Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Purdue Provides Tools to Manage Research Plans and Data

January 10th, 2012

As noted in Fall 2010 Libraries Update, when the NSF issued a “mandate” in May 2010 for data management plans the University was quick to respond. And now the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is available to researchers as resource for both creating data management plans, and for managing data. (http://research.hub.purdue.edu/)

As described at the website, PURR, “is a central hub and resource for research, collaboration, assistance, and information concerning data management.” In addition to providing resources for creating plans, the Libraries offer a “data reference” through an online tool on PURR. And they offer more in-depth consulting to discuss a range of issues related to research data: access, standards, citation and preservation. Since June, two new Libraries’ faculty have been added to work in this area, and now the Libraries is able to offer a tiered approach to data consulting.

Libraries’ faculty can advise on a variety of short term questions (data reference), such as where to find discipline specific metadata standards. They can also consult on developing approaches to handling data in new projects (data management planning), tailored to specific funders (NSF, NIH, etc.). They can work closely with researchers to help assess current research outputs (data curation profiling), identifying areas of data workflow that may need attention. And faculty in the Libraries’ Distributed Data Curation Center (D2C2) can collaborate with faculty to solve specific data related problems on funded proposals (applying library science to interdisciplinary research), such as “Integrating Spatial Educational Experiences (ISEE) into Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Curricula.”

Needless to say, Purdue Libraries have been ahead of the curve in data related research. Purdue Libraries’ faculty are not the only librarians in the country working in this area, as this is an evolving area in which all academic librarians are participating. But Purdue Libraries’ faculty have been studying research data sharing since February 2006, when Dean Mullins first visited the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to ask what they were planning to do about research data. In FY11, the Libraries and D2C2 submitted or participated in $5M in grant proposals related to data research.

For more information on current D2C2 projects, click here.