Enabling Access to Scientific

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Enabling Access to Scientific Technical
Data-sets in e-Science a role for Library
Science

• James L. Mullins, PhD
• Dean of Libraries
• Professor of Library Science
• Purdue University
• March 24, 2008

University of Illinois Mortenson Center South
African Librarian Program
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e-Science

• What is meant by e-Science?
• Large scale science increasingly carried out
  through distributed global collaborations enabled
  by the Internet
• Such collaborative scientific enterprise requires
  access to massive data collections, large scale
  computing resources and high performance
  visualization back to the individual user
  scientists
• Requires large scale storage, retrieval and
  transfer

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Innovative Research Concepts

• Data Authors benefit from their own work,
  broadly disseminated, safely archived.
• Data Managers -- collaborates by insuring
  successful retention and dissemination through
  technical infrastructure
• Data Scientists conduct creative inquiry and
  analysis, enhance the research of data authors

National Science Board, Long-lived digital data
collections Enabling research and education in
the 21st century, p. 27.
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Innovative Research Concepts
Data Scientists crucial to the
successful management of a digital
data collection lie in having
their contributions fully recognized
National Science Board, Long-lived digital data
collections Enabling research and education in
the 21st century, p. 27.
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National Science Foundation Recognition of the
Challenge for Data Curation
Dr. Christopher Greer Former Program Director
Office of Cyberinfrastructure, NSF
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To Stand the Test of Time Long Term Stewardship
of Digital Data Sets in Science and Engineering

• A report to the National Science Foundation from
  the ARL Workshop on New Collaborative
  Relationships The Role of Academic Libraries in
  the Digital Data Universe
• Supported by NSF, September 26-27, 2006
• Attendees NSF program directors disciplinary
  researchers information technologists computer
  scientists and librarians
• http//www.arl.org/bmdoc/digdatarpt.pdf

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To Stand the Test of Time Long Term Stewardship
of Digital Data Sets in Science and Engineering
Overarching Recommendation

• NSF should facilitate the establishment of a
  sustainable framework for the long-term
  stewardship of data. This framework should
  involve multiple stakeholders by supporting
• Research to understand, model, prototype data
  stewardship
• Training and educational programs to develop new
  workforce
• Efforts to effect change in the research
  enterprise regarding the importance of the
  stewardship of digital data produced

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To Stand the Test of Time Long Term Stewardship
of Digital Data Sets in Science and Engineering
Specific Recommendations
How can Libraries respond? How can Libraries
prepare?
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Conceptualization By Chris Greer, NSF
ICenter
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Scholarly Communication
in the past,libraries involved at this end
traditional research publication
publishedresearchnon-traditional
unpublishedresearchtraditional
secondarytertiaryresources
publishedresearchtraditional
publisheddata/datasets
analyzeddata/datasets
currently many attempts todata mine to uncover
data
processeddata/datasets
metadata curation profiles for dataallow
forward/backward movement through scholarly
communication process
rawdata/datasets
Source D. Scott Brandt, Purdue University
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One Example
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One Example
Purdue University
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Purdue University

• Founded 1869 by gift from John Purdue
• Premier programs engineering (astronautics
  alumnus Neil Armstrong) agriculture hospitality
  and tourism business computer science
  communications.
• 39,102 students 2007/08
• Third largest international student enrollment in
  U.S. 4,994 for 2007/08 (over 2,000 from India,
  China and Korea combined).

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Purdue University

• Nine Colleges Agriculture, Consumer Family
  Sciences, Education, Engineering, Liberal Arts,
  Management, Pharmacy/ Nursing/Health Sciences,
  Technology, Vet Medicine
• 73 Departments, several cross-disciplinary e.g.
  Agricultural Biological Engineering

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Interdisciplinary collaboration
Discovery Park A 44 acre site,
interdisciplinary centers which are designed to
facilitate and promote leading edge research
Cyber Infrastructure
Energy
Oncology
Entrepreneurship
e-Enterprise
Manufacturing
Nanotechnology
Environment
Learning Center
Bioscience
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Envisioning New Interdisciplinary Collaborations
Associate Dean for Research, D. Scott
Brandt, Professor of Library Science Facilitates
individual and interdisciplinary research
efforts of the fifty Libraries faculty
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Purdue University Libraries

• Since 2004, initiative for Libraries faculty to
  collaborate with other faculty across
  campusapply library science knowledge and
  expertise to research problems
• collect, organize, describe, curate, archive,
  disseminate data/information

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Determine need for collaboration

• Hypothesized that researchers have data
  management needs and that librarians can help
  meet them
• Employed top-down and bottom-up investigation for
  data collection
• Verified PU researchers said they need help in
  collecting, organizing and providing access to
  their data

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Outside of the library

• Attended research seminars, call-outs, etc., to
  identify collaboration and funding opportunities
• Built relationships - found researchers who
  understood that collecting, organizing and
  providing access to data and information are not
  only important, but critical
• Found problems to solve, then collaborated on
  solutions
• Talked about what we knoworganizing data and
  information (different meanings to different
  groups)
• Brought something to the table. Had to be
  prepared to demonstrate something tangible
  (initially a proof-of-concept or a prototype).

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Current areas of collaboration

• Discovery Learning Center
• Earth Atmospheric Sciences
• English
• IT at Purdue
• Mechanical Engineering Technology
• Regenstrief Center
• Graduate School
• Oncological Sciences

• Agronomy
• Biology
• Cancer Center
• Center for the Environment
• Chemical Engineering
• Chemistry
• Civil Engineering
• Cyber Center

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Motivation (library participants)

• Directly related to work, and makes something
  difficult easier
• Its an extension of our everyday job
• Something new and exciting to do
• Breaking new ground, want to contribute to
  interdisciplinary initiative
• Force the issue of how it gets done (i.e., more
  people added to help out)

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Motivation (non-participants)

• Articulation of what is expected by the Dean
• Partly determined on a case-by-case basis
• Has to be interesting to me
• Something that uses the skills I can bring to
  it
• Need to get credit for it (recognition, reward)
• Important to allow individual to define what
  interdisciplinary research is
• Should be opportunities to "stick your toe in the
  water" before making big commitment
• Need time to do it, and to do the things I want
  to do

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Distributed Data Curation Center D2C2

• Sustainability for data curation repositories
• Ontological and taxonomic organization of
  disciplinary datasets
• Metadata to facilitate access to data
• collections
• Data curation profiles for archiving and
  preserving datasets
• http//d2c2.lib.purdue.edu/

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Recap

• 22 Libraries faculty involved in 32 grants since
  April of 2006
• New positions Data Research Scientist to support
  research
• Computer Science/Libraries discussion on joint
  appointment
• Sun Microsystems gift -
• Sun StorageTek 5800, 32 terabytes, for D2C2
  research.

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100 conversations, lead to 20 discussions, lead
to 5 grants, lead to 1 award
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Web 2.0 for e-Science nanoHUB from PowerPoint
Presentation by Mark Lundstrom, Gerhard Klimeck,
Michael McLennan, Purdue University, Network for
Computational Nanotechnology.
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nanoHUB, Purdue University
https//www.nanohub.org/home
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National Science Foundation (NSF) DataNet 07-601

• e-Science data stewardship, Five 20 million
  grants
• Competition to Build a Data network
• Replicate for print resources for data
• Proposals being led by librarians, collaborators
  are computer scientists, information
  technologists, domain scientists sociologists,
  information scientists, computer engineers,
  museum and K-12 educators metadata and ontology
  specialists data visualization specialists.
• International collaboration with UK, Australia,
  and China.
• Submission deadline March 21st, announcement
  summer 2008.

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Thank you! Questions and Answers? James L.
Mullins Purdue University, USA
jmullins_at_purdue.edu