CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

Data Management Strategies

Jonathan Markow
Chief Strategy Officer
DuraSpace

Elaine L. Westbrooks
Associate Dean of Libraries
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Kathy Notter
Director of Shared Computing Services, Information Services
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

DuraCloud “Direct-to-Researcher” (DTR) (Markow)

DuraSpace, with grant funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has been working on a project (DuraCloud DTR) to provide enhanced cloud-based storage for research data.  An open source software platform optimized for the needs of researchers will deliver durable storage and flexible management of data.  The application, building on the DuraCloud project, will provide preservation services in a secure environment that safeguards privacy.  In addition, researchers will be able to provide secure access to data curators and institutional data management staff to ensure that project data may be preserved for future use. DuraSpace aims to differentiate the DTR platform from commodity cloud storage by providing features unique to the needs of researchers, such as integration with institutional authentication services, fine grained access control, repository infrastructure for organizing project data, bit integrity checking and replication services, and workflows that support researcher/curator interactions.  This session will discuss the project in more detail and will report on the current status of work.

Presentation

UNL Data Repository: Partnerships Between IT and Libraries for Seamless Data Archiving (Westbrooks, Notter)

In response to the National Science Foundation (NSF) mandate for researchers to include data management plans in grant proposals, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) secured hardware to set up a data archive that provides a safe place for UNL researchers to archive their data. The university information technology unit, Information Services, partnered with the Libraries to create a seamless system where researchers can easily enter metadata, express rights, and indicate how long the data should be retained via a simple ‘click-through’ website that requires little human intervention. The Libraries’ data curation committee built the user interface to ensure that the libraries get all of the necessary information to archive the data in perpetuity. In addition, the archive’s interface was designed to encourage researchers to consider not only the option of open data but also the possibility of depositing their scholarly output in the University’s institutional repository. Information Services is responsible for securing the payment for the data and maintaining the hardware while the Libraries is responsible for the data life-cycle management. This partnership demonstrated how two units effectively used their strengths to create a low-maintenance service that benefits everyone at UNL and supports the drive to increase sponsored research at UNL.

http://lib10058.unl.edu/unldr/
http://libraries.unl.edu/datacuration

Presentation

The DMPTool: Online Guidance and Resources for Your Data Management Plan

Sherry Lake
Senior Scientific Data Consultant
University of Virginia

Laine Farley
Executive Director
California Digital Library

This session is an update to the CNI Spring 2011 project briefing, “Data Management Plans Online,” presented by Todd Grappone (University of California, Los Angeles) and Patricia Cruse (California Digital Library).  Work on the initial phase of the Data Management Planning Tool (DMPTool) has been completed. The DMPTool was released on October 5, 2011.

To help researchers with funding agencies’ proposal requirements for DMPs, several organizations (the California Digital Library, the University of Illinois, the University of Virginia, the Smithsonian Institution, the DataONE consortium, and the UK Digital Curation Centre) came together to develop the DMPTool. The goal of the DMPTool is to provide researchers with guidance, links to local resources, and help with writing data management plans. In the tool, researchers from partner institutions will find links to resources at their institutions, such as to preservation repositories, consultation services or other information and support provided to researchers by their institutions. In addition, partner institutions can provide help to specific sections of the funder requirements within the plan, and even suggest responses to these requirements. By incorporating a blog, institutions can provide local news items about events, workshops, and other information. Other developments, such as integration with grants management systems and closer cooperation with the funding agencies, have been discussed.

This project briefing will include an in-depth look at the DMPTool, describe the information institutions can provide to become contributing partners, and describe future development plans and ideas for priorities, directions and funding opportunities.


http://dmp.cdlib.org

Handout (MS Word)

Presentation

ETDs as Prior Publications: The 2011 NDLTD Publishers’ Survey

Gail McMillan
Director, Digital Library and Archives
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

As an increasing number of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are made available on the Internet, there has been a concomitant increase in concern about how publishers and editors of scholarly journals view these documents, with particular interest in whether open access to ETDs hinders future publishing opportunities.

This presentation reports on the 2011 survey results of journal editors’ and university press directors’ attitudes toward online theses and dissertations, attitudes that indicate support for open access. This information is of significance to the academy as it will help students, graduate schools, and faculty advisors make informed decisions about open access of ETDs and what the implications are for publication based on ETDs.  Survey authors include Gail McMillan, Marisa L. Ramirez, Joan Dalton, Max Read, and Nancy H. Seamans.

 

Handout (MS Word)

Europeana Libraries: Establishing THE Library Aggregator for Europe

Wouter Schallier
Executive Director
LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries)

The Europeana Libraries project, funded by the European Commission, is working to make 5 million digital objects from 19 leading European research libraries freely accessible through Europeana by the end of 2012. This will be done by opening up the existing TEL aggregator of 49 national libraries to potentially 400+ research libraries.

Most materials in Europeana, the European Digital Library, are meant for the general public; content from research libraries is currently underrepresented. Europeana Libraries will radically change this by making valuable resources for scholars available, such as books (including those digitized by Google), special collections, audiovisual materials, more than 200,000 open access (OA) research theses, and more than 270,000 OA scholarly articles. Prestigious institutions such as the Bavarian State Library, the Hungarian Parliament Library, Trinity College Dublin, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, University College London, University of Ghent, University of Lund, University of Oxford, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, and many others, are providing their materials.

Europeana Libraries’ ambition to establish THE library aggregator for Europeana will require a new sustainable business model. The expansion from 49 to potentially 400+ libraries should reduce the average cost per partner (economies of scale), but it will also pose new challenges such as funding, governance and strategy.  Another important task in the Europeana Libraries project is to investigate how additional services (economies of scope) such as innovative tools for researchers and digital preservation can complement the aggregating service.

http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/

http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/communications-tools

Presentation

Exhibit 3.0: The New and Improved Linked Data Publishing Platform

MacKenzie Smith
Research Director
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

At the CNI Fall 2010 Membership Meeting, a new project was presented that proposed to create a new version of the popular Exhibit open source software for organizing, publishing and navigating linked data on the Web. The plan was to use funding from the Library of Congress to redesign and redevelop Exhibit as a more scalable, flexible, and modular platform that supports both small, personal collections as well as large, institutional ones, while keeping the current simplicity of use… no programming required. The key goals for the new platform:

•    Robustness and scalability:  robust, scalable software for managing and publishing very large collections of any type of data (and metadata), with a seamless mechanism to convert from small to large collections, and with similar processes for user interface specification
•    Modularity:  a means to embed Exhibits in separate software, systems and Web pages, and an API to allow it to be used in a variety of existing Web sites and with a variety of existing Web services, under a methodology called Linking Curated Data
•    Extensibility:  support for developers wishing to extend the platform with new views, widgets and facets
•    Community infrastructure:  support for the users, and an open source software developer community surrounding Exhibit

This presentation will include a demonstration of the new platform, Exhibit 3.0, including small and large collections and the skills and support expectations for each. Using the tool with Google Refine to edit data, and how it can be integrated into other platforms (e.g. Recollection) to improve the user experience will be demonstrated. There will also be discussion about how organizations are using the new tool, and what is being implemented to support both users and the developers who are key to Exhibit’s future development as open source software.

http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit3

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