Bigger on the inside: building Research Data Services at the University of Virginia

Abstract

Every story has a beginning, where the narrator chooses to start, though this is rarely the genesis. This story begins with the launch of the University of Virginia (U.Va.) Library's new Research Data Services (RDS) unit in October 2013. Born from the conjoining of a data management team and a data analysis team, RDS expanded to encompass data discovery and acquisitions, research software support and new expertise in the use of restricted data. Our purpose is to respond to the challenges created by the growing ubiquity and scale of data by helping researchers acquire, analyze, manage and archive these resources. We have made serious strides towards becoming 'the face of data services at U.Va.'. This article tells a bit of our story so far, relays some early challenges and how we have responded to them, outlines several initial successes and summarizes a few lessons going forward. Bigger on the inside: building Research Data Services at the University of VirginiaA timeline in brief 'People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey . . . stuff. ' The Doctor (Doctor Who) 1In 2010 the University of Virginia (U.Va.) Library formed the Scientific Data Consulting group (SciDac) to respond to new imperatives by funding agencies for researchers to share the data gathered as a product of sponsored research. Building on the work of prior library collaborations 2 , this group began to research how scientists in our community were handling data, to create tools for assessing their data practices, and to work with colleagues at other institutions to build solutions for data-intensive researchers encountering new and evolving requirements.3 The SciDac team laid considerable groundwork within the Library, advancing the notion of the research lifecycle and the Library's role throughout, as well as with analogous organizations across the globe. One notable early achievement was SciDac's involvement in developing and advancing the DMPTool, a collaboratively built tool to guide researchers writing a data management plan.4 In early 2013 the four-person team rebranded as the Data Management Consulting Group, to underscore the University-wide need for data management, documentation and archiving support.In the meantime, the U.Va. Library committed to expanding the Library's data services by supporting additional positions and graduate student assistantships. In Spring 2013 the Library hired a statistical consultant (the author) to build a data analysis consultancy service. The following August the StatLab launched with a second full-time consultant and three doctoral students, offering workshops and individual consultations on the use of statistical software, advanced data analytic techniques, and statistical methods. In October the StatLab and the Data Management Consulting Group merged into Research Data Services (RDS). 5'advancing the notion of the research lifecycle and the Library's role throughout...

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