data library services at the university of edinburgh
TRANSCRIPT
Data Library Services at the University of EdinburghROBIN RICE, DATA LIBRARIAN, [email protected]
SHINE MEETING, EDINBURGH, 28 MAY 2015
OverviewWhat is a data library?
The Data Library in context
How the Data Library service has evolved
Research Data Management and the University
Edinburgh DataShare repository
Research Data Management Training (MANTRA) course
What is a data library?
A data library refers to both the content and the services that foster use of collections of numeric, audio-visual, textual or geospatial data sets for secondary use in research. A data library is normally part of a larger institution (academic, corporate, scientific, medical, governmental, etc.) established to serve the data users of that organisation.
The data library tends to house local data collections and provides access to them through various means (CD-/DVD-ROMs or central server for download). A data library may also maintain subscriptions to licensed data resources for its users to access.
Edinburgh University Data Library: History
Established out of the Program Library Unit in early 1980s to provide access to data on mainframes, e.g. 1981 population census data. Was part of Computing Services, now (merged) Information Services
Part of long tradition of sharing digital data for secondary analysis in the social sciences
Became a national data centre as EDINA in 1995/96 - data library continues University remit◦ celebrated 25th anniversary in 2008
EDINA & Data Library within ISDivisions
IS Corporate Office
User Services
Library and University Collections
IT Infrastructure
IS Applications
Learning, Teaching and Web
EDINA and Data Library
Digital Curation Centre
Information Services (IS) is led by the Chief Information Officer and Librarian to the University, and organised into 8 divisions.
Total of ~550 staff
EDINA and Data Library ~90 staff
Data Library team:• Data Librarian• Associate Data Librarian• 1.5 FTE Data Library Assistants• 0.5 FTE Software Engineer
International membership org: IASSIST
IASSIST is an international organization of professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences.
Data Library perspective: supporting data users Data Library established in 1983 to provide Population Census and other datasets for analysis
Follows a North American model of institutional support
We help users with queries like Does such data even exist? Where can I locate it? Who will pay for it? How can I access it? What does this documentation mean? How do I use it in X software?
Data Library service at UoE Consultancy (direct help for users) Catalogue (Drupal) – free and purchased/licensed datasets
IS Skills training
Part of IS service catalogue: Drill down to our services from Research Support Research Data Support
◦ Data Library & Consultancy◦ Research Data Management
8
Data Library key development projects
Each of these projects informed the evolution of the UoE Data Library services in a significant way.
What is Research Data Management?
An umbrella term to describe all aspects of planning, organising, documenting, storing sharing, and preserving data.
It also takes into account issues such as data protection and confidentiality.
It provides a framework that supports researchers and their data throughout the course of their research and beyond.
A data lifecycle:
Our RDM Programme: support throughout the data / research lifecycle
Edinburgh DataShare Built in 2007-09 with JISC funding as a pilot institutional open access data repository, with Oxford & Southampton
Now core service of the University RDM programme - multidisciplinary
Based on DSpace, metadata profile developed from dcterms (Similar to DataCite)
~ 250 datasets deposited so far; handles batch ingest, large file sizes (>10 GB)
New features being developed, on our own and via open source community
Pursuing trusted digital repository status via Data Seal of Approval
Harvested by Thomson-Reuters Data Citation Index
Issues DataCite DOIs
Research Data MANTRA course
Openly licensed, free, online self-paced course in RDM for researchers
Embedded in at least 3 graduate schools at UoE
Video stories from researchers in variety of settings
Interactive quizzes make it fun Data handling exercises in four software analysis packages
Four releases in 4 years
Academic Service Librarian Training
Data Library & User Services Division piloted training with 4 liaison librarians – then all (12 more)
Aimed to reuse MANTRA in a blended learning approach for academic liaison librarians
Materials gathered together in the DIY Training Kit for Librarians on the MANTRA website
http://www.mcphee.com/laf/
For further exploration UoE Data Library Services
◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library
UoE Information Services◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services
RDM landing page◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-management
MANTRA online training◦ http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra
Edinburgh Data Blog (can subscribe)◦ http://datablog.is.ed.ac.uk