Diddling with data
Posted on September 30, 2010 in Uncategorized by Eric Lease Morgan
Michele Hudson and I have begun visiting faculty across campus in an effort to learn about data needs and desires. We’re diddling with data. To date, we have only visited two (and a half) people, but I have learned a few things:
- Darwin Core – Apparently there is metadata schema used for describing biological content — Darin Core. I wonder where they got that name?
- ease-of-use – At least one faculty member said a University-wide effort to collect and curate scientific data would be good thing, as long as the overhead of doing so was minimal.
- evaluation – Some scientists generate data and then work with computer scientists to do the analysis and look for patterns. This seems akin to the relationship between social scientists and statisticians.
- Google Groups – When it comes to collaboration, Google Groups & Friends was used at a tool. Consequently much of their content is save in Google’s “cloud”.
- MBLWHOI Library – A faculty member suggested we get in touch with the librarian at the MBLWHOI Library because they are doing similar work, and “That person changed forever my perception of librarians.”
- notebooks – Many scientists record their actions in notebooks, a la the way science was first conducted. Sometimes these notebooks are physical items, and sometimes they are digital manifestations. The physical items may benefit from digitization. The “born digital” notebooks may benefit from preservation. Everything goes into them. Data. Observations. Cogitations. In this vein, a number of software packages were brought to our attention including: YoGo and CambridgeSoft.
- scooped – One faculty member thought the idea of sharing data enables “scooping”, the process of stealing another’s ideas. While they advocated sharing, they thought it would be better if it were brought up through the ranks and manifested in undergraduate research. This is what has essentially happened with the local implementation of the Excellent Undergraduate Research.
That is what I’ve learned so far. ‘More later.
