IASSIST Quarterly (Journal)
Not a member yet
764 research outputs found
Sort by
One store has all? - the backend story of managing geospatial information toward an easy discovery
Full text linkGeospatial 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
An epic journey in sharing: The story of a young researcher\u27s journey to share her data and the information professionals who tried to help
Full text linkSharing 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.
[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.
From Paper Map to Geospatial Vector Layer: Demystifying the Process
Full text linkWith paper map use in decline, one of the strategies that libraries and archives can adopt to make the information contained within them more accessible and usable is to extract features of interest from their scanned raster maps and convert those to geospatial vector data. This process adds valuable unique data to library geospatial collections and enables those previously map-bound features to be used separately in geographic information systems (GIS) software for custom mapping and analysis. Advances in partially automating most of the process have made this a much more viable option for libraries and archives. Although there is no one-size-fits-all automated solution for all maps and map features, this paper provides a complete description of the entire process incorporating examples of the various techniques and software used in selected studies that would be applicable in the library and archive environment
Research Data Management Tools and Workflows: Experimental Work at the University of Porto
Full text linkResearch datasets include all kinds of objects, from web pages to sensor data, and originate in every domain. Concerns with data generated in large projects and well-funded research areas are centered on their exploration and analysis. For data in the long tail, the main issues are still how to get data visible, satisfactorily described, preserved, and searchable.
Our work aims to promote data publication in research institutions, considering that researchers are the core stakeholders and need straightforward workflows, and that multi-disciplinary tools can be designed and adapted to specific areas with a reasonable effort. For small groups with interesting datasets but not much time or funding for data curation, we have to focus on engaging researchers in the process of preparing data for publication, while providing them with measurable outputs. In larger groups, solutions have to be customized to satisfy the requirements of more specific research contexts.
We describe our experience at the University of Porto in two lines of enquiry. For the work with long-tail groups we propose general-purpose tools for data description and the interface to multi-disciplinary data repositories. For areas with larger projects and more specific requirements, namely wind infrastructure, sensor data from concrete structures and marine data, we define specialized workflows. In both cases, we present a preliminary evaluation of results and an estimate of the kind of effort required to keep the proposed infrastructures running.
The tools available to researchers can be decisive for their commitment. We focus on data preparation, namely on dataset organization and metadata creation. For groups in the long tail, we propose Dendro, an open-source research data management platform, and explore automatic metadata creation with LabTablet, an electronic laboratory notebook. For groups demanding a domain-specific approach, our analysis has resulted in the development of models and applications to organize the data and support some of their use cases. Overall, we have adopted ontologies for metadata modeling, keeping in sight metadata dissemination as Linked Open Data
Elaborating a Crosswalk Between Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for an Emerging Data Archive Service Provider
Full text linkBelgium has recently decided to integrate the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). The Social Sciences Data Archive (SODA) project aims at tackling the different challenges entailed by the setting up of a new research infrastructure in the form of a data archive. The SODA project involves an archival institution, the State Archives of Belgium, which, like most other large archival repositories around the world, work with Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for managing their metadata. There exists at the State Archives a large pipeline of programs and procedures that processes EAD documents and channels their content through different applications, such as the online catalog of the institution. Because there is a chance that the future Belgian data archive will be part of the State Archives and because DDI is the most widespread metadata standard in the social sciences as well as a requirement for joining CESSDA, the State Archives have developed a DDI-to-EAD crosswalk in order to re-use the State Archives\u27 infrastructure for the needs of the future Belgian service provider. Technical illustrations highlight the conceptual differences between DDI and EAD and how these can be reconciled or escaped for the purpose of a data archive for the social sciences
Digital curation after digital extraction for data sharing
Full text linkWelcome to the third issue of volume 42 of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ 42:3, 2018).
The IASSIST Quarterly presents in this issue three papers from geographically widespread countries. We call IASSIST ‘International’, so I am happy to present papers from three continents in this issue with papers from Zimbabwe, Italy and Canada.
The paper \u27The State of Preparedness for Digital Curation and Preservation: A Case Study of a Developing Country Academic Library\u27 is by Phillip Ndhlovu, who works as the institutional repository librarian and liaison librarian, and Thomas Matingwina, who is a lecturer at the Department of Library and Information Service at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Modern day libraries have vast amounts of digital content and the authors noted that because these collections require very different management than the traditional paper-based materials, the new materials’ longevity is endangered. Their study assessed the state of preparedness of the NUST Library for digital curation and preservation, including the assessment of awareness, competencies, technology infrastructure, digital disaster preparedness, and challenges to digital curation and preservation. They found a lack of policies, lack of expertise by library staff, and lack of funding.
You might conclude that investigating your own organization and reaching the very well known conclusion that \u27we need more money!\u27 is not so surprising. However, you have to take note that the Jeff Rothenberg statement from 1995 that \u27Digital information lasts forever – or five years, whichever comes first\u27 has not yet sunk in with politicians and administrators, who will immediately associate the term \u27digital\u27 with \u27saving money\u27. This study shows them why this is not a valid connotation. It is a study of a single institution, and as the authors note it cannot be generalized even to other academic libraries in Zimbabwe. However, other libraries - also outside Zimbabwe - have here a good guide for making their own assessment of the digital preparedness of their institution.
The second paper was - as was the paper above - presented at the IASSIST conference in 2018 and is also about the transition from media known for thousands of years to new media and digital forms. Peter Peller presented the paper \u27From Paper Map to Geospatial Vector Layer: Demystifying the Process\u27. He is the Director of the Spatial and Numeric Data Services unit at Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary in Canada.
The conversion of raster images of maps to vector data is analogous to OCR technologies extracting words from scanned print documents. Thereby the map information becomes more accessible, and usable in geographic information systems (GIS). An illustrative example is that historical geospatial information can be overlaid in Google Earth. The description of the entire process incorporates examples of the various techniques, including different types of editing. Furthermore, descriptions of the software used in selected studies are listed in the appendix. It is mentioned that \u27paper texture and ink spread\u27 can be responsible for introducing noise and errors, so remember to keep the old maps. This is because what is considered noise in one context might become the subject for interesting future research. In addition the software for extracting information will most certainly improve.
For once both the author and we at IASSIST Quarterly have been quite fast. The data for the third paper was collected in late 2017 and the results are presented here only a year later. In October 2017 a message appeared on the IASSIST mail list with the start of the sentence \u27I would share the data but...\u27 It quickly generated many ways of completing that sentence. Flavio Bonifacio - who works at Metis Ricerche srl in Torino, Italy - quickly launched a questionnaire sent to members of the mail list and to others from similar communities of interested individuals. The questionnaire was an extension of an earlier one concerning scientists\u27 reuse and sharing of data. The paper includes many tabulations and models showing the background as well as the data sharing attitudes found in the survey. A respondent typology is developed based upon the level of propensity for sharing data and the level of experiencing problems in data sharing into a 2-by-2 table consisting of \u27irreducible reluctant\u27, \u27reducible reluctant\u27, \u27problematic follower\u27, and \u27premium follower\u27.
In the Nordic countries we tend to have the impression that certain services are publicly available and for free. This impression is plainly superficial because we Nordic people also know very well that \u27there is no such thing as a free lunch\u27! All services must be paid for in one way or another. If you have many services that carry no direct cost, it is probably because you - and others - paid for them beforehand through taxation. Because of cuts in the public economy one of the things Flavio Bonifacio wanted to investigate was the question \u27Is there a market for selling data-sharing services?\u27 The results imply that \u27reducible reluctants\u27 can be a target for services that reduce the problems of that group.
Submissions of papers for the IASSIST Quarterly are always very welcome. We welcome input from IASSIST conferences or other conferences and workshops, from local presentations or papers especially written for the IQ. When you are preparing such a presentation, give a thought to turning your one-time presentation into a lasting contribution. Doing that after the event also gives you the opportunity of improving your work after feedback. We encourage you to login or create an author login to https://www.iassistquarterly.com (our Open Journal System application). We permit authors \u27deep links\u27 into the IQ as well as deposition of the paper in your local repository. Chairing a conference session with the purpose of aggregating and integrating papers for a special issue IQ is also much appreciated as the information reaches many more people than the limited number of session participants and will be readily available on the IASSIST Quarterly website at https://www.iassistquarterly.com. Authors are very welcome to take a look at the instructions and layout:
https://www.iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/about/submissions
Authors can also contact me directly via e-mail: [email protected]. Should you be interested in compiling a special issue for the IQ as guest editor(s) I will also be delighted to hear from you.
Karsten Boye Rasmussen - November 201
Differences in Data Sharing Attitudes and Behaviours
Full text linkThis article reports the results of a survey conducted between 18th November and 18th December 2017 about different aspects of data sharing: tools used in building metadata, problems encountered in order to share the data, the propensity to share the data, the satisfaction obtained over different working tasks. After a short description of the data gathering task, the report describes the sample, the univariate distribution of the most important variables related to the work of data archiving and the attitudes concerning the data sharing activity: problems encountered, propensity to share the data, satisfaction obtained. Part of the report illustrates models suitable for interpreting the results and finally gives some advice for promoting data services. Some international comparisons of the results are proposed in the annex
The State of Preparedness for Digital Curation and Preservation: A Case Study of a Developing Country Academic Library
Full text linkDigital technologies have allowed libraries to create, manipulate, store and make accessible vast amounts of digital content. However, they endanger the longevity of the very objects they produce and require very different management than the traditional paper-based world. Despite the fact that the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Library in Zimbabwe has amassed a huge body of digital collections, there are no formal mechanisms to ensure accessibility and long-term preservation of digital content. The study assessed the state of preparedness of NUST Library for digital curation and preservation of its digital collections. The conceptual framework was based on Sinclair et al. (2011) and Boyle, Eveleigh, and Needham’s (2008) formulations. NUST Library preparedness for digital curation and preservation was assessed by examining awareness, competencies, technology infrastructure, digital disaster preparedness and challenges to digital curation and preservation. A mixed methods research design employing a case study research strategy was adopted for the study. The findings revealed a low level of awareness of digital curation and preservation. Challenges to digital curation are mainly lack of policies, lack of expertise by library staff and lack of funding. It is recommended that the Library should consider digital curation and preservation as one of the primary responsibilities and take staff members’ training in this area seriously in order to ensure current and future access to digital collections
Flexible DDI storage
Full text linkThe current usage of DDI is heterogeneous. It varies over different versions of DDI, different grouping, and unequal interpretation of elements. Therefore, provider of services based on DDI implement complex database models for each developed application, resulting in high costs and application specific and non-reusable models.
This paper shows a way to model the binding of DDI to applications in a way that it works independent of most version changes and interpretative differences in a standard like DDI without continuous reimplementation. Based on our DDI-FlatDB approach, shown first at EDDI 2015 & 2016, we present a complete implementation along the use case of a web-based questionnaire editor including sustainable solution for version management and efficient handling of large DDI structures. The user interface is adaptable to different usage scenarios to come. The application supports DDI-Lifecycle from the first question draft and hands over structured (meta-) data to survey institutes and data archives and supports the collaborative questionnaire development for the Pre-election Cross-Section of the German Longitudinal Election Study from early 2017 on