{"title":"Research-driven approaches to improving archival discovery","authors":"Diana E. Marsh","doi":"10.29173/IQ955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ955","url":null,"abstract":"The National Anthropological Archives (NAA), part of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, holds some 18,000 cubic feet of materials of relevance to qualitative researchers. These archival collections—manuscripts, fieldnotes, audio recordings, drawings, maps, and still and moving images—are used by not only anthropologists, but increasingly scholars from a range of qualitative research fields. In 2016, the NAA received a grant to support a 3-year post-doctoral fellow to conduct research that would lead to the improved discovery and use of archival resources. This article discusses some of the practical ways the fellowship was designed to ask interdisciplinary research questions, and describes how that premise, as well as findings from a pilot study run in the first year, are helping to improve the research experience for our increasingly interdisciplinary users. Both the project’s preliminary findings and its overall design may provide valuable insights to qualitative researchers and their institutions.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48334695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Cain, L. Cooper, Sarah Demott, Alesia F. Montgomery
{"title":"Where is QDA hiding? An analysis of the discoverability of qualitative research support on academic library websites","authors":"J. Cain, L. Cooper, Sarah Demott, Alesia F. Montgomery","doi":"10.29173/IQ957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ957","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the discoverability of qualitative research support services, using a purposive sample of academic library websites (n=95). These services were hard to find on most of the websites in our sample. In this paper, we outline the site characteristics that make discoverability easy or hard. Previous studies on qualitative resources at academic libraries have not addressed this topic. Our study fills this gap in the literature. Our aim is to provide information that can help libraries to improve the visibility of their resources for qualitative researchers and their students.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42011437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bringing method to the madness: An example of integrating social science qualitative research methods into NVivo data analysis software training","authors":"Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh","doi":"10.29173/IQ956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ956","url":null,"abstract":"It is not uncommon for researchers who wish to delve into qualitative data analysis to be lacking in qualitative methods training. Data professionals who support these aspiring qualitative researchers are well positioned to recognize and develop resources, training, and services to address this methods gap. This article describes a specific training session aimed at bridging this gap: a collaboration between a sociology professor and the author that integrates a qualitative methodological framework with specific features of NVivo qualitative data analysis software that complement and facilitate research guided by that framework. This article (1) outlines how this collaboration came to be; (2) describes the roles that the sociology professor and the author play in the collaboration, including specific examples from the training session; and (3) offers a reflection on the experience, including successes and growth possibilities going forward.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41650766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Standardization and certification save us from the frustrations of the Greek drama","authors":"K. Rasmussen","doi":"10.29173/IQ953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ953","url":null,"abstract":"Welcome to the first issue of volume 43 of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ 43:1, 2019). \u0000The IASSIST Quarterly presents in this issue three papers illustrated in the title above. Chronologically we start from an early beginning. No, not with Turing, we time travel further back and experience ancient Greece. In this submission the Greek drama delivers the form, while data librarians deliver the content on data sharing. And it makes you a proud IASSISTer to know that altruism is the rationale behind data sharing. The drama continues in the second submission when librarians get frustrated because they suddenly find themselves first as data librarians and second as frustrated data librarians because ends do not meet when the librarians have difficulties servicing the data needs of their users, in combination with the users having unrealistic expectations. Finally, the third article is about standardization and certification that makes the librarians more secure that they are on the right track when building a TDR (Trustworthy Digital Repository). Enjoy the reading. \u0000The first article is different from most articles. There is a first for everything! Not often are we at IQ offered a Greek drama. And here is one on data sharing. The article needed the layout of a play so even the typeface of this contribution is different. The paper / play is called 'An epic journey in sharing: The story of a young researcher’s journey to share her data and the information professionals who tried to help’. The authors are Sebastian Karcher and Sophia Lafferty-Hess at Duke University Libraries. The reason for using Greek drama as a template is that form can help us think differently - 'out of the box’! The play demonstrates the positive intention of data sharing, and by sharing contributing to something larger. The article references other researchers showing that scholarly altruism is a driving force for data sharers. No matter the good intentions of the protagonist, she finds herself locked in a situation where she is not able to take identifiable data with her when leaving the institution. And leaving the university is what undergraduates do. Without the identification, it is impossible to obtain re-consent from participants. Yes, it does look murky but there is even a happy ending in the epilogue. \u0000The second article is about librarianship, and how that task is not always easy. 'Frustrations and roadblocks in data reference librarianship’ is by Alicia Kubas and Jenny McBurney who work at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Like many others, they have observed that many librarians find themselves as 'accidental data librarians'. That this brings frustration can be seen in the results of a survey they carried out. The methodology is explained, and descriptive statistics bring insight to what librarians do as well as to the frustrations and roadblocks they experience. Let us start with the good news: some librarians are never frustrated with data questions. The bad news ","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43862927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CoreTrustSeal: From academic collaboration to sustainable services","authors":"Hervé L’Hours, Mari Kleemola, L. De Leeuw","doi":"10.29173/IQ936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ936","url":null,"abstract":"National and international digital repositories must design and deliver sustainable services as a foundation for a range of scientific and data management infrastructures while reducing costs and avoiding duplication of effort. The CoreTrustSeal, launched in 2017, defines requirements and offers core level certification for Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDR) holding data for long-term preservation. This paper traces the journey of the CoreTrustSeal through the Data Seal of Approval (DSA), ICSU World Data System (WDS), Research Data Alliance (RDA) working groups, and community engagement, towards becoming a sustainable service supporting global data infrastructure. We outline the design and delivery of the service, current activities, the benefits of certification to a range of communities, and future plans and challenges. As well as providing a historical narrative and current and future perspectives the CoreTrustSeal experience offers lessons for those developing standards and best practices, or seeking to develop cooperative and community-driven efforts which bridge data curation across academic disciplines and the governmental and private sectors.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44444656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frustrations and roadblocks in data reference librarianship","authors":"Alicia Kubas, J. McBurney","doi":"10.29173/IQ939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ939","url":null,"abstract":"As data skills are incorporated into academic curriculum and data becomes more widely available and used in everyday life, many librarians find themselves serving as 'accidental' data librarians in their subject areas. Due to this evolving landscape and growing data need, it is increasingly important for librarians to be familiar with data resources and able to answer secondary data reference questions. To learn more about this area of librarianship, this study uses survey responses from librarians who answer data questions to explore the challenges and frustrations that arise from data reference questions and interactions. Our key findings reveal that frustrations are ever present in data reference regardless of how much experience a librarian has, and many frustrations arise due to factors such as patron expectations, subject-specific and data-related jargon, and data formats and accessibility.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49035553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An epic journey in sharing: The story of a young researcher's journey to share her data and the information professionals who tried to help","authors":"Sebastian Karcher, Sophia Lafferty-Hess","doi":"10.29173/IQ942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ942","url":null,"abstract":"Sharing data can be a journey with various characters, challenges along the way, and uncertain outcomes. These “epic journeys in sharing” teach information professionals about our patrons, our institutions, our community, and ourselves. In this paper, we tell a particularly dramatic data-sharing story, in effect a case study, in the form of a Greek Drama. It is the quest of – a young idealistic researcher collecting fascinating sensitive data and seeking to share it, encountering an institution doing its due diligence, helpful library folks, and an expert repository. Our story has moments of joy, such as when our researcher is solely motivated to share because she wants others to be able to reuse her unique data; dramatic plot twists involving IRBs; and a poignant ending. It explores major tropes and themes about how researchers’ motivations, data types, and data sensitivity can impact sharing; the importance of having clarity concerning institutional policies and procedures; and the role of professional communities and relationships. Just like the chorus in greek drama provides commentary on the action, a a chorus of data elders in our drama points out larger lessons that the case study has for research data management and data sharing. Where actors in the greek chorus were wearing masks, our chorus carries different items, symbolizing their message, on every entry. \u0000[i] The narrative structure of this paper was inspired by the IASSIST 2018 conference theme of “Once Upon a Data Point: Sustaining Our Data Storytellers.”","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41582910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How NOT to create a digital media scholarship platform: the history of the Sophie 2.0 project","authors":"Jasmine Kirby","doi":"10.29173/IQ926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ926","url":null,"abstract":"Since the mid-2000s digital platforms have emerged to take advantage of the capabilities of new technology to incorporate media content, tell nonlinear stories, and reinvent the book for the 21st century. Sophie 1.0, from the University of Southern California, the Institute for the Future of the Book (IFB), and computer scientists based in Europe, was an attempt to create a multimedia editing, reading, and publishing platform. Sophie 2.0 was an international collaboration between the University of Southern California and Astea Solutions in Bulgaria to rewrite Sophie 1.0 in the Java programming language. This research will explore how the Sophie 2.0 project was unable to become a viable and wellmaintained open source product despite receiving over a million dollars in funding from the Mellon Foundation. Problems included the technological difficulty of creating an easy-to-use but completely customizable open source multimedia e-publishing platform, which was also compounded by competing visions over what this project was to be. Stakeholders did not demand a deliverable that actually worked. Funders seemed willing to overlook weaknesses in early releases for a more encompassing, if impractical, project. The computer scientists wanted to add the most features possible while, the IFB and USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy focused on creating a product based on the values of a future they hoped to create. Understanding what went wrong with Sophie 2.0 can help us understand how to create better digital media scholarship tools and to start much needed discussions about failure in the digital humanities. ","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42259687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Failure as the treatment for transforming complexity to complicatedness","authors":"K. Rasmussen","doi":"10.29173/iq949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/iq949","url":null,"abstract":"Welcome to the fourth issue of volume 42 of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ 42:4, 2018). \u0000The IASSIST Quarterly presents in this issue three papers. When you know how, cycling is easy. However, data for cycling infrastructure appears to be a messiness of complications, stakeholders and data producers. The exemplary lesson is that whatever your research area there are often many views and types of data possible for your research. And the fuller view does not make your research easier, but it does make it better. The term geospatial data covers many different types of data, and as such presents problems for building access points or portals for these data. The second paper also brings experiences with complicated data, now with a focus on data management and curation. I would say that the third paper on software development in digital humanities is also about complicatedness, but this time the complicatedness was not overcome. Maybe here complexity is a better choice of word than complicatedness. In my book things are complex until we have solved how to deal with them; after that they are only complicated. The word failure is even among the keywords selected for this entry. Again: Read and learn. You might learn more from failure than from success. I find that Sir Winston Churchill is always at hand to keep up the good spirit: ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’. \u0000From Canada comes the paper ‘Cycling Infrastructure in the Ottawa-Gatineau Area: A Complex Assemblage of Data’ that some readers might have seen in the form of a poster at the IASSIST 2018 conference in Montreal. The authors are Sylvie Lafortune, Social Sciences Librarian at Carleton University in Ottawa, and Joël Rivard, Geography and GIS Librarian at the University of Ottawa. The article is a commendable example of how to encompass and illuminate an area of research not only though data but also by including the data producers and stakeholders, and the relationships between them. The article is based upon a study conducted in 2017-2018 that explored the data story behind the cycling infrastructure in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city; or to be precise, the infrastructure of the cycling network of over 1,000 km which spans both sides of the Ontario and Quebec provincial boundary known as the Ottawa-Gatineau National Capital Region. The municipalities invest in cycling infrastructure including expanded and improved bike lanes and paths, traffic calming measures, parking facilities, bike-transit integration, bike sharing and training programs to promote cycling and increased cycling safety. The research included many types of data among which were data from telephone interviews concerning ‘who, where, why, when, and how’ in an Origin-Destination survey, data generated by mobile apps tracking fitness activities, collision data, and bike counters placed in the area. The study shows how a narrow subject topic such as cycling infrastructure is embedded in compl","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44898275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"One store has all? - the backend story of managing geospatial information toward an easy discovery","authors":"N. Kong","doi":"10.29173/IQ927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/IQ927","url":null,"abstract":"Geospatial data includes many formats, varying from historical paper maps, to digital information collected by various sensors. Many libraries have started the efforts to build a geospatial data portal to connect users with the various information. For example, GeoBlacklight and OpenGeoportal are two open-source projects that initiated from academic institutions which have been adopted by many universities and libraries for geospatial data discovery. While several recent studies have focused on the metadata, usability and data collection perspectives of geospatial data portals, not many have explored the backend stories about data management to support the data discovery platform. The objective of this paper is to provide a summary about geospatial data management strategies involved in the geospatial data portal development by reviewing case studies. These data management strategies include managing the historical paper maps, scanned maps, aerial photos, research generated geospatial information, and web map services. This paper focuses on the data organization, storage, cyberinfrustracture configuration, preservation and sharing perspectives of these efforts with the goal to provide a range of options or best management practices for information managers when curating geospatial data in their own institutions.","PeriodicalId":84870,"journal":{"name":"IASSIST quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44631529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}