Why A tale of two projects Jen Ferguson

02•13•2012

Reuse & collaboration

First, there was

Annotating data sets associated with published papers.

(Have you seen me?)

Microarray data set(s) Paper

Software

Here’s what comes out.

Why S Switching gears

Reuse & collaboration

Then there was

Creating an insanely great digital repository service.

The vision

A repository robust and flexible enough to support storage,

access, & discovery of the widest possible range of digital

materials created and used at the university.

Meaning?

Teaching materials ✔

Student portfolios & projects ✔

Research data ✔

And more.

“We have to respect that most folks chose not to be librarians.”

The tech specs

• Repository built in Fedora

• Perl scripts (not people) do most of the metadata ‘dirty work’

The process

• Meet with the client to determine needs & practices

• Create a customized Perl module to unpack/wrangle data

A case in point

Late-breaking news:

Got data!

LearningObject Papers

Data

Faculty member

isPartOf

isPartOf isMemberOf

isMemberOf isMemberOf

isMemberOf

isMemberOf

isMemberOf

Other

isDataSetFor

isDataSetFor

isDerivativeOf

isMemberOf

isPartOf isPartOf

JPG

PDF

DAT SPS

Dataset Dataset

Paper

Paper

U Summing up

Created by scientists

Specialized solution

Discipline-specific

Globally focused

‘Downstream’ intervention

Metadata by external curator

Created by librarians

Generalized solution

Discipline-agnostic

Institutionally focused

‘Upstream’ intervention

Metadata by content creator

Two very different approaches…

The good news

Thank you!

j.ferguson@neu.edu

Sources

Harvard School of Public Health. “Harvard School of Public Health- HSPH”. October 13, 2011.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/

ISA Team. "Isa - About". October 6, 2011. http:// isatab.sourceforge.net/index.html.

Northeastern University. “Northeastern University: a leader in global experiential learning in Boston, MA”.

October 13, 2011. http://www.northeastern.edu/

Northeastern University – University Libraries. Annual Report: 2010. Available from:

http://www.lib.neu.edu/about_us/mission/documents/2010annualreport.pdf

United States National Library of Medicine. “Home – PubMed – NCBI”. October 13, 2011.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Stock photos ‘Abacus’, ‘Chrome gear’, ‘Floppy disks’ and ‘Roll’ courtesy of stock.xchng. Available from:

http://www.sxc.hu/.