Vittore Casarosa

Research Data Management in the Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach☆

Abstract Research Data Management is broadly understood as collecting, analyzing, publishing, reanalyzing, critiquing, and reusing data. The increase of digital content in the broad areas of Institutional and domain specific Repositories, Libraries, Archives and Museums and the increased interest in the sharing and preservation of “research data” have triggered the emergence of new roles such as Data Curator. The paper refers about the on-going investigation of current data curator education and training programs with regard to the role of information professionals and/or data scientists in the research lifecycle. The investigation has been based on a series of workshops and events discussing the concerns of researchers and teachers about digital library and digital curation. A first list of competencies and skills at technical and operational level that professionals should have, has been evidenced. The theoretical framework and structure of educational programmes should have sufficient flexibility to accommodate the needs of various groups of specialists.

Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries -- TPDL 2013 Selected Workshops

This article describes a case study of a small research group collecting and managing data from a pair of long-running experimental campaigns, detailing the data management and publication processes in place at the time of the experiments. It highlights the reasons why publications became disconnected from their underlying data in the past, and identifies the new processes and principles which aim to address these issues.

Towards a Methodology for Publishing Library Linked Data

It is argued that linked data are becoming increasingly necessary for libraries and related institutions, such as galleries, museums and archives. Though libraries are potentially crucial players in the linked data movement, very often there is lack of knowledge among librarians on how to publish linked data. This paper presents the results of a master thesis whose main aim was to empower libraries to take an effective part in publishing linked data thereby contributing to building the semantic web, in order to improve the general services which they offer. In a narrower sense, this research aims to draw a methodology applicable to the library domain in publishing linked data. A 15-step methodology is presented and illustrated in some detail.

Closing the Gap: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Research and Education for Digital Libraries

Two major themes continue to be a subject of discussion when dealing with digital libraries: how should the education programs in LIS (Library and Information Science) schools be changed or updated in order to provide the needed knowledge (skills ?) for librarians in the digital age and, closely related, how could the three major memory institutions (libraries, archives and museums) define common educational curricula for professionals in the three domains, now that the digital age is blurring the boundaries between the three profession. In this paper we will present some considerations about the first topic, in order to share the experience gained through the organization and the participation in five events, having as theme the educational needs of the new librarians and the possible synergies of research and education in the field of digital libraries. It is hoped that it can serve as a further stimulus for discussions and for the definition of possible common actions in the digital libraries community.

iSchools building on the strengths found in the convergence of librarianship, archival, and museum studies to improve the education of managing digital collections

The half day workshop will explore ways iSchools can participate in research and education relevant to the employment of information professionals in libraries, archives, and museums to provide access to and preservation of the collections held by these institutions. Presently, the education of information professionals for each of these institutions has primarily separate and diverse tracks and traditions. While some schools educating librarians do offer courses that include discussion of the application of library and information science skills to archival and museum collections, few offer full specializations in this area. Archival education has traditionally been based on degrees in history, but as the archival collections have utilized more digitalization to provide preservation and expand access to the content of collections, the need for staff with more knowledge of skills related to the preservation and expansion of access to archival collections has been recognized. Similar recognition of the importance of information profession skills is being recognized in museum studies, an area that in the past has depended on specialized subject discipline education coupled with an internship/apprenticeship-based training.

Digital Curators’ Education: Professional Identity vs. Convergence of LAM (Libraries, Archives, Museums)

Digital curation education is a new subject where the convergence between libraries, archives, museums and computer science seems to build an interdisciplinary bridge, with common competences needed by present and future professionals. The study methodology is based on: the literature review, on the proceedings of the Puerto Rico Conference organised by IFLA on “Education for Digital Curation” and on the findings of a Delphi study which has been done for a Thesis of the International Master DILL. Issues and problematic areas for further study and discussions are evidenced.

The Europeana Network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy Data Infrastructure

Epigraphic archives, containing collections of editions about ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions, have been created in several European countries during the last couple of centuries. Today, the project EAGLE (Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy, a Best Practice Network partially funded by the European Commission) aims at providing a single access point for the content of about 15 epigraphic archives, totaling about 1,5M digital objects. This paper illustrates some of the challenges encountered and their solution for the realization of the EAGLE data infrastructure. The challenges mainly concern the harmonization, interoperability and service integration issues caused by the aggregation of metadata from heterogeneous archives (different data models and metadata schemas, and exchange formats). EAGLE has defined a common data model for epigraphic information, into which data models from different archives can be optimally mapped. The data infrastructure is based on the D-NET software toolkit, capable of dealing with data collection, mapping, cleaning, indexing, and access provisioning through web portals or standard access protocols.

Improving Online Access to Archival Data

Archives are memory institutions whose original mission was to preserve and provide access to a set of carefully selected, arranged and described documents to a small number of scholars interested in their contents. For those specialists, the usual way to find information in an archive is by way of “finding aids”, i.e. descriptions of the arc-hive contents that reflect the hierarchical structure by which data are physically arranged in an archive. With the increased availability of archival holdings accessible on the Web, archives are now widening the range of users, and the use of online finding aids has proved to be too complicated for the non-specialists. This is mostly due to the hierarchical nature of the description, usually represented on line with a standard called EAD (Encoded Archival Description). This paper is the synopsis of a Master Thesis, where a methodology has been developed to represent the information contained in finding aids with a different standard, namely EDM (Europeana Data Model), which is used by the Europeana digital library and is becoming the de-facto standard for metadata interoperability. EDM allows a much more intuitive representation of the archive content and the possibility to access data from many different access points.

The European Project OpenUP: OPENing UP New Methods, Indicators and Tools for Peer Review, Impact Measurement and Dissemination of Research Results.

Open Access and Open Scholarship are substantially changing the way scholarly artefacts are evaluated, published and assessed, while the introduction of new technologies and media in scientific workflows has changed the “how and to whom” science is communicated, and how stakeholders interact with the scientific community. OpenUP addresses key aspects and challenges of the currently transforming science landscape. Its main objectives are to: (i) identify and determine new mechanisms, processes and tools for the peer-review of all types of research results (publications, data, software, processes, etc.); (ii) explore, identify and classify innovative dissemination mechanisms with an outreach aim towards businesses and industry, education, and society as a whole; (iii) analyse and identify a set of novel indicators that assess the impact of research results and correlate them to channels of dissemination.

Who Is the Data Curator? Defining a Vocabulary

In 2016, the IFLA Section Library Theory and Research has (partially) funded the research project “Data curator who is s/he?” to clarify the profile of data curator. The main goal of the project was to define characteristics of roles and responsibilities of data curators in the international and interdisciplinary contexts. The research questions of the Project were: