What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The Impact of Poor Data Management

This chapter highlights the importance of good data management practices by providing examples of problems a researcher may encounter when research data is poorly managed. It provides examples of actual situations when bad data management led to serious problems with data loss, research integrity, and worse. It also provides tips on how data management could have been done differently to encourage a more positive outcome

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

Selection and Appraisal of Digital Research Datasets

As the currency of science, data are important to preserve. However, since scientific research is producing ever-increasing volumes of data, it is impossible to preserve it all. Even if it were, not every data set ought to be preserved. For this reason, academic libraries need policies with criteria governing which data sets will be preserved and how to appraise them against those criteria. Appraisal and selection policies are commonplace in academic libraries for other materials, but many do not have complementary policies for data sets. If data are to be preserved, then academic libraries must have clear and useful selection and appraisal policies to govern which data sets will be selected for preservation. This chapter discusses challenges to creating and executing an appraisal and selection policy. Important considerations are whether it should be a sub-section of the library’s overall material collection development policy or a separate policy on its own. Likewise, should it be more similar in scope and form to the library’s traditional collection development policy or more similar to a special collections appraisal and selection policy? Should the policy be comprehensive across the entire lifecycle from ingest to disposition or just cover ingest? This chapter discusses these issues and offer alternatives for libraries to consider. Furthermore, this chapter introduces and explains the range of selection criteria libraries may consider when developing policies. It discusses each important criteria in depth, such as scientific or historical value, scarcity, relevance to institutional mission, and others. Lastly, it discusses life cycle management of data sets, such as periodic refreshing of files and determining when to deaccession data sets. Readers will find a thorough overview of the issues surrounding appraisal and selection of digital research data and will be equipped with the knowledge and resources to develop such policies in their institutions

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

Architectural History / Epigraphy - University of Tennessee Knoxville

The research in this data curation profile focuses on studying inscriptions from statue bases from the 4th and 5th centuries CE in a specific neighborhood of ancient Rome. There are 95 discrete texts that inscription hobbyists recorded in books and manuscripts during the Renaissance. Although the researcher is willing to share his data and has made it available on the university’s server, he would also be willing to submit his data to a disciplinary specific repository if it were available. However, within the discipline there are currently no standard methods of encoding inscriptions

#DitchTheSurvey: Expanding Methodological Diversity in LIS Research

Recent content analyses of LIS literature show that, by far, the most popular data collection method employed by librarians and library researchers is the survey. The authors of this article, all participants in the 2014 Institute for Research Design in Librarianship, recognize that there are sound reasons for using a survey. However, like any one method, its very nature limits the types of questions we can ask. Our profession’s excessive reliance on the survey likewise imposes excessive limitations on what we can know about our field and our users. This article summarizes recent studies of the methods most common to LIS studies, explores more deeply the benefits of using non-survey methods, and offers recommendations for future researchers. In short, this article is a call to arms: it is time to ditch the survey as our primary research method and think outside the checkbox. It is time to fully embrace evidence-based library and information practice and promote training in diverse research techniques

Data from Public Progress, Data Management and the Land Grant Mission

This article reports results from a survey about data management practices and attitudes sent to agriculture researchers and extension personnel at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) and the College of Agricultural Sciences and Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. Results confirm agriculture researchers, like many other scientists, continue to exhibit data management practices that fall short of generally accepted best practices. In addition, librarians, and others seeking to influence future behavior, may be informed by our finding of a relationship between the land-grant mission and researchers’ data management practices

Public Progress, Data Management and the Land Grant Mission: A Survey of Agriculture Researchers\u27 Practices and Attitudes at Two Land-Grant Institutions

This article reports results from a survey about data management practices and attitudes sent to agriculture researchers and extension personnel at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) and the College of Agricultural Sciences and Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. Results confirm agriculture researchers, like many other scientists, continue to exhibit data management practices that fall short of generally accepted best practices. In addition, librarians, and others seeking to influence future behavior, may be informed by our finding of a relationship between the land-grant mission and researchers\u27 data management practices

Data Curation Profiles Symposium Panel on the Experiences of Practitioners

The Data Curation Symposium was hosted by Purdue Libraries and was held September 24, 2012. The participants on the panel on experiences of practioners were Katie Dunn (RPI), Chris Eaker (University of Tennessee), Daureen Nesdill (University of Utah), Lisa Zilinski (University of Southern Florida),and Marianne Stowell-Bracke (Purdue University). Participants on the panel were asked to answer and discuss three questions: What were your goals in constructing a Data Curation Profile? What did you learn from using the Data Curation Profile? Have you or will you apply what you learned from the Data Curation Profile

The HLS Guide to Library School

The writers at Hack Library School have selected the content for this ebook based on the most practical advice for others to make the most of library school. The ebook is divided into three main sections: Before Library School, During Library School, and After Library School. Within these sections are sub-sections intended to help organize the content meaningfully. The authors hope that no matter what stage of library school readers find themselves in, they will be able to benefit from the collective wisdom within this guide