VICKY STEEVES (Posts about nyu)

Getting Use Cases is Hard

Vicky Steeves — Sun, 20 Mar 2016 18:08:25 GMT

One of my big tasks since coming into NYU last August was to work on the ReproZip project. My role is largely outreach and education: I was tasked with teaching ReproZip and general reproducibility principles, gathering use cases in a wider variety of disciplines (when I arrived, the use cases were largely in computer science), and supporting users in general.

ReproZip kind of blew my mind when I arrived; it's an open source software tool that simplifies the process of creating reproducible experiments. Basically it tracks operating system calls and creates a package that contains all the binaries, files, and dependencies required to reproduce the experiment. A reviewer can then extract the experiment on their own machine using ANY operating system (even if it's different from the original one!!) to reproduce the results. As a librarian, I was like "OH MY GOD. THE DIGITAL PRESERVATION GAME JUST GOT UPPED." Anyway, here's basically how ReproZip works -- in 2 steps:

#LYD16 Recap

Vicky Steeves — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 18:08:25 GMT

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!

Goals for 2016 and How I'll Make Them Happen

Vicky Steeves — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 18:08:25 GMT

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.

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.

Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment Summit: A Recap

Vicky Steeves — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 18:08:25 GMT

This year's Moore/Sloan Data Science Environment was in the beautiful Cascade Mountains at the Suncadia Resort in Cle Elum, Washington.

RT @uwescience: #DSESummit is off to a sunny start! pic.twitter.com/fQi3EZpSdL
— Vicky Steeves (@VickySteeves) October 5, 2015

Look how beautiful that is. Wow.

Debrief: My First Two Months at NYU

Vicky Steeves — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 18:08:25 GMT

So, for those who don't follow me on Twitter (go ahead though, @VickySteeves), I recently accepted a position at New York University, Division of Libraries and the NYU Center for Data Science, 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.