Rebecca J. Holz Series in Research Data Management

 

The 2012–2013 Rebecca J. Holz Series in Research Data Management commemorates Research Data Services co-founder Rebecca Holz, who passed away unexpectedly in 2011. RDS gratefully acknowledges support from Ebling Library.

All lectures run from noon to 1 pm. Light lunch provided! Please RSVP via this web form so that we can estimate our lunch order and send reminder emails shortly before each event. Remote participation is usually possible through Adobe Connect; URLs will be provided below as we have them.

Like to talk about your data? Have a topic you’d like us to present on? Please contact Dorothea Salo.

Spring 2013

All spring events will take place in the SLIS Commons, 4207 Helen C. White Hall.

February 19, 2013: Data Speed Dating!

Need data tools or services? We’ve got data tools and services! Circulate around the tables to get acquainted with some of what UW-Madison and the web in general have to offer. On display:

  • Databib and DataUp (Dorothea Salo, School of Library and Information Studies)
  • Electronic lab notebooks (Jan Cheetham, DoIT Academic Technology)
  • Research Data Services (Ryan Schryver, Wendt Commons)
  • Research-software licensing (Chris Hopp, DoIT)
  • Transana transcription/annotation tool (David Woods, Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
  • WCER’s data-management planning tool (Leah Ujda, Wisconsin Center for Education Research)

Got something you’d like to demo? Contact Dorothea Salo.

(This event will not be webcast, because of the number of speakers.)

March 5, 2013: Research Participation in Stem Cell Databanks
Dr. Krishanu Saha, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

Dr. Saha will discuss his laboratory’s contributions to online stem-cell databanks, including data preparation and the advantages of participation.

April 16, 2013: Technology and Data of the Living Environments Lab (“CAVE”)
Ross Tredinnick, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

Ross Tredinnick will demonstrate and explain the technology and data-management requirements associated with WID’s Living Environments Laboratory, also known as “the CAVE.”

May 7, 2013: Tracking Behavioral Data: Planning and Implementation
Dr. Karen Strier, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Karen Strier will discuss her data-design process, aimed at collecting behavioral data on wild monkeys in Brazil. After consulting with DoIT, she engaged a student to design and build a custom relational database. She has been testing the design with uploads of existing data, and will soon have enough entered to start query-based analysis.

Fall 2012

September 17, 2012: Data and Tangible Research Products: Stewardship, Access, and Retention
Assistant Dean Stephen J. Harsy, School of Medicine and Public Health

Dr. Harsy will discuss UW-Madison’s Policy on Data Stewardship, Access and Retention, which clarifies ownership of data produced by university researchers, as well as researcher responsibility for data before, during, and after specific research projects.

This lecture will take place in Room 1220-1222, Health Sciences Learning Center. Please post this advertising flyer widely!

October 16, 2012: De-Mystifying the Data Management Requirements of Research Funders
Trisha Adamus, Data, Network, and Translational Research Librarian, Ebling Library

Since the announcement of the NSF Data Management Plan requirement, researchers have had many questions about it: Will I be required to make all of my data available on the web in perpetuity? Where will I put all of this data? Who will pay for storage after the grant is finished? The answers to these questions aren’t always straightforward, especially since the NSF requirements are relatively general.

The NSF requirement isn’t the only one researchers face, however: many federal funding agencies have data management requirements for PIs. What does this landscape look like? What can we learn from examining a range of data policies? This talk will review over two dozen funder policies and provide strategies for writing a data management plan.

This lecture will take place in the third-floor Teaching Lab at WID/MIR.

November 12, 2012: Managing Sensitive Data Across Research Sites: the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute
Dr. Erin Jonaitis, Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute

The Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute conducts longitudinal medical research at several sites across Wisconsin. Learn how WAI collects, transports, and stores data safely and securely despite the logistics difficulties inherent in multiple-site research.

This lecture will take place in the third-floor Teaching Lab at WID/MIR.

December 10, 2012: Semantics and Geospatial Data
Dr. Nancy Wiegand, Space Science and Engineering Center

Data are becoming more voluminous and more available, but finding and re-using data across agencies or jurisdictions remains difficult because different terms are used. This lack of semantic interoperability has been recognized as a stumbling block to collaboration. This talk introduces semantics, including ontologies, the vision of enabling semantic interoperability, and the linked data initiative.

This lecture will take place in the third-floor Teaching Lab at WID/MIR.

Previous brownbags

September 12, 2011: NSF Data Management Plans

Research Data Services will facilitate a discussion of the NSF’s new guidelines for grant applicants. Written an NSF grant and gotten DMP feedback? About to write one, and have questions or concerns? Have a wishlist for campus support of data management and DMPs? We want to hear from you!

October 10: Kevin Eliceiri, Image Informatics for Multidimensional Biological Microscopy

Dr. Eliceiri and the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (http://loci.wisc.edu/) are developing a complete, open source system for handling biomedical images, including image acquisition, data storage, metadata (experimental data associated with an image), visualization, analysis, annotation, and database interconnectivity.

November 14: Puneet Kishor, Building a data-sharing database: PaleoDB

Noted open-data practitioner Puneet Kishor of the Department of Geology will demo the Paleobiology Database (http://paleodb.org/), an open, crowdsourced online database of fossils. Questions about technical infrastructure, sustainability, and data sharing welcome!

December 12: Brian Yandell, Statistics support for UW-Madison research

Statistics department chair Brian Yandell will speak about how his department’s strategic plan emphasizes improving statistical literacy and access to statistics support and assistance for UW-Madison researchers.

FEBRUARY 13, 2012: What should grad students know about data management?
(Event recording)

IMPORTANT: This brownbag will take place in the SLIS LIBRARY CLASSROOM, 4191F Helen C. White. Go into the SLIS Laboratory Library and turn left.

This summer Dorothea Salo will inaugurate a one-credit bootcamp-style course on research-data management (LIS 341) for graduate students across the disciplines. What context, best practices, and technologies should be covered? PIs, PAs, RAs, postdocs, dissertators: come prepared with horror stories, experiences good and bad, and your own “if only I’d known that early on” wishlists!

MARCH 12, 2012: GIS Data Preservation, with Jaime Stoltenberg and AJ Wortley
(Adobe Connect archive)

Learn how the Robinson Map Library and the State Cartographer’s Office are archiving geospatial data for use in research and teaching. Preservation of “at risk” and temporally significant digital geospatial content poses challenges:

  • Geospatial data layers containing information about land parcels, roads, and administrative boundaries change often.
  • Existing copies of these data are often at risk of being overwritten when updates or changes are made, and these superseded snapshots of data are then lost for future use and analysis.

APRIL 9, 2012: Teacher Incentive Fund, Sara Kraemer and Lexy Spry
(Adobe Connect link)

The Teacher Incentive Fund is a data-driven project that takes advantage of knowledge-management and online-collaboration tools. Also discussed will be how school districts involved in the project use data to inform incentive and compensation decisions.

MAY 7, 2012: Long-Term Ecological Research Network, with Corinna Gries
(Adobe Connect link)

LTER is an NSF-funded network of 26 sites throughout the US, Antarctica and French Polynesia. LTER has had the mandate to archive data and employ a dedicated Information Manager since its inception 30 years ago. The group of LTER Information Managers was instrumental in developing procedures and approaches for long-term ecological data storage, including the Ecological Metadata Language, employed for data discovery and data access. New challenges include:

  • streaming sensor data management
  • a centralized network information system, and
  • implementation of workflow systems for quality control measures.

May 7 bonus: posters from LIS 855 “Digital Curation” service-learning
projects centered on local datasets.