Birds, Groundhogs, and Squirrels

It takes a strong data science community and many stakeholders to make disparate types of data work so that you and I can continue to explore and learn. Being proactive by including diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) policies and practices, along with evaluating liaison/outreach roles and established programs and tools, will go a long way in strengthening the library, its staff and services, and the institution. Fighting for the “food” you need to grow the profession and data services is key to the future of the RDM library community

Open Access, Open Data, and Open Scholarship

The Journal of eScience Librarianship is in the “business of scholarship” and dedicated to openly disseminating the theory and practice of librarians who are active in data-driven research, open access, science, and data. This issue’s authors write about developing programs, tools, and frameworks in support of open data and data management

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Data Librarians: Connections that Resonate

Key themes in Dickens’ novel, transformation and resurrection, darkness and light, and social justice are firmly connected to the work being done in data. Data librarians can make a difference in times like these: resurrecting data, transforming how students, researchers, or the public think about and use data; unearthing and bringing to light historical data that will give context and meaning to an issue; and that accessible data can help address, and perhaps solve, social justice issues

The Rewards of Library Publishing at an Academic Medical Research Center

This presentation was presented as part of a panel on Library as Publisher: The challenge of hosting student and faculty journals. A panel of speakers will discuss experiences with library-based publishing including successes, challenges, and how the library’s position as publisher has changed over time. What support is necessary and available for libraries and librarians, as they consider these new responsibilities? The discussion will explore the library’s role in publishing journals both in STEM and other disciplines. Following speaker presentations, participants will engage in roundtable discussions centered around these topics. Presented for the ACRL STS Hot Topics Discussion session at the American Library Association Annual Conference, Washington DC, June 23, 2019

Opening Medical Humanities to the World: Reflecting on Library Support for the Medical Humanities Lab

This poster tells the story of how the Lamar Soutter Library at UMass Medical School has successfully collaborated with faculty leaders and medical students to launch the Medical Humanities Lab, which integrates the arts and humanities into medical education and healthcare through student, faculty, and staff collaborations fostering humanism in medicine. The Library has provided leadership, technology expertise, space for in-person meetings, logistical support for virtual meetings during the pandemic, and promotional assistance. In just over a year, the Lab has sponsored a dozen projects, including a storytelling event, a creative writing and photography journal, a blog, two podcasts, and a creative writing website. The projects, many of which are openly accessible, address important themes including health inequality and the impact of incarceration on medical care. This poster showcases this partnership; highlights projects, challenges, and facilitators of success; and features a survey and a multimedia sample from our projects

Medical Humanities Lab: Re-envisioning library services to foster the growth of medical humanities in education and healthcare

In this virtual presentation for the Medical Library Association Health Humanities Caucus, learn how UMass Chan Medical School’s Lamar Soutter Library successfully collaborates with faculty leaders and medical students in the Medical Humanities Lab, an initiative which integrates the arts and humanities into medical education and healthcare through student, faculty, and staff collaborations fostering humanism in medicine. The Library has provided leadership, technology expertise, space for in-person meetings, logistical support for virtual meetings, and promotional assistance. Over the past 3+ years, the Lab has sponsored projects, including a storytelling event, a creative writing and photography journal, a blog, two podcasts, and a creative writing website. The projects, many of which are openly accessible, address important themes including health inequality and the impact of incarceration on medical care. This presentation discusses the partnership, highlights projects, challenges, and facilitators of success, and features multimedia samples from our projects. Attendees also brainstormed new ways that their library can support medical humanities at their institution

Best Practices for Data Sharing and Deposit for Librarian Authors

Sharing data is now encouraged by major funding agencies, and many journals require it as a prerequisite for publication. While many of the hard science journals have implemented ‘Data Deposit Requirements’ and ‘Policies’, in the Library Science literature, publishers are beginning to move titles into open access journals, but data deposit requirements are just beginning to be addressed. Librarian authors will increasingly find themselves having to comply with data sharing policies. In this webinar, we look at examples from the Journal of the Medical Library Association and the Journal of eScience Librarianship and discuss best practices in data deposit

Leading Through a Crisis: The Application of Servant Leadership During COVID-19

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lamar Soutter Library was faced with moving off campus and into a remote work environment. As the crisis unfolded, it was critical for staff to experience a unified leadership team that was dedicated to their well-being, empathetic to the unprecedented situation, and committed to providing exceptional service. At that time, library leaders made a conscious decision to apply the principles of servant leadership as the framework for how, as a team, the library would see its way through the pandemic. What follows is a case study in the application of servant leadership in an academic health sciences library during the COVID-19 crisis

Baseball and Research Data Management (RDM) Planning: It’s All About Depth and Data

As any lover of the game of baseball knows, at this time of year it’s all about depth – what you built in the farm system and on the bench matters; the data crunched before and during the season comes into play when managing a team to the World Series. Gut feelings and hunches matter too. Since being affected by the Federal government’s open data requirements, libraries and their institutions have been building research data management services and opportunities for researchers. There were libraries and institutions ready to jump into the fray of an ever-evolving RDM landscape, and currently, these services are being assessed in order to expand the depth and breadth of their RDM offerings.</p

In Honor of Peer Reviewers

There is ongoing debate in the scholarly community on the challenges and changes to peer review in an open access environment. The Journal of eScience Librarianship is monitoring these discussions, as well as being proactive in recognizing peer reviewers for their service to data science librarianship