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Preface
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- The Data Librarian's Handbook
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- 31 December 2016, pp xi-xiv
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Summary
This is not the first book written about data librarianship, and hopefully it will not be the last, but it is one of very few, all written within the past few years, that reflects the growing interest in research data support. Academic data librarians help staff and students with all aspects of this peculiar class of digital information – its use, preservation and curation, and how to support researchers’ production and consumption of it in ever greater volumes, to create new knowledge.
Our aim is to offer an insider's view of data librarianship as it is today, with plenty of practical examples and advice. At times we try to link this to wider academic research agendas and scholarly communication trends past, present and future, while grounding these thoughts back in the everyday work of data librarians and other information professionals.
We would like to tell you a little bit about ourselves as the authors, but first a word about you. We have two primary groups of readers in mind for this book: library and iSchool students and their teachers, and working professionals (especially librarians) learning to deal with data. We would be honoured to have this book used as an educational resource in library and information graduate programmes, because we believe the future of data librarianship (regardless of its origins, examined in Chapter 1) lies with academic libraries, and for that to become a stronger reality it needs to be studied as a professional and academic subject. To aid the use of this book as a text for study we have provided ‘key take-away points’ and ‘reflective questions’ at the end of each chapter. These can be used by teachers for individual or group assignments, or by individuals to self-assess and reinforce what they may have learned from reading each chapter.
Equally important, we empathetically address the librarian, academic, or other working expert who feels their working life is pulling them towards data support or that area of academic activity known as research data management (RDM).
Index
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- The Data Librarian's Handbook
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- 31 December 2016, pp 169-177
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References
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 161-168
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8 - Dealing with sensitive data
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- The Data Librarian's Handbook
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- 08 June 2018
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- 31 December 2016, pp 121-136
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Summary
Challenging assumptions about data
What is meant by confidential or sensitive data? In Chapter 2 we outlined some of the formats of common types of research data. The field is of course wide and may include datasets that are based on numbers, text or audiovisual material. Most of the time researchers will be interested in how they can manipulate these in order to address the goals of their investigations. Some researchers are interested less in the format than in what they consider to be fundamental problems of confidentiality or data sensitivity. They have concerns about managing the data securely while they are working with it – and are unsure what they are supposed to do. Others have concerns about the appropriateness of allowing preservation or re-use of the same material. Understanding what a researcher actually means when they state their data are confidential therefore becomes significant. This is a growing area of discussion and is demonstrated by the huge interest shown by researchers in training and awareness raising courses on this topic. Typical concerns include whether the data:
1 were collected just for a specific research project
2 are still needed for future analysis
3 may only be properly understood by the original researchers
4 should be destroyed once they have been used or analysed
5 could be exploited for non-academic purposes
6 cover a subject area that is not for public consumption such as studies of terrorists, family history or locations of endangered species
7 contain general information that could allow participants to be Identified
8 include names and addresses or similar personal information
9 include particular details that could be harmful to participants if made Public
10 are to be treated as confidential so an unintended release in itself would be damaging.
Such a wide range of concerns illustrates that no data type is inherently more confidential than another. It is possible to encounter variations on some or all of these arguments from researchers working with statistical data, video interviews or samples of genetic material. However it is commonplace to find researchers working under the assumption that all their data are confidential and present unique problems. The role of the data librarian is to help shift that perception.
Frontmatter
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- The Data Librarian's Handbook
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- 31 December 2016, pp i-iv
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5 - Research data management service and policy: working across your institution
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 67-86
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Summary
Librarians and RDM
Many data librarians working today are solo librarians or part of a small team. However, we would argue that for those data librarians who have become involved in work supporting research data management (RDM), working alone is not an option. There are too many components involved in institutional RDM support for one professional to be able to do it all. One parallel trend to employing data librarians in the UK is for academic libraries to hire an ‘RDM services coordinator’. These may be the only full-time professional working on RDM, and their title recognizes the need to leverage input from service managers across the library and computing service, and beyond. In some cases these new posts have been based in the research office, rather than the library. In other cases support has been cobbled together from parts of people's jobs across libraries, research offices and IT departments. A DCC survey from 2015 found that ‘At least two-thirds of [52 responding UK-based] institutions currently have less than 1 [full-time equivalent staff] allocated to RDM’ with only those receiving the top third of research income expected to have more (almost three on average) by May 2016 (Whyte, 2015, 3).
For those without the luxury of being in a dedicated post, taking on data support is often a new job requirement from which none of the previous duties have been removed. While this may cause stress and even resentment for some, it really should be seen as an intellectual challenge and an opportunity to work with new researchers and colleagues outside one's normal circles. Even those in a dedicated data-related post who may be accustomed to serving a specific research community are being challenged to come out of their silos and combine forces with others across campus to join RDM committees and do some collective problem-solving. People skills or communication skills have never been more needed in the data support profession.
Similarly, it may be observed that there are two types of research institutions: those that embrace the RDM challenge proactively, and those that wait for funders’ requirements to threaten research income or other external consequences (such as a scandal involving fraud, confidentiality breach or failure to comply with a freedom of information [FOI] request) before reluctantly taking action.
4 - Building a data collection
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 53-66
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Summary
Policy and data
A task faced by many data librarians is the acquisition and development of digital resources in the context of a larger library of printed material. This can be done through adoption of a range of procedures but there are also benefits in having a formal written policy. A formal description acknowledges that a policy fulfils many functions beyond being merely a tool for choosing materials. In addition to describing current collections, it encourages ‘the staff involved to (re)consider the aims and objectives of the organization, both long and short term, and the priorities to be attached to different activities. It assists with budgeting, serves as communication channel within a library and between the library and outside constituents, supports co-operative collection development, prevents censorship, and assists in overall collection management activities’ (IFLA, 2001).
Development of a formal policy is recommended and it ought to encapsulate the range of activities to be undertaken by the data librarian. It will involve selection of materials of course but will equally build on the relationships with readers within a department and library, mechanisms for promoting resources and receiving feedback, and raising the profile of your work within the larger organization. The policy needs to acknowledge that collection development can be different where data are concerned.
Data as a resource to be acquired
What are the various issues to consider? Many traditional topics to do with library print collections apply equally to those of us who are building up digital research data collections. Some institutions may regard the latter as more the responsibility of IT services or archival holdings if a digitization project has been involved, but the continuing evolution of academic libraries makes it important to stake a claim for responsibility in this area. In Data Basics, a seminal monograph on developing data libraries and support services, Geraci, Humphrey and Jacobs argue, ‘The role of the library is to Select, Acquire, Organize, and Preserve information, and to provide Access to and Services for that information. Although some librarians question these roles in the digital world … these are the activities that define a library. If an organization fulfils all these roles … what would we call it but “a library”?’ (Geraci, Humphrey and Jacobs, 2012, 65).
2 - What is different about data?
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 19-34
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Attitudes and pre-conceptions
The daily work of the data librarian can be quite similar to that of our more traditional named academic librarians. It can involve working within library systems, acquiring resources and developing working relationships that allow you to promote the role of your library. The fact we work with research data alongside periodicals, books and other publications should not make that much of a difference to how our work is seen but for a variety of reasons it does. The word ‘data’ itself is off-putting to some traditional academic librarians and researchers and a cause of some anxiety. For some it is because it seems to belong to other disciplines and have little relationship with their own work. Others see it as being such a common word as to be almost indistinguishable from ‘information’.
A good example of these different perspectives can be seen in the social sciences. Researchers that use survey techniques and questionnaires create a body of data that can be recorded, analysed, summarized in the form of statistics and, in due course, form the basis of publications. They are clear that this is their dataset and appreciate its role in enabling analysis. It is numerical, quantitative and quite obviously ‘data’. On the other hand researchers using qualitative techniques such as semi-structured interviews or focus groups create a body of work that includes audio transcriptions as well as perhaps audio recordings or photographs. This material is just as crucial in informing analysis but within that tradition it is routinely not perceived or referred to as ‘data’. A similar situation can be seen in many disciplines within the humanities (Ward et al., 2011), which focus on working with ‘primary materials’. Within visual art research a similar resistance has been noted so that there is, ‘An additional task to those working towards the same ends in other disciplines: the translation of scientific RDM concepts into language meaningful to those working in creative arts disciplines’ (Guy, Donnelly and Molloy, 2013, 101).
Data librarians need to be aware of these nuances if they are to be successful in promoting RDM. Reflection on the attitudes you encounter and adopting the terminology of different user communities will be important in offering effective support from your library during a research project.
6 - Data management plans as a calling card
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 87-102
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Responding to challenges in data support
Academic librarians play an important role in supporting the research process throughout its many phases. In order to maintain this level of support they also need to be responsive to new requirements being placed on researchers. So while there are expectations from institutions and funders that more thought be given to the general principles of data management, there are also specific stages in the data lifecycle where new and potentially unfamiliar activities may be identified and supported. The production of a DMP is a perfect example of such an activity. It is an important stage in the management of research data where, ‘Principal investigators (PIs) … document their plans for describing, storing, securing, sharing, and preserving their research data’ (Bishoff and Johnston, 2015, 1), but also presents an opportunity for academic librarians to give guidance and introduce themselves to their target audience. Preparation of a DMP benefits from various stages of redrafting much like a consent agreement (a document discussed within this chapter and in more detail in Chapter 8). It is an opportunity for the data librarian to offer support and advice for what is becoming a key document – but also one that may be unfamiliar even to experienced researchers – which will have a great deal of impact.
Leading by example: eight vignettes
In this chapter we have selected case studies – or vignettes – from a range of disciplines to show how the demands of RDM are being dealt with at different institutions and how advice on data management planning is being used to establish links and recognition. Each is written by a different data librarian, research data manager or data professional, and illustrates how the needs of researchers are addressed through a mixture of awareness raising about RDM and troubleshooting specific details of project administration.
Social science research at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Laurence Horton, Data Librarian, Digital Library, London School of Economics
Before the LSE Library set up an RDM support service in 2014, data management planning support consisted of the research office providing award applicants with a plan from someone's previously successful application and letting them copy and adapt it.
Acknowledgements
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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1 - Data librarianship: responding to research innovation
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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The rise of data librarians
A university has been defined as ‘just a group of buildings gathered around a library’ (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote); in any case, the role of the library in academic life is a central one. Those working within libraries make a valuable contribution to supporting research and teaching as well as shaping the character and intellectual life of individual institutions. Whether a university focuses on the humanities, physical sciences, classics or any other number of disciplines, the librarian ultimately works to support learning and the spread of knowledge. This may take many established forms but increasingly there is a need to support new forms of information. Digital data is one particular new form. In the case of data collections and research data creation this has also led to the rise of a new kind of library professional: the data librarian. But to what extent is this in fact a new role and in what ways does it differ from traditional librarianship?
For example, one role of the librarian is to deal with what may be called the lifecycle of information resources. These are the varied tasks to do with evaluation, selection, purchasing and promotion, and preservation of materials within the library. This relies on having a good working knowledge of what readers in a particular area need for their work. It also draws on a familiarity with what is being made available by publishers and other suppliers of information resources. The terms employed to describe a researcher also indicate the orientation or origin of research support services. Some may prefer traditional terms such as patron or – as favoured at the University of Oxford – reader, since this gives continuity to existing provision. The medium or methodologies being applied to the data are unimportant. On the other hand those working on support services created specifically to deal with digital data may feel older terms are inappropriate or anachronistic. Since digital information is often used in conjunction with software it is no longer ‘human-readable’ at all and its value lies in the fact it can be easily supplied to researchers. Their role is to manipulate, interpret, analyse, watch, listen to, or more generally ‘use’ the data. For this reason data centres or repositories often refer to ‘users’ of data.
Contents
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- The Data Librarian's Handbook
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- 31 December 2016, pp v-viii
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9 - Data sharing in the disciplines
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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Summary
Culture change in academia
To work in research support is to be immersed in culture change, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. The arrival of a killer app or new technology may seem to transform the way research is conducted in a given field very quickly. On the other hand, universities have existed for centuries, and knowledge and research know-how are passed on from teacher to student in time-honoured fashion. Tradition slows down culture change, and minimizes effects of external factors on researchers’ behaviour, such as the use of social media.
For example, young researchers who may not think twice about sharing aspects of their private life on social media may learn to be very guarded about revealing their data. This may be the case if their discipline's norms are to consider data to be a kind of capital, on which to fashion one's career. This is not wholly bad in itself, because it may protect them from jeopardizing their chances of getting published – for which an original work is usually required. Indeed, the Belmont Forum's Open Data Survey found that younger researchers were more concerned about being able to publish results before releasing data than older researchers (Schmidt, Gemeinholzer and Treloar, 2016, 6–7).
So we tend to find that innovations in scholarly communication can take a generation or more to take root. For this reason librarians are often in the difficult position of championing scholarly innovations to research communities that seem stubbornly resistant to change. In these circumstances it can be challenging to find the right balance of patience and initiative. A support network of peers within your institution or in the wider world is therefore highly recommended!
In the social sciences
In our first chapter we discussed the history of data libraries and data archives, and the strong economic motivation of social scientists for getting access to large-scale survey and population census data collected by government agencies. The prevalence of data sharing for social scientists then are often focused on the receiving end of sharing. Large-scale academic surveys and longitudinal studies, known to be rich sources for re-use and funded with an expectation they will become resources for the wider community, are an exception.
10 - Supporting open scholarship and open science
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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The notable rise in the perceived value of data sharing across disciplines at the present time, as demonstrated in Chapter 9, probably has two distinct origins, which influence disciplines in tandem: the open access movement in its broadest sense; and data science, with its roots in computational methods and its embrace of the ‘data revolution’ (Hey, Tansley and Tolle, 2009). Both of these are having a positive and potentially powerful effect on data sharing and re-use. In this chapter we draw evidence from the broader area of scholarly communication in order to bring the discourse about the nature of data librarianship right up to the present, and peer into a possible future – one where technologies may be harnessed in ways that lead to an acceleration of not just data accumulation but knowledge creation and dissemination. This would benefit not just scientists and scholars but – through increased transparency and accessibility – potentially the full range of human endeavours. Concepts discussed in this chapter in particular may be usefully explored using the Open Research Glossary (www.righttoresearch.org/ resources/ OpenResearchGlossary) for those unfamiliar with them.
Going green: impact of the open access movement
The primary reasons for and against open access to digital content can be summed up in this famous quote by Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and The WELL, an early internet community network based in San Francisco: ‘Information wants to be free – because it is now so easy to copy and distribute casually – and information wants to be expensive – because in an Information Age, nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.’ The quote has been attributed to Brand at the first Hackers Conference, 1984 (www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html).
This summarizes the conflict between those who wish to access information over the internet at the click of a button without paying for it and those who wish to build paywalls around commodified information products for profit. Libraries normally help users get over paywalls simply by paying for access to digital content on behalf of a community, sometimes getting the price lowered through negotiation, consortia-building, buying products in bundles and building collections as discussed in Chapter 4.
3 - Supporting data literacy
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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Information literacy with data awareness
Academic librarians have excelled in promoting the information literacy agenda and developing bibliographic instruction as part of learning research skills. Not only is it quite common for library sessions to be a key part of new student inductions, but examples abound of successful partnerships with university instructors for getting library-based training into the classroom and coursework, and sometimes even assessed. Virtual learning environ - ments, online courses and distance learning all offer new ways for librarians to interact with learners and teachers as well. A little bit of ‘data awareness’ can go a long way in extending traditional information literacy and bibliographic instruction programmes.
In some ways existing forms of library instruction lend themselves easily to the addition of concepts of data management and re-use. For example, in teaching about doing a literature search in a given discipline, librarians may give instruction in using standalone or online reference management tools, such as EndNote, Reference Manager, Zotero or Mendeley. For some disciplines in which the data used are mostly in textual form (e.g. law, history), such tools may even be the best method of conducting data management throughout a research project. For disciplines using other data types, further organizing options may need to be explored, such as those described in the Research Data MANTRA training course Organising Data (HYPERLINK “http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/organisingdata”).
Bibliographic search methods may also be useful for teaching skills in data discovery. Students will not find all of the references needed for a literature search solely by consulting Google or Wikipedia, nor will they find all the supporting non-textual data for their research that way. Data librarians can teach the use of specialized data portals, disciplinary data centres, government statistical websites and repository registries alongside the use of specialized publication databases to aid discovery of published literature and data. Besides, in the case of many online databases, licensed products, or datasets requiring permission to access, content cannot be indexed by Google, and so familiarity with potential sources is essential. Training in data sources may be offered to particular classes or as part of information skills programmes. Alternatively web-based resources may be offered, for example the Bodleian Data Library web pages (www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/data).
The Data Librarian's Handbook
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2016
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The Data Librarian's Handbook covers a large amount of interesting terrain in thoughtful and accessible ways. It is both essential for any information professional interested in data and their management, and is also indicative of the increasing – and increasingly varied – role that data and data management play in libraries and more broadly across academia.
7 - Essentials of data repositories
- Robin Rice, John Southall
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- 31 December 2016, pp 103-120
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Repository versus archive?
What is a data repository and what is a data archive? We do not have any definitive answers and opinions often vary, but it is useful to note how the terms are used in practice. Certainly in one sense the two terms are synonymous. Each term carries with it certain implied characteristics, and is used within its own contexts and traditions. Social science data archives, as we discussed in Chapter 1, have a tradition going back decades. They can be established at various levels, most commonly national or sub-institutional, such as departmental. The term ‘archive’ to some implies rigorous long-term preservation procedures, and can also be associated with long-term storage that is not publicly accessible. In some cases these are collections intended to become open at some point in the future for legal reasons, also known as ‘dark archives’. To others, ‘archive’ is seen as a simple IT storage service akin to long-term back-up, but without any of the added curation that helps keep data usable and understandable over time and across communities (‘keeping the bits safe’). Of course the word archive is both a noun and a verb and the demand to ‘archive research data’ is a common one; but we suggest that on closer examination there is not enough shared understanding among communities about what it means to ‘archive your data’. For this reason we feel the term is best avoided, except as part of a name of a known institution.
Data repositories have a different provenance. Digital repositories came into fashion in the early 2000s to manage and disseminate publications and other types of digital assets. The use of ‘repository’ rather than ‘archive’ may in part indicate a desire to differentiate them from traditional physical archives managed within institutions. Electronic or digital repositories such as these were usually based on open source software such as DSpace, EPrints, Fedora and others, and were broadly established in institutions, championed by academic libraries in support of the open access movement. In addition to publications repositories, other specialist collections such as e-learning repositories began to flourish as well. Some repositories are subject-based, such as the well known arXiv service, established in 1991 for disseminating e-prints (electronic preprints) of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science and related fields.
FIELD CRICKETS (ORTHOPTERA: GRYLLIDAE) AS PREY OF THE TOAD BUFO MARINUS
- William H. Cade, Robin Rice
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- The Canadian Entomologist / Volume 112 / Issue 3 / 01 March 1980
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- 31 May 2012, pp. 335-336
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During studies on different aspects of cricket (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) biology in Hawaii, we observed many toads, Bufo marinus (L.), in areas inhabited by the field crickets Teleogryllus oceanicus (Le Guillou) and Modicogryllus conspersus Walker. The research reported here was intended to determine if B. marinus is a predator of these crickets and, if so, the relative amount of predation on each. We also tested the possibility that B. marinus locates crickets by orienting to cricket acoustical signals.