Category: Research Libraries

"Conceptualizing Data Curation Activities within Two Academic Libraries"

Sophia Lafferty-Hess et al. have self-archived "Conceptualizing Data Curation Activities within Two Academic Libraries."

Here's an excerpt:

At the 2017 Triangle Research Libraries Network Institute, staff from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University used the 47 data curation activities identified by the Data Curation Network project to create conceptual groupings of data curation activities. The results of this "thought-exercise" are discussed in this white paper. The purpose of this exercise was to provide more specificity around data curation within our individual contexts as a method to consistently discuss our current service models, identify gaps we would like to fill, and determine what is currently out of scope. We hope to foster an open and productive discussion throughout the larger academic library community about how we prioritize data curation activities as we face growing demand and limited resources.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Collections as Data: Implications for Enclosure"

Thomas G. Padilla has published "Collections as Data: Implications for Enclosure" in .

Here's an excerpt:

In recent years a growing amount of interest has been dedicated to collections as data. A collections as data paradigm seeks to foster an expanded set of research, pedagogical, and artistic potential predicated on the computational use of cultural heritage collections. Collections as data raises the question of what it might mean to treat digitized and born digital collections as data rather than simple surrogates of physical objects or static representations of digital experience.

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Austin Booth Named Dean of Libraries at New York University

Austin Booth has been named Dean of Libraries at New York University.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Austin received her BA in English and Economics from Cornell University in 1984, and received her MLIS from University of California, Berkeley in 1987. She received an MA in English Language and Literature in 1992 and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies in 1995, both from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Austin has been with the Libraries at Buffalo in increasingly prominent roles since 1997, including Director, Arts & Sciences Libraries and Director of Collections. Previously, Austin worked at San Jose State University, UC Berkeley, and Oakland Public Library.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Joseph Salem Jr. Recommended to Michigan State University Board of Trustees as Director of Libraries/University Librarian

Joseph Salem Jr. has been recommended to the Michigan State University Board of Trustees as the Director of Libraries/University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Salem is currently the associate dean for learning, undergraduate services and commonwealth campus libraries at Penn State, a role he assumed in 2015.

In that role, he has led Penn State's open and affordable course content program, built the libraries' assessment effort, developed a programmatic approach to teaching and learning, developed the Diversity Librarian Residency program, created undergraduate internships and graduate assistantships within the libraries and led strategic and space planning.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing, Version 0.5 (Draft for Comment)"

Jason Boczar et al. have self-archived "An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing, Version 0.5 (Draft for Comment)." This document is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Here's an excerpt:

Background: At the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Membership Meeting at the 2017 Library Publishing Forum in Baltimore, Maryland, the community discussed how the LPC can respond to the current political climate. The discussion was wide-ranging, but kept coming back to the importance of library values and our responsibility as library publishers to center our publishing practice around them. A number of those present offered to devise a way for the conversation to continue beyond the Forum. That group included Marilyn Billings, Jason Boczar, Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Harrison W. Inefuku, Joshua Neds-Fox, Matt Ruen, Emily Stenberg, and Monica Westin, who proposed a task force to tackle the issues raised. This task force was charged with creating an Ethical Framework for Library Publishing . From July of 2017 to June of 2018, the task force members (listed on the title page as authors of this document) identified the topics to be covered in the framework, and then worked in subgroups to review the literature on those topics and identify existing resources of particular relevance to the community of library publishers. The subgroups then drafted the sections you see in this document. Throughout this process, they worked iteratively to devise a structure and format for the framework—a challenging task, and one for which there were many inspirations, but no clear models. In the end, they decided that the most effective structure for the document would break each section into an introduction, a scope statement, a review of existing resources, and a set of recommendations for library publishers. Some sections also include a note about new resources that are needed and/or further readings on the topic.

Context: library publishing and ethics: Academic libraries have entered the publishing space due to changes in ways of disseminating information and in response to faculty members’ desire to control their own publishing destiny. This work has been enabled by the emergence of open source or low-cost technologies for publishing, but the motivations for it are broad and deep—for example, library publishers are also deeply engaged with emerging forms of scholarship (and emerging disciplines) that do not yet have a voice within the traditional publishing environment. These motivations often include a desire for increased openness and sustainability in the scholarly communication landscape. Unlike commercial publishers and traditional presses, the work of library publishers is largely funded through existing library budgets without a profit motive. The goal is instead to increase the impact of scholarship created by faculty and students affiliated with an institution and to disseminate that scholarship as broadly as possible, by emphasizing open access as a means of distribution. Because these publishing activities for academic libraries are a relatively recent endeavor, education and training for librarians as publishers is not fully established and thus one of the objectives for preparing this guide. Publishing as a role for librarians is increasing in importance for all academic libraries and is not limited to just research libraries, but also includes community colleges and four-year undergraduate institutions. Library publishers are also uniquely positioned to look beyond traditional prestige publishing priorities to partner with faculty, students, and organizations in order provide services such as data preservation and engage in publishing as pedagogy. As relative newcomers to the world of publishing, libraries are able to draw on a wealth of resources and expertise developed by more established players. To avoid reinventing the wheel, this document is structured primarily around existing resources. The framework pulls together existing publishing codes of ethics (many of which are included in the Publishing Practice section), along with resources from librarianship and other related fields, and contextualizes them for library publishers. The recommendations in each section attempt to distill a wealth of knowledge and guidance into a small set of actionable steps meant to answer the question, "But how do I get started?" They are by no means the only steps to be taken in these areas, but they may help library publishers begin to incorporate these important ethical considerations into their work.

Future plans for the framework From the beginning of this project, the taskforce designed An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing to be an iterative document, more formal than a wiki but less so than a monograph or white paper. The founding group of authors worked on the framework with an understanding that every topic could not be covered, especially with a goal to create a document in less than a year. This framework was always envisioned as a starting place. In light of an iterative approach, we have decided to call this version 1 from the outset. The definitive version of An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing will always be the most current version. Versioning the document will also help make visible the historical transition. Version 2, the taskforce hopes, can be started by a new group of library publishing professionals with new views and ideas. In this way, we hope, An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing will never be a static, antiquated document created only from the viewpoint of a small group of people. It can, and should, be a community project.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"FAIR Principles for Library, Archive and Museum Collections: A Proposal for Standards for Reusable Collections"

Lukas Koster and Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer have published "FAIR Principles for Library, Archive and Museum Collections: A Proposal for Standards for Reusable Collections" in the Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Many heritage institutions would like their collections to be open and reusable but fail to achieve that situation because of organizational, legal and technological barriers. A set of guidelines and best practices is proposed to facilitate the process of making heritage collections reusable. These guidelines are based on the FAIR Principles for scholarly output (FAIR data principles [2014]), taking into account a number of other recent initiatives for making data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The resulting FAIR Principles for Heritage Library, Archive and Museum Collections focus on three levels: objects, metadata and metadata records. Clarifications and examples of these proposed principles are presented, as well as recommendations for the assessment of current situations and implementations of the principles.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

University Librarian at California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is recruiting a University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Caltech (the California Institute of Technology), a private research university of approximately 300 faculty focused on science and engineering, seeks a talented leader and experienced administrator to serve as University Librarian. . . .

The Caltech Library comprises six libraries, which are staffed by 20 librarians, archivists, and software developers, including three with Ph.D.'s, as well as 25 support staff and a rotating team of student employees.

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University of Colorado Boulder Names Robert H. McDonald Dean of University Libraries

The University of Colorado Boulder has named Robert H. McDonald, Associate Dean for Research and Technology Strategies Librarian at Indiana University Libraries, as Dean of University Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As the associate dean for research and technology strategies at IU, McDonald led the work of providing library information system and discovery services to the entire IU system. He managed projects related to scholarly communications, new model publishing and technologies that enabled IU's libraries to support teaching and learning for the IU Bloomington campus.

At IU, he also served as deputy director of the Data to Insight Center, where he conducted research in areas of large data analysis and digital storage and preservation through grant-funded and collaborative projects, such as the HathiTrust Research Center.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Lisa R. Carter Named Vice Provost for Libraries at University of Wisconsin–Madison

Lisa R. Carter, Associate Director, Special Collections and Area Studies at The Ohio State University Libraries has been named Vice Provost for Libraries at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Carter has been at Ohio State since 2011. Previously, she was the head of the Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University Libraries in Raleigh, North Carolina and director of archives at the University of Kentucky Libraries in Lexington, Kentucky. In her professional service, Carter has advanced conversations about integrating distinctive collections widely throughout the academic enterprise.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"How Important is Data Curation? Gaps and Opportunities for Academic Libraries"

Lisa R Johnston et al. have published "How Important is Data Curation? Gaps and Opportunities for Academic Libraries" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Data curation may be an emerging service for academic libraries, but researchers actively "curate" their data in a number of ways—even if terminology may not always align. Building on past userneeds assessments performed via survey and focus groups, the authors sought direct input from researchers on the importance and utilization of specific data curation activities. METHODS Between October 21, 2016, and November 18, 2016, the study team held focus groups with 91 participants at six different academic institutions to determine which data curation activities were most important to researchers, which activities were currently underway for their data, and how satisfied they were with the results. RESULTS Researchers are actively engaged in a variety of data curation activities, and while they considered most data curation activities to be highly important, a majority of the sample reported dissatisfaction with the current state of data curation at their institution. DISCUSSION Our findings demonstrate specific gaps and opportunities for academic libraries to focus their data curation services to more effectively meet researcher needs. CONCLUSION Research libraries stand to benefit their users by emphasizing, investing in, and/or heavily promoting the highly valued services that may not currently be in use by many researchers.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"National Licence Negotiations Advancing the Open Access Transition—A View from the UK"

Liam Earney has published "National Licence Negotiations Advancing the Open Access Transition—A View from the UK" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

Jisc Collections has had agreements with open access (OA) publishers since the mid-2000s. In 2014, following the UK government’s response to the Finch Report, it started to target hybrid OA via 'offsetting agreements' that covered both subscriptions and article processing charges for OA.

This article will provide a status update on OA negotiations in the UK in the context of the UK's progress towards OA. It will look at some of the concerns about the progress of OA in the UK, how negotiations have evolved in response, and will look at prospects for their future direction.

See also: "National Licence Negotiations Advancing the Open Access Transition—A View from Sweden."

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Data-Driven Transition: Joint Reporting of Subscription Expenditure and Publication Costs"

Irene Barbers et al. have published "Data-Driven Transition: Joint Reporting of Subscription Expenditure and Publication Costs" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The transition process from the subscription model to the open access model in the world of scholarly publishing brings a variety of challenges to libraries. Within this evolving landscape, the present article takes a focus on budget control for both subscription and publication expenditure with the opportunity to enable the shift from one to the other. To reach informed decisions with a solid base of data to be used in negotiations with publishers, the diverse already-existing systems for managing publications costs and for managing journal subscriptions have to be adapted to allow comprehensive reporting on publication expenditure and subscription expenditure. In the case presented here, two separate systems are described and the establishment of joint reporting covering both these systems is introduced. Some of the results of joint reporting are presented as an example of how such a comprehensive monitoring can support management decisions and negotiations. On a larger scale, the establishment of the National Open Access Monitor in Germany is introduced, bringing together a diverse range of data from several already-existing systems, including, among others, holdings information, usage data, and data on publication fees. This system will enable libraries to access all relevant data with a single user interface.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Supporting Open Access at Kent—New Staff Roles"

Rosalyn Bass and Sarah Slowe have published "Supporting Open Access at Kent—New Staff Roles" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access has been supported at the University of Kent from an early stage with the establishment of the Kent Academic Repository in 2007. Initially, this work was accommodated within the existing library staff structure, but the pace of change, funder requirements, and a new university plan meant that support for Open Access needed to become explicit. Therefore, a research support team was established using a matrix working system1. This article details this new structure and reflects on the benefits and challenges it brings.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Version 9 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography Released

Digital Scholarship has released Version 9 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 750 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. Printed from the HTML page, it is over 130 pages long.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, provenance, repositories, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, open access, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through December 2017; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to included works.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Journal Access Problem Note

The International Journal of Digital Curation server is having access problems today resulting in the following error message: "DB Error: Can't create/write to file '/var/tmp/#sql_565_1.MAI' (Errcode: 28)."

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University Librarian and Vice-Provost (Knowledge Systems) at University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is recruiting a University Librarian and Vice-Provost (Knowledge Systems).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The University Librarian and Vice-Provost (Knowledge Systems) (hereafter "University Librarian") will play a critical role in providing strategic direction and leadership in advancing the University’s teaching and research mission through the adoption of emerging technologies, sound fiscal management and via strong advocacy for professional values and standards to a broad spectrum of external constituents. He/She will possess a strong vision and be prepared to identify critical Library and University needs and lead the Library team to address information challenges and the strategic future of the University Libraries through the development of a strategic plan that is both unifying and innovative.

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Dean, University Libraries at Florida State University

Florida State University is recruiting a Dean, University Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean is the senior academic and administrative officer of the University Libraries, home to 138 full time employees supported by a total annual operating budget of more than $18 million.

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"Data Librarianship: A Path and an Ethic. A Conversation between Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves"

Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves have published "Data Librarianship: A Path and an Ethic. A Conversation between Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves" in dh+lib.

I think a lot about the corporate capture of the scholarly record, and how my work in data management and reproducibility can either contribute to or disrupt that. With the rise of reproducibility as a buzzword, there are plenty of commercial entities ready to profit from so-called 'reproducibility platforms'. This represents yet another corporate capture of scholarship. I try to disrupt this by advocating for community-run, open source software for reproducibility, such as ReproZip (which I work on), o2r, and Binder. The same goes for data management platforms. We're seeing a lot of new data services springing up from major publishers and this is also something I am actively trying to combat.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"What Do Data Librarians Think of the MLIS? Professionals’ Perceptions of Knowledge Transfer, Trends, and Challenges"

Camille V.L. Thomas and Richard J. Urban have published "What Do Data Librarians Think of the MLIS? Professionals' Perceptions of Knowledge Transfer, Trends, and Challenges " in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

There are existing studies on data curation programs in library science education and studies on data services in libraries. However, there is not much insight into how educational programs have prepared data professionals for practice. This study asked 105 practicing professionals how well they thought their education prepared them for professional experience. It also asked supervisors about their perceptions of how well employees performed. After analyzing the results, the investigators of this study found that changing the educational model may lead to improvements in future library data services.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

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