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

1. Enabling Access to Scientific & Technical Data-sets in e-Science: a role for Library Science African Digital Curation Conference Pretoria, South Africa James L. Mullins, PhD Dean of Libraries & Professor of Library Science Purdue University, USA February 12, 2008

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. National Science Foundation Recognition of the Challenge for Data Curation Dr. Christopher Greer Former Program Director Office of Cyberinfrastructure, NSF

6. 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/bm~doc/digdatarpt.pdf

7. 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

8. 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?

9. Domain Science Cyber infra-structure Computer Science Lib/Info Sciences Archival Sciences Conceptualization By Chris Greer, NSF ICenter

10. Scholarly Communication in the past,libraries involved at this end “traditional” research publication unpublishedresearchtraditional “published”researchnon-traditional secondarytertiaryresources “published”data/datasets publishedresearchtraditional currently many attempts todata mine to uncover data… analyzeddata/datasets metadata curation profiles for dataallow forward/backward movement through scholarly communication process processeddata/datasets “raw”data/datasets Source: D. Scott Brandt, Purdue University

11. One Example

12. One Example Purdue University

13. 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).

14. 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

15. DiscoveryPark 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

16. 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

17. Purdue University Libraries Since 2004, initiative for Libraries faculty to collaborate with other faculty across campus—apply library science knowledge and expertise to research problems: collect, organize, describe, curate, archive, disseminate data/information

18. 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

19. 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 know—organizing 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).

20. 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 Current areas of collaboration

21. Motivation (library participants) • Directly related to work, and makes something difficult easier • It’s 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)

22. 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”

23. 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/

24. 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.

25. “100 conversations, lead to 20 discussions, lead to 5 grants, lead to 1 award

26. Web 2.0 for e-Science: nanoHUB from PowerPoint Presentation by: Mark Lundstrom, Gerhard Klimeck, Michael McLennan, Purdue University, Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

27. nanoHUB, Purdue University https://www.nanohub.org/home

28. 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.

29. Thank you! Questions and Answers? James L. Mullins – Purdue University, USA jmullins@purdue.edu