Minutes
Data Services Committee Meeting
Monday, March 24, 2014, 11:00-12:00
2090 Lincoln Hall (conference room in Dean’s Office)
Attendees: Karen Hogenboom, chair; Joanne Kazcmarek; Dawn Owens-Nicholson; Carissa Phillips;
Christie Wiley; Sarah Williams; Maryalice Wu
1. Appoint someone to take notes. Carissa Phillips volunteered.
2. Readme files: next steps (see spreadsheet emailed on 3/21)
The group agreed to set April 28th (the date of the next meeting) as the deadline for completion
of the readme files.
3. Data Information Literacy (concepts in rank order as determined by faculty)
(http://wiki.lib.purdue.edu/display/ste/Home)
The group evaluated the concepts in the outlined list below and brainstormed about workshop
ideas for the top priorities. Any workshops would probably be offered through the Savvy
Researcher beginning in the Fall. A concern was expressed that the concepts in the report and
their ranking come from the physical sciences faculty at another institution, which may not
match the priorities of UIUC faculty or students. The group agreed to focus on versions of
relevant workshops for physical sciences and social sciences separately, drawing on the
knowledge and skills of the Data Services Committee members and our colleagues. One
suggestion was to look for examples and guidance from the “Little Red Schoolhouse of Data,”
the ATLAS counterpart at UChicago [note: this resource is no longer available]. It was proposed
that there would be Libguides or other online materials for each workshop.
a. Processing and Analysis—the initial reaction was that there were too many directions to go
with this, and that individual departments may be offering discipline-specific training on this
already, in addition to the training offered by ATLAS. Further discussion narrowed the focus
toward guiding attendees in how to figure out the appropriate processing and analysis
methods in their field, rather than teaching those methods directly, and this was wellreceived by the group; there was even a suggestion that this could be a Coursera course.
Other ideas included guest speakers for lectures or workshops on topics such as data
mining, text mining, and research practices in specific disciplines. These would be in
addition to the existing workshops on finding and downloading Census data and on using
Census data in ArcGIS.
b. Visualization and Representation—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
c. Quality and Documentation—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
d. Metadata and Description—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
e. Ethics and Attribution—Ron Banks from IRB was suggested as a speaker, since “people are
afraid of IRB.” Also, it was noted that all graduate assistants on campus have to go through
discipline-specific research ethics training, and perhaps there could be a way to incorporate
ethical use of data into those pre-existing courses.
f.
Curation and Re-use—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
g. Databases and Formats—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
h. Conversion and Interoperability—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
i.
Management and Organization—This was suggested as something for a librarian to teach,
perhaps building on the “Intro to Data Management” workshops that Sarah Williams and
Sarah Shreeves already teach.
j.
Cultures of Practice—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
k. Preservation—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
l.
Discovery and Acquisition—not selected as a priority area for Fall workshops
4. Announcements
a. 2013 data purchases
There were two applications for the data purchase program, and they were for the same
$10,000 dataset of property sales and assessment data from Dataquick. It seems that this
dataset will be able to be acquired.
A question was asked about whether an applicant needs to have a firm value for a dataset’s
cost, or if an estimate would be okay for the application. An estimate is okay, because the
Library would need to negotiate a final price anyway.
b. GIS specialist search
The Library is negotiating with the chosen candidate, but official acceptance hasn’t been
announced yet. The start date should be sometime in early-to-mid June.
c. Computational Social Science workshop
Ninety graduate students and junior faculty were in attendance at the workshop on March
15, with another 60 people on a wait list. There was good publicity for the Data Purchase
Program, but at this point in the year it would not be possible to purchase anything.
d. Zar Symposium
Karen and Maryalice will be talking about partnering to provide data services at this
Symposium at the University of Chicago on April 25.
e. Other

The Computational Social Science workshop generated demand for ATLAS workshops
this Summer. ATLAS is considering offering R, ArcGIS, and Atlas.ti workshops.

Karen is considering putting together a GIS Day, with the new GIS Specialist perhaps
taking the lead in Spring 2015 (as a Pre-GIS Day) or in Fall 2015 (officially held in midNovember).

ATLAS is losing its GIS people as they graduate and are hired into permanent positions.
The GIS Specialist will be very welcome!