How to Position Data Science as a Research Support Service
Clifford Lynch
Most research universities are setting up academic programs in data science, which often involve complex organizational restructuring and collaborations among computer science, information science, statistics, and other fields. At the same time, consultations on data science are becoming an important part of emerging research support services. The extent to which this is a support service as opposed to part of an actual research collaboration is unclear. Research data management and curation are also part of research support services, and their relationships to data science are still being defined (and terminology in this area is not uniformly accepted). Many institutions are also offering non-credit courses in many of the popular tools of data science, though it’s unclear how far they go in the ways to use these tools for data science applications. An additional question is the appropriate locus, or loci, of responsibility within organizational units such as the library in providing these services.
In the coming weeks, my organization, the Coalition for Networked Information, will be convening a series of executive roundtables to explore institutional practices and strategies to engage these challenges. My hope in this discussion is to clarify the right questions to ask, and to gain insights into existing institutional and researcher practices that may be represented among the seminar participants.
This seminar will be held both online & in person. You are welcome to join us either in South Hall or via Zoom.
For in-person participants
- For participants who are fully vaccinated (Covid vaccine + Covid booster + flu vaccine), face masks are strongly recommended.
- For participants who are not fully vaccinated, face masks are required.
For online participants
Online participants must have a Zoom account and be logged in. Sign up for your free account here. If this is your first time using Zoom, please allow a few extra minutes to download and install the browser plugin or mobile app
Clifford Lynch is the director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and an adjunct professor at the School of Information. Prior to joining CNI in 1997, Lynch spent eighteen years at the University of California Office of the President, the last ten as director of Library Automation. Lynch is a past president of ASIS&T and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Information Standards Organization.
Contact
If you have questions about this event, please contact Michael Buckland.
