Bridging the Gap: Improving Data Services through Cross-Campus Collaboration

Abstract

Objective: New York University (NYU) Libraries provide research data services to diverse communities across several campuses. Until recently, they have worked mostly independent of each other. At the main campus, NYU Data Services offers workshops, individual and group consultations, and traveling “road shows” on data management to the larger NYU community. At a separate medical center campus, the NYU Health Sciences Library (NYUHSL) supports a data catalog, data management education, and individualized lab support. Finally, Databrary, which is connected to NYU’s Digital Library Technology Services, provides a repository for behavioral and learning science researchers working primarily with video data to store, manage, and share the raw materials of their work with their colleagues. This poster will discuss how these disparate services have worked more closely together by identifying overlap, making connections between service offerings, and sharing knowledge and resources around data. This initiative better enriches the overall mission and strategy of NYU libraries to serve its student and research communities. Methods: To ensure the better coordination of these data services, we began to hold regular, bi-monthly meetings to discuss strategies for improving data education material, integrating an institutional data catalog created by NYUHSL with main campus systems, and providing data-related outreach to institutional stakeholders. These groups have also collaborated on planning and hosting events on data-related topics including using Databrary, reproducibility in science, and data visualization. Finally, a resource sharing system was instituted across campuses for library faculty to collaborate and improve upon the instructional design of data management education, create outreach materials, and share ongoing project documentation. Results: The new collaboration between NYU Data Services, NYUHSL and special projects like Databrary has served to break down existing institutional silos to provide better research and educational data services to NYU’s student and research communities. This collaboration has been essential for improving upon existing services, identifying new opportunities to support the data needs of institutional stakeholders, and providing increased levels of outreach. By fostering a better understanding of what data services are available across campuses through this ongoing collaboration, we are better able to identify and support our communities’ data needs. Conclusion: Providing data management, curation, and storage services for a diverse and dynamic research community on campus is a demanding task that requires a distributed effort. Each service fills different gaps for researchers at varying stages of their research practices, though without inter-department communication there was decidedly less impact and reach by everyone. By collaborating and opening a line of communication, we have built a better understanding of how we can interact to provide stronger support to the student and research communities across campuses.