Data Services Committee
Meeting Minutes
Monday, February 27, 2012
11:00-12:00
ATLAS Office
Attendees:
Dawn Owens-Nicholson, Carissa Phillips, Sarah Shreeves, Sarah Williams, Maryalice Wu
1. Partnership with Survey Research Lab
a. Office hours. The Scholarly Commons is buying out time from the Survey Research Lab to
enable four weekly hours of consultation time. Office hours in the Scholarly Commons are
expected to begin after Spring Break. Survey construction, sampling, and some analysis will be
covered.
b. Potential Savvy Researcher workshops. The main idea mentioned was questionnaire
design/question writing. It was also mentioned that Linda Owens from SRL is working on a
resource page that will address the pros and cons of various survey construction tools.
2. Data Services hours
a. Promotions left to try—Inside Illinois and the DI were considered possibilities, perhaps
specifically to promote the lab hours in 314; a library marketing grant application will be made
to pay for this advertising. Flyers and posters were also suggested, and the marketing grant will
include this proposal as well. Finally, it was suggested that we touch base with the Undergrad
Library to let them know that Data Services/Scholarly Commons is also there to help
undergraduates with their research needs.
b. Report on 314 activities. Dawn reported that she had the highest traffic yet this past
Wednesday—4 people came to 314 for help. One person needed help the whole time, two
others needed brief help, and Dawn was able to do triage in that situation. The other student
just used the resources.
3. “Metadata for the Dataquick Data”
a. Relationship to possible readme files for purchased data? Eric has put together metadata for
the dataset containing the real estate parcels in New York and Chicago. The files are in
G:\ScholComm\DataQuickFiles, and also are attached to the January 31 email he sent to the
datagis account. Please everyone review these files, and let’s review and discuss over email the
elements that should be added to make this into a readme file. Sarah S. also offered to direct us
to readme files in IDEALS, as further examples. This will prepare our discussion for the next
meeting.
4. Physical Sciences Data Pages
a. Comments, feedback? If you haven’t reviewed these, please do and send any feedback to Lura.
5. Data Literacy in Workshops
a. Brief discussion regarding the growing prevalence of conversations about data literacy. General
discussion tabled until next meeting.
6. Updates
a. Data Services Brownbags
 Jake Bowers and Cara Wong—Black Elected Officials Data—February 29, 12:30-1:30, 428
Library
 Ashwini Chhatre—villages in India—March 29, 12:30-1:30, 428 Library
 Anna Popova—APA Elections Data—April 25, 12:30-1:30, 428 Library
b. Other?
 Myron Gutmann, March 15, 2012, 10:30 am, 126 GSLIS.
http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/7?eventId=16620458&calMin=201202&cal=20120226&sk
inId=1
 Sarah S. called for input on software tools that the Scholarly Commons could add to its
offerings after the move into the I(3) space.