Jake Carlson

Developing an Approach for Data Management Education: A Report from the Data Information Literacy Project

This paper describes the initial results from the Data Information Literacy (DIL) project designed to identify the educational needs of graduate students across a variety of science disciplines and respond with effective educational interventions to meet those needs. The DIL project consists of five teams in disparate disciplines from four academic institutions in the United States. The project teams include a data librarian, a subject-specialist or information literacy librarian, and a faculty member representing a disciplinary group of students. Interviews with the students and faculty members present a detailed snapshot of graduate student needs in data management education. Following our study, educational programs addressing identified needs will be delivered in the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013. Our findings from the project interviews are analyzed here, with a preview of the training approaches that will be taken by the five teams.

Demystifying the data interview

Purpose – As libraries become more involved in curating research data, reference librarians will need to be trained in conducting data interviews with researchers to better understand their data and associated needs. This article seeks to identify and provide definitions for the basic terms and concepts of data curation for librarians to properly frame and carry out a data interview using the Data Curation Profiles (DCP) Toolkit.Design/methodology/approach – The DCP Toolkit is a semi‐structured interview designed to assist librarians in identifying the data curation needs of researchers. The components of the DCP Toolkit were analyzed to determine the base level of knowledge needed for librarians to conduct effective data interviews. Specific concepts, definitions, and examples were sought through a review of articles, case studies, practitioner resources and from the experiences of the Purdue University Libraries.Findings – Data curation concepts and terminology are not yet well‐defined and often vary ac...

Data Management and Sharing from the Perspective of Graduate Students: An Examination of the Culture and Practice at the Water Quality Field Station.

Libraries are actively seeking to identify and respond to the data management and curation needs of researchers. One important perspective often overlooked in acquiring an understanding is that of graduate students. This case study used the Data Curation Profile Toolkit to interview six graduate students working for agronomy researchers at the Water Quality Field Station (WQFS) research lab to understand the students’ practices with data, the challenges they face, and their attitudes toward managing and sharing data. Though a small study, this research could provide new insights for libraries creating data services, particularly in regard to graduate students.

Agronomy / Biofuels - Purdue University

The Graduate Student is collecting data that could be of use to others in her lab to augment their own research activities and may have value outside of her lab as well. She believes that data needs to be shared in her research community to better communicate findings and is quite willing to share her own data as an appendix to her eventual publications. However, she is uncertain as to which journals in her field would accept data as a part of the publication. In order to be useful her data would need to be connected to the corresponding article as the article would contain a description of her methodologies in generating and working the data, information that would be needed for others to understand the data. Her data may require additional labeling or descriptions before it could be used by other researchers in her field.

Agricultural and Biological Engineering / Eco-Hydrology - Purdue University

The graduate student employs multiple types of data to develop and validate a new application of an existing model, SWAT, traditionally used in assessing environmental impacts. Many of these data types are generated by other students and, as no standardized policies or procedures for documenting, describing or organizing the data are in place, it is sometimes difficult for her to understand and make use of the data. The graduate student is aware of the need for her to consider additional uses of her data by others once she graduates but is not sure how to address this need in developing her own data. As a graduate student, she feels that she lacks the knowledge, experience and position to address the need for common approaches and practices to handling data. Talks on these subjects have begun amongst the graduate students in her lab and things are beginning to improve.

Agronomy / Land Use - Purdue University

Section 1 Brief summary of data curation needs The largest issue with the data set according to the Graduate Student is the separation of the data from its documentation, which is contained in a physical lab notebook. This separation of data and documentation presents a barrier to sharing the data with others, as the data set cannot be easily understood just from looking at the files themselves. The Graduate Student illustrated these barriers through recounting a time where he shared his data with a graduate student in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering department and the subsequent exchanges that were needed to explain the data sufficiently. The information contained in his physical lab notebook would not be easy to integrate with digital data files.

Agronomy / Soil Microbiology - Purdue University

Section 1 Brief summary of data curation needs The Graduate Student has developed her own method of organizing her data that has worked well for her overall. Her lab notebook serves as the primary means of documentation for her data, but as it is in a physical form, the information it contains is not easily associated with the digital files that comprise her data set, nor is the information easily accessible to others. The Graduate Student will print out her data and paste them into her lab notebook, a rather cumbersome process. Although the lab notebooks were not observed by the author, it sounded as though the Graduate Student is quite thorough in documenting her work. The Graduate Student also builds in redundancies into her spreadsheets enabling her to trace back the provenance of her data.

Supplementary Data for 'How Important Are Data Curation Activities to Researchers? Gaps and Opportunities for Academic Libraries'

Data were collected from the two protocols (ratings and worksheet answers) and analyzed by institution. Blanks indicate that no data was collected at that institution for that data curation activity.

How are we Measuring Up? Evaluating Research Data Services in Academic Libraries

INTRODUCTION In the years since the emergence of federal funding agency data management and sharing requirements ( http://datasharing.sparcopen.org/data ), research data services (RDS) have expanded to dozens of academic libraries in the United States. As these services have matured, service providers have begun to assess them. Given a lack of practical guidance in the literature, we seek to begin the discussion with several case studies and an exploration of four approaches suitable to assessing these emerging services. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM This article examines five case studies that vary by staffing, drivers, and institutional context in order to begin a practice-oriented conversation about how to evaluate and assess research data services in academic libraries. The case studies highlight some commonly discussed challenges, including insufficient training and resources, competing demands for evaluation efforts, and the tension between evidence that can be easily gathered and that which addresses our most important questions. We explore reflective practice, formative evaluation, developmental evaluation, and evidence-based library and information practice for ideas to advance practice. NEXT STEPS Data specialists engaged in providing research data services need strategies and tools with which to make decisions about their services. These range from identifying stakeholder needs to refining existing services to determining when to extend and discontinue declining services. While the landscape of research data services is broad and diverse, there are common needs that we can address as a community. To that end, we have created a community-owned space to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and existing resources.

Agriculture/ Graduate Students/ Carlson & Bracke/ Purdue University/ 2014

that they have the knowledge and skills needed to education. Students that do acquire proficiencies on the job and at the problem that information -suited to address (Haendel, et.al., 2012) (Molloy & Snow, Project (Carlson, et.al., 2013) were launched the need for data education. Tools and resources are 1 . And many librarians are offering workshops (Eaker, 2 , or even credit bearing courses (Whitmire, 2013). define what should be taught and what teaching data literacy is their lasting impact the cultures and practices surrounding data : http://library.umassmed.edu/necdmc Marianne Stowell Bracke Purdue University