Navigating Research Data Together: Librarians, Researchers, and Students

Session Schedule

Click on each session for individual descriptions.

Session Descriptions

Data Partners: Fostering Librarian-Researcher Partnerships

Providing data management assistance to a researcher in a few brief consultations presents few challenges to a librarian. Working with a researcher in an extended partnership lasting months and years presents unique challenges that experience with brief consultations do not prepare you for.

In this session, three established librarian/researcher pairs in an extended partnership will show how you can work most effectively with a research partner. You’ll learn how to set expectations, identify the roles you will adopt, negotiate recognition for your contribution, communicate effectively, address challenges, and generally promote a satisfying collaboration. You’ll also learn strategies for engaging the research community in your institution.

You’ll leave this session with knowledge and guidance that can help you develop a reputation as the librarian researchers most want to work with and advance in your career.

Panelists

Levi Dolan, MLIS, is a data services librarian at the Ruth Lilly Medical Library at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. His work involves project management, consultation, and instruction that addresses the full research data life cycle. As part of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Research Team, he contributes to data management, research metrics, and scholarly communications initiatives. His research partner, Amy Han, PhD, will appear via recording.

Ben Gerber, MD, MPH, is a Professor & Chief, Division of Health Informatics and Implementation Science, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the UMass Chan Medical School. He is an internist, professor, researcher, and data scientist. He leads an NIH-funded clinical trial to evaluate clinical pharmacists, community health workers, and telehealth in supporting continuous glucose monitoring. He is a life-long software programmer and co-leads the R Café with Tess Grynoch. The R Café convenes a group of R users on a monthly basis to share skills, show off cool projects, and troubleshoot code.

Tess Grynoch, MLIS, is the Research Data & Scholarly Communications Librarian at the Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. She collaborates with faculty, students, researchers, fellow colleagues, and academic units to support scholarly communication programs, including library-based research data support services. Tess is the President-Elect of the Research Data Access and Preservation Association and a certified Carpentries instructor with NESCLiC. Her research partner is Ben Gerber.

Alisa Surkis, PhD, MLS, is the Deputy Director and Vice Chair for Research of the NYU Health Sciences Library, in which capacity she has led the development of data services. She is also the Director of the NNLM National Center for Data Services, which provides training and resources to develop capacity for data services in the health information community. Since 2018, Alisa has served as the Data Science Core Director for an NIH BRAIN Initiative collaborative grant in which capacity she works with researchers to facilitate FAIR data sharing and collaborates in the development of BrainSTEM, a tool for collection of structured, standardized experimental neuroscience metadata. Her research partner, Robert Froemke, PhD, will appear via recording.

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Data Equity: Exploring What It Is and Why It Matters

[To be livestreamed]

Have you been thinking of issues of power, bias, and discrimination in data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting? Data can empower practitioners, policymakers, and community members to make better, more informed decisions grounded in evidence, but they can also reinforce deficit narratives, biases, and other long-standing structural inequities when used inappropriately. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, data can be misused and misinterpreted, sometimes causing harm to communities already most marginalized.

In this session, you’ll be introduced to data equity in the context of data ethics. You’ll learn what is meant by data equity and ethics and the implications of not using equitable practices, and you’ll gain ideas on strategies for ensuring that data are meaningful, accessible, and actionable for all communities.

Presenters

Nicole Contaxis, MLIS, MA, is a Data Services Librarian and the Head of Data Sharing and Metadata Management at the NYU Langone Health. She leads the NYU Data Catalog and other infrastructure projects and research that focus on open science, data sharing, data curation, and ethics. She is also a Content Expert for the NNLM National Center for Data Services.

Aileen Alfonso Duldulao, PhD, MSW, is the Data Equity Measurement Methodologist for the Race, Ethnicity, Language, Disability & Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (REALD & SOGI) Section, Equity & Inclusion Division, of the Oregon Health Authority. In this role, she co-leads data equity and data justice work with internal and external partners. She is also the data advisor for the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition and is on the Board of Directors for the Filipino Bayanihan Center.

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Data Instructors: Providing Data Literacy as Part of Information Literacy

[To be livestreamed]

As data is becoming increasingly important in the health and other sciences, it’s become clear that there is great value in integrating data literacy into information literacy instruction. In this session you’ll learn how data literacy and information literacy are related and how you can integrate teaching data literacy skills, including data discovery, data analysis, data visualization, and data preservation, into your information literacy instruction and programs.

Three data librarians will share their approach to data literacy instruction and their strategies for including data literacy, particularly as defined by the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, in their information literacy instruction. You’ll leave the session with fresh ideas on how you can support all your patrons in understanding the relationship between data and information literacy.

Theresa Burress, MLS, is the Assistant Director of Research & Instruction at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, in which capacity she provides research services and instruction for natural sciences departments. She has authored a number of publications on data and data literacy and is particularly interested in topics at the intersection of information and data literacy.

Daria Orlowska, MSLIS, is a Data Librarian and Assistant Professor at Western Michigan University, in which capacity she advises on data management plans, creates data education resources, and provides consultations on all things data. In addition, she helps curate datasets from archival collections that serve as data literacy teaching tools for college undergraduates and K-12 students alike.

Ashley Rockwell, MA, is the Data Literacy & Learning Specialist for the Georgia State University Library Research Data Services Department. She leads the development, implementation, and assessment of the Get Data Ready! and Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) initiatives. The former aims at building data literacy curriculum and programming, the latter on connecting students with community partners and applying data skills to address real-world problems.

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Data Allies: Building Institutional Support Networks

Developing partnerships with researchers can be particularly challenging. This session offers you a rare opportunity to learn about these partnerships from both the librarian and the researcher side.

This session will focus on research enterprise-librarian partnerships. Examples will highlight various campus partners and their role in supporting research. Presentations will discuss how the collaboration was initiated and evolved over time, what worked and what didn’t, and key takeaways you can use to expand your networks and develop future collaborations.

Moderator

Sally Gore, MS, MS, LIS, is the manager of Research and Scholarly Communication Services for the Lamar Soutter Library, Chan Medical School, University of Massachusetts. In this role, she oversees the library's work with campus basic science and clinical researchers on campus, including expanding support and instruction in data services and leading all scholarly communication endeavors for the Library. Sally is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Panelists

Andrea H. Denton, MILS, is the Research & Data Services Manager at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia, in which capacity she designs and delivers data services to researchers at UVA’s academic medical center. She leads training on research data management best practices in acquisition, analysis, and sharing. She also partners with university research development staff to support the pursuit of external funding for large, collaborative projects.

Eugenia Opuda, MLS, MEd, is the Health and Human Services Librarian and an Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). She is the co-author of a chapter on integrating data management and information literacy skills in Teaching Research Data Management and author of the “Inclusion and Exclusion in Data” online training resource published in Sage Skills: Student Success.

Sara M. Samuel, MSI, is an Informationist at the Taubman Health Sciences Library, University of Michigan (U-M). She connects students, staff, faculty, researchers, and clinicians with the information they need to be successful. She is a founding member of the Research Data Stewardship Initiative (RDSI) working group at U-M, which aims to support all U-M researchers in managing and sharing research data. As part of RDSI, she helped refine U-M’s newly implemented Research Data Stewardship Policy and co-chairs the RDSI Community of Practice, which connects U-M community members that are interested in or actively supporting research data.

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