Invited talk to the Scottish Health Information Network meeting, Edinburgh, May 2015

1. Data Library Services at the
University of Edinburgh
ROBIN RICE, DATA LIBRARIAN, R.RICE@ED.AC.UK
SHINE MEETING, EDINBURGH, 28 MAY 2015

2. Overview
What is a data library?
The Data Library in context
 How the Data Library service has evolved
 Research Data Management and the University
 Edinburgh DataShare repository
Research Data Management Training (MANTRA) course

3. What is a data library?
A data library refers to both the content and the services that
foster use of collections of numeric, audio-visual, textual or
geospatial data sets for secondary use in research. A data library
is normally part of a larger institution (academic, corporate,
scientific, medical, governmental, etc.) established to serve the
data users of that organisation.
The data library tends to house local data collections and
provides access to them through various means (CD-/DVD-ROMs
or central server for download). A data library may also maintain
subscriptions to licensed data resources for its users to access.

4. Edinburgh University Data Library:
History
Established out of the Program Library Unit in early
1980s to provide access to data on mainframes, e.g.
1981 population census data. Was part of Computing
Services, now (merged) Information Services
Part of long tradition of sharing digital data for
secondary analysis in the social sciences
Became a national data centre as EDINA in 1995/96 -
data library continues University remit
◦ celebrated 25th anniversary in 2008

5. EDINA & Data Library within IS
Divisions
IS Corporate Office
User Services
Library and University Collections
IT Infrastructure
IS Applications
Learning, Teaching and Web
EDINA and Data Library
Digital Curation Centre
Information Services (IS) is led by the Chief
Information Officer and Librarian to the
University, and organised into 8 divisions.
Total of ~550 staff
EDINA and Data Library ~90 staff
Data Library team:
• Data Librarian
• Associate Data Librarian
• 1.5 FTE Data Library Assistants
• 0.5 FTE Software Engineer

6. International membership org: IASSIST
IASSIST is an international organization of professionals working with information technology and data
services to support research and teaching in the social sciences.

7. Data Library perspective: supporting
data users
 Data Library established in 1983 to provide Population Census and other datasets for analysis
 Follows a North American model of institutional support
 We help users with queries like
 Does such data even exist?
 Where can I locate it?
 Who will pay for it?
 How can I access it?
 What does this documentation mean?
 How do I use it in X software?

8. Data Library service at UoE
Consultancy (direct help for users)
Catalogue (Drupal) – free and
purchased/licensed datasets
IS Skills training
Part of IS service catalogue:
Drill down to our services from Research
Support  Research Data Support
◦ Data Library & Consultancy
◦ Research Data Management
8

9. Data Library key development projects
Each of these projects informed the evolution of the UoE Data Library services in a significant way.

10. What is Research Data Management?
An umbrella term to describe all aspects of
planning, organising, documenting, storing
sharing, and preserving data.
It also takes into account issues such as
data protection and confidentiality.
It provides a framework that supports
researchers and their data throughout the
course of their research and beyond.
A data lifecycle:

11. Our RDM Programme: support
throughout the data / research lifecycle

13. Edinburgh DataShare
Built in 2007-09 with JISC funding as a pilot institutional open access data repository,
with Oxford & Southampton
Now core service of the University RDM programme - multidisciplinary
Based on DSpace, metadata profile developed from dcterms (Similar to DataCite)
~ 250 datasets deposited so far; handles batch ingest, large file sizes (>10 GB)
New features being developed, on our own and via open source community
Pursuing trusted digital repository status via Data Seal of Approval
Harvested by Thomson-Reuters Data Citation Index
Issues DataCite DOIs

15. Research Data MANTRA course
Openly licensed, free, online self-
paced course in RDM for
researchers
Embedded in at least 3 graduate
schools at UoE
Video stories from researchers in
variety of settings
Interactive quizzes make it fun
Data handling exercises in four
software analysis packages
Four releases in 4 years

16. Academic Service Librarian Training
 Data Library & User Services
Division piloted training with 4
liaison librarians – then all (12
more)
 Aimed to reuse MANTRA in a
blended learning approach for
academic liaison librarians
 Materials gathered together in
the DIY Training Kit for Librarians
on the MANTRA website
http://www.mcphee.com/laf/

17. For further exploration
UoE Data Library Services
◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library
UoE Information Services
◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services
RDM landing page
◦ http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-management
MANTRA online training
◦ http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra
Edinburgh Data Blog (can subscribe)
◦ http://datablog.is.ed.ac.uk