Making Secondary Data Collections Discoverable in the uOttawa Scholar’s Portal Dataverse
Wednesday October 07, 2020
From 2:30pm to 3:00pm
In this presentation, we will give an overview of other libraries that have chosen to use Dataverse to manage their licensed datasets. We will describe how we worked through technical challenges and modeled operational practices within a self-directed learning group, led by the Research Data Management Librarian.
Document
The Interdisciplinary Data Team (IDT) at the University of Ottawa Library acquires, manages and makes accessible numerical and geospatial data in support of research and instruction at the University. Traditionally, the Library acquired and stored its machine-readable datafiles on a Web server and made them discoverable through various portals, including the library catalog, HTML web pages, and links through research guides. This has led to inconsistencies in the format, quality, and robustness of associated metadata, and has also forced users to search for these data in multiple places. To encourage greater discovery and reuse of the datasets, members of the IDT have developed a proof of concept using the institutionally-branded uOttawa Scholar’s Portal Dataverse. This nationally adopted data repository platform allows the creation of institutional collections and manage access permissions, including restricted access to institutional IP ranges, thus satisfying access conditions of licensed data products.
In this presentation, we will give an overview of other libraries that have chosen to use Dataverse to manage their licensed datasets. We will describe how we worked through technical challenges and modeled operational practices within a self-directed learning group, led by the Research Data Management Librarian. This voluntary adoption of Dataverse as a tool for data management by a wide range of library staff enabled the Library’s IDT to move forward with better data management and discoverability of data collections for the benefit of researchers and students at the University, and can serve as an example for other libraries in the Scholar’s Portal Dataverse network.
