NADDI Reflections [part 1]

NADDI_RDS
Evan (L) and Morgaine (R)

This post on NADDI 2015 was written by Morgaine Gilchrist Scott, one of two recipients of an RDS student scholarship. Read Evan Meszaros’ reflection.

In my past life, I was a public health researcher. In my current one, I’m a first year SLIS graduate student. I’m amazed and appalled at the data I once lost due to convenience. I don’t think we knew (or cared about) anything better than the proprietary format which met our immediate needs perfectly. I just looked up the software, and it’s already dead.

Have you ever heard of the Överkalix study? It’s often indicated as the seminal study in epigenetics. Scientists were able to discover things like a greater BMI at 9 years in the sons (but not the daughters) of fathers who began smoking early, and that a granddaughter’s risk of cardiovascular mortality increased when there was a sharp change in food availability for their paternal grandmothers.

But HOW were researchers able to conclude these things? Data. Old data. Old, easily explainable, data. Scientists looked at records from 1890, 1905, and 1920 on birthrates and various environmental factors and were able to follow up with children and grandchildren. These records were obviously kept on paper in a safe place and in the same language used today. But in today’s digital age, we may be depriving future generations of intuiting similarly ground breaking conclusions from the data collected today.

We’re producing data at a greater rate than ever before, and who knows what could be useful in the future. But with poor metadata, and the use of proprietary formats, we’re also losing more than ever. Fortunately, the good people involved with the Data Documentation Initiative are working towards a world where that won’t happen. I learned about so many easy, free, and important tools at NADDI. I can’t wait to implement them in my own research.

Now, you’ve missed the conference. That’s a shame, but we won’t hold that against you. NADDI has opened the doors here at Madison to making sure you have sustainable data. I’d encourage you to talk to someone from the RDS team and they can show you some free or cheap tools that are so easy to use, you’ll barely notice them. These tools, and the future of DDI will make sure that your data will contribute to science for as long as possible.

Morgaine Gilchrist-Scott is currently a Masters candidate in the School of Library and Information Science at UW-Madison. She hails from Ohio and has worked in Boston and New York before coming to Madison. She hopes to continue in data management and STEM librarianship with her degree.