in health informatics, and to leverage expertise to support University-wide initiatives in E-Science and data services. The position built on experience with and commitment to the concept of “informationist”. This paper reports the opportunities, challenges and evolving critical role of the Information Specialist as “curator” and “translator” of health …

The Sdss And E-Science Archiving At The University Of Chicago Library, Barbara Kern, Dean Armstrong, Charles Blair, David Farley, Kathleen Feeney, Eileen Ielmini, Elisabeth Long, Daniel Meyer, Peggy Wilkins

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a co-operative scientific project involving over 25 institutions worldwide and managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) to map one- quarter of the entire sky in detail, determining the positions and absolute brightness of hundreds of millions of celestial objects. The project was completed in October 2008 and produced over 100 terabytes of data comprised of object catalogs, images, and spectra. While the project remained active, SDSS data was housed at Fermilab. As the project neared completion the SDSS project director (and University of Chicago faculty member) Richard Kron considered options for long …

Coordinated Research Support Services At Queensland University Of Technology, Australia, Martin Borchert, Joseph Young

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a large multidisciplinary university located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. QUT is increasing its research focus and is developing its research support services. It has adopted a model of collaboration between the Library, High Performance Computing and Research Support (HPC) and more broadly with Information Technology Services (ITS).

Research support services provided by the Library include the provision of information resources and discovery services, bibliographic management software, assistance with publishing (publishing strategies, identifying high impact journals, dealing with publishers and the peer review process), citation analysis and calculating authors’ H Index. Research data management services …

The E-Research Center: Transforming A Traditional Science Library, Martha Bedard, Johann Van Reenen

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

At the University of New Mexico Libraries (UL) a year long process engaged faculty, students and library personnel in developing a new mission for the Centennial Science and Engineering Library (CSEL) that will re-purpose it to serve the evolving need for facilitating e-research. The authors discuss the vision of the UL for being at the center of data intensive and cyber-enabled research and the planned development of the eResearch Center (eRC). They share the planning process and ideas to revitalize a 25 year old science and engineering library into a collaborative transdisciplinary research hub. Plans include installing low-latency and high-availability …

Library Applications, Collaborations, And Courses For Geodata And Geoinformatics, C. C. Miller

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

This paper will overview several library GIS and geoinformatics projects, collaborations, and initiatives at Purdue that, taken together, formulate a reasonable plan of attack for geolibrarians interested in tackling some (not all) of the issues rolled up into e-geoscience and geoinformatics. Included as examples are a metadata harvesting/catalog project, collaborations with domain faculty, courses developed and taught, and e-data efforts. From this handful of examples an argument will be made that aggressive and efficient individual geolibrarians can impact and indeed steer geoinformatics and interdisciplinary research efforts project by project, then campus by campus, and simultaneously develop and evolve their library …

E-Science At The University Of Minnesota: A Collaborative Approach, Lisa Johnston, Cody Hanson

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

In 2008 the University of Minnesota Libraries formed the E-science and Data Services Collaborative (EDSC). The group was formed amid an environment of emerging initiatives related to e-science at the University, and was intended to leverage our existing expertise, such as our nationally recognized assessments of researcher behavior, to develop new capacity and engage with campus partners to support e-science and data services. We will report on the EDSC’s progress to date, including the following four areas of focus:

• A Data Stewardship Report assessing requirements for support of e-science and data services, determining gaps in our capacity, and seeking …

Lessons Learned From A Two-Year Experience In Science Data Literacy Education, Jian Qin, John D'Ignazio

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

In spring 2008 and 2009, we offered a course “Scientific Data Management” to undergraduate and graduate students from science and technology majors with support from an NSF CCLI (award #0633447) grant. We actively advertised the course on campus and conducted outreach efforts to individual classes and faculty representing a wide range of science and technology disciplines. Each time the course was offered, we conducted pre- and post-course surveys to assess the instructional effectiveness and learning outcomes. This paper will describe our experience as well as lessons learned in three areas: science faculty perceptions on data management, effect of science curriculum …

Get On Your Boots: A Model For Low-Cost, Regional Professional Development For Science Librarians At The University Of Massachusetts, Maxine Schmidt, Rebecca Reznik-Zellen

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

The University of Massachusetts Five Campus System Science Librarians organized a low-cost, regional professional development program as part of a response to state-wide life science initiatives. Science Boot Camp for Librarians was envisioned as a casual but intensive immersion event into selected scientific subjects that employ networked computing capabilities for research and collaboration. The goal of the event was to provide librarians with subject awareness and networking opportunities to enable them to better engage faculty and research scientists with regard to e-science. This article focuses on the planning and execution of the event as an example of a successful, grass-roots …

Data Curation In Avian Ecology: A Case Study From Both The Scientist’S And Librarian’S View, Eric Snadjr

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

This case study of a data curation project, which is currently in progress, demonstrates how a team of scientists has worked, in partnership with librarians, to plan to preserve their scientific output in an institutional repository. In addition, this case study offers a unique perspective. The author worked as one of the scientists in this particular research group for 10 years and is currently a science librarian working on this data curation project. As a result, the author has been an “insider” in discussions in both the scientist and librarian camps and provides viewpoints from both the scientist and librarian …

Survey Of Eresearch Practices And Skills At Qut, Australia, Stephanie Bradbury, Martin Borchert

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a multidisciplinary university in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and has 40,000 students and 1,700 researchers. Notable eResearch infrastructure includes the QUT ePrints repository, Microsoft QUT Research Centre, the OAK (Open Access to Knowledge) Law Project, Cambia and leading research institutes.

The Australian Government, via the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), is funding institutions to identify and describe their research datasets, to develop and populate data repositories and collaborative infrastructure, and to seed the Australian Research Data Commons. QUT is currently broadening its range of research support services, including those to support the management of research …

Data Mining, Data Fusion, And Libraries, Katherine Chiang

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Our computerized world churns out data and their analysis is a challenge. Data mining and data fusion are two complementary approaches to processing dynamic, large and/or heterogeneous data. They are already used in various research disciplines and real‐world applications and that use will grow. This paper describes and defines these approaches using examples, and suggests possible services and applications by libraries. The focus is on eliciting the common information concepts that might be of interest, not on understanding the details of the computer/information science work, or the validity of the approach in solving a particular research or commercial problem.

User-Needs Assessment Of The Research Cyberinfrastructure For The 21st Century, Lisa Johnston

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

In support of the University of Minnesota’s goal to become one of the top three public research universities, the Research Cyberinfrastructure Alliance (RCA) was developed with the vision of facilitating access to state-of-the-art research computing systems and services, enhancing interdisciplinary research, and allowing researchers to explore radically new concepts, approaches, and tools. Founding members of the University’s RCA included individuals from college-level research computing units, the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and key leaders from the University’s Office of Information Technology (OIT), the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), and the University Libraries.

A key step for the RCA was …

Rsquared: Researching The Researchers. A Study Into How The Researchers At The University Of New South Wales Use And Share Research Data, Howard Amos, Maude Frances, Tom Ruthven

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

This paper presents a research study of data usage, creation and sharing within different research communities at UNSW. The study identifies emerging data usage and management needs within the e-research life cycle of diverse research communities. Comparison is made with the outcomes of other studies that have examined e-researcher work practices in relation to their data. The paper examines the findings to understand what role researchers see libraries having, and discusses the development of a framework that libraries can use to support the curation and management of data and the development of tools and library support services that can be …

Disciplinary Data Inventory: Introductory Plenary Session Comments, Jacob Carlson

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

Jacob Carlson's introductory comments to the second plenary session on the theme "Disciplinary Data Inventory" at the 31st IATUL conference

Covering The Last Mile: Developing E-Science Data Services With Liaison Librarians, Tracy A. Gabridge

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

No abstract provided.

Ensuring The Integrity, Accessibility, And Stewardship Of Research Data In The Digital Age, Daniel Kleppner

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

National Academy of Sciences, 2009

Remarks Before The Iatul, Arden L. Bement

International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 31st Annual Conference

31st IATUL conference opening comments by Arden Bement, Director of the Global Policy Research Institute, Purdue University