Hi! I'm Vicky Steeves. I recently accepted a position at New York University Libraries as the Research Data Management and Reproducibility librarian as of August 2015!
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I will provide instructional and consultation services to the NYU Community in Research Data Management, as well as pilot curation practices while monitoring researcher needs across disciplines. Additionally, I will be directly involved in supporting the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment Partnership at NYU, working on the reproducibilty of scientific research data.
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Learn All About My Background Stuff!
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I recently completed the National Digital Stewardship Residency at the American Museum of Natural History. My project was to gain a broad overview of the extent and status of AMNH digital assets pertaining to Science. To do so I developed a structured interview guide designed to measure and describe scientific digital assets resulting in a metric to predict ongoing data curation needs. Read more.
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Learn All About My Personal Stuff!
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Other interests include: gaming (pencil & paper and PC), crafting (embroidery, sewing, knitting, crocheting, quilting, scrapbooking--you name it), animal care (especially my kitten Little Boss!), snowboarding, and hiking.
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Data, Science, & Librarians, Oh My!
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My thoughts as I navigate the world of data librarianship.
This past week, February 8-12th, was Love Your Data Week!! Is there a more perfect holiday for data librarians, especially right before Valentine's Day??
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#LYD16 was a social media event coordinated officially by 27 academic and research institutions, of which both NYU Data Services and NYU Health Sciences Library were a part. The idea behind this social media blitz was to raise awareness of research data management and the support/resources for RDM at each individual institution.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, or even took a quick look on my resume page, you’ll see I haven’t been at my position at NYU for very long. January 3rd marks the fifth month (to the day!) that I’ve been NYU’s official “Research Data Management and Reproducibility Librarian.” There was a bit of an adjustment period where I just spent the majority of my time introducing myself to my colleagues, getting to know what my daily workflow would look like, and brainstorm with Nick about what our services will look like, some good groups for targeted outreach, and what classes we are going to teach as a part of Data Services typical course offerings.
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This was all well and good, but since I started in August I missed the goal-setting timeline that is typical for my colleagues. As such, I wanted to make some, and my supervisor in the library thought it would be a good way to measure growth besides. Plus, since I’m pretty early career, setting goals for a measurable outcome was kind of new for something not project based. This was just trying to assess my own growth, not necessarily the growth of a project I’m working on.
This month was excellent as it marked my first ever professional presentation as a NYU Librarian :)
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Last year during NDSR, it seemed like I was giving a presentation at a conference, professional organization meeting, webinar, etc. every other week. It’s been exceptionally restful (well, sort of...) to spend these past 5 months getting to know NYU, my colleagues, the scope of my work, and really just getting a feel for my day-to-day.
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One of the most exciting outputs from my first semester here at NYU has surrounded my work on the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment (msdse.org). Back in October (link to Oct 2015 post), I wrote about the MSDSE Summit that was held at Suncadia Resort in Washington state. God it was so incredibly beautiful there and I got to do some really cool stuff, but the best thing that happened was definitely meeting Jenny Muilenburg and Erik Mitchell.
A few weeks ago, I attend the Library Information Technology Association’s Forum. Over the 13-15th, I attended several sessions, explored Minneapolis for the first time, and met some really awesome people. I was, as always, a bit nervous attending a new conference but the organizers had some really great 101-type sessions, and even set up a Slack channel which I found to be immensely helpful throughout the day. People organized dinners, discussed sessions in real-time, posed questions, and uploaded some hysterical gifs.
So, for those who don’t follow me on Twitter (go ahead though, ), I recently accepted a position at New York University, Division of Libraries, as the Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility. I started August 3rd of this year, which turned out to be great because there were no students around. This may sound bad, but the prep time was invaluable. My partner-in-crime Nick Wolf came two weeks later, and together we really amped up the existing data management LibGuide.
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When September rolled around, I was hit with a visual on just how gigantic a school NYU really is. Seeing all the students streaming into the library, I was hit with the scope of my work here. Nick and I were supposed to build up services around research data management/data management planning for literally everyone on campus, from staff to students to faculty. Of course to start we will focus on a few core user communities and build our way out, but just wow--even starting on building services for grad students, for example, is an awesome task.
As the National Digital Stewardship Resident at the American Museum of Natural History, I was introduced to the very specific problems facing museum librarians and archivists not only through observing the Research Library, but by speaking individually with some of the most intensive data creators at the Museum. As a part of my larger needs assessment project at the Museum, I created a semi-structured interview guide that I used to enter into a targeted dialogue with scientific staff members, covering all aspects of their digital research and collections data. Topics included the volume of their data, its rate of growth, format types, necessary software and hardware support, management practices, and opinions on preservation of their data (i.e. what data they believe is important in the long-term). I interviewed close to 60 staff members in total, including all the curators in the five Science divisions at the Museum: Anthropology, Invertebrate Zoology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences, and Vertebrate Zoology.
Hello everyone! Vicky here to bring you some holiday cheer. I thought, since this is our last post before Hanukkah, Yule, Life Day, Festivus, Kwanzaa , Pancha Ganapati, Soyal, the Dongzhi Festival, Christmas, Newtonmas, Boxing Day, Omisoka, and New Years, I could wind down a busy few months by talking about the American Museum of Natural History party season!
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Just about every day of the week, starting from the 10th of December to the 19th, there is a party at the AMNH. Each department has their own parties, some are small and attended mostly by people within the department; others are all staff events with food, drinks, and music.
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The Library kicked off the party season this year, with probably 50+ people eating and drinking in the reading room (it’s only one night of the year, librarian friends who are cringing!) as the night went on. This was a great opportunity for me to better get to know many of the scientists that I've interviewed for my NDSR project in a more informal environment.
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Friday the 12th was the day of the physical sciences party. Since it’s one of the better slots for parties, the Rose Center was absolutely packed. What usually sets the physical sciences party apart from others is the high probability of seeing some science celebrities, since it is held in the same wing as Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office.
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For me, the first celeb sighting of the night was Bill Nye the Science Guy! I walked by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office on the way to the bar/food room, and looked in hoping for a quick look look at NDT himself, and to assess the number of people at the party. To my surprise, I saw Bill Nye in there dancing!! I promptly freaked out to my boss but kept moving as the office was way too crowded for me to get in.
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Me & Billy Nye the Science Guy!! Childhood made.
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Later that night, as I was refilling my drink, in Bill walked to get some dinner. I saw him bopping around the table, getting some pasta and salad, and waited until he was done to approach and ask for a picture. He was so sweet and immediately agreed! He told me on "the Science Guy show," they had 12 GB of digital data that were constantly being fanned and air conditioned. In his words, “it was state of the art technology.”
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After I got through the crowds and saw a lot of the scientists I interviewed for my project here, I made it into Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office thanks to my security guard friend Jamiel, who is tight with Dr. Tyson. He introduced me to NDT, and asked if I could get a picture with him. Dr. Tyson replied "only if she asks me." I was so struck I immediately stuttered out "if you don't mind, Dr. Tyson!" And he turned to take a picture with me. As we opened a bottle of wine together, I told him about my project and digital preservation, which was absolutely incredible. He was obviously supportive of anything preserving science data. He even took a picture with my boyfriend later! Such a good sport.
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Me & Neil deGrasse Tyson!! Adulthood made.
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I have to say, the AMNH is absolutely the best place I've ever worked. Everyone I've met here has been nothing but gracious and my work is everything I've wanted to do since I was a kid. However, perks like getting to meet Bill Nye the Science Guy and Neil deGrasse Tyson make this job all the sweeter.
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Until our next posting, happy holidays to all you fabulous readers!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Hello everyone! Vicky here to bring you some holiday cheer. I thought, since this is our last post before Hanukkah, Yule, Life Day, Festivus, Kwanzaa , Pancha Ganapati, Soyal, the Dongzhi Festival, Christmas, Newtonmas, Boxing Day, Omisoka, and New Years, I could wind down a busy few months by talking about the American Museum of Natural History party season!
+
+
Just about every day of the week, starting from the 10th of December to the 19th, there is a party at the AMNH. Each department has their own parties, some are small and attended mostly by people within the department; others are all staff events with food, drinks, and music.
+
+
The Library kicked off the party season this year, with probably 50+ people eating and drinking in the reading room (it’s only one night of the year, librarian friends who are cringing!) as the night went on. This was a great opportunity for me to better get to know many of the scientists that I've interviewed for my NDSR project in a more informal environment.
+
+
Friday the 12th was the day of the physical sciences party. Since it’s one of the better slots for parties, the Rose Center was absolutely packed. What usually sets the physical sciences party apart from others is the high probability of seeing some science celebrities, since it is held in the same wing as Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office.
+
+
For me, the first celeb sighting of the night was Bill Nye the Science Guy! I walked by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office on the way to the bar/food room, and looked in hoping for a quick look look at NDT himself, and to assess the number of people at the party. To my surprise, I saw Bill Nye in there dancing!! I promptly freaked out to my boss but kept moving as the office was way too crowded for me to get in.
+
+
+
Me & Billy Nye the Science Guy!! Childhood made.
+
+
Later that night, as I was refilling my drink, in Bill walked to get some dinner. I saw him bopping around the table, getting some pasta and salad, and waited until he was done to approach and ask for a picture. He was so sweet and immediately agreed! He told me on "the Science Guy show," they had 12 GB of digital data that were constantly being fanned and air conditioned. In his words, “it was state of the art technology.”
+
+
After I got through the crowds and saw a lot of the scientists I interviewed for my project here, I made it into Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office thanks to my security guard friend Jamiel, who is tight with Dr. Tyson. He introduced me to NDT, and asked if I could get a picture with him. Dr. Tyson replied "only if she asks me." I was so struck I immediately stuttered out "if you don't mind, Dr. Tyson!" And he turned to take a picture with me. As we opened a bottle of wine together, I told him about my project and digital preservation, which was absolutely incredible. He was obviously supportive of anything preserving science data. He even took a picture with my boyfriend later! Such a good sport.
+
+
+
Me & Neil deGrasse Tyson!! Adulthood made.
+
+
I have to say, the AMNH is absolutely the best place I've ever worked. Everyone I've met here has been nothing but gracious and my work is everything I've wanted to do since I was a kid. However, perks like getting to meet Bill Nye the Science Guy and Neil deGrasse Tyson make this job all the sweeter.
+
+
Until our next posting, happy holidays to all you fabulous readers!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
What I’ve come to love about the library science field (which after years of waiting tables you’d think I’d hate) is the service aspect to everything we do. Librarians are intensely user-focused in all of our work: through the use of needs assessment surveys, we mold our libraries to what users want, expect, and need. We use the results to design programs, buy technology, even create positions within a library (YA librarian is a thing because of that!). Some common ways to implement a library assessment include focus groups, interviews, scorecards, comment cards, usage statistics from circulation and reference, and surveys sent to users via email or on paper.
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This past week, I attended a workshop with the fabulous Julia Kim at METRO that focused on the implementation and design aspects of surveying, called “Assessment in Focus: Designing and Implementing an Effective User Feedback Survey.” The presenter, Nisa Bakkalbasi, the assessment coordinator at Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, was a former statistician and presented on the many ways one could glean statistically valuable quantitative data from simple survey questions.
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The first part of this workshop dealt with the assessment process and types of survey questions, while the second dealt mainly with checking your results for errors. I will focus here on the first part, which is about data gathering and question manufacturing.
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I will touch briefly on the assessment process by saying this: all the questions asked should be directly relatable to all the objectives laid out in the beginning of the process. Also, that surveying is an iterative process, and as a library continues to survey its users, the quality of the survey to get valuable results will also increase.
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While my work at AMNH is conducted solely through interviews, I found that the discussion Nisa had on the types of questions used in survey design was particularly helpful. She focused the session on closed-end questions, because there is no way to get quantitative data from open-ended questions. All the results can say is “the majority of respondents said XYZ,” as opposed to closed-ended questions where in the results its “86% of respondents chose X over Y and Z.” This emphasize was extremely important, because real quantifiable data is the easiest to work with when putting together results to share in an institution.
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When designing survey questions, it is important to keep a few things in mind:
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Ask one thing at a time
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Keep questions (and survey!) short and to the point
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Ask very few required questions
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Use clear, precise language (think The Giver!)
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Avoid jargon and acronyms!
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The two most common closed-ended questions are multiple choice questions:
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and rating scale questions:
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For multiple choice questions, it is important to include all options without any overlap. The user should not have to think about whether they fit into two of the categories or none at all. For rating scales, my biggest takeaway was the use of even points for taking away any neutrality. While forcing people to have opinions is considered rude at the dinner table, it is crucial to the success of a survey project.
+
+
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Both of these types of questions (and all closed-ended questions) allow for easy statistical analysis. By a simple count of answers, you have percentage data that you can then group by other questions, such as demographic questions (only use when necessary! sensitive data is just that--sensitive) or other relevant identifying information.
+
+
In terms of results, this can be structured like: “78% of recipients who visit the library 1-4 times a week said that they come in for group study work.” These are two questions: what is your primary use of the library, and how often do you come in, both multiple choice. These provide measurable results, critically important in libraryland and something librarians can utilize and rely heavily upon.
+
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I also want to briefly discuss more innovative ways libraries can begin to use this incredible tool. Proving value--the library’s value, that is. Libraries traditionally lose resources in both space and funding due to a perceived lack of value by management, the train of thought usually that since libraries aren't money-makers, it inherently has less value to the institution.
+
+
We as librarians know this to be both ludicrous and false. And we need to prove it. If the result the library is looking for says something like “95% of recipients said that they could not have completed their work without the use of the library,” then that is a rating scale question waiting to happen. And an incredible way to quantitatively prove value to upper management.
+
+
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Quantitative data gathered via strategic surveying of user groups can be a powerful tool that librarians can--and should!--use to demonstrate their value. In business decisions, the hard numbers do more than testimonials. Library directors and other leaders could have access to materials that allow them to better represent the library to upper management on an institution-wide level. This can be the difference between a library closure and a library expansion, especially in institutions where funding can be an issue.
+
+
Librarians can and should use these surveys for their own needs, both internally for library services and externally on an institution-wide scale. Whether you are a public library trying to prove why you need a larger part of the community’s budget, or a corporate library vying for that larger space in the office, the needs assessment survey can prove helpful to cementing the importance of a library as well as development of library programs.
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+
In the words of Socrates, “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
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+
+
+
+
+
+
About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
What I’ve come to love about the library science field (which after years of waiting tables you’d think I’d hate) is the service aspect to everything we do. Librarians are intensely user-focused in all of our work: through the use of needs assessment surveys, we mold our libraries to what users want, expect, and need. We use the results to design programs, buy technology, even create positions within a library (YA librarian is a thing because of that!). Some common ways to implement a library assessment include focus groups, interviews, scorecards, comment cards, usage statistics from circulation and reference, and surveys sent to users via email or on paper.
+
+
This past week, I attended a workshop with the fabulous Julia Kim at METRO that focused on the implementation and design aspects of surveying, called “Assessment in Focus: Designing and Implementing an Effective User Feedback Survey.” The presenter, Nisa Bakkalbasi, the assessment coordinator at Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, was a former statistician and presented on the many ways one could glean statistically valuable quantitative data from simple survey questions.
+
+
The first part of this workshop dealt with the assessment process and types of survey questions, while the second dealt mainly with checking your results for errors. I will focus here on the first part, which is about data gathering and question manufacturing.
+
+
I will touch briefly on the assessment process by saying this: all the questions asked should be directly relatable to all the objectives laid out in the beginning of the process. Also, that surveying is an iterative process, and as a library continues to survey its users, the quality of the survey to get valuable results will also increase.
+
+
+
+
While my work at AMNH is conducted solely through interviews, I found that the discussion Nisa had on the types of questions used in survey design was particularly helpful. She focused the session on closed-end questions, because there is no way to get quantitative data from open-ended questions. All the results can say is “the majority of respondents said XYZ,” as opposed to closed-ended questions where in the results its “86% of respondents chose X over Y and Z.” This emphasize was extremely important, because real quantifiable data is the easiest to work with when putting together results to share in an institution.
+
+
When designing survey questions, it is important to keep a few things in mind:
+
+
Ask one thing at a time
+
Keep questions (and survey!) short and to the point
+
Ask very few required questions
+
Use clear, precise language (think The Giver!)
+
Avoid jargon and acronyms!
+
+
+
The two most common closed-ended questions are multiple choice questions:
+
+
+
+
and rating scale questions:
+
+
+
+
For multiple choice questions, it is important to include all options without any overlap. The user should not have to think about whether they fit into two of the categories or none at all. For rating scales, my biggest takeaway was the use of even points for taking away any neutrality. While forcing people to have opinions is considered rude at the dinner table, it is crucial to the success of a survey project.
+
+
+
+
Both of these types of questions (and all closed-ended questions) allow for easy statistical analysis. By a simple count of answers, you have percentage data that you can then group by other questions, such as demographic questions (only use when necessary! sensitive data is just that--sensitive) or other relevant identifying information.
+
+
In terms of results, this can be structured like: “78% of recipients who visit the library 1-4 times a week said that they come in for group study work.” These are two questions: what is your primary use of the library, and how often do you come in, both multiple choice. These provide measurable results, critically important in libraryland and something librarians can utilize and rely heavily upon.
+
+
I also want to briefly discuss more innovative ways libraries can begin to use this incredible tool. Proving value--the library’s value, that is. Libraries traditionally lose resources in both space and funding due to a perceived lack of value by management, the train of thought usually that since libraries aren't money-makers, it inherently has less value to the institution.
+
+
We as librarians know this to be both ludicrous and false. And we need to prove it. If the result the library is looking for says something like “95% of recipients said that they could not have completed their work without the use of the library,” then that is a rating scale question waiting to happen. And an incredible way to quantitatively prove value to upper management.
+
+
+
+
Quantitative data gathered via strategic surveying of user groups can be a powerful tool that librarians can--and should!--use to demonstrate their value. In business decisions, the hard numbers do more than testimonials. Library directors and other leaders could have access to materials that allow them to better represent the library to upper management on an institution-wide level. This can be the difference between a library closure and a library expansion, especially in institutions where funding can be an issue.
+
+
Librarians can and should use these surveys for their own needs, both internally for library services and externally on an institution-wide scale. Whether you are a public library trying to prove why you need a larger part of the community’s budget, or a corporate library vying for that larger space in the office, the needs assessment survey can prove helpful to cementing the importance of a library as well as development of library programs.
+
+
In the words of Socrates, “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Science: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Vicky Steeves. Her nine-month mission: to explore how scientific data can be preserved more efficiently at the American Museum of Natural History, to boldly interview every member of science staff involved in data creation and management, to go into the depths of the Museum where none have gone before.
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+
Hi there. Digital preservation of scientific data is criminally under-addressed nationwide. Scientific research is increasingly digital and data intensive, with repositories and aggregators built everyday to house this data. Some popular aggregators in natural history include the NIH-funded GenBank for DNA sequence data and the NSF funded MorphBank for image data of specimens. These aggregators are places where scientists submit their data for dissemination and act as phenomenal tools for data sharing, however they cannot be relied upon for preservation.
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+
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Science is, at its core, the act of collecting, analyzing, refining, re-analyzing, and reusing data. Reuse and re-analysis are important parts of the evolution of our understanding of the world and the universe, so to carry out meaningful preservation, we as the digital preservationists need to equip those future users with the necessary tools to reuse said data.
+
+
Therein lies the biggest challenge of digital preservation of scientific data: the very real need to preserve not only the dataset but the ability to deliver that knowledge to a future user community. Technical obsolescence is a huge problem in the preservation of scientific data, due in large part to the field-specific proprietary software and formats used in research. These software are sometimes even project specific, and often are not backwards compatible, meaning that a new version of the software won’t be able to open a file created in an older version. This is counter-intuitive for access and preservation.
+
+
Digital data are not only research output, but also input into new hypotheses and research initiatives, enabling future scientific insights and driving innovation. In the case of natural sciences, specimen collections and taxonomic descriptions from the 19th century (and earlier) are still used in modern scientific discourse and research. There is a unique concern in digital preservation of scientific datasets where the phrase “in perpetuity” has real usability and consequence, in that these data have value that will only increases with time. 100 years from now, scientific historians will look to these data to document the processes of science and the evolution of research. Scientists themselves will use these data for additional research or even comparative study: “look at the population density of this scorpion species in 2014 versus today, 2114, I wonder what caused the shift.” Some data, particularly older data, aren't necessarily replicable, and in that case, the value of the material for preservation increases exponentially.
+
+
+
+
So the resulting question is how to develop new methods, management structures and technologies to manage the diversity, size, and complexity of current and future datasets, ensuring they remain interoperable and accessible over the long term. With this in mind, it is imperative to develop an approach to preserving scientific data that continuously anticipates and adapts to changes in both the popular field-specific technologies, and user expectations.
+
+
There is a pressing need for involvement by digital preservationists to look after scientific data. While there have been strides made by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Interagency Working Group on Digital Data, and NASA, no overarching methodology or policy has been accepted by scientific fields at large. And this needs to change.
+
+
The library, computer science, and scientific communities need to come together to make decisions for preservation of research and collections data. My specific NDSR project at AMNH is but a subset of the larger collaborative effort that needs to become a priority in all three fields. It is the first step of many in the right direction that will contribute to the preservation of these important scientific data. And until a solution is found, scientific data loss is a real threat, to all three communities and our future as a species evolving in our combined knowledge of the world.
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I will leave you, dear readers, with a video from the Alliance for Permanent Access conference in 2011. Dr. Tony Hey speaks on data-intensive scientific discovery and digital preservation and exemplifies perfectly the challenges and importance of preserving digital scientific research data:
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Science: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Vicky Steeves. Her nine-month mission: to explore how scientific data can be preserved more efficiently at the American Museum of Natural History, to boldly interview every member of science staff involved in data creation and management, to go into the depths of the Museum where none have gone before.
+
+
Hi there. Digital preservation of scientific data is criminally under-addressed nationwide. Scientific research is increasingly digital and data intensive, with repositories and aggregators built everyday to house this data. Some popular aggregators in natural history include the NIH-funded GenBank for DNA sequence data and the NSF funded MorphBank for image data of specimens. These aggregators are places where scientists submit their data for dissemination and act as phenomenal tools for data sharing, however they cannot be relied upon for preservation.
+
+
+
+
Science is, at its core, the act of collecting, analyzing, refining, re-analyzing, and reusing data. Reuse and re-analysis are important parts of the evolution of our understanding of the world and the universe, so to carry out meaningful preservation, we as the digital preservationists need to equip those future users with the necessary tools to reuse said data.
+
+
Therein lies the biggest challenge of digital preservation of scientific data: the very real need to preserve not only the dataset but the ability to deliver that knowledge to a future user community. Technical obsolescence is a huge problem in the preservation of scientific data, due in large part to the field-specific proprietary software and formats used in research. These software are sometimes even project specific, and often are not backwards compatible, meaning that a new version of the software won’t be able to open a file created in an older version. This is counter-intuitive for access and preservation.
+
+
Digital data are not only research output, but also input into new hypotheses and research initiatives, enabling future scientific insights and driving innovation. In the case of natural sciences, specimen collections and taxonomic descriptions from the 19th century (and earlier) are still used in modern scientific discourse and research. There is a unique concern in digital preservation of scientific datasets where the phrase “in perpetuity” has real usability and consequence, in that these data have value that will only increases with time. 100 years from now, scientific historians will look to these data to document the processes of science and the evolution of research. Scientists themselves will use these data for additional research or even comparative study: “look at the population density of this scorpion species in 2014 versus today, 2114, I wonder what caused the shift.” Some data, particularly older data, aren't necessarily replicable, and in that case, the value of the material for preservation increases exponentially.
+
+
+
+
So the resulting question is how to develop new methods, management structures and technologies to manage the diversity, size, and complexity of current and future datasets, ensuring they remain interoperable and accessible over the long term. With this in mind, it is imperative to develop an approach to preserving scientific data that continuously anticipates and adapts to changes in both the popular field-specific technologies, and user expectations.
+
+
There is a pressing need for involvement by digital preservationists to look after scientific data. While there have been strides made by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Interagency Working Group on Digital Data, and NASA, no overarching methodology or policy has been accepted by scientific fields at large. And this needs to change.
+
+
The library, computer science, and scientific communities need to come together to make decisions for preservation of research and collections data. My specific NDSR project at AMNH is but a subset of the larger collaborative effort that needs to become a priority in all three fields. It is the first step of many in the right direction that will contribute to the preservation of these important scientific data. And until a solution is found, scientific data loss is a real threat, to all three communities and our future as a species evolving in our combined knowledge of the world.
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I will leave you, dear readers, with a video from the Alliance for Permanent Access conference in 2011. Dr. Tony Hey speaks on data-intensive scientific discovery and digital preservation and exemplifies perfectly the challenges and importance of preserving digital scientific research data:
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Originally, I had my presentation scheduled for about 10 minutes but due to time constraints on the agenda, it was shortened to five. This meant I speed-talked my way through all the analyses I had finished the Friday before (April 3) while hoping to impress on everyone there that the risk of data loss is not only imminent, but inevitable. Given the questions and comments I received directly after my presentation and in the week to come, I can say this presentation was a definite success.
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For the Residency itself, all I have left to do is my final report--this is a compilation of my previous reports and analyses with recommendations for storage, management, and preservation of the Museum’s vast scientific collections and research data. These previous reports include: a plan for the length of retention for digital assets, an environmental scan to see what other similar institutions are doing for their data, and an overview of what federal agencies fund AMNH research, and whether those agencies require data management plans or not. All these previous reports will come together to form my recommendations as well as provide the Museum with the information it needs to understand and interpret my recommendations.
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DigiMan knows what's up
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From there, I will take the results of my survey and translate them into functional requirements I believe should be met by the Museum. This will be the final half of the report. What I anticipate taking up the bulk of the report are my findings and analytical work. This is the evidence for my recommendations and must be given the majority of emphasis. Translating my enormous excel sheet of results into nicely graphic'd and verbal will be a task worthy of its two month timeline for sure.
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+
This Friday, I will fulfill my last requirement for NDSR. This is my enrichment session--basically a way for the Residents to get experience planning events. I will take the other Residents up to the AMNH Research Library for a presentation on the types of data at risk at the Museum, and current strategies for preservation of such data.
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CT Machine at the MIF @ the AMNH!
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After this, I will give them a snapshot into the research process by taking them down to the Microscopy and Imaging Facility for an in-depth look at how research using the CT Scanner works. Think of a “cooking show” type of presentation that shows each data at each step of the process, with an eye toward management of that data. This could have only been achieved with the collaboration of the exceptional MIF staff, whom I will now publicly thank: Morgan, and Henry--thank you!
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So as you can see--the life of a Resident is busy and the work is always flowing never ending. However, with two months left at the AMNH, I can only hope that time starts to slow down and I can have a small infinity within the remaining months.
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Originally, I had my presentation scheduled for about 10 minutes but due to time constraints on the agenda, it was shortened to five. This meant I speed-talked my way through all the analyses I had finished the Friday before (April 3) while hoping to impress on everyone there that the risk of data loss is not only imminent, but inevitable. Given the questions and comments I received directly after my presentation and in the week to come, I can say this presentation was a definite success.
+
+
For the Residency itself, all I have left to do is my final report--this is a compilation of my previous reports and analyses with recommendations for storage, management, and preservation of the Museum’s vast scientific collections and research data. These previous reports include: a plan for the length of retention for digital assets, an environmental scan to see what other similar institutions are doing for their data, and an overview of what federal agencies fund AMNH research, and whether those agencies require data management plans or not. All these previous reports will come together to form my recommendations as well as provide the Museum with the information it needs to understand and interpret my recommendations.
+
+
+
DigiMan knows what's up
+
+
From there, I will take the results of my survey and translate them into functional requirements I believe should be met by the Museum. This will be the final half of the report. What I anticipate taking up the bulk of the report are my findings and analytical work. This is the evidence for my recommendations and must be given the majority of emphasis. Translating my enormous excel sheet of results into nicely graphic'd and verbal will be a task worthy of its two month timeline for sure.
+
+
This Friday, I will fulfill my last requirement for NDSR. This is my enrichment session--basically a way for the Residents to get experience planning events. I will take the other Residents up to the AMNH Research Library for a presentation on the types of data at risk at the Museum, and current strategies for preservation of such data.
+
+
+
CT Machine at the MIF @ the AMNH!
+
+
+
After this, I will give them a snapshot into the research process by taking them down to the Microscopy and Imaging Facility for an in-depth look at how research using the CT Scanner works. Think of a “cooking show” type of presentation that shows each data at each step of the process, with an eye toward management of that data. This could have only been achieved with the collaboration of the exceptional MIF staff, whom I will now publicly thank: Morgan, and Henry--thank you!
+
+
So as you can see--the life of a Resident is busy and the work is always flowing never ending. However, with two months left at the AMNH, I can only hope that time starts to slow down and I can have a small infinity within the remaining months.
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
As the National Digital Stewardship Resident at the American Museum of Natural History, I was introduced to the very specific problems facing museum librarians and archivists not only through observing the Research Library, but by speaking individually with some of the most intensive data creators at the Museum. As a part of my larger needs assessment project at the Museum, I created a semi-structured interview guide that I used to enter into a targeted dialogue with scientific staff members, covering all aspects of their digital research and collections data. Topics included the volume of their data, its rate of growth, format types, necessary software and hardware support, management practices, and opinions on preservation of their data (i.e. what data they believe is important in the long-term). I interviewed close to 60 staff members in total, including all the curators in the five Science divisions at the Museum: Anthropology, Invertebrate Zoology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences, and Vertebrate Zoology.
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During the course of my analysis, I discovered not only the sheer volume of data (with a substantial number of curators generating many terabytes a day!) but also the diversity of said data, for both research purposes and within collections. This is a big data problem that many research museums are facing. Looking at the AMNH, diversity of data is found not only in the macrocosm of the Museum’s five Science divisions, but also with each curator and research methodology.
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The NDSR mascot, Inez the DigiPres Turtle, look-ing in on a CT scanner scanning a monkey's skull at AMNH.
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After gathering this interview data, I was tasked with analyzing it in order to make recommendations in a larger final report on three essential categories: storage, management, and preservation of digital research and collec-tions data. A related deliverable of my project was also a report on solutions other museums have developed for curat-ing their in-house research and collections data. This environmental scan showed that few natural history museums in the United States take an institutional approach to solving this challenge, largely due to re-source constraints. A popular institutional solution for collections data is Arctos, the community-driven multidisciplinary collec-tion management information system that was developed as a collaboration among multiple institutions and currently holds three million natural history museum re-cords. However for research data, fewer such solutions exist for natural science research and are in development cur-rently. The National Museum of Natural History and the British Natural History Museum are both growing their digital preservation program by building institutional repositories to house their respective research data.
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+
As I continued to develop my AMNH-specific recommendations for storage, management, and preservation of digital research and collections data, I remained cognizant of the community implications. This final report is still a working docu-ment, now totaling over 100 pages. It is my hope that through at least publicly releasing my semi-structured interview guide (which will be in my public NDSR report to be released in the coming weeks), that other natural science muse-ums can pursue the same needs assess-ment procedure to understand the ex-tent and scope of their own digital data—and in doing so, have the opportu-nity to advocate and educate for and on digital preservation in their own institu-tions. Only when there is institutional support can larger community-driven resources be developed and the risk of data loss minimized.
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+
About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
As the National Digital Stewardship Resident at the American Museum of Natural History, I was introduced to the very specific problems facing museum librarians and archivists not only through observing the Research Library, but by speaking individually with some of the most intensive data creators at the Museum. As a part of my larger needs assessment project at the Museum, I created a semi-structured interview guide that I used to enter into a targeted dialogue with scientific staff members, covering all aspects of their digital research and collections data. Topics included the volume of their data, its rate of growth, format types, necessary software and hardware support, management practices, and opinions on preservation of their data (i.e. what data they believe is important in the long-term). I interviewed close to 60 staff members in total, including all the curators in the five Science divisions at the Museum: Anthropology, Invertebrate Zoology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences, and Vertebrate Zoology.
+
+
During the course of my analysis, I discovered not only the sheer volume of data (with a substantial number of curators generating many terabytes a day!) but also the diversity of said data, for both research purposes and within collections. This is a big data problem that many research museums are facing. Looking at the AMNH, diversity of data is found not only in the macrocosm of the Museum’s five Science divisions, but also with each curator and research methodology.
+
+
+
The NDSR mascot, Inez the DigiPres Turtle, look-ing in on a CT scanner scanning a monkey's skull at AMNH.
+
+
After gathering this interview data, I was tasked with analyzing it in order to make recommendations in a larger final report on three essential categories: storage, management, and preservation of digital research and collec-tions data. A related deliverable of my project was also a report on solutions other museums have developed for curat-ing their in-house research and collections data. This environmental scan showed that few natural history museums in the United States take an institutional approach to solving this challenge, largely due to re-source constraints. A popular institutional solution for collections data is Arctos, the community-driven multidisciplinary collec-tion management information system that was developed as a collaboration among multiple institutions and currently holds three million natural history museum re-cords. However for research data, fewer such solutions exist for natural science research and are in development cur-rently. The National Museum of Natural History and the British Natural History Museum are both growing their digital preservation program by building institutional repositories to house their respective research data.
+
+
As I continued to develop my AMNH-specific recommendations for storage, management, and preservation of digital research and collections data, I remained cognizant of the community implications. This final report is still a working docu-ment, now totaling over 100 pages. It is my hope that through at least publicly releasing my semi-structured interview guide (which will be in my public NDSR report to be released in the coming weeks), that other natural science muse-ums can pursue the same needs assess-ment procedure to understand the ex-tent and scope of their own digital data—and in doing so, have the opportu-nity to advocate and educate for and on digital preservation in their own institu-tions. Only when there is institutional support can larger community-driven resources be developed and the risk of data loss minimized.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
This month was excellent as it marked my first ever professional presentation as a NYU Librarian :)
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Last year during NDSR, it seemed like I was giving a presentation at a conference, professional organization meeting, webinar, etc. every other week. It’s been exceptionally restful (well, sort of...) to spend these past 5 months getting to know NYU, my colleagues, the scope of my work, and really just getting a feel for my day-to-day.
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One of the most exciting outputs from my first semester here at NYU has surrounded my work on the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment (msdse.org). Back in October (link to Oct 2015 post), I wrote about the MSDSE Summit that was held at Suncadia Resort in Washington state. God it was so incredibly beautiful there and I got to do some really cool stuff, but the best thing that happened was definitely meeting Jenny Muilenburg and Erik Mitchell.
We were really interested in exploring more overlap between the work that data scientists do and the potential work that could take place in libraries. Because the nature of data science is so multidisciplinary, and encompasses a variety of research methods and domains, it faces a lot of the same issues as libraries do in open scholarship, data access, reproducibility, curation, standardized vocabularies and metadata, and data curation.
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There are so many opportunities for us to all collaborate on these issues and create infrastructure and service models to better serve our communities. However, deploying these is super challenging. This has been a big strength of the MSDSE--the chance for universities to create these new collaborations as well as create new employment opportunities for data scientists.
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So in thinking through these issues, Jenny, Erik, and I thought of potential career paths for data scientists in libraries. We thought of three main categories of jobs:
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You can see our slides on the Open Science Framework as well as our recorded presentation, which CNI is graciously hosting on their YouTube and Vimeo channels:
This month was excellent as it marked my first ever professional presentation as a NYU Librarian :)
+
+
Last year during NDSR, it seemed like I was giving a presentation at a conference, professional organization meeting, webinar, etc. every other week. It’s been exceptionally restful (well, sort of...) to spend these past 5 months getting to know NYU, my colleagues, the scope of my work, and really just getting a feel for my day-to-day.
+
+
One of the most exciting outputs from my first semester here at NYU has surrounded my work on the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment (msdse.org). Back in October (link to Oct 2015 post), I wrote about the MSDSE Summit that was held at Suncadia Resort in Washington state. God it was so incredibly beautiful there and I got to do some really cool stuff, but the best thing that happened was definitely meeting Jenny Muilenburg and Erik Mitchell.
We were really interested in exploring more overlap between the work that data scientists do and the potential work that could take place in libraries. Because the nature of data science is so multidisciplinary, and encompasses a variety of research methods and domains, it faces a lot of the same issues as libraries do in open scholarship, data access, reproducibility, curation, standardized vocabularies and metadata, and data curation.
+
+
There are so many opportunities for us to all collaborate on these issues and create infrastructure and service models to better serve our communities. However, deploying these is super challenging. This has been a big strength of the MSDSE--the chance for universities to create these new collaborations as well as create new employment opportunities for data scientists.
+
+
So in thinking through these issues, Jenny, Erik, and I thought of potential career paths for data scientists in libraries. We thought of three main categories of jobs:
+
+
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You can see our slides on the Open Science Framework as well as our recorded presentation, which CNI is graciously hosting on their YouTube and Vimeo channels:
Hi everyone, this is Vicky reporting from Portland, Oregon! I am here on the west coast for the first time attending code4Lib 2015, and since today is the last day of the conference, I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a report about what went on here.
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First, I want to talk about the format of presentations at code4Lib. It’s absolutely unlike any other conference I’ve ever been too. There are no multiple sessions going at once. Everything is streamlined into one room. Yes--we sat in a room from 9-5pm watching 20 minute presentations, with an hour for lunch and two to three half hour breaks. This sounds really daunting but I have to tell you--it was so refreshing! I’ll talk a little bit more about the actual presentations later on.
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code4Lib also is the first conference I’ve ever been to that takes the idea of explicit consent to heart and offers attendees and presenters ways to opt-in to potential anxiety-triggering events (like being filmed or photographed) rather than opt-out. I find this really progressive and important--other conferences, take note. All presenters had to sign a consent form, and could opt-in to being filmed and live-streamed (find the live stream and archived videos here). Attendees wore red lanyards if they didn’t. You can find a great blog post on explicit consent by code4Libber Tara Robinsonhere.
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Picture taken from the blog mentioned above.
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We had an NDSR moment too! Rebecca from the Boston cohort presented on the “horror story” of data loss in LTO tapes at WGBH. It gave everyone in the audience a chill and started some really interesting conversations at break about preservation. It’s especially important because this was the only presentation that focused on digital preservation. I was shocked a conference as techy as code4Lib didn’t include more presentations on digipres, but the presentation are chosen by votes so maybe most attendees didn’t think the other presentations on digipres were relevant. Read more about Rebecca’s presentation here.
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NDSR NY & Boston representing at code4Lib 2015! Me, Peggy, & Rebecca
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Peggy and Rebecca also participated in the pre-conference PBCore Hackaton! Read more about that here.
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+
The content of the presentations was super diverse and interesting. The conference organizers did a really good job of grouping the presentations by topic so everything flowed really organically from one to the other. Kudos!
+
+
I found that my favorite presentations dealt with actual technical products or services that people had been developing. This was especially interesting to me because of my background in computer science and continued work in the tech-related side of LIS. While there were great presentations on other subjects I’m interested in (management practices and libs & social justice work, to name a few), I found these “meat and potatoes” presentations to be the most eye-opening for me. I had no idea that SASS was something gaining traction in web development, but apparently it’s the next step in web aesthetics. It’s basically a cleaner version of CSS that compiles into CSS--the best part for me: you can have variables instead of duplicates in your code! No more will my web pages have CSS that reads:
+
body{background-color:#222930;color:#E9E9E9;}
+
+ *scroll down about 100 lines*
+
+ #nav ul ul {display: none; position: absolute; border:1px solid #E9E9E9;}
+ It will have:
+
@color: #E9E9E9;
+ that can be instantiated anywhere I want it! I can change one value instead of one thousand! Mind=blown.
+
+
Other tech touched upon library tools that make jobs as techy-librarians easier. Like the presentation on packer.io. Packer.io is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms (Docker, VMWare, VirtualBox, etc), all from a single source configuration. The presenters gave the example of an Islanadora install. There are a lot of software dependencies that comes with the install and it is a really convoluted and intense process. If you want to put this on another computer, it would require you to do that whole install all over again. With packer.io, there are no more crazy software stacks. You just “clone” the first computer and boot up the second one with the system image disk. Boom. Just one config.
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+
It’s scriptable so that builds can be automated and it’s API is extendable to make it work with just about anything. This is such an awesome tool and I’m so glad I got to hear someone speak on it in detail. It could definitely have some possibilities at the AMNH. You can see the full line-up of presentations here, many of which have the slides attached.
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A slide from a presentation on packer.io. The rest of the slides here & info on packer.io here.
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Portland has also been a blast to explore. As my first introduction to the west coast, its basically everything I thought it would be: Williamsburg if Williamsburg were a huge city. It was filled with trendy thrift shops, tiny hole-in-the-wall music and tea shops, and a population dressed in the finest worn leather jackets and combat boots. Everyone is really friendly and willing to help when tourists (read: me) get hopelessly lost. The city even gave me a sign post to make getting home easier:
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Is it a coincidence Times Square and Mecca are in the same direction?
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Portland had a ton of really niche spots to explore. When I told friends I was going to Portland, the first thing they told me was: get donuts! The best two are Blue Star Donuts and Voodoo Doughnuts. I ended up trying both, but only one can be king. Turns out it’s:
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My fav Portland donut spot: Voodoo Doughnuts!
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code4Lib provided a great semi-structured social event after-hours at the eBay HQ called beer4Lib where conference attendees brought beer from their home or local to Portland. Everyone got together, shared their takeaways from the con, played some pool, and tried some new craft beers. I’m just excited I got to say I had beers at eBay!
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Awesome beer4Lib speciality glasses provided by the con organizers!
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Today I am going to continue my exploration by adding Powell’s City of Books (apparently, the Strand of Portland) and a cat cafe called Purrington’s Cat Lounge to my list of visited places in Portland. Though I’m sad the conference is over, I’m glad I had the opportunity to both explore a new city and to speak with other techy-librarians and get to see what such a diverse population of institutions are doing to contribute to the management, organization, and storage of digital assets. Needless to say, I’ll be back next year to explore a (hopefully) new city and new conference materials.
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+
PS. As an aside, I thought this was quite funny: after the two people live-tweeting the event, I am the person tweeting the most about the con! How weird...BUT everyone can access the #c4l15 twitter archive here if they want to see what everyone’s been tweeting about!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Hi everyone, this is Vicky reporting from Portland, Oregon! I am here on the west coast for the first time attending code4Lib 2015, and since today is the last day of the conference, I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a report about what went on here.
+
+
First, I want to talk about the format of presentations at code4Lib. It’s absolutely unlike any other conference I’ve ever been too. There are no multiple sessions going at once. Everything is streamlined into one room. Yes--we sat in a room from 9-5pm watching 20 minute presentations, with an hour for lunch and two to three half hour breaks. This sounds really daunting but I have to tell you--it was so refreshing! I’ll talk a little bit more about the actual presentations later on.
+
+
code4Lib also is the first conference I’ve ever been to that takes the idea of explicit consent to heart and offers attendees and presenters ways to opt-in to potential anxiety-triggering events (like being filmed or photographed) rather than opt-out. I find this really progressive and important--other conferences, take note. All presenters had to sign a consent form, and could opt-in to being filmed and live-streamed (find the live stream and archived videos here). Attendees wore red lanyards if they didn’t. You can find a great blog post on explicit consent by code4Libber Tara Robinsonhere.
+
+
+
Picture taken from the blog mentioned above.
+
+
We had an NDSR moment too! Rebecca from the Boston cohort presented on the “horror story” of data loss in LTO tapes at WGBH. It gave everyone in the audience a chill and started some really interesting conversations at break about preservation. It’s especially important because this was the only presentation that focused on digital preservation. I was shocked a conference as techy as code4Lib didn’t include more presentations on digipres, but the presentation are chosen by votes so maybe most attendees didn’t think the other presentations on digipres were relevant. Read more about Rebecca’s presentation here.
+
+
NDSR NY & Boston representing at code4Lib 2015! Me, Peggy, & Rebecca
+
+
Peggy and Rebecca also participated in the pre-conference PBCore Hackaton! Read more about that here.
+
+
The content of the presentations was super diverse and interesting. The conference organizers did a really good job of grouping the presentations by topic so everything flowed really organically from one to the other. Kudos!
+
+
I found that my favorite presentations dealt with actual technical products or services that people had been developing. This was especially interesting to me because of my background in computer science and continued work in the tech-related side of LIS. While there were great presentations on other subjects I’m interested in (management practices and libs & social justice work, to name a few), I found these “meat and potatoes” presentations to be the most eye-opening for me. I had no idea that SASS was something gaining traction in web development, but apparently it’s the next step in web aesthetics. It’s basically a cleaner version of CSS that compiles into CSS--the best part for me: you can have variables instead of duplicates in your code! No more will my web pages have CSS that reads:
+
body{background-color:#222930;color:#E9E9E9;}
+
+ *scroll down about 100 lines*
+
+ #nav ul ul {display: none; position: absolute; border:1px solid #E9E9E9;}
+ It will have:
+
@color: #E9E9E9;
+ that can be instantiated anywhere I want it! I can change one value instead of one thousand! Mind=blown.
+
+
Other tech touched upon library tools that make jobs as techy-librarians easier. Like the presentation on packer.io. Packer.io is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms (Docker, VMWare, VirtualBox, etc), all from a single source configuration. The presenters gave the example of an Islanadora install. There are a lot of software dependencies that comes with the install and it is a really convoluted and intense process. If you want to put this on another computer, it would require you to do that whole install all over again. With packer.io, there are no more crazy software stacks. You just “clone” the first computer and boot up the second one with the system image disk. Boom. Just one config.
+
+
It’s scriptable so that builds can be automated and it’s API is extendable to make it work with just about anything. This is such an awesome tool and I’m so glad I got to hear someone speak on it in detail. It could definitely have some possibilities at the AMNH. You can see the full line-up of presentations here, many of which have the slides attached.
+
+
+
A slide from a presentation on packer.io. The rest of the slides here & info on packer.io here.
+
+
Portland has also been a blast to explore. As my first introduction to the west coast, its basically everything I thought it would be: Williamsburg if Williamsburg were a huge city. It was filled with trendy thrift shops, tiny hole-in-the-wall music and tea shops, and a population dressed in the finest worn leather jackets and combat boots. Everyone is really friendly and willing to help when tourists (read: me) get hopelessly lost. The city even gave me a sign post to make getting home easier:
+
+
+
Is it a coincidence Times Square and Mecca are in the same direction?
+
+
Portland had a ton of really niche spots to explore. When I told friends I was going to Portland, the first thing they told me was: get donuts! The best two are Blue Star Donuts and Voodoo Doughnuts. I ended up trying both, but only one can be king. Turns out it’s:
+
+
+
My fav Portland donut spot: Voodoo Doughnuts!
+
+
code4Lib provided a great semi-structured social event after-hours at the eBay HQ called beer4Lib where conference attendees brought beer from their home or local to Portland. Everyone got together, shared their takeaways from the con, played some pool, and tried some new craft beers. I’m just excited I got to say I had beers at eBay!
+
+
+
Awesome beer4Lib speciality glasses provided by the con organizers!
+
+
Today I am going to continue my exploration by adding Powell’s City of Books (apparently, the Strand of Portland) and a cat cafe called Purrington’s Cat Lounge to my list of visited places in Portland. Though I’m sad the conference is over, I’m glad I had the opportunity to both explore a new city and to speak with other techy-librarians and get to see what such a diverse population of institutions are doing to contribute to the management, organization, and storage of digital assets. Needless to say, I’ll be back next year to explore a (hopefully) new city and new conference materials.
+
+
PS. As an aside, I thought this was quite funny: after the two people live-tweeting the event, I am the person tweeting the most about the con! How weird...BUT everyone can access the #c4l15 twitter archive here if they want to see what everyone’s been tweeting about!
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+
About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Everyone reading my posts must be saying, “Damn, this girl is obsessed with proving the value of the library! We get it already!” Blame Jim Matarazzo, my corporate libraries professor back at Simmons. He really drilled it into my head that if a library can’t prove that it’s worth having, it will be the first thing cut from a budget. And it scared me into constantly thinking about it. Thanks, Jim!
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In my last NDSR-NY post, I described how the needs assessment survey can be utilized to show value on an institutional level, in the setting of meetings with business operatives and institutional leaders. In my blog post for the SIGNAL, I wrote about how programs like NDSR can prove their value on an interdisciplinary level as well as to the LIS field.
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In this post, I’m going to discuss the day-to-day bias that libraries and librarians face within their user groups. It’s something I’ve dealt with as the resident at the AMNH, and as such I’ve had to do a lot of advocacy work at the “ground level.” With librarians becoming increasingly digitally proficient and offering new digital services, a common question many face is: “Why is the library doing this? Isn’t this an IT thing?”
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I am not Marian the Librarian!
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No. It’s not an IT thing. While all the back-end work, such as physically setting up servers and maintaining them is under IT’s jurisdiction, it is the information professionals who make all the ones and zeroes stored there discoverable and readable to users. Other misconceptions are that IT is responsible for making sure your data isn’t corrupted. It’s not. The job of IT ends at the storage, security (keeping out unwanted hackers, firewalls, etc.), and maintenance of hardware.
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Where librarians excel in the technological world is in management and preservation. We can organize your digital objects, create systems to put it in where its searchable and accessible on a wide scale, and then preserve the most important 2-4% through techniques created within our field. Preservation metadata doesn’t add itself, nor does IT want to add to their already ridiculously long laundry list of things to do. I’ve worked so many IT jobs, just take it from me: they do not want the job of a systems engineer or a networking administrator AND a librarian.
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Librarians are becoming increasingly into the digital.
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Nor should librarians work solely in analog materials anymore. With so much born-digital material being created daily, we need to be involved in its organization and management or data loss is a big concern. This interview with Sibyl Schaefer in the SIGNAL paints this idea perfectly; she says “we don’t all need to be digital archivists, but we do need to be archivists who work with digital materials.”
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We need to help cultivate a culture that trusts librarians with both analog and digital materials. Libraries are a service, and as such we as librarians need to make known and understood the services we offer. This is done usually through interpersonal communication, in email, phone, text, IM, or face-to-face. Each of these interactions provide the librarian a great opportunity to explain why the services they and the library offer are only available through them. A few sentences here and there spawn larger conversations where we can continue to prove our knowledge and worth as digitally proficient staff. From there, institutional culture and indeed, wider stereotypes of librarians as stodgy old women can finally, finally end.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Everyone reading my posts must be saying, “Damn, this girl is obsessed with proving the value of the library! We get it already!” Blame Jim Matarazzo, my corporate libraries professor back at Simmons. He really drilled it into my head that if a library can’t prove that it’s worth having, it will be the first thing cut from a budget. And it scared me into constantly thinking about it. Thanks, Jim!
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In my last NDSR-NY post, I described how the needs assessment survey can be utilized to show value on an institutional level, in the setting of meetings with business operatives and institutional leaders. In my blog post for the SIGNAL, I wrote about how programs like NDSR can prove their value on an interdisciplinary level as well as to the LIS field.
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In this post, I’m going to discuss the day-to-day bias that libraries and librarians face within their user groups. It’s something I’ve dealt with as the resident at the AMNH, and as such I’ve had to do a lot of advocacy work at the “ground level.” With librarians becoming increasingly digitally proficient and offering new digital services, a common question many face is: “Why is the library doing this? Isn’t this an IT thing?”
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I am not Marian the Librarian!
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No. It’s not an IT thing. While all the back-end work, such as physically setting up servers and maintaining them is under IT’s jurisdiction, it is the information professionals who make all the ones and zeroes stored there discoverable and readable to users. Other misconceptions are that IT is responsible for making sure your data isn’t corrupted. It’s not. The job of IT ends at the storage, security (keeping out unwanted hackers, firewalls, etc.), and maintenance of hardware.
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Where librarians excel in the technological world is in management and preservation. We can organize your digital objects, create systems to put it in where its searchable and accessible on a wide scale, and then preserve the most important 2-4% through techniques created within our field. Preservation metadata doesn’t add itself, nor does IT want to add to their already ridiculously long laundry list of things to do. I’ve worked so many IT jobs, just take it from me: they do not want the job of a systems engineer or a networking administrator AND a librarian.
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+
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Librarians are becoming increasingly into the digital.
+
+
Nor should librarians work solely in analog materials anymore. With so much born-digital material being created daily, we need to be involved in its organization and management or data loss is a big concern. This interview with Sibyl Schaefer in the SIGNAL paints this idea perfectly; she says “we don’t all need to be digital archivists, but we do need to be archivists who work with digital materials.”
+
+
We need to help cultivate a culture that trusts librarians with both analog and digital materials. Libraries are a service, and as such we as librarians need to make known and understood the services we offer. This is done usually through interpersonal communication, in email, phone, text, IM, or face-to-face. Each of these interactions provide the librarian a great opportunity to explain why the services they and the library offer are only available through them. A few sentences here and there spawn larger conversations where we can continue to prove our knowledge and worth as digitally proficient staff. From there, institutional culture and indeed, wider stereotypes of librarians as stodgy old women can finally, finally end.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Well folks, this marks the final post from the 2014-15 NDSR-NY cohort. Before we officially sign off we wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has followed our journeys via this blog, and offer some final thoughts on what the residency has meant to us.
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The NDSR-NY 2014-15 cohort.
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Shira: I’ve learned so much over the past 9 months that it’s hard to know where to begin. When I think back to when we began this residency I’m amazed at what we’ve managed to accomplish since September: between the 5 of us we’ve published over 50 blog posts, attended and/or presented at over 20 conferences, tweeted about our projects more or less continuously, and published 15 articles. And of course that’s not to mention all the project deliverables themselves! I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to be a part of this residency. Working with my colleagues and mentors at the Carnegie Hall Archives has been an absolute pleasure. They were supportive and generous with their time and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from them. The same goes for my incredible cohort. Peggy, Vicky, Karl and Julia: you guys have taught me so much. I’m thankful for the wisdom, words of encouragement, and advice you have given to me over the course of this residency, and I’m truly sad to be saying goodbye.
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The residents at MoMA after a panel discussion hosted by ARLIS/NA & Metro.
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Vicky: Wow, it’s so hard to believe that the nine months are over. It feels like I blinked and I was moving from Boston to Brooklyn, I blinked again and I was in orientation week at METRO, and now I blinked and we are writing our farewells on our blog. NDSR has prepped me for a career doing an intensely specialized facet of information science, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the chance to work on this next frontier. The AMNH has been so instrumental to my professional and personal growth, and the support of my cohort has been invaluable. But like the Fellowship of the Ring, we are bound by friendship and love, but our time as a cohort has ended. I’ll never forget this time or the people in it. Thank you everyone!!
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Photo op at the NDSR-NY Closing Ceremony.
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Karl: I refuse to leave my desk at the Frick and so will not be signing off here...j/k...*sigh*. Like all of my fellow residents, I'm sure, I was tremendously inspired by the scope and nature of these projects when I first discovered them. What I didn't anticipate was that they would embed us into such a warm, welcoming, and supportive family of professionals. Thanks to Margo, Annie, and all at METRO who made this opportunity real and guided us through it. Thanks to the NYARC Directors for providing both the inspiring vision for my work and the professional support to make it and my future endeavors successful. Thanks to Sumitra Duncan, Debbie Kempe, Lily Pregill, and everyone else at the Frick, MoMA, and Brooklyn Museum, who made me feel so much at home. Most of all, thanks to my fellow residents for making this crazy adventure so fun and inspiring throughout. We'll have to do it again some time.
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The cohort celebrating the completion of the residency at a Mets game after the Closing Ceremony.
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Julia: It’s been an amazing past year! I can’t believe it’s actually come to an end and we’ll all disperse to begin the next phase in our lives! I’m truly grateful to have shared this experience with Vicky, Karl, Peggy, and Shira. Much thanks also to my generous mentors, Donald Mennerich and Lisa Darms. Sharing my experiences with all of you readers has also been an unexpected bonus! I’ve been pleased that the blog has reached new researchers now interested in coming to use NYU’s born-digital collections. Thanks guys!
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Peggy: Though I may have internally (or externally) groaned every time I realized I had another post on this blog coming up, when I look back on what I’ve written over the past nine months, I’m glad that I was required to record my experiences. There’s so much I might have forgotten if I hadn’t written it down, from lessons learned to fun times had at conferences. I’m happy that there will be a record of this whirlwind nine months in my life, and I’m glad that it’s publicly available for all to see, both as a record of my work and a look into the life of a young professional. I won’t lie though - it was pretty exciting crossing off this last blog post on my to-do list. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for September when a new cohort of residents will take over the blog!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Well folks, this marks the final post from the 2014-15 NDSR-NY cohort. Before we officially sign off we wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has followed our journeys via this blog, and offer some final thoughts on what the residency has meant to us.
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The NDSR-NY 2014-15 cohort.
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+
Shira: I’ve learned so much over the past 9 months that it’s hard to know where to begin. When I think back to when we began this residency I’m amazed at what we’ve managed to accomplish since September: between the 5 of us we’ve published over 50 blog posts, attended and/or presented at over 20 conferences, tweeted about our projects more or less continuously, and published 15 articles. And of course that’s not to mention all the project deliverables themselves! I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to be a part of this residency. Working with my colleagues and mentors at the Carnegie Hall Archives has been an absolute pleasure. They were supportive and generous with their time and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from them. The same goes for my incredible cohort. Peggy, Vicky, Karl and Julia: you guys have taught me so much. I’m thankful for the wisdom, words of encouragement, and advice you have given to me over the course of this residency, and I’m truly sad to be saying goodbye.
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+
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The residents at MoMA after a panel discussion hosted by ARLIS/NA & Metro.
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+
Vicky: Wow, it’s so hard to believe that the nine months are over. It feels like I blinked and I was moving from Boston to Brooklyn, I blinked again and I was in orientation week at METRO, and now I blinked and we are writing our farewells on our blog. NDSR has prepped me for a career doing an intensely specialized facet of information science, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the chance to work on this next frontier. The AMNH has been so instrumental to my professional and personal growth, and the support of my cohort has been invaluable. But like the Fellowship of the Ring, we are bound by friendship and love, but our time as a cohort has ended. I’ll never forget this time or the people in it. Thank you everyone!!
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Photo op at the NDSR-NY Closing Ceremony.
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+
Karl: I refuse to leave my desk at the Frick and so will not be signing off here...j/k...*sigh*. Like all of my fellow residents, I'm sure, I was tremendously inspired by the scope and nature of these projects when I first discovered them. What I didn't anticipate was that they would embed us into such a warm, welcoming, and supportive family of professionals. Thanks to Margo, Annie, and all at METRO who made this opportunity real and guided us through it. Thanks to the NYARC Directors for providing both the inspiring vision for my work and the professional support to make it and my future endeavors successful. Thanks to Sumitra Duncan, Debbie Kempe, Lily Pregill, and everyone else at the Frick, MoMA, and Brooklyn Museum, who made me feel so much at home. Most of all, thanks to my fellow residents for making this crazy adventure so fun and inspiring throughout. We'll have to do it again some time.
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+
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The cohort celebrating the completion of the residency at a Mets game after the Closing Ceremony.
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+
Julia: It’s been an amazing past year! I can’t believe it’s actually come to an end and we’ll all disperse to begin the next phase in our lives! I’m truly grateful to have shared this experience with Vicky, Karl, Peggy, and Shira. Much thanks also to my generous mentors, Donald Mennerich and Lisa Darms. Sharing my experiences with all of you readers has also been an unexpected bonus! I’ve been pleased that the blog has reached new researchers now interested in coming to use NYU’s born-digital collections. Thanks guys!
+
+
Peggy: Though I may have internally (or externally) groaned every time I realized I had another post on this blog coming up, when I look back on what I’ve written over the past nine months, I’m glad that I was required to record my experiences. There’s so much I might have forgotten if I hadn’t written it down, from lessons learned to fun times had at conferences. I’m happy that there will be a record of this whirlwind nine months in my life, and I’m glad that it’s publicly available for all to see, both as a record of my work and a look into the life of a young professional. I won’t lie though - it was pretty exciting crossing off this last blog post on my to-do list. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for September when a new cohort of residents will take over the blog!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Hi everyone!! So, like Karl, I was recently asked to write a post on another blog (The Smithsonian Field book Project blog!) and thought, instead of rewriting the whole post and publishing it here, I could just point our lovely readers in the right direction!
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The post on the Smithsonian Field book Project blog details the specific interactions I've had at the American Museum of Natural History with field books. The majority of my experience with field books was actually initiated by the curators and scientific staff that I interviewed--they will often talk about how invaluable their field notes and lab notes are to maintaining the long-term viability and usability of their research data, or how older field books are incredibly impactful to their ongoing projects. For those that don't know, field books are essentially notebooks that scientists bring into the field to record their observations and findings. There are a few tidbits in my post about how field books are necessary as primary source documentation for ongoing and current scientific research. Basically--there are really cool old field books at the Museum and they are still relevant to science!
Also, if anyone missed it, I recently did a screencast on NDSR and NDSR-NY. This is basically a "what is this" and "why should you do this" type of screencast--so if you are interested in being a Resident in next year's iteration, I would recommend giving it a watch! You can find that here!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Hi everyone!! So, like Karl, I was recently asked to write a post on another blog (The Smithsonian Field book Project blog!) and thought, instead of rewriting the whole post and publishing it here, I could just point our lovely readers in the right direction!
+
+
The post on the Smithsonian Field book Project blog details the specific interactions I've had at the American Museum of Natural History with field books. The majority of my experience with field books was actually initiated by the curators and scientific staff that I interviewed--they will often talk about how invaluable their field notes and lab notes are to maintaining the long-term viability and usability of their research data, or how older field books are incredibly impactful to their ongoing projects. For those that don't know, field books are essentially notebooks that scientists bring into the field to record their observations and findings. There are a few tidbits in my post about how field books are necessary as primary source documentation for ongoing and current scientific research. Basically--there are really cool old field books at the Museum and they are still relevant to science!
Also, if anyone missed it, I recently did a screencast on NDSR and NDSR-NY. This is basically a "what is this" and "why should you do this" type of screencast--so if you are interested in being a Resident in next year's iteration, I would recommend giving it a watch! You can find that here!
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Applications to the 2015-16 National Digital Stewardship Residencies in New York are open! The deadline to apply has been extended by two weeks, to Friday, May 22! Woo! As if you needed more good news than that, METRO also recently announced the host institutions for this round of residencies, and they’re very exciting (like we’d probably compete with you for them if we could!). You can learn all about them and their projects here.
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As the the current cohort round the corner and bring their 2014-15 residencies into the home stretch, we’re frequently asked for our advice to prospective Residents, those of you considering applying to the program (most important advice: do it!). We touched on some of these themes in our most recent interview with METRO. Here, in the meantime, are our summary responses to those questions most frequently asked of us live and online:
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How did you approach the video portion of the NDSR application?
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Julia: I took together multiple AV recordings of presentations, presentation files, moving images I had worked on, etc., and overlaid/combined them to make a case for my expertise to work on my top choices.
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Peggy: I used it as a sort of audiovisual cover letter. I explained what I had to offer my top choice and why I was enthusiastic and excited about the project. I used specific examples to back up my points. I did not use a script, but I practiced my answer beforehand and reshot it a few times.
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Shira: Ah yes, the video. I used it as an opportunity to demonstrate my understanding of some of the key concepts that I would be required to engage with throughout my residency. Given how I work I knew that it would be easiest if I wrote a script beforehand. Although this might not be necessary for some people, it turned out to be a huge help for me since it forced me to pay careful attention to the video’s structure, which ultimately made for a tighter, more cogent piece.
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Karl: I followed Julia’s and Shira’s general approaches to creating the video, but in terms of what I wanted it to actually achieve for me, I focused on making it the best possible representation of who I am and how I like to communicate--especially when challenged to speak on such a complicated topic in a short timeframe. I can’t stress heavily enough just how many directions you could take that in your own case, and therefore how beneficial it is to be yourself and make it your own.
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Vicky: To be honest, I totally winged it. My boyfriend’s twin sister has a degree in photography with a concentration in film (big thank you to Zoë Catalano!), so after a double shift at the restaurant I was working at, I went to their house to film. It was nice that she had an HD camera and editing abilities, so the actual quality of the video was very good. As for the content, I didn’t practice or write a script, I just got in front of the camera and tried to focus on the reasons why I am interested in digital preservation, and then focused it onto the project at the AMNH--because I really, really, wanted that one. That being said, tailoring it so specifically probably isn’t a good idea...but for me in this one instance, it really worked. I agree with Peggy--think of it as a video cover letter.
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What does good preparation for the residency look like? How did you do it?
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Peggy: It’s really, really helpful to have worked in a cultural heritage institution while you’re in school, to show that you have at least a basic understanding of how these types of institutions work and that you’ve demonstrated your skills outside the classroom. Even if you’re volunteering or working one day a week - any hands-on experience you can get, take it.
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Vicky: Keep up with the profession--librarians and archivists of all types are super active on Twitter, listservs, LinkedIn--you name it, we’re on it. Read the blogs, read the articles, and stay up to date with the latest developments in the field. This will put you ahead.
Julia: While I agree with what everyone else has said, I also want to stress that it depends. Each fellowship is different. I don’t think the fellows would be interchangeable on each other’s projects. For example, my thesis work in digital forensics applications to archives and my week long “Born-Digital Forensics” course at the Maryland Institute of Technology Humanities in Learning and Teaching all helped prepare me specifically for some of the challenges at NYU and made it much easier to hit the ground running with my project to start my acquisition workflows and documentation.
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How do you balance your obligations to your residency’s host institution with all of the other NDSR cohort/workshop/conference activities?
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Vicky: Well in the beginning of the Residency, it wasn’t too bad trying to balance the NDSR requirements/meetings and the work at the AMNH. That being said, as we are into the final stretch of the Residency, it’s become increasingly difficult. The final deliverable still needs to be written, some intermittent deliverables need to be cleaned up, and we are in the push. While workshops and professional development opportunities are critical to information professionals, there are times I just want to hunker down at the AMNH and not come out until I am finished. But otherwise, the AMNH has been very understanding and supportive of my PD/NDSR requirements and my mentors have been a huge help for me finding balance.
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Karl: This is not always a binary choice; outreach and advocacy are part and parcel of our residencies, both within and on behalf of our host institutions. I try to keep in mind at all times how my work at NYARC advances the field outside of our walls (it helps when you’re already working for a consortium) and how my participation in outside events/efforts can advance NYARC’s specific goals. Still, as Vicky implies, these strategies do compete for your time and your presence, so you kind of have to love to do both in order to keep the fuel burning for either!
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Shira: Google calendar is pretty much my bible these days.
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Julia: This can be tricky. There’s definitely some push and pull between wanting to advocate both within my own institution and to the general community. More prosaically, just fitting in all the meetings into my schedule is difficult. There are standing meetings that are both NDSR- and NYU-specific, and it can be impossible to make them all. Factor in the travel and there’s really no time to waste. Fortunately, everyone I report to understands that I have multiple obligations that sometimes compete with one another.
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Is there any one thing that’s been especially important to the success of your project?
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Julia: My relationship with my mentor. While I don’t necessarily see or work with him on a daily or even every-other-day basis, if we didn’t agree on how to prioritize and focus my energies this project might not have worked out. Luckily, he’s given me a lot of flexibility to explore the issues that I think are interesting, like emulated access to complex media, while also giving me support when I get stuck, run out of ideas, and just need some help. I’ve also been super lucky in that we’ve been able to collaborate on talks and papers together.
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Karl:I’ll agree with Julia and say that it’s all about relationships. To the success of my project, it was definitely more important that I could work and communicate effectively among geographically (and hierarchically) dispersed teammates than that I had any particular experience with software, metadata schemas, or scripting languages. Those are useful only insofar as you can gain and sustain buy-in for your work, and yes, having an engaged and engaging mentor in your corner can make all the difference there.
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Peggy:I will also add that taking advantage of the cohort model of NDSR is incredibly important. By that I mean utilizing this built in support network of residents going through a very similar experience to you. I’ve found it so helpful to discuss problems and questions with the other residents, especially at the beginning of the program when you may be more hesitant to ask a lot of questions at your institution (even though, of course, you totally should! But I understand the hesitancy when you’re just starting somewhere). The other residents will probably be going through a lot of the same stuff you’re going through and be very grateful for someone to talk about it with.
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Shira: I think Peggy hit the nail on the head as far as the advantages of the cohort model go, because having everyone’s input and support has been invaluable. I also want to mention how important it is to have your elevator pitch down pat. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what my project was about over the past year, I’d be an extremely rich lady by now. (Alas…) But in all seriousness, I’ve found that being able to concisely explain what the NDSR program is, what your project will accomplish, etc., was key to gaining buy-in from my colleagues at Carnegie Hall.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
Applications to the 2015-16 National Digital Stewardship Residencies in New York are open! The deadline to apply has been extended by two weeks, to Friday, May 22! Woo! As if you needed more good news than that, METRO also recently announced the host institutions for this round of residencies, and they’re very exciting (like we’d probably compete with you for them if we could!). You can learn all about them and their projects here.
+
+
As the the current cohort round the corner and bring their 2014-15 residencies into the home stretch, we’re frequently asked for our advice to prospective Residents, those of you considering applying to the program (most important advice: do it!). We touched on some of these themes in our most recent interview with METRO. Here, in the meantime, are our summary responses to those questions most frequently asked of us live and online:
+
+
How did you approach the video portion of the NDSR application?
+
+
Julia: I took together multiple AV recordings of presentations, presentation files, moving images I had worked on, etc., and overlaid/combined them to make a case for my expertise to work on my top choices.
+
+
Peggy: I used it as a sort of audiovisual cover letter. I explained what I had to offer my top choice and why I was enthusiastic and excited about the project. I used specific examples to back up my points. I did not use a script, but I practiced my answer beforehand and reshot it a few times.
+
+
Shira: Ah yes, the video. I used it as an opportunity to demonstrate my understanding of some of the key concepts that I would be required to engage with throughout my residency. Given how I work I knew that it would be easiest if I wrote a script beforehand. Although this might not be necessary for some people, it turned out to be a huge help for me since it forced me to pay careful attention to the video’s structure, which ultimately made for a tighter, more cogent piece.
+
+
Karl: I followed Julia’s and Shira’s general approaches to creating the video, but in terms of what I wanted it to actually achieve for me, I focused on making it the best possible representation of who I am and how I like to communicate--especially when challenged to speak on such a complicated topic in a short timeframe. I can’t stress heavily enough just how many directions you could take that in your own case, and therefore how beneficial it is to be yourself and make it your own.
+
+
Vicky: To be honest, I totally winged it. My boyfriend’s twin sister has a degree in photography with a concentration in film (big thank you to Zoë Catalano!), so after a double shift at the restaurant I was working at, I went to their house to film. It was nice that she had an HD camera and editing abilities, so the actual quality of the video was very good. As for the content, I didn’t practice or write a script, I just got in front of the camera and tried to focus on the reasons why I am interested in digital preservation, and then focused it onto the project at the AMNH--because I really, really, wanted that one. That being said, tailoring it so specifically probably isn’t a good idea...but for me in this one instance, it really worked. I agree with Peggy--think of it as a video cover letter.
+
+
What does good preparation for the residency look like? How did you do it?
+
+
Peggy: It’s really, really helpful to have worked in a cultural heritage institution while you’re in school, to show that you have at least a basic understanding of how these types of institutions work and that you’ve demonstrated your skills outside the classroom. Even if you’re volunteering or working one day a week - any hands-on experience you can get, take it.
+
+
Vicky: Keep up with the profession--librarians and archivists of all types are super active on Twitter, listservs, LinkedIn--you name it, we’re on it. Read the blogs, read the articles, and stay up to date with the latest developments in the field. This will put you ahead.
Julia: While I agree with what everyone else has said, I also want to stress that it depends. Each fellowship is different. I don’t think the fellows would be interchangeable on each other’s projects. For example, my thesis work in digital forensics applications to archives and my week long “Born-Digital Forensics” course at the Maryland Institute of Technology Humanities in Learning and Teaching all helped prepare me specifically for some of the challenges at NYU and made it much easier to hit the ground running with my project to start my acquisition workflows and documentation.
+
+
How do you balance your obligations to your residency’s host institution with all of the other NDSR cohort/workshop/conference activities?
+
+
Vicky: Well in the beginning of the Residency, it wasn’t too bad trying to balance the NDSR requirements/meetings and the work at the AMNH. That being said, as we are into the final stretch of the Residency, it’s become increasingly difficult. The final deliverable still needs to be written, some intermittent deliverables need to be cleaned up, and we are in the push. While workshops and professional development opportunities are critical to information professionals, there are times I just want to hunker down at the AMNH and not come out until I am finished. But otherwise, the AMNH has been very understanding and supportive of my PD/NDSR requirements and my mentors have been a huge help for me finding balance.
+
+
Karl: This is not always a binary choice; outreach and advocacy are part and parcel of our residencies, both within and on behalf of our host institutions. I try to keep in mind at all times how my work at NYARC advances the field outside of our walls (it helps when you’re already working for a consortium) and how my participation in outside events/efforts can advance NYARC’s specific goals. Still, as Vicky implies, these strategies do compete for your time and your presence, so you kind of have to love to do both in order to keep the fuel burning for either!
+
+
Shira: Google calendar is pretty much my bible these days.
+
+
Julia: This can be tricky. There’s definitely some push and pull between wanting to advocate both within my own institution and to the general community. More prosaically, just fitting in all the meetings into my schedule is difficult. There are standing meetings that are both NDSR- and NYU-specific, and it can be impossible to make them all. Factor in the travel and there’s really no time to waste. Fortunately, everyone I report to understands that I have multiple obligations that sometimes compete with one another.
+
+
Is there any one thing that’s been especially important to the success of your project?
+
+
Julia: My relationship with my mentor. While I don’t necessarily see or work with him on a daily or even every-other-day basis, if we didn’t agree on how to prioritize and focus my energies this project might not have worked out. Luckily, he’s given me a lot of flexibility to explore the issues that I think are interesting, like emulated access to complex media, while also giving me support when I get stuck, run out of ideas, and just need some help. I’ve also been super lucky in that we’ve been able to collaborate on talks and papers together.
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Karl:I’ll agree with Julia and say that it’s all about relationships. To the success of my project, it was definitely more important that I could work and communicate effectively among geographically (and hierarchically) dispersed teammates than that I had any particular experience with software, metadata schemas, or scripting languages. Those are useful only insofar as you can gain and sustain buy-in for your work, and yes, having an engaged and engaging mentor in your corner can make all the difference there.
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Peggy:I will also add that taking advantage of the cohort model of NDSR is incredibly important. By that I mean utilizing this built in support network of residents going through a very similar experience to you. I’ve found it so helpful to discuss problems and questions with the other residents, especially at the beginning of the program when you may be more hesitant to ask a lot of questions at your institution (even though, of course, you totally should! But I understand the hesitancy when you’re just starting somewhere). The other residents will probably be going through a lot of the same stuff you’re going through and be very grateful for someone to talk about it with.
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Shira: I think Peggy hit the nail on the head as far as the advantages of the cohort model go, because having everyone’s input and support has been invaluable. I also want to mention how important it is to have your elevator pitch down pat. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what my project was about over the past year, I’d be an extremely rich lady by now. (Alas…) But in all seriousness, I’ve found that being able to concisely explain what the NDSR program is, what your project will accomplish, etc., was key to gaining buy-in from my colleagues at Carnegie Hall.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
A few weeks ago, I attend the Library Information Technology Association’s Forum. Over the 13-15th, I attended several sessions, explored Minneapolis for the first time, and met some really awesome people. I was, as always, a bit nervous attending a new conference but the organizers had some really great 101-type sessions, and even set up a Slack channel which I found to be immensely helpful throughout the day. People organized dinners, discussed sessions in real-time, posed questions, and uploaded some hysterical gifs.
+
+
+
+
The first session I attended cemented to me that this conference is 1000% worth attending. Jason Casden talked about the state of open source software in the LIS community and why we are falling short of creating what he called “mature” software. He began this discussion by commending libraryland for creating and publishing a lot of open source software, but there was the big essential caveat: it has to be maintained. This becomes an issue when other institutions want to use your software, but lack prerequisite knowledge--the point is, the software is ECONOMICALLY free to obtain, but requires labour and some prerequisite hardware or software configurations you may not have and may not be free.
+
+
He went into some really cool discussion about the open source community in general, of course starting with Richard Stallman and his ideas on developing standardized methods of delivering software and on creating "ideologically free software."
+
+
Richard Stallman....you know. Richard Stallman << all that needs to be said about him #litaforum
Now of course, Unix systems (Linux!) is widely used and increasingly popular across domains. But the central idea still remains: how can we make open source software more available in Libraryland, especially to underresourced staff?
+
+
Jason made an amazing point here: we as a field need to produce more “adult” software. And no, not hentai games, but software that knows what it needs and can correct an environment to allow it to thrive--we must teach software how to create an environment in which it can thrive. Most open source library software, compared to this, is in its child stage.
+
+
Again, the open source movement is super important and no disrespect to the developers spending their time creating amazing community resources. But the idea is that our field should spend some time thinking, deliberating, and creating tools that are easier to install, maintain, and evaluate.
To help, Jason discussed some reasonable task performance metrics that we can apply to our own open source projects. We ideally should meet an 80% threshold of usefulness for software based on these key characteristics, assessed together using the same user group for each one, and using the same success rate for each one:
+
+
+
can someone install your software on a laptop? how long does it take? over an hour, less than an hour? for what percentage?
+
how long does it take to update dependencies?
+
time to migrate (how long??)
+
time to new production deployment (e.g. if you are funded for 5 years, how long will it take you to deploy it?)
+
time to reasonable security (passwords, firewalls, etc)
+
time to export data (if relevant)
+
+
+
+
+
Another amazing session I attended at LITA was all about "Collaborating to Deliver Better Data Management Services" from Brianna Marshall, the lead in Research Data Services at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Kristin Briney, the Data Services Librarian at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. This session focused on some really cool actionable stuff for me to take home to New York, as Nick and I begin to think on some greater outreach campaigns for the research data management services we provide.
+
+
+
~Go fighting Badgers~
+
+
The two started off respectively discussing the environments at their own institutions. At UW-Madison, a research institution that spends about $1.1 billion in research spending, the focus of Research Data Services is mainly education and training, consultations, and support for data management plans. UW-Milwaukee is a Carnegie high research institution ($59mil research spending) with a more demographically diverse population. Their Data Services also include DMP consultations, data management training, and data management consultations.
+
+
Brianna went onto describe her initial framework for everything they did in the past year: increasing awareness, and creating buzz so researchers could see them as a valuable service. The first step was to improve the website for Research Data Services: by providing a useful knowledge hub that had an updated aesthetic, they wanted to convey to users that RDS is a useful, active group. The blog attached to this site has amazingly cute RDM-themed graphics, too!!
+
+
+
+
Additionally, Brianna started a research data management-themed digest as a way for them to both generate content and push users towards the new and improved RDS website. On this shared news, content, and events. These two were bolstered up by the newly created RDS twitter.
+
+
Brianna also discussed two in-person meetings they began this past year: a brown bag talk series and a data information literacy reading group. The first was all about finding really awesome researchers and putting the spotlight on them, loosely surrounding their research data management practices and workflows. The idea here was to capitalize on researcher’s social capital to bring people together to talk about research workflows and management.
+
+
The data information literacy reading group had about 12 participants so far, a mix of information literacy librarians, subject librarians, graduate students, library IT, and academic IT. The goal was to essentially explore the intersection between research data management and information literacy--and, create some data management evangelists on the way! This group had monthly notes as well as a teaching and learning forum talk.
+
+
At UW-Milwaukee, Data Services was really prompted by the 2011 NSF requirement for the inclusion of data management plans with grant applications. Again, the biggest thing at this campus was creating a marketing campaign to get the word out about this new service in the library. Data Services went to faculty meetings, created a partnership with sponsored research, etc. They've put out some sweet videos also like this one below for giving researchers and others some impetus for data managements:
+
+
+
+
Kristen’s vision was to get people in the room together who rarely met but were stakeholders in how researchers on campus managed their data: records managers, IT, the CIO’s office, the director of networking, a compliance person, senior academic research officer/dean, IRB, and information security. The idea was to create a RDM cohort/network on campus so Data Services (and others!) could provide a research resource list, i.e. “if you have sensitive data, talk to these people” or “if you need storage options, talk to these people.” This created one place for researchers to look instead of having them fumble around asking who does what on campus.
+
+
Kristen described her model for Data Services as "playing around in the data sandbox," which I absolutely adored. Their focus is on interdisciplinary programming, trying to train people on skills that cut across all disciplines, so in this spirit they’ve created things like "Data Day!" This was a part of a larger GIS series. They are trying to connect more with digital humanities also by providing support and training on TEI, OpenRefine, and RegEx.
What has been a great advantage for Data Services is their ability to try things, see what works, and possibly fail. Because it's a smaller department than the UW-Madison RDS, they have less people to get things done. For Data Services, this wiggle room has been awesome for them as they build new and kind of experimental services around data and data management.
+
+
Lastly, Brianna and Kristen went over the cross-campus collaboration that went on between their departments at Madison and Milwaukee. There were some existing infrastructure that helped them think more holistically about the way that they delivered their services. The UW system is completely connection: there is one system across all the UW campuses for library services. They use Primo and Alma, there is a DPLA Wisconsin hub, so why not one data services? They each had some limited local resources and didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so the idea is that they can use what each other develops!
+
+
+
Sharing is caring!
+
+
Perhaps one of the coolest RDM-related things I had ever seen is their one of their joint projects, the Midwest Data Librarians Symposium. Milwaukee hosted and Madison kicked in some money for food and space. They asked a registration fee of $30 for this one day event that centered on all aspects of data librarianship. They had four facilitators who taught in four different sections: teaching data management (focus on lesson planning/curriculum building), curating data, building collaborations, and consulting. What was most exciting was that folks from other states saying they wanted to host it next year!! I really want to do this in New York. The closest thing is The University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium but I’m wondering if there is an avenue to explore for explicit RDM-type sessions.
+
+
+
Great turnout for the 2015 Symposium! See contents here.
+
+
Some future projects for them include providing some liaison librarian training, producing teaching materials for others on RDM, and collecting some cool data that passes through their doors. This involves some more intellectual work, since they have to develop a collection development policy, come up with some metadata recommendations, licensing standards, and think of a role for repository. They also want to formalize these relationships on some state/system level.
+
+
They closed the session going over some lessons learned from their past year building collaborations and communication between their two departments at their two campuses. The most salient for me: partnership can work on a partner-by-partner basis because personal relationships matter--most of the time, there is no top-down mandate--you have to go out and do this on your own!
+
+
+
+
LITA was definitely worth my while and if the program next year is as good as this year, you can bet you’ll find me there again. Plus, amazing crepes:
A few weeks ago, I attend the Library Information Technology Association’s Forum. Over the 13-15th, I attended several sessions, explored Minneapolis for the first time, and met some really awesome people. I was, as always, a bit nervous attending a new conference but the organizers had some really great 101-type sessions, and even set up a Slack channel which I found to be immensely helpful throughout the day. People organized dinners, discussed sessions in real-time, posed questions, and uploaded some hysterical gifs.
+
+
+
+
The first session I attended cemented to me that this conference is 1000% worth attending. Jason Casden talked about the state of open source software in the LIS community and why we are falling short of creating what he called “mature” software. He began this discussion by commending libraryland for creating and publishing a lot of open source software, but there was the big essential caveat: it has to be maintained. This becomes an issue when other institutions want to use your software, but lack prerequisite knowledge--the point is, the software is ECONOMICALLY free to obtain, but requires labour and some prerequisite hardware or software configurations you may not have and may not be free.
+
+
He went into some really cool discussion about the open source community in general, of course starting with Richard Stallman and his ideas on developing standardized methods of delivering software and on creating "ideologically free software."
+
+
Richard Stallman....you know. Richard Stallman << all that needs to be said about him #litaforum
Now of course, Unix systems (Linux!) is widely used and increasingly popular across domains. But the central idea still remains: how can we make open source software more available in Libraryland, especially to underresourced staff?
+
+
Jason made an amazing point here: we as a field need to produce more “adult” software. And no, not hentai games, but software that knows what it needs and can correct an environment to allow it to thrive--we must teach software how to create an environment in which it can thrive. Most open source library software, compared to this, is in its child stage.
+
+
Again, the open source movement is super important and no disrespect to the developers spending their time creating amazing community resources. But the idea is that our field should spend some time thinking, deliberating, and creating tools that are easier to install, maintain, and evaluate.
To help, Jason discussed some reasonable task performance metrics that we can apply to our own open source projects. We ideally should meet an 80% threshold of usefulness for software based on these key characteristics, assessed together using the same user group for each one, and using the same success rate for each one:
+
+
+
can someone install your software on a laptop? how long does it take? over an hour, less than an hour? for what percentage?
+
how long does it take to update dependencies?
+
time to migrate (how long??)
+
time to new production deployment (e.g. if you are funded for 5 years, how long will it take you to deploy it?)
+
time to reasonable security (passwords, firewalls, etc)
+
time to export data (if relevant)
+
+
+
+
+
Another amazing session I attended at LITA was all about "Collaborating to Deliver Better Data Management Services" from Brianna Marshall, the lead in Research Data Services at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Kristin Briney, the Data Services Librarian at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. This session focused on some really cool actionable stuff for me to take home to New York, as Nick and I begin to think on some greater outreach campaigns for the research data management services we provide.
+
+
+
~Go fighting Badgers~
+
+
The two started off respectively discussing the environments at their own institutions. At UW-Madison, a research institution that spends about $1.1 billion in research spending, the focus of Research Data Services is mainly education and training, consultations, and support for data management plans. UW-Milwaukee is a Carnegie high research institution ($59mil research spending) with a more demographically diverse population. Their Data Services also include DMP consultations, data management training, and data management consultations.
+
+
Brianna went onto describe her initial framework for everything they did in the past year: increasing awareness, and creating buzz so researchers could see them as a valuable service. The first step was to improve the website for Research Data Services: by providing a useful knowledge hub that had an updated aesthetic, they wanted to convey to users that RDS is a useful, active group. The blog attached to this site has amazingly cute RDM-themed graphics, too!!
+
+
+
+
Additionally, Brianna started a research data management-themed digest as a way for them to both generate content and push users towards the new and improved RDS website. On this shared news, content, and events. These two were bolstered up by the newly created RDS twitter.
+
+
Brianna also discussed two in-person meetings they began this past year: a brown bag talk series and a data information literacy reading group. The first was all about finding really awesome researchers and putting the spotlight on them, loosely surrounding their research data management practices and workflows. The idea here was to capitalize on researcher’s social capital to bring people together to talk about research workflows and management.
+
+
The data information literacy reading group had about 12 participants so far, a mix of information literacy librarians, subject librarians, graduate students, library IT, and academic IT. The goal was to essentially explore the intersection between research data management and information literacy--and, create some data management evangelists on the way! This group had monthly notes as well as a teaching and learning forum talk.
+
+
At UW-Milwaukee, Data Services was really prompted by the 2011 NSF requirement for the inclusion of data management plans with grant applications. Again, the biggest thing at this campus was creating a marketing campaign to get the word out about this new service in the library. Data Services went to faculty meetings, created a partnership with sponsored research, etc. They've put out some sweet videos also like this one below for giving researchers and others some impetus for data managements:
+
+
+
+
Kristen’s vision was to get people in the room together who rarely met but were stakeholders in how researchers on campus managed their data: records managers, IT, the CIO’s office, the director of networking, a compliance person, senior academic research officer/dean, IRB, and information security. The idea was to create a RDM cohort/network on campus so Data Services (and others!) could provide a research resource list, i.e. “if you have sensitive data, talk to these people” or “if you need storage options, talk to these people.” This created one place for researchers to look instead of having them fumble around asking who does what on campus.
+
+
Kristen described her model for Data Services as "playing around in the data sandbox," which I absolutely adored. Their focus is on interdisciplinary programming, trying to train people on skills that cut across all disciplines, so in this spirit they’ve created things like "Data Day!" This was a part of a larger GIS series. They are trying to connect more with digital humanities also by providing support and training on TEI, OpenRefine, and RegEx.
What has been a great advantage for Data Services is their ability to try things, see what works, and possibly fail. Because it's a smaller department than the UW-Madison RDS, they have less people to get things done. For Data Services, this wiggle room has been awesome for them as they build new and kind of experimental services around data and data management.
+
+
Lastly, Brianna and Kristen went over the cross-campus collaboration that went on between their departments at Madison and Milwaukee. There were some existing infrastructure that helped them think more holistically about the way that they delivered their services. The UW system is completely connection: there is one system across all the UW campuses for library services. They use Primo and Alma, there is a DPLA Wisconsin hub, so why not one data services? They each had some limited local resources and didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so the idea is that they can use what each other develops!
+
+
+
Sharing is caring!
+
+
Perhaps one of the coolest RDM-related things I had ever seen is their one of their joint projects, the Midwest Data Librarians Symposium. Milwaukee hosted and Madison kicked in some money for food and space. They asked a registration fee of $30 for this one day event that centered on all aspects of data librarianship. They had four facilitators who taught in four different sections: teaching data management (focus on lesson planning/curriculum building), curating data, building collaborations, and consulting. What was most exciting was that folks from other states saying they wanted to host it next year!! I really want to do this in New York. The closest thing is The University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium but I’m wondering if there is an avenue to explore for explicit RDM-type sessions.
+
+
+
Great turnout for the 2015 Symposium! See contents here.
+
+
Some future projects for them include providing some liaison librarian training, producing teaching materials for others on RDM, and collecting some cool data that passes through their doors. This involves some more intellectual work, since they have to develop a collection development policy, come up with some metadata recommendations, licensing standards, and think of a role for repository. They also want to formalize these relationships on some state/system level.
+
+
They closed the session going over some lessons learned from their past year building collaborations and communication between their two departments at their two campuses. The most salient for me: partnership can work on a partner-by-partner basis because personal relationships matter--most of the time, there is no top-down mandate--you have to go out and do this on your own!
+
+
+
+
LITA was definitely worth my while and if the program next year is as good as this year, you can bet you’ll find me there again. Plus, amazing crepes:
There were a number of sessions here that were fairly typical “data science-y:” Data Structures for DS, Astrophysics Software, and Big Data Systems Tutorial. What I thought was perhaps the most interesting at the summit was this pervasive discussion about ethics and social good. I was pleasantly surprised that the participants here were interested in engaging in topics so far outside the normal purview of coding problems, data analysis methods, and data gathering. Another testament to the great multidisciplinary field that is Data Science and the wonderful people who populate it.
+
+
I was really inspired by a lightning talk on Monday morning by Ariel Rokem of University of Washington’s eScience Institute on their Data Science for Social Good program, which had its inaugural summer program this past June. Based on the program with the same name at University of Chicago, the goal of the eScience Institute DSSG program is “to enable new insight by bringing together data and domain scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects that are designed to impact public policy for social benefit.”
The eScience Institute hosted four projects focusing on urban environments and urban science across topics such as transportation, social justice, and sustainable urban planning. Each project was assigned a mentor from the eScience Institute, and each team was populated by a project lead, DSSG fellows, and Alliances for Learning and Vision for underrepresented Americans (a post-freshman year internship) students. It was all about bringing together the Data Science fellows and faculty with project leads from industry along with undergraduate students.
Assessing Community Well-Being through Open Data and Social Media
+
+
Our DSSG Fellows and ALVA students paired with Third Place Technologies to create neighborhood community report pages in the context of a hyperlocal, crowd-sourced community network. The objective was to help neighborhood communities better understand the factors that impact community well-being, and how they as a neighborhood compare with other neighborhoods on these factors. This helps them set the agenda for what to prioritize in promoting their well-being. A key aspect of this project was to explore novel ways to leverage diverse social media and open data sources to dynamically assess community-level well-being, in order to a) enable early identification of emerging social issues warranting a collective response, and to b) automatically identify and recommend the local community hubs best positioned to coordinate a community response.
This project is an extension of the "Hackcessible" project that was awarded top prize in this year's "HackTheCommute" event in Seattle. Hackcessible has built an application that helps people with mobility challenges to navigate the streets of Seattle based on sidewalk characteristics and the presence of curb ramps. Expanding on these ideas, the DSSG team worked to utilize city sidewalk and street data to provide stakeholders with routing information, similar to what is currently provided by Google Maps, but that considers issues of accessibility. The goal of the effort was to provide rapid and convenient routing that avoids steep hills, uncrossable intersections, stairs or construction. The work was carried out in partnership with Dr. Anat Caspi of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington, and with various stakeholders with the City of Seattle and the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Predictors of Permanent Housing for Homeless Families
+
+
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with Building Changes have partnered with King, Pierce and Snohomish counties to make homelessness in these counties rare, brief and one-time. The goal of this project was to take part in this multi-stakeholder collaboration, and to analyze data about enrollments of homeless families in these counties in programs serving the homeless population, to identify factors that predicted whether families would succeed in finding permanent housing, and to investigate the ways families transition between different programs and different episodes of homelessness.
Rerouting Solutions and Expensive Ride Analysis for King County Paratransit
+
+
The Paratransit team collaborated with King County Metro to improve operations of the Paratransit service, which is an on-demand public transportation program that provides door-to-door rides for people with limited ability who are unable to use traditional fixed route services. Currently, King County Metro paratransit trips cost approximately ten times as much as an equivalent trip using a fixed-route service, so the team concentrated their efforts on identifying costly routes, providing cost-driven recommendations for rescheduling broken buses, and better predicting service usage hours over quarterly periods. The team analyzed history data and observed rides whose cost per boarding was over $100, providing King County Metro with a method to update predictions of usage hours customized for each day of the week and a web app which provides cost comparison for the different options of handling a broken bus event: reschedule clients on an existing route, send a new bus, or serve them with a taxi. These tools aim to help the Paratransit operations better plan resources over longer periods of time and help dispatchers make informed decisions in case of emergency.
I had a total Twilight Zone moment on Tuesday during a session entitled “Semantics of Data: Integrating Across Tools.” I attended because I thought the discussion was surrounding how the data scientists here want to communicate their tools using standard vocabularies.
+
+
I was pretty close--however my scope was off. These scientists talked for ONE HOUR AND A HALF on building standard vocabularies, ontologies, metadata schemas, json-schema. I was near-faint from surprise.
+
+
+
I think I hit my head on my way to this talk because scientists are talking about ontologies and linked data...willingly... #DSESummit
I love these projects. These students are committed to improving their communities through integrating what they know about all the multidisciplinary fields that make up data science. The real-world applications of their work are just incredible. I think this speaks to almost a moral obligation of science to not only contribute to the greater body of human knowledge, but also to improve the standard of living globally. For more on this, I’d point you to a great article by Alan Fritzler, project manager for the DSSG program at University of Chicago.
+
+
+
+
I had a total Twilight Zone moment on Tuesday during a session entitled “Semantics of Data: Integrating Across Tools.” I attended because I thought the discussion was surrounding how the data scientists here want to communicate their tools, or possibly create a directory of tools cross-institutionally to track outputs of the MSDSE.
+
+
I was pretty wrong. These scientists talked for AN HOUR AND A HALF on building standard vocabularies, ontologies, metadata schemas, using json-schema, and the semantic web (read: linked data). I was near-faint from surprise.
+
+
However, the tone of the conversation left me wondering--where else are the overlaps between science needs and library services? We’ve identified in the LIS field that things like infrastructure (institutional repositories, etc.) are resources for research that should be housed in the library, but where are the boots on the ground librarians? These collaborations are tricky, but maybe they are starting to reach that point of critical mass where we just have to get down to it. Where are my science metadata librarians at? I smell a new field...
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+
+
"my field is changes too much to use a standard vocab" feels like a cop out. Talk to librarians & let us help you make ontologies #DSESummit
That tweet being said, I firmly believe that this is something where librarians (those into metadata--here’s looking at you, Peggy) can collaborate with science to build these vocabularies and schemas. The plain fact of the matter is that the everyday researcher is not equipped to build these ontologies, nor do they really want to--and frankly I don’t blame them. Librarians (read: information professionals) have these skills, want to do the work, and LIS is a service industry. Take advantage of us, science!
+
+
However, there was a lot of room in the schedule for hilarity. Between David Hogg’s constant delight in our “obedience” in following directions for lunch seating and another great lightning talk Monday morning on improving the quality of the field (see tweet below), the tone of this conference was jovial, scholarly, and just plain fun. I’m excited for NYU to host next years! Here’s hoping we get a place in the Catskills...
There were a number of sessions here that were fairly typical “data science-y:” Data Structures for DS, Astrophysics Software, and Big Data Systems Tutorial. What I thought was perhaps the most interesting at the summit was this pervasive discussion about ethics and social good. I was pleasantly surprised that the participants here were interested in engaging in topics so far outside the normal purview of coding problems, data analysis methods, and data gathering. Another testament to the great multidisciplinary field that is Data Science and the wonderful people who populate it.
+
+
I was really inspired by a lightning talk on Monday morning by Ariel Rokem of University of Washington’s eScience Institute on their Data Science for Social Good program, which had its inaugural summer program this past June. Based on the program with the same name at University of Chicago, the goal of the eScience Institute DSSG program is “to enable new insight by bringing together data and domain scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects that are designed to impact public policy for social benefit.”
The eScience Institute hosted four projects focusing on urban environments and urban science across topics such as transportation, social justice, and sustainable urban planning. Each project was assigned a mentor from the eScience Institute, and each team was populated by a project lead, DSSG fellows, and Alliances for Learning and Vision for underrepresented Americans (a post-freshman year internship) students. It was all about bringing together the Data Science fellows and faculty with project leads from industry along with undergraduate students.
Assessing Community Well-Being through Open Data and Social Media
+
+
Our DSSG Fellows and ALVA students paired with Third Place Technologies to create neighborhood community report pages in the context of a hyperlocal, crowd-sourced community network. The objective was to help neighborhood communities better understand the factors that impact community well-being, and how they as a neighborhood compare with other neighborhoods on these factors. This helps them set the agenda for what to prioritize in promoting their well-being. A key aspect of this project was to explore novel ways to leverage diverse social media and open data sources to dynamically assess community-level well-being, in order to a) enable early identification of emerging social issues warranting a collective response, and to b) automatically identify and recommend the local community hubs best positioned to coordinate a community response.
This project is an extension of the "Hackcessible" project that was awarded top prize in this year's "HackTheCommute" event in Seattle. Hackcessible has built an application that helps people with mobility challenges to navigate the streets of Seattle based on sidewalk characteristics and the presence of curb ramps. Expanding on these ideas, the DSSG team worked to utilize city sidewalk and street data to provide stakeholders with routing information, similar to what is currently provided by Google Maps, but that considers issues of accessibility. The goal of the effort was to provide rapid and convenient routing that avoids steep hills, uncrossable intersections, stairs or construction. The work was carried out in partnership with Dr. Anat Caspi of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington, and with various stakeholders with the City of Seattle and the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Predictors of Permanent Housing for Homeless Families
+
+
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with Building Changes have partnered with King, Pierce and Snohomish counties to make homelessness in these counties rare, brief and one-time. The goal of this project was to take part in this multi-stakeholder collaboration, and to analyze data about enrollments of homeless families in these counties in programs serving the homeless population, to identify factors that predicted whether families would succeed in finding permanent housing, and to investigate the ways families transition between different programs and different episodes of homelessness.
Rerouting Solutions and Expensive Ride Analysis for King County Paratransit
+
+
The Paratransit team collaborated with King County Metro to improve operations of the Paratransit service, which is an on-demand public transportation program that provides door-to-door rides for people with limited ability who are unable to use traditional fixed route services. Currently, King County Metro paratransit trips cost approximately ten times as much as an equivalent trip using a fixed-route service, so the team concentrated their efforts on identifying costly routes, providing cost-driven recommendations for rescheduling broken buses, and better predicting service usage hours over quarterly periods. The team analyzed history data and observed rides whose cost per boarding was over $100, providing King County Metro with a method to update predictions of usage hours customized for each day of the week and a web app which provides cost comparison for the different options of handling a broken bus event: reschedule clients on an existing route, send a new bus, or serve them with a taxi. These tools aim to help the Paratransit operations better plan resources over longer periods of time and help dispatchers make informed decisions in case of emergency.
I had a total Twilight Zone moment on Tuesday during a session entitled “Semantics of Data: Integrating Across Tools.” I attended because I thought the discussion was surrounding how the data scientists here want to communicate their tools using standard vocabularies.
+
+
I was pretty close--however my scope was off. These scientists talked for ONE HOUR AND A HALF on building standard vocabularies, ontologies, metadata schemas, json-schema. I was near-faint from surprise.
+
+
+
I think I hit my head on my way to this talk because scientists are talking about ontologies and linked data...willingly... #DSESummit
I love these projects. These students are committed to improving their communities through integrating what they know about all the multidisciplinary fields that make up data science. The real-world applications of their work are just incredible. I think this speaks to almost a moral obligation of science to not only contribute to the greater body of human knowledge, but also to improve the standard of living globally. For more on this, I’d point you to a great article by Alan Fritzler, project manager for the DSSG program at University of Chicago.
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I had a total Twilight Zone moment on Tuesday during a session entitled “Semantics of Data: Integrating Across Tools.” I attended because I thought the discussion was surrounding how the data scientists here want to communicate their tools, or possibly create a directory of tools cross-institutionally to track outputs of the MSDSE.
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I was pretty wrong. These scientists talked for AN HOUR AND A HALF on building standard vocabularies, ontologies, metadata schemas, using json-schema, and the semantic web (read: linked data). I was near-faint from surprise.
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However, the tone of the conversation left me wondering--where else are the overlaps between science needs and library services? We’ve identified in the LIS field that things like infrastructure (institutional repositories, etc.) are resources for research that should be housed in the library, but where are the boots on the ground librarians? These collaborations are tricky, but maybe they are starting to reach that point of critical mass where we just have to get down to it. Where are my science metadata librarians at? I smell a new field...
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"my field is changes too much to use a standard vocab" feels like a cop out. Talk to librarians & let us help you make ontologies #DSESummit
That tweet being said, I firmly believe that this is something where librarians (those into metadata--here’s looking at you, Peggy) can collaborate with science to build these vocabularies and schemas. The plain fact of the matter is that the everyday researcher is not equipped to build these ontologies, nor do they really want to--and frankly I don’t blame them. Librarians (read: information professionals) have these skills, want to do the work, and LIS is a service industry. Take advantage of us, science!
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However, there was a lot of room in the schedule for hilarity. Between David Hogg’s constant delight in our “obedience” in following directions for lunch seating and another great lightning talk Monday morning on improving the quality of the field (see tweet below), the tone of this conference was jovial, scholarly, and just plain fun. I’m excited for NYU to host next years! Here’s hoping we get a place in the Catskills...
So, for those who don’t follow me on Twitter (go ahead though, ), I recently accepted a position at New York University, Division of Libraries, as the Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility. I started August 3rd of this year, which turned out to be great because there were no students around. This may sound bad, but the prep time was invaluable. My partner-in-crime Nick Wolf came two weeks later, and together we really amped up the existing data management LibGuide.
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When September rolled around, I was hit with a visual on just how gigantic a school NYU really is. Seeing all the students streaming into the library, I was hit with the scope of my work here. Nick and I were supposed to build up services around research data management/data management planning for literally everyone on campus, from staff to students to faculty. Of course to start we will focus on a few core user communities and build our way out, but just wow--even starting on building services for grad students, for example, is an awesome task.
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It's 100% nameplate official!! If you need help managing your data, come up to the Bobst Library and visit me! #NYUpic.twitter.com/zLTNPbJbFP
However, that being said, I am absolutely in love with the work environment here. Everyone is so collaborative and service-oriented, and the office just has a really positive energy to it. I have a feeling I’m going to have many successes here simply feeding off all the forward-thinking spirit that is in the research commons.
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What’s perhaps most interesting about my position here at NYU is that I’m a joint appointment between the NYU Division of Libraries and NYU’s Center for Data Science. The CDS is a multidisciplinary center dedicated to data science training and research. Data science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to extracting knowledge from big data, focusing on processes and systems. As such, there are many interactions between statistics, machine learning, computer science, natural science, and even social science.
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The CDS is a great place for me as a RDM Librarian because of the multidisciplinary nature of the work: there are so many collaborators from so many departments within NYU from anthropology to physics, and so a lot of opportunities to spread the good word of research data management, open science, and reproducible research practices.
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I am working directly to support the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment, which is a grant NYU collaborates on with University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington. This has been a huge help to my strategic plan to integrate library services into the CDS. The eScience Institute (UWashington) and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (UC Berkeley) are both housed in the respective libraries, so library services around data science have been integrated from the start. I’m the first librarian at NYU whose job description includes building services for the CDS, so being able to talk to the other librarians at Berkeley and Washington has been absolutely invaluable.
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Another thing--it feels good to be back around computer scientists. I really missed that in library school and my work at the AMNH (even though goodness knows I hung around IT a lot...). There is a purity in science that I just love to be around. It’s definitely why I am a science librarian. Plus, like everyone at NYU Libraries, the people at the CDS are very open to collaborating and helping me navigate my new position in my new environment. They even got me a gift!!
I couldn’t be happier with my choice to stay in New York and take this job at NYU. As with all major decisions, there was a nervousness about accepting that I had a hard time shaking--I’m a chronic overthinker. Even in the first two months, that has been totally assuaged. I know that being here is the right thing for me, and that peace of mind has been the best thing to come from my initial time here.
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
So, for those who don’t follow me on Twitter (go ahead though, ), I recently accepted a position at New York University, Division of Libraries, as the Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility. I started August 3rd of this year, which turned out to be great because there were no students around. This may sound bad, but the prep time was invaluable. My partner-in-crime Nick Wolf came two weeks later, and together we really amped up the existing data management LibGuide.
+
+
When September rolled around, I was hit with a visual on just how gigantic a school NYU really is. Seeing all the students streaming into the library, I was hit with the scope of my work here. Nick and I were supposed to build up services around research data management/data management planning for literally everyone on campus, from staff to students to faculty. Of course to start we will focus on a few core user communities and build our way out, but just wow--even starting on building services for grad students, for example, is an awesome task.
+
+
It's 100% nameplate official!! If you need help managing your data, come up to the Bobst Library and visit me! #NYUpic.twitter.com/zLTNPbJbFP
However, that being said, I am absolutely in love with the work environment here. Everyone is so collaborative and service-oriented, and the office just has a really positive energy to it. I have a feeling I’m going to have many successes here simply feeding off all the forward-thinking spirit that is in the research commons.
+
+
What’s perhaps most interesting about my position here at NYU is that I’m a joint appointment between the NYU Division of Libraries and NYU’s Center for Data Science. The CDS is a multidisciplinary center dedicated to data science training and research. Data science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to extracting knowledge from big data, focusing on processes and systems. As such, there are many interactions between statistics, machine learning, computer science, natural science, and even social science.
+
+
The CDS is a great place for me as a RDM Librarian because of the multidisciplinary nature of the work: there are so many collaborators from so many departments within NYU from anthropology to physics, and so a lot of opportunities to spread the good word of research data management, open science, and reproducible research practices.
+
+
I am working directly to support the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment, which is a grant NYU collaborates on with University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington. This has been a huge help to my strategic plan to integrate library services into the CDS. The eScience Institute (UWashington) and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (UC Berkeley) are both housed in the respective libraries, so library services around data science have been integrated from the start. I’m the first librarian at NYU whose job description includes building services for the CDS, so being able to talk to the other librarians at Berkeley and Washington has been absolutely invaluable.
+
+
Another thing--it feels good to be back around computer scientists. I really missed that in library school and my work at the AMNH (even though goodness knows I hung around IT a lot...). There is a purity in science that I just love to be around. It’s definitely why I am a science librarian. Plus, like everyone at NYU Libraries, the people at the CDS are very open to collaborating and helping me navigate my new position in my new environment. They even got me a gift!!
I couldn’t be happier with my choice to stay in New York and take this job at NYU. As with all major decisions, there was a nervousness about accepting that I had a hard time shaking--I’m a chronic overthinker. Even in the first two months, that has been totally assuaged. I know that being here is the right thing for me, and that peace of mind has been the best thing to come from my initial time here.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
This past week, February 8-12th, was Love Your Data Week!! Is there a more perfect holiday for data librarians, especially right before Valentine's Day??
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#LYD16 was a social media event coordinated officially by 27 academic and research institutions, of which both NYU Data Services and NYU Health Sciences Library were a part. The idea behind this social media blitz was to raise awareness of research data management and the support/resources for RDM at each individual institution.
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Although just under 30 institutions officially were a part of the team, MANY MORE ended up joining the conversation on social media and jumping in, sharing their own thoughts and resources. We saw input from commercial organizations, researchers, faculty members, librarians, non-profits, and even academic journals! It was really great to see a conversation started around data stewardship and the importance of loving your data as much as it loves you!
What was also super neat about Love Your Data Week is that, although it was clearly US-centric, we had participation across the globe! I even tried to tweet in French to someone in France writing about #LYD16 (and had that tweet quickly edited by my French boyfriend. I'm trying!!).
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Map of where #LYD16 tweets were coming from! I made this in NVivo 11~
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Each day of the week had it’s own theme where everyone shared tips and tricks, stories, examples, resources, and experts:
#LYD16 also happened to coincide with the deployment of Nick and I’s ongoing project, Data Dispatch. You’ll see that if you click on the above links, you’ll get directed to posts on this blog! This site is replacing the previous Data Services blog, and has been in the works in one form or another since Nick arrived at Data Services (two weeks after me). The old blog was another avenue for the department to advertise classes, events, or push out the cool link or two. This new platform functions more as a space to show off the cool data that comes through our doors, in addition to the features of the last blog (advertising us, our classes, and services). With this new site, we are hoping to create more of a conversation about data-driven initiatives both here and beyond NYU.
+
+
Anyway, for #LYD16 Nick and I organized ourselves using our collaborative Open Science Framework project, "Data Management Team Planning." The first thing we did was create a separate wiki page for our #LYD16 planning. On this wiki, we wrote down our social media etiquette. For instance: Vicky will tweet from @nyudataservices, then Nick and Vicky will retweet, or Vicky will instagram this photo and using IFTTT, push it out onto her tumblr. Basically, we set up some basic ground rules for posting during the week. Everything #LYD16!!
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A portion of this page was dedicated to scheduling our social media blasts. We made this editorial calendar so we could coordinate who would be responsible for what during the week. Since the OSF wiki supports the amazing feature of strikethrough, I had a blast crossing things off our list as the week progressed.
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Nick and I made a nice editorial calendar on our collaborative OSF wiki!
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Everything in our editorial calendar was linked out to our images in OSF Storage. This made everything really easy to execute week-of and day-of. He and I could just go to the appropriate day, click the link for the images, download them, and schedule them to be tweeted/instagrammed at the agreed upon time. By having everything centralized via OSF, it was much easier for us to coordinate, especially since I spend one day a week in a different office space. You might not think that's a lot, but Nick and I spend a good amount of our day-to-day with each other planning and coordinating, so not having him right there is mildly annoying when I'm in Brooklyn.
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Just one page of many for our #LYD16 images.
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After the fact, we wanted to examine some of the impact that Love Your Data week had on our Data Services social media presence. We captured the tweets using the hashtag #LYD16 via NCapture, a browser extension for NVivo, a qualitative data software from QSR International. This was great because we could perform some network analysis as well as do some basic word-frequency queries, cluster analysis, and mapping if the tweets are geocoded (some but not all are for our #LYD16 dataset!).
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In this little chart we made in NVivo, usernames ranked by how often they were mentioned with #LYD16--@nyudataservices and @VickySteeves are in the top 10!
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AND if you all followed our advice, you might have enough points for a nifty RDM Badge to show off to all your friends, followers, and colleagues!
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I am definitely a level 4! Which are you?
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+
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About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
This past week, February 8-12th, was Love Your Data Week!! Is there a more perfect holiday for data librarians, especially right before Valentine's Day??
+
+
#LYD16 was a social media event coordinated officially by 27 academic and research institutions, of which both NYU Data Services and NYU Health Sciences Library were a part. The idea behind this social media blitz was to raise awareness of research data management and the support/resources for RDM at each individual institution.
+
+
Although just under 30 institutions officially were a part of the team, MANY MORE ended up joining the conversation on social media and jumping in, sharing their own thoughts and resources. We saw input from commercial organizations, researchers, faculty members, librarians, non-profits, and even academic journals! It was really great to see a conversation started around data stewardship and the importance of loving your data as much as it loves you!
What was also super neat about Love Your Data Week is that, although it was clearly US-centric, we had participation across the globe! I even tried to tweet in French to someone in France writing about #LYD16 (and had that tweet quickly edited by my French boyfriend. I'm trying!!).
+
+
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Map of where #LYD16 tweets were coming from! I made this in NVivo 11~
+
+
Each day of the week had it’s own theme where everyone shared tips and tricks, stories, examples, resources, and experts:
#LYD16 also happened to coincide with the deployment of Nick and I’s ongoing project, Data Dispatch. You’ll see that if you click on the above links, you’ll get directed to posts on this blog! This site is replacing the previous Data Services blog, and has been in the works in one form or another since Nick arrived at Data Services (two weeks after me). The old blog was another avenue for the department to advertise classes, events, or push out the cool link or two. This new platform functions more as a space to show off the cool data that comes through our doors, in addition to the features of the last blog (advertising us, our classes, and services). With this new site, we are hoping to create more of a conversation about data-driven initiatives both here and beyond NYU.
+
+
Anyway, for #LYD16 Nick and I organized ourselves using our collaborative Open Science Framework project, "Data Management Team Planning." The first thing we did was create a separate wiki page for our #LYD16 planning. On this wiki, we wrote down our social media etiquette. For instance: Vicky will tweet from @nyudataservices, then Nick and Vicky will retweet, or Vicky will instagram this photo and using IFTTT, push it out onto her tumblr. Basically, we set up some basic ground rules for posting during the week. Everything #LYD16!!
+
+
A portion of this page was dedicated to scheduling our social media blasts. We made this editorial calendar so we could coordinate who would be responsible for what during the week. Since the OSF wiki supports the amazing feature of strikethrough, I had a blast crossing things off our list as the week progressed.
+
+
+
Nick and I made a nice editorial calendar on our collaborative OSF wiki!
+
+
Everything in our editorial calendar was linked out to our images in OSF Storage. This made everything really easy to execute week-of and day-of. He and I could just go to the appropriate day, click the link for the images, download them, and schedule them to be tweeted/instagrammed at the agreed upon time. By having everything centralized via OSF, it was much easier for us to coordinate, especially since I spend one day a week in a different office space. You might not think that's a lot, but Nick and I spend a good amount of our day-to-day with each other planning and coordinating, so not having him right there is mildly annoying when I'm in Brooklyn.
+
+
+
Just one page of many for our #LYD16 images.
+
+
After the fact, we wanted to examine some of the impact that Love Your Data week had on our Data Services social media presence. We captured the tweets using the hashtag #LYD16 via NCapture, a browser extension for NVivo, a qualitative data software from QSR International. This was great because we could perform some network analysis as well as do some basic word-frequency queries, cluster analysis, and mapping if the tweets are geocoded (some but not all are for our #LYD16 dataset!).
+
+
In this little chart we made in NVivo, usernames ranked by how often they were mentioned with #LYD16--@nyudataservices and @VickySteeves are in the top 10!
+
+
+
+
+
AND if you all followed our advice, you might have enough points for a nifty RDM Badge to show off to all your friends, followers, and colleagues!
+
+
+
I am definitely a level 4! Which are you?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
This past week, February 8-12th, was Love Your Data Week!! Is there a more perfect holiday for data librarians, especially right before Valentine's Day??
+
+
#LYD16 was a social media event coordinated officially by 27 academic and research institutions, of which both NYU Data Services and NYU Health Sciences Library were a part. The idea behind this social media blitz was to raise awareness of research data management and the support/resources for RDM at each individual institution.
+
+
Although just under 30 institutions officially were a part of the team, MANY MORE ended up joining the conversation on social media and jumping in, sharing their own thoughts and resources. We saw input from commercial organizations, researchers, faculty members, librarians, non-profits, and even academic journals! It was really great to see a conversation started around data stewardship and the importance of loving your data as much as it loves you!
What was also super neat about Love Your Data Week is that, although it was clearly US-centric, we had participation across the globe! I even tried to tweet in French to someone in France writing about #LYD16 (and had that tweet quickly edited by my French boyfriend. I'm trying!!).
+
+
+
Map of where #LYD16 tweets were coming from! I made this in NVivo 11~
+
+
Each day of the week had it’s own theme where everyone shared tips and tricks, stories, examples, resources, and experts:
#LYD16 also happened to coincide with the deployment of Nick and I’s ongoing project, Data Dispatch. You’ll see that if you click on the above links, you’ll get directed to posts on this blog! This site is replacing the previous Data Services blog, and has been in the works in one form or another since Nick arrived at Data Services (two weeks after me). The old blog was another avenue for the department to advertise classes, events, or push out the cool link or two. This new platform functions more as a space to show off the cool data that comes through our doors, in addition to the features of the last blog (advertising us, our classes, and services). With this new site, we are hoping to create more of a conversation about data-driven initiatives both here and beyond NYU.
+
+
Anyway, for #LYD16 Nick and I organized ourselves using our collaborative Open Science Framework project, "Data Management Team Planning." The first thing we did was create a separate wiki page for our #LYD16 planning. On this wiki, we wrote down our social media etiquette. For instance: Vicky will tweet from @nyudataservices, then Nick and Vicky will retweet, or Vicky will instagram this photo and using IFTTT, push it out onto her tumblr. Basically, we set up some basic ground rules for posting during the week. Everything #LYD16!!
+
+
A portion of this page was dedicated to scheduling our social media blasts. We made this editorial calendar so we could coordinate who would be responsible for what during the week. Since the OSF wiki supports the amazing feature of strikethrough, I had a blast crossing things off our list as the week progressed.
+
+
+
Nick and I made a nice editorial calendar on our collaborative OSF wiki!
+
+
Everything in our editorial calendar was linked out to our images in OSF Storage. This made everything really easy to execute week-of and day-of. He and I could just go to the appropriate day, click the link for the images, download them, and schedule them to be tweeted/instagrammed at the agreed upon time. By having everything centralized via OSF, it was much easier for us to coordinate, especially since I spend one day a week in a different office space. You might not think that's a lot, but Nick and I spend a good amount of our day-to-day with each other planning and coordinating, so not having him right there is mildly annoying when I'm in Brooklyn.
+
+
+
Just one page of many for our #LYD16 images.
+
+
After the fact, we wanted to examine some of the impact that Love Your Data week had on our Data Services social media presence. We captured the tweets using the hashtag #LYD16 via NCapture, a browser extension for NVivo, a qualitative data software from QSR International. This was great because we could perform some network analysis as well as do some basic word-frequency queries, cluster analysis, and mapping if the tweets are geocoded (some but not all are for our #LYD16 dataset!).
+
+
In this little chart we made in NVivo, usernames ranked by how often they were mentioned with #LYD16--@nyudataservices and @VickySteeves are in the top 10!
+
+
+
+
+
AND if you all followed our advice, you might have enough points for a nifty RDM Badge to show off to all your friends, followers, and colleagues!
+
+
+
I am definitely a level 4! Which are you?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
About
+
A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, or even took a quick look on my resume page, you'll see I haven't been at my position at NYU for very long. January 3rd marks the fifth month (to the day!) that I've been NYU’s official "Research Data Management and Reproducibility Librarian." There was a bit of an adjustment period where I just spent the majority of my time introducing myself to my colleagues, getting to know what my daily workflow would look like, and brainstorm with Nick about what our services will look like, some good groups for targeted outreach, and what classes we are going to teach as a part of Data Services typical course offerings.
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This was all well and good, but since I started in August I missed the goal-setting timeline that is typical for my colleagues. As such, I wanted to make some, and my supervisor in the library thought it would be a good way to measure growth besides. Plus, since I’m pretty early career, setting goals for a measurable outcome was kind of new for something not project based. This was just trying to assess my own growth, not necessarily the growth of a project I’m working on.
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In the end, I made 7 goals for this 2015-2016 academic year:
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Research: Currently I’m involved in a few different research projects, all collaborations, across three different domains/topics. I’d really like to finalize and publish at least one of these projects this year into a peer-reviewed, academic journal.
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Reproducibility as Research: I would also like to look at reproducibility more specifically as a research target area. I am really interested in learning more about reproducibility and possible applications or crossover with library services.
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Teaching Me How to Teach: I would love to learn more about teaching and pedagogical theory, as its own entity. While I have certainly taught before, I’ve never attended classes or the like on the actual practice of instruction, evaluating instruction, active teaching, diversity in instruction, etc. I think that I would benefit from taking some workshops on teaching. I’m going to attend at least three of these sessions by the end of the academic year at a minimum.
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Multimedia Instruction/Outreach: I’m super interested in making short, two-to-five minute videos outlining tools that could be of use in managing data, such as the Open Science Framework, Open ICPSR, converting files to archival formats, etc. I think a varied approach to disseminating RDM information would get us some more love. I would like to complete two of these "how-to" videos by the end of this academic year.
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Build Up the Curriculum: I want to expand instructional offerings from three classes a semester to six classes a semester at a minimum, starting in the spring 2016 semester. Approaching the entire RDM lifecycle in one class can be overwhelming to some first-time users. By offering classes that separately address each aspect of the RDM lifecycle (i.e. data creation, data documentation, etc.) it allows for a more in-depth and digestible delivery of information.
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Targeted Outreach: I want to incorporate some more relationship building into my daily workflow. I think that by entering a 1-1 dialogue with certain users would help to disseminate information on RDM services at NYU, and hopefully start a dialogue about RDM and reproducibility leading to some action items within the target group. By the end of this academic year, I will choose one department to make direct inroads with and speak 1-1 with the faculty members of that department.
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Improving the Libguide: I’m really interesting in building up a corpus of online knowledge base through expanding the LibGuide as much as possible. To accomplish this, every Friday I plan on setting aside an hour to update the LibGuide and add instructional and informational offerings.
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I have a twofold method to keeping these goals in order and make sure I "get 'er done" (ew sorry for this). The first one is more for the collaborative projects I've listed under these goals, and that's the Open Science Framework(OSF) I mentioned under goal #4.
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The OSF is a FREE tool created by the non-profit, the Center for Open Science, to integrate with resarchers' daily workflows. Besides allowing for maximum control over data access (with really robust controls for creating labs/collaborators on specific projects, and even more granularly, specific components of specific projects), the OSF helps people document and archive materials from all parts of the research data lifecycle, from study design to data to publication. What's also great is that the OSF is completely open source, which means there is an API and lots of addon features that you can use. My favourites are the Google Drive and GitHub addon (probably because I use it the most), but it also has integration with Amazon S3, Box, Dataverse, Dropbox, Figshare, OSF Storage, Mendeley, and Zotero.
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All my projects listed on OSF, with Nick as my collaborator on almost all.
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Nick and I use the OSF for all our projects for Team RDM in Data Services. We use it to track files in each of our individual, NYU-Google Drive accounts, link in code that we write from our respective GitHubs, and keep metrics open for our public projects as a great boost to our reviews. It's been really useful, also because of the integrated Wiki feature that lets us keep robust to-do lists for each other/our team and allows gives us a space to document explicitly what we have been doing, how we've been doing it, how we are disseminating information, and how we are maintaining all the different aspects of our RDM outreach and instructional work.
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Plus, it's a standardized markup so we can do some cool strikethrough effects and style it like any other Wiki page. As someone who lives for striking out tasks, this was honestly one little tiny feature I just absolutely adored.
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Nick and I are super productive, as you can see ;)
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The second one is strangely analog. I always make a plan in my Passion Planner to make sure I keep my behind in gear and keep a big picture focus of all the things I want to get done before August 2016. I'm a proud member of the #PashFam on Facebook and Instagram, and using my Passion Planner I’ve definitely kept up with a lot of goals that may or may not have previously fallen to the wayside. It just has a great interface to goal tracking and accountability that has helped me refine my focus professionally and personally.
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Look at all the crossed-off goals and "to-do's!"
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Plus, Passion Planner has really great inspiration quotes on each page, along with a “Good Things That Happened” section each week for me to fill out. As a generally negative person, I genuinely feel like this helped to keep me positive and less bogged down in my anxiety. The paper is super thick also so I like to draw with my multi-colored pens to make everything seem just that little bit better.
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Passion Planner works for me because it’s not only a place to keep my schedule, but also a place to doodle, journal, write notes, and do some short and long-term goal setting activities complete with weekly to-do-lists and monthly check-ins. Each week and day have a "Focus" section, where you write in your focus for that week, and then each individual day. As someone who loves to multitask but also loves to plan (almost obsessively loves to plan) this has kept me super on-track for getting things done, especially since there are separate to-do lists on each week for my personal and professional life. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I have like 3 of these in the wings for when I finish this one. What's cool is you can also download it for free as a pdf!
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, or even took a quick look on my resume page, you'll see I haven't been at my position at NYU for very long. January 3rd marks the fifth month (to the day!) that I've been NYU’s official "Research Data Management and Reproducibility Librarian." There was a bit of an adjustment period where I just spent the majority of my time introducing myself to my colleagues, getting to know what my daily workflow would look like, and brainstorm with Nick about what our services will look like, some good groups for targeted outreach, and what classes we are going to teach as a part of Data Services typical course offerings.
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This was all well and good, but since I started in August I missed the goal-setting timeline that is typical for my colleagues. As such, I wanted to make some, and my supervisor in the library thought it would be a good way to measure growth besides. Plus, since I’m pretty early career, setting goals for a measurable outcome was kind of new for something not project based. This was just trying to assess my own growth, not necessarily the growth of a project I’m working on.
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In the end, I made 7 goals for this 2015-2016 academic year:
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Research: Currently I’m involved in a few different research projects, all collaborations, across three different domains/topics. I’d really like to finalize and publish at least one of these projects this year into a peer-reviewed, academic journal.
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Reproducibility as Research: I would also like to look at reproducibility more specifically as a research target area. I am really interested in learning more about reproducibility and possible applications or crossover with library services.
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Teaching Me How to Teach: I would love to learn more about teaching and pedagogical theory, as its own entity. While I have certainly taught before, I’ve never attended classes or the like on the actual practice of instruction, evaluating instruction, active teaching, diversity in instruction, etc. I think that I would benefit from taking some workshops on teaching. I’m going to attend at least three of these sessions by the end of the academic year at a minimum.
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Multimedia Instruction/Outreach: I’m super interested in making short, two-to-five minute videos outlining tools that could be of use in managing data, such as the Open Science Framework, Open ICPSR, converting files to archival formats, etc. I think a varied approach to disseminating RDM information would get us some more love. I would like to complete two of these "how-to" videos by the end of this academic year.
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Build Up the Curriculum: I want to expand instructional offerings from three classes a semester to six classes a semester at a minimum, starting in the spring 2016 semester. Approaching the entire RDM lifecycle in one class can be overwhelming to some first-time users. By offering classes that separately address each aspect of the RDM lifecycle (i.e. data creation, data documentation, etc.) it allows for a more in-depth and digestible delivery of information.
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Targeted Outreach: I want to incorporate some more relationship building into my daily workflow. I think that by entering a 1-1 dialogue with certain users would help to disseminate information on RDM services at NYU, and hopefully start a dialogue about RDM and reproducibility leading to some action items within the target group. By the end of this academic year, I will choose one department to make direct inroads with and speak 1-1 with the faculty members of that department.
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Improving the Libguide: I’m really interesting in building up a corpus of online knowledge base through expanding the LibGuide as much as possible. To accomplish this, every Friday I plan on setting aside an hour to update the LibGuide and add instructional and informational offerings.
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I have a twofold method to keeping these goals in order and make sure I "get 'er done" (ew sorry for this). The first one is more for the collaborative projects I've listed under these goals, and that's the Open Science Framework(OSF) I mentioned under goal #4.
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The OSF is a FREE tool created by the non-profit, the Center for Open Science, to integrate with resarchers' daily workflows. Besides allowing for maximum control over data access (with really robust controls for creating labs/collaborators on specific projects, and even more granularly, specific components of specific projects), the OSF helps people document and archive materials from all parts of the research data lifecycle, from study design to data to publication. What's also great is that the OSF is completely open source, which means there is an API and lots of addon features that you can use. My favourites are the Google Drive and GitHub addon (probably because I use it the most), but it also has integration with Amazon S3, Box, Dataverse, Dropbox, Figshare, OSF Storage, Mendeley, and Zotero.
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All my projects listed on OSF, with Nick as my collaborator on almost all.
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Nick and I use the OSF for all our projects for Team RDM in Data Services. We use it to track files in each of our individual, NYU-Google Drive accounts, link in code that we write from our respective GitHubs, and keep metrics open for our public projects as a great boost to our reviews. It's been really useful, also because of the integrated Wiki feature that lets us keep robust to-do lists for each other/our team and allows gives us a space to document explicitly what we have been doing, how we've been doing it, how we are disseminating information, and how we are maintaining all the different aspects of our RDM outreach and instructional work.
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Plus, it's a standardized markup so we can do some cool strikethrough effects and style it like any other Wiki page. As someone who lives for striking out tasks, this was honestly one little tiny feature I just absolutely adored.
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Nick and I are super productive, as you can see ;)
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The second one is strangely analog. I always make a plan in my Passion Planner to make sure I keep my behind in gear and keep a big picture focus of all the things I want to get done before August 2016. I'm a proud member of the #PashFam on Facebook and Instagram, and using my Passion Planner I’ve definitely kept up with a lot of goals that may or may not have previously fallen to the wayside. It just has a great interface to goal tracking and accountability that has helped me refine my focus professionally and personally.
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Look at all the crossed-off goals and "to-do's!"
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Plus, Passion Planner has really great inspiration quotes on each page, along with a “Good Things That Happened” section each week for me to fill out. As a generally negative person, I genuinely feel like this helped to keep me positive and less bogged down in my anxiety. The paper is super thick also so I like to draw with my multi-colored pens to make everything seem just that little bit better.
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Passion Planner works for me because it’s not only a place to keep my schedule, but also a place to doodle, journal, write notes, and do some short and long-term goal setting activities complete with weekly to-do-lists and monthly check-ins. Each week and day have a "Focus" section, where you write in your focus for that week, and then each individual day. As someone who loves to multitask but also loves to plan (almost obsessively loves to plan) this has kept me super on-track for getting things done, especially since there are separate to-do lists on each week for my personal and professional life. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I have like 3 of these in the wings for when I finish this one. What's cool is you can also download it for free as a pdf!
In May, Rémi and I will be at the Data and Software and Preservation for Open Science workshop, Container Strategies for Data Software Preservation that Promote Open Science. I'm serving as an external organizer, but the two of us will be doing some extensive work with ReproZip while there. In addition to a talk/demo during the conference preceedings.
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About
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A blog chronicling my career mostly, with some scattered pictures of my cat.
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