Librarians at University of Minnesota Make an Impact with Data Management Program
By Michael Kelley Aug 8, 2011Librarians at the University of Minnesota have stepped up to help researchers manage their digital data and, in the process, have highlighted the value of the University Libraries within the larger institution.
Under the direction of Lisa Johnston, a research services librarian at the University Libraries and a codirector of the University Digital Conservancy (UDC), the library has created a program called Managing Your Data, which guides researchers in the creation of data management plans (DMP).
"Research is something that faculty care about. This program allows us to start a conversation with faculty in new ways that our more traditional library roles might not have before," Johnston said. "And something amazing happens in this conversation, faculty listen to us. They see our expertise in the areas of open access, public distribution of information, and long-term preservation and look to us for best practices and principles to incorporate into their research," she said.
The program provides best practices for sharing and finding data, preservation and archiving, copyright and ethics, and other areas. A spur was the National Science Foundation's (NSF) announcement in October 2010 that effective January 18, 2011, all grant proposals would have to include a data management plan. In December 2010, the library piloted its first DMP workshop and began offering consultation services to faculty.
"Since then we have offered 14 sessions, with two more upcoming this fall. The key to our success has been collaborating with the Office of the Vice President for Research and offering these sessions with continuing education credit, required for all principal investigators," Johnston said.
Through the consultations, the librarians have reached over 250 faculty members and been invited by six departments to give sessions to their entire staff, Johnston said.
"These sessions work particularly well as we are able to have a rich discussion that focuses on the cultural and ethical practices of data management and sharing in a particular discipline," she said. "Not only do I get to instruct researchers on best practices, I also designed these sessions with a curriculum that involves the appropriate subject librarian as a coinstructor."
Including the subject librarian has the beneficial side effect of enriching that librarian's knowledge of the researchers' needs.
"This is a wonderful liaison opportunity and educates librarians on e-science issues that they might not have been aware of previously," Johnston said. "I find that the colleagues [whom] I coteach with are much more engaged in our future library education activities in this area, having seen the interest that their faculty had while engaging in these issues."
A 2009 user-needs assessment of 780 university faculty, research staff, and graduate students showed that there were definite gaps in knowledge across the campus that needed to be addressed.
"Our study identified more training as a key recommendation for improving cyberinfrastructure on campus, and the libraries were seen as an integral part in this role," Johnston said. "Another fact was that nearly half of our researchers were keeping their data in unsecure locations such as laptops, external hard drives, and flash drives," she said.
Twenty-seven percent of the 780 respondents reported losing some data. Filling this type of gap became an opening for the library to have an impact.
"The digital age changed many ways that we engage with our users in the library; digital research data is no different," she said. "I see these changes as exciting opportunities to discover new ways the library can engage with users, and in potentially more impactful ways than ever before."
The workshops and consultations that the new DMP offers are supplemented by online videos and slideshows. The site also provides links to other training opportunities through the university's Office of Information Technology.
In addition to the NSF's requirements, Johnston and her team compiled a list of the data management requirements of numerous federal agencies. Helping the faculty devise a robust data management plan helps give them an edge in the competition for grants.
For example, Steven L. Girshick, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department and the director of the High Temperature and Plasma Laboratory, contacted Johnston shortly after the mandate from NSF went into effect and after hearing her presentation to the Library Faculty Advisory Group.
"We worked through his DMP, and I was able to respond to [Girshick's] draft, ask him questions, and give suggestions of ways he might preserve his work," Johnston said. "This consultation was not only successful for his DMP, but the faculty member approached his department chair and advised him to schedule a workshop for the entire department," she said. Girshick was awarded his grant in July.
The librarians also guide researchers, in person and through the website, on how they can best preserve and archive their data. In Girschick's case, Johnston advised him that rather than posting his supercomputing video simulations on a website for long-term access, he could use the recently developed UMedia Archive, an institutional repository platform that supports video, audio, and image formats.
"He was thrilled with the do-it-yourself preservation platform and appreciated the chance to share his work for the long-term," Johnston said.
The librarians also make faculty aware of UDC, which is a digital archiving venue available to University of Minnesota faculty. It provides long-term digital preservation and open access to institutional digital resources. But they also point out that if an appropriate discipline-specific data repository already exists, that should be the first choice for long-term archiving, and they provide copious links to the appropriate repositories.
This is has all been part of an overall plan Johnson, as research services librarian, has been spearheading to focus on communicating the library's role in supporting research, which is critical in a large research institution where there is a concentration on measures of impact and success.
"I was adamant that when we redesigned our library web page that we include a section on services directed at faculty and researchers, in addition to our instruction services," Johnston said. "The library was doing all these great things, such as copyright consultation, transforming scholarly communications, and providing a platform for open access to research. But we were not showcasing it. Now we have something to point people to in order to help them see the range of services we offer. It is still early, but I feel like this web presence is a good step in our conversation with the campus," she said.
