Data Curation Education in Research Centers Poster

The volume of scientific data is growing exponentially across all scientific disciplines. Competent information professionals are needed to sort, catalog, store, and retrieve this data for future research and education requirements. In response to this need, the goal of the Data Curation Education in Research Centers (DCERC) project is to develop curriculum to educate information science students in the critical field of scientific data curation. Three masters degree students at University of Tennessee (UT) and three doctoral students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign are completing year one of the program. Each brings to the field of data curation skills obtained from prior work in diverse scientific and engineering professions. In the summers of 2012 and 2013, the masters students will travel to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, to work alongside scientists and researchers and to experience the demands of data curation at the source of data creation. The NCAR experience will allow students to assimilate the skills learned from the Fundamentals in Data Curation course, which will be completed in Spring 2012. This poster session will display and demonstrate the goals, student achievements, and overall program performance by providing examples of the specific skill sets the students are obtaining, projects they are completing, and expected future milestones

Data Services Librarians’ Responsibilities and Perspectives on Research Data Management

This study of data services librarians is part of a series of studies examining the current roles and perspectives on Research Data Management (RDM) services in higher education. Reviewing current best practices provides insights into the role-based responsibilities for RDM services that data services librarians perform, as well as ways to improve and create new services to meet the needs of their respective university communities. Objectives: The objectives of this article are to provide the context of research data services through a review of past studies, explain how they informed this qualitative study, and provide the methods and results of the current study. This study provides an in-depth overview of the overall job responsibilities of data services librarians and as well as their perspectives on RDM through job analyses. Methods: Job analysis interviews provide insight and context to the tasks employees do as described in their own words. Interviews with 10 data services librarians recruited from the top 10 public and top 10 private universities according to the 2020 Best National University Rankings in the US News and World Reports were asked 30 questions concerning their overall job tasks and perspectives on RDM. Five public and five private data services librarians were interviewed. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions were analyzed in NVivo using a grounded theory application of open, axial, and selective coding to generate categories and broad themes based on the responses using synonymous meanings. Results: The results presented here provide the typical job tasks of data services librarians that include locating secondary data, reviewing data management plans (DMPs), conducting outreach, collaborating, and offering RDM training. Fewer data services librarians assisted with data curation or manage an institutional repository. Discussion: The results indicate that there may be different types of data services librarians depending on the mix of responsibilities. Academic librarianship will benefit from further delineation of job titles using tasks while planning, advertising, hiring, and evaluating workers in this emerging area. There remain many other explorations needed to understand the challenges and opportunities for data services librarians related to RDM. Conclusions: This article concludes with a proposed matrix of job tasks that indicates different types of data services librarians to inform further study. Future job descriptions, training, and education will all benefit from differentiating between the many associated research data services roles and with increased focus on research data greater specializations will emerge

Open Research Toolkit List of References

The Open Research Toolkit was created by Christopher Eaker during Faculty Development Leave, Fall 2021. While this toolkit was designed for librarians for learning open research concepts and skills and teaching them at their institutions, it would be useful for anyone interested in learning more about open research. Any questions related to this content can be directed to the author

Planning Data Management Education Initiatives: Process, Feedback, and Future Directions

Educating researchers in sound data management skills is a hot topic in today’s data intensive research world. Librarians across the country and the world are taking the lead in offering this training to their campus research communities. In Fall, 2013, the Data Curation Librarian at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, held a one-day “Data Management Basics” Workshop geared towards graduate students in engineering and science disciplines based on the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum. Students were asked to complete a pre-workshop survey and a series of seven post-module surveys throughout the day. This article discusses the results of the survey feedback, the planning process, and elaborates on important variables in planning data management training initiatives, such as disciplinary adjustments and time constraints. The article concludes with a discussion of the author’s future plans for providing training initiatives based on the feedback he received

Empirical Librarians Conference

Repository for presentation materials for the Empirical Librarians Conference. For more information, go to https://www.lib.utk.edu/emplibs

Data Sharing Practices of Agricultural Researchers and Their Implications for the Land-Grant University Mission

Poster SessionSince passage of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and the subsequent Hatch Act of 1887 and Smith-Lever Act of 1914, land-grant universities have conducted basic and applied research in agricultural sciences and disseminated the results of that research to citizens of their respective states. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 clearly states the purpose of the cooperative agricultural extension component of the land-grant university as “...the development of practical applications of research knowledge and giving of instruction and practical demonstrations of existing or improved practices or technologies in agriculture...” Thus, as a significant goal of the land-grant university, this dissemination of new knowledge, applications, and technologies hinges on the effective management of data and subsequent sharing of that data. This project will explore the data management practices and data sharing attitudes among agricultural researchers at two public land-grant institutions, one in the southeastern United States and one in the mountain region of the United States. The researchers intend to determine how these practices and attitudes serve the mission of the land-grant university as stated within the Morrill Act of 1862. This poster will share the initial results of the research project by explaining research methodology, defining study population, sharing preliminary findings, and presenting possible future directions

How information science professionals add value in a scientific research center

In response to the increasing need for a data curation workforce, the Data Curation Education in Research Centers program is educating library and information science students in scientific data curation. During the summer of 2012, the authors worked alongside scientists and data managers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to learn data curation within the context of a research center. Each student was matched with a “Science Mentor” and a “Data Mentor” based on prior work experience and the results of a placement questionnaire completed before the internship. Though NCAR has robust data services, we found that there was nevertheless still a role for data curators who can foster close collaborations between scientists and repository managers that may have traditionally not existed. This collaboration supports an otherwise impossible mutual education that benefits all involved. This poster demonstrates tangible outcomes of these internships.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Research Data Management Services: A Primer

<p>Presentation file from the Introduction to Research Data Managment Services worskhop at the Charleston Conference 2015, co-sponsored by ALCTS and the Charleston Conference.  </p