Research Data Curation, Part Two: Libraries and Big Data

Introduction

Academic Libraries Get Ready: Big data is Here and it Needs a (caring) Home.

When the local supercomputing center approaches your library and asks, "Our users want services for sharing their digital research data - can you help?" Will your library be ready? Disseminating, archiving, preserving, and even curating the digital results of our grant funded research is a growing user-need for academic institutions. The University of Minnesota Libraries are piloting data curation services using existing tools and infrastructure, including our well established institutional repository. By developing common workflows for accessioning, ingest, description, access, and preservation of digital data assets, we hope to better understand the variety and scale of our users' data, big and small. Our approach builds on the metadata expertise and institutional repository infrastructures already in place - making this approach a practical first step for many academic libraries who can then respond to the opening question, "We can help!"

As Research Services Librarian and co-director of the University Digital Conservancy, Johnston coordinates the library's efforts around digital scholarship and research data management, access, and archiving. Prior to this she served as library liaison to the Physics, Astronomy, and Geology departments (2007-2011). Her research areas of focus are E-science, scientific data curation, citation analysis, information-seeking behavior and web development of user-centered tools to access information. She holds a Masters of Library Science and a Bachelors of Science in Astrophysics from Indiana University.

The Library's Role in Enabling Data Interaction for Researchers

Research libraries have recognized the potential for engaging researchers through data management services, particularly as they relate to the submission of grant proposal with data management plan (DMP) requirements. In response to the February 2013 White House OSTP memo, multiple federal agencies have followed the lead of NIH and NSF by requiring a DMP with the submission of proposals. While providing support for DMPs represents an important and useful step, it is important to remember that a DMP is a means, not an end. Ultimately, if DMPs -- and libraries that support them -- do not result in greater data access, sharing and preservation, then the goals of new science, collaboration, jobs and economic activity will not be achieved. This presentation will provide lessons learned from the development of the Johns Hopkins University Data Management Services (JHUDMS), including the impact of the Data Conservancy -- a community data infrastructure development effort -- and the archiving of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data.

Sayeed Choudhury is the Associate Dean for Research Data Management and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. He is also the Director of Operations for the Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) based at Johns Hopkins. He is a member of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information, the ICPSR Council, DuraSpace Board, and a Senior Presidential Fellow with the Council on Library and Information Resources. Previously, he was a member of the Digital Library Federation advisory committee, Library of Congress' National Digital Stewardship Alliance Coordinating Committee and Federation of Earth Scientists Information Partnership (ESIP) Executive Committee. He has been a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the recipient of the 2012 OCLC/LITA Kilgour Award. He has testified for the Research Subcommittee of the Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Building Communities and Services to Support Data-Intensive Research

Data is the new currency of scientific and social progress. As part of the California Digital Library, the UC Curation Center (UC3) is creating a comprehensive set of tools and services to assist researchers throughout the research and data lifecycles. Many of these projects involve partners both within the UC system and beyond, and represent successful collaborations with museums, libraries, researchers, and funders. 

Carly Strasser is a Data Curation Project Manager at the California Digital Library University of California Curation Center (UC3). She received her Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the MIT-WHOI Joint Program and has since transitioned to working on issues related to scientific data sharing. She currently is the project manager for the the Data Curation for Excel (DCXL) project at UC3.