Love Your Data Week, Day 5: Transform, Extend, Reuse

Today we're wrapping up Love Your Data Week by addressing open data and data sharing. This blog post from the University of Michigan Libraries includes a list of ways to share your data. Also worthy are these stories about how data are shared and reused by others:

• Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom: Data Stories
• DataONE Data Stories
• Environmental Exchange Network
• ODE Ten Tales of Drivers & Barriers in Data Sharing

You can also check out Nine Simple Ways to Make it Easier to (re)Use Your Data. And as always, if you're looking for ways to make your data more sharable, contact the UW Libraries Data Services Team!

A Day of Library Conversation on Open Public Data

[Note: this article appears concurrently in the ACRL-WA/OR newsletter for Fall 2015, n76]

On October 13, Seattle Public Library hosted a day of library conversation on open public data. Attendees came from around the Puget Sound area and included libraries such as Seattle Public Library, Pierce County Libraries, King County Libraries, Sno-Isle Libraries, the University of Washington and the UW Libraries, the City of Seattle, and OCLC. Representatives from Socrata, a company that provides solutions for governments to put their data online, were also in attendance. The idea behind the workshop was to facilitate a discussion regarding the role of the library in open and government data initiatives. The hope was to brainstorm ways in which public libraries can partner with local data initiatives, how to provide library staff with the skills and resources they need to participate in local data, and how to support the library's community of users.

The session included folks from Socrata presenting examples of some of the government data they provide solutions for, as well as a brainstorming session on what a library's potential role is regarding open data. In the Puget Sound there is already a bounty of online government data available (for example, http://data.kingcounty.gov/, https://data.seattle.gov/, https://data.wa.gov/, http://www.census.gov/data.html, and many, many more), and libary user communities are accessing that data from library computers. The question is: could or should libraries be doing more to support what users are doing?

Though no magic-bullet solutions were found, everyone involved agreed it was a good initial conversation -- it was the first time all of us had collected together to learn about how we are or would like to be supporting open data, what our staff needs to be able to continue or begin supporting open data initiatives, and what the future might look like as far as library support for these endeavors goes.

I'm sure this was the first of many meetings on the topic, and everyone looked forward to potential collaboration on future projects, and/or to more discussion on particular concepts.

Some additional open data-related resources that were highlighted at the event included OpenSeattle (a civic technology group, including weekly civic hacking nights), Municipal Research Services Center (has a data request service for municipalities), Puget Sound Regional Council (also has a data request service), NextDoor (private social networks connecting neighborhoods).

Following the afternoon workshop, an evening event at SPL was held. Titled "From Data to Action: Open Data and You," the event included a panel presentation and audience discussion. Panelists were:

• Ryan Biava, ‎Senior Policy Advisor, Mayor's Office of Policy & Innovation
• Abe Diaz, Mobile Program Manager at NBC-Universal, Inc. and Independent Developer
• Amy Laurent, Assessment, Policy Development and Evaluation Unit, Public Health, Seattle & King County
• Domonique Meeks, Masters of Science Information Management graduate student at the University of Washington and the co-organizer of Hack The CD
• Jenny Muilenburg, Data Curriculum and Communications Librarian, University of Washington Libraries Research Commons

Facilitated by Jim Loter, Director of Information Technology at SPL, discussion topics included resources for open data (with a focus on data.seattle.gov), best ways to learn about data if you're starting out on a project, where to acquire data-related skills, and examples of the creative ways people have used open data. The best part of the night was the Q&A, with questions ranging from Seattle policy decisions, skill training, ideas for how to use open data, and more.

The presentation was recorded, and will be available online via SPL soon.

New Data Policies from AGU and PLOS

Both the American Geophyical Union and PLOS have recently announced new policies dealing with the data that underlies published research. The PLOS statement recognized that having open access literature without providing the underlying data was incongruous, and both policies provide recommendations for what to share, and how to share it.

In both statements, the requirement is not necessarily for all research data to be shared, but for the critical parts of data that were used to complete the published research and analysis. The two groups also require that data is made easily accessible, within legal constraints, and not held by the authors as the sole gatekeeper to the data. The expectation is for the data to be stored in trusted repositories: AGU provides a link to suggested repositories; PLOS suggests authors use repositories verified with criteria such as that provided by the Centre for Research Libraries or Data Seal of Approval (perhaps recognizing that when public archives aren't used, access to the data rapidly diminishes over time).

Recognizing that there are a variety of reasons all data may not be able to be shared publicly, each policy provides options for privacy or legal concerns, but requires that a statement be made to that effect, explaining why part or all of the data can not be shared.

With funding agencies and the federal government moving swiftly toward open access for all research outputs, and the proliferation of tools making it easy to share data, more groups and publishers will no doubt be adopting similar policies in the very near future.

Upcoming Conferences and Sessions and Workshops, Oh My!

Since beginning to follow groups and conferences relevant to data management issues for information professionals in November 2012, I've known that there is always something upcoming in the not-too-distant future that looks fascinating and informative. There is a panoply happening right now, though, that could have us all booked out of the office for the bulk of 2013 (given inexhaustible travel budgets, that is). Here are a few upcoming events that have caught my eye:

• Happening right now is Open Repositories 2013 (#or2013) in Prince Edward Island, CA, July 8-12. I've been following the twitter feed via the hashtag and Storify; lots of interesting talk going on around data policies, data curation methods and technologies, the research lifecycle...
• The University of East London has been training various types of staff on research data management over the last year. They're summarizing some of their work at a daylong workshop, "Support for support: training those in RDM support roles," July 16, London, UK. I'm currently working my way through some of UEL's online curriculum offerings for librarians, and very much wish I could be there for this session.
• For those interested in the metadata side of scientific data, Camp-4-Data in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 6, will be exploring many facets of metadata standards used to manage scientific data. This is being held just before iPres, the 10th International Conference on the Preservation of Digital Objects, and DCMI, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. Head in a whirl yet?
• The HathiTrust Research Center UnCamp 2013, September 8-9, Urbana, IL, is targeted to digital humanities tool developers, researchers and librarians of HathiTrust institutions, and will include hands-on coding and demonstration, use cases, and community building in an un-conference programmming format. Register early to help form the program.
• Data Information Literacy Symposium, West Lafayette, IN, September 23-24. This workshop will "explore roles for practicing librarians in teaching competencies in data management and curation to graduate students." Registration for this is currently full, but following via twitter should be interesting.
• The Digital Humanities Data Curation Workshop is being held in College Park, MD, October 16-18. Their resource guide is a great place to start if you can't attend one of their workshops.
• The 2013 Digital Library Foundation Forum, November 4-6 in Austin, TX. Proposed sessions include one on using a CRM tool to track data management services in an academic library, one on the influence of faculty rank on attitudes toward research data management, several presentations on encouraging better and more specific use of metadata, fostering a culture of data sharing among researchers, data management education for librarians and researchers...

I'm sure there are others out there that I missed; if you have a suggestion, please add it in the comments below.

Public Comment on Access to Federally Supported Research and Development Data and Publications

In response to both the recent OSTP memorandum and the proposed bill (FASTR) that call for increased public access to data and publications resulting from federally funded research, a group of cooperating agencies and the National Research Council have organized two planning meetings held May 14-17 to gather stakeholder input (also included are "brief introductory addresses by a select few experts and summarizing commentary by equally few rapporteurs").

Two meetings will be held, one focused on publications (May 14-15) and the other on data (May 16-17). The public is invited to attend in person (at the National Academy of Sciences in DC) or via webcast, but registration is required. Attendees may also request time to present a verbal or written statement.

Sponsoring Agencies:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Technical Information Service
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Department of the Interior
United States Geological Survey
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution

The New OSTP Policy and Data

The OSTP policy changes last month that mandate greater access to federally funded research left us wondering what, exactly, it'll mean for federally funded research data. There have been several good blog posts written that summarize what the policy states and an interpretation of what the changes might mean in the realm of data.

The Scholarly Kitchen gives a history of how the policy came to be, deciphers what it means, and provides a list of agencies covered (NIH, CDC, FDA, ARHQ, NSF, NASA, DOE, USDA, FAA, FHWA, NIST, NOAA, USGS, EPA, DOD, VA, USAID, Dept. of Education, and the Smithsonian), and some first impressions of what it means for public access to funded research papers.

Carly Strasser from California Digital Library takes a look at the policy from both a scholarly article and data perspective, providing a short-and-sweet summary in plain English about potential changes from the policy.

And last, Kristin Briney spends time looking at what the policy means for data in particular.

Basically, what all this means is that data management plans will now be required of researchers on federal grants, and these plans should be supported by the various agencies. There is no particular mandate for sharing, just the "maximizing of access to research data." There is a lot of potential there for increases in data management plan creation and support, open repositories and greater access to the content therein. Agencies have 6 months from the announcement to create a policy; come August, there will be some interesting things to discuss.