By Matt Mayernik, UCAR/NCAR
The American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) held its third annual Research Data Access and Preservation (RDAP) Summit March 22-23, 2012, in New Orleans, LA. The summit brought together information professionals from academia, university libraries, research agencies, national and disciplinary data centers and private industry. The program featured panels on Data Management Plans and Policies, Data Citation, Curation Service Models, Sustainability, and Data Management Practitioner Training.
Data Conservancy members Barbara Pralle and I participated in the Curation Service Models panel. I served as the moderator for the panel, and Barbara participated as one of the panelists, along with David Minor from the University of California, San Diego, and Michael Witt from Purdue University. The three panelists discussed how their universities are responding to the need for data curation services within their home institutions, as well as how their respective data curation services are being planned, resourced, and implemented. In her talk, Barbara described the development of the JHU Data Management Services (DMS), which has deployed a Data Conservancy Instance. The Curation Service Models panel was well received by the RDAP audience, with an active question and answer session following the individual presentations.
The Data Conservancy also had a strong presence in the RDAP poster session. Two DC student researchers, Karen Wickett and Andrea Thomer presented posters related to their DC work. Karen present a poster titled, “What Dataset Descriptions Actually Describe: Using the Systematic Assertion Model to Connect Theory and Practice,” and Andrea presented a poster titled, “Integrating Conceptual and Empirical Studies of Data to Guide Curatorial Processes.” Karen and Andrea are both from the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
More information on the RDAP 2012 Summit is available at the following links:
RDAP12 Program
RDAP12 Presentation slides
Information about the two CIRSS DC posters