Hannah F. Norton, Rolando Garcia Milian, Michele R. Tennant*, Cecilia Botero

Supporting the local research data environment via cross-campus collaboration and leveraging of

national expertiseHannah F. Norton, Rolando Garcia Milian,

Michele R. Tennant*, Cecilia Botero

Health Science Center Libraries* and UF Genetics Institute

University of Florida

Image credit: Modified from Eric Fischer, http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5266043943/

Background

• Growing interest in research data and how to provide support– Partnership with Research Computing/ High

Performance Computing Center (HPCC)– Involvement in ARL E-Science Institute

• Pilot project asked about Clinical and Translation Science Institute (CTSI) researchers’ information needs, including those related to data and e-science

Pilot Project Results

Other

Other external expertise (e.g. statistician, informatician)

Data management service to outsource some of the work to

Computing expertise or software

Computing capacity for analysis

Data/digital management system for organizing data

Storage capacity

Training on data management

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

15.6%

37.8%

31.1%

62.2%

40.0%

51.1%

53.3%

44.4%

What resources outside of your department do you need to best manage and analyze your data?

Percentage of Respondentsn=45

Interview theme: Learning data management

• Larger labs with many graduate students have trouble with consistency of data organization and documentation – best practices training would help.

• Data management is either learned from PIs or individually.

• In today’s rapidly-changing fields, it is important to be able to learn new methods for data management and analysis as quickly as possible.

Interview theme: Storage and long-term preservation

• Most participants use college- or department-level network servers for storage. This is convenient, but can be difficult to access from off-campus.

• Print lab notebooks are still used in many disciplines. Despite interest in migrating to electronic documentation, print lab notebooks were cited as – the gold standard for documenting ethical conduct of research, – easier to use when doing gloved research, – and less expensive than electronic options.

• Retention of data is difficult when it must be constantly migrated to new systems.

• Those working with biological samples indicated that their retention is more important than electronic data (samples cannot be exactly duplicated if lost).

Interview theme: Data sharing and collaboration

• Most participants are not sharing data, other than with their immediate collaborators. Exceptions are those who deposit genetic data into national databases.

• Large collaborative projects can have trouble with re-integrating data from multiple investigators on multiple side-projects.

• It can be difficult to find and use existing data that should be compared or related to the researcher’s data.

• Research is increasingly collaborative, and it is important for researchers to learn about resources and potential collaborators across the institution.

Interview theme: Overall concerns and observations

• For those working with particularly sensitive data (e.g. from high containment labs or the Veterans Affairs hospital), it is important to balance necessary security measures with processes that enable researchers to actually work with the data.

• Resource-rich labs with dedicated data people have fewer problems.

• Institution-level policies or guidelines on data management would be helpful.

• Even those who have few data management challenges now are planning to work on more complex research in the future with bigger, more varied data sets.

Learning from national experts

• Faculty Enhancement Opportunity (mini-sabbatical) allowed library director and two other librarians to visit three top tier health science libraries to observe strategies, programs, and services that could be applied at UF.

• Also provided funding to bring experts in topics of interest to UF to provide training and lead strategic brainstorming sessions.

Learning from national experts

Each visit focused on a particular strength of that library, but other areas were addressed.

Library space and renovation

E-science and data curation support

CTSA and bioinformatics support

Learning from national experts

• 3-day visit from:– Joan Starr, EZID Service Manager, California Digital

Library– Carly Strasser, Data Curation Specialist, California

Digital Library– Sherry Lake, Data Specialist, University of Virginia

Libraries• Presentations on data trends, open data, data

tools, and next steps for librarians

Outcome: Presentations across campus

• Research Computing Day• Open Access Week

Outcome: Best Practices in Data Management

Outcome: Data Management/Curation Task Force

Membership: • 2 health science librarians• 2 science librarians• GIS librarian• 3 humanities/social

science librarians• Director of Research

Computing• Representative of Office

of Research

Projects:• Dataverse• Focus groups• DMP Tool• Survey• Workshops

Conclusion

• Research data management is an area ripe for library involvement and leadership.

• At our institution, local training on the best practices in data management and development of a library-wide task force on data management have proven fruitful first steps in providing concrete guidance to our users in this area.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to collaborators at UF, including faculty and staff from:• Clinical Translational Science Institute• High Performance Computing Center• Digital Library Center

This project has been funded in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract # HHS-N-276-2011-00004-C.

This presentation is available for re-use under a creative commons attribution license.