As we at UC Irvine Libraries begin to restructure our e-research services and recruit new personnel to meet the national and international trend of moving away from a traditional way of providing data services (more a reference and collection development model) toward one of potentially partnering with faculty in research projects and endeavors, it may be useful to look back on recent and past ways we’ve approached this and the presentations I’ve made on research data management.

In 1986 I was hired at UC Irvine Libraries to be the responsible for machine-readable data files in social sciences, among other bibligrapher duties.  My working title was Social Science Data Librarian.  A few years ago, I became the Data Librarian as our focus on data encompassed beyond that discipline.  Indeed,  while data librarianship has changed over my 28 years at UC Irvine Libraries as a data librarian, at its core it remains our ability to meet the needs of academic faculty by a willingness to help and listen and not to over promise what we can offer.

Even before research data management became common parlance, UCI Libraries took note of the need for librarians to intervene at the beginning of the life cycle of a dataset or data project, and help researchers with their research data, even at the point of project conception. To that end, we formed a Data Team at UCI Libraries and I served as chair.

On 14 May 2010, the UCI Libraries Data Team sponsored an open forum at Langson Library on “Data, Data Curation, and Libraries: A Panel Discussion.”  UCLA participants were as follows: Christine L. Borgman, Professor & Presidential Chair in Information Studies; Jillian Wallis, PhD student in Information Studies and Data Course co-instructor; Kristine Kasianowitz, Librarian, Government Information, Public Policy, Urban Planning, Geography, Maps and GIS; Matthew Mayernik, PhD candidate in Information Studies; Katie Shilton, Ph.D student in Information Studies; Laura Wynholds, PhD student in Information Studies.  I chaired the panel. Also participating was Libbie Stephenson, UCLA’s noted data archivist. To listen to the audio of the fascinating conversation among the panelists, including the doctoral students in Prof. Borgman’s pioneering UCLA Information Studies class, “Data, Data Practices, and Data Curation,” first offered in Fall, 2010, click here.

In November 2011, I gave my first research data management presentation at the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance (PRDLA) meeting held at the University of Southern California Library. My talk, “Social Science Data Sharing & Management in Asia: Overview and Future Prospects” tried to emphasize the importance of data sharing in Asia.

Then in November 2012, I joined then-interim UL Lorelei Tanji in Beijing at a conference celebrating the 110th anniversary of the Peking University Library as well as another PRDLA annual meeting, this time in Beijing. My presentation at Beida focused on “Social Science Data Sharing & Management in Asia: Overview and Future Prospects.” Amazingly the session and conference was recently cited online (in Chinese) on the Chinese Social Science Net.

in January 2013 the UCI Libraries participated in a successful “town hall” with faculty and OIT staff to promote the then emerging CDL services. My talk then focused on “Research Data Management: Tools and Services.” I was then representing the UCI Libraries on a committee conducting a “Faculty Assessment of the State of Research Computing at UCI”, and committee members also participated in that forum. Then-AUL for public services Carol Hughes and Library IT director Adrian Petrisor also gave presentations. The UCI Libraries posted the presentations and audio (restricted to UCI) of the town hall.

In February 2013 I gave an invited presentation at the University of California Office of Research Development Network meeting, held at the Atrium Hotel in Irvine. I was on a panel on “Research Computing, Data Management and Shared Facilities.” My presentation, “Research Data Management: Local UCI Outreach to Faculty” highlighted initial responses relating to research data management and archiving from that UCI survey, “Faculty Assessment of the State of Research Computing (FASRC) at University of California, Irvine.” The UCI Libraries were key partners in conducting the survey. From the meetings and the survey results, it was clear that the libraries needed to step up to offer more services in this area.

And in March 2013 I was asked to chair OCLC Research’s Data Curation Policy Working Group, to encourage campus-wide research data management policy development.  That small group of interested librarians from U.S., U.K. and Australia helped draft a report, Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy  that was finally written by Ricky Erway of OCLC Research. I am glad that report, Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy, has been embraced by many institutions worldwide; my one regret is I didn’t push more strongly on having more in the draft about the important role social science data librarians and archivists have played in data sharing over the decades earlier.

 

Hence, it’s not surprise to say that I come to data management and archiving from a social science data perspective.  Key to tradition of social science data archiving is ICPSR, the premier social science data respository based at the University of Michigan, which gave me my first job after library school in its data archive back in the 1970s. I processed a media study and merged three years (1972, 1974, 1976) of the American National Election Studies.  So it was quite emotional for me to be internationally recognized by ICPSR and my fellow social science data librarians last year.  At a ceremony and banquet at the October 2013 ICPSR Official Representatives meeting, I was awarded the William H. Flanigan Award for Distinguished Service by ICPSR.  My mentor and UC colleague Libbie Stephenson, the pioneering data archivist at UCLA, in nominating me, gave a wonderful introduction to my acceptance speech.  While I wasn’t there at ICPSR’s beginnings I feel I have grown professionally with it, so it was entirely fitting that at the 2013 meeting, ICPSR, which has surpassed half-a-century of existence, the theme was “”Beyond Access: Curating Data for Discovery, Re-Use, and Impact.”  It followed a day-long “Data Seal of Approval” conference which I also attended.

In October 2013 I joined UL Lorelei Tanji and newly hired Southeast Asian Archive librarian Thuy Vo Dang in attending PRDLA 2013 at the University of British Columbia.  My talk was on “Research Data Management: Reaching Out to Faculty.”

In January 2014 I was invited by the library director at the innovative Singapore Management University (SMU) Library, Gulcin Cribb, to speak in Singapore.  Dozens pre-registered and I ended up speaking before a crowd of some 53 people, mostly librarians from Singapore university libraries and special libraries, and one informatics professor.  SMU’s Digital Resources Librarian Pin Pin Yeo 3 February 2014 wrote a nice report of my talk in the Singapore Libraries Bulletin blog.  My talk was on “Research Data Management: Challenges & Opportunities.” Subsequently, SMU Library has hired a very helpful data librarian, Tint Hla Hla Htoo.

Right before we broke off for the summer, I attended in June, 2014, the 40th anniversary conference of IASSIST, the International Association for Social Science Service and Technology, in Toronto, Canada.  It’s a conference every social science data librarian is encouraged to join and participate in, and one for which I have a special affection, having attended since the 1980s and served on its administrative committee for two 8-year terms.

My presentation, “Challenges in Developing A New Library Infrastructure for Research Data Services,” co-written with AUL for research resources John Renaud (who couldn’t attend in person), was given at Ryerson University’s School of Business (the conference site). In person, I gave homage to pioneering social science data librarians and data archives and pointed out that merely storing a dataset in a repository may be preserving it somewhat, but cannot be considered data curation.  Interestingly enough, that was a point picked up by a tweet from the new social sciences data services coordinator at Columbia University:

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Dan Tsang: it’s not enough to just put data into a repository, it needs curation to be useful; deposit != curation #iassist40

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I also detailed the efforts underway at UC Irvine Libraries for implementing a new unit for e-research and the developing of our new Digital Scholarship Services.  The future is challenging but if the past is prologue then our path is clear.  But we cannot do it alone.  To efficiently and securely share research data, the infrastructure needs to be enhanced.

One effort campus-wide is to strengthen our data networks to enable more efficient data sharing.  To this end, the UCI Office of Information Technology is managing a half-million $ NSF grant to upgrade our campus data network. From the UCI Libraries, I serve on its “advisory” committee.  See the Research Computing & Networking Advisory (RCNA) site for more on the project’s development.