The need for Data Management services is one of two large-scale needs consistently expressed by Texas Digital Library (TDL) members, a need driven in part by the February 2013 mandate from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to make the results of federally funded research publicly accessible. In response, the Texas Digital Library organized a working group to recommend infrastructure and services that can be offered at a consortial level to help TDL members meet the emerging federal mandates for public access to research and improve access and reuse of research data.
The team followed a specified process that included the development of researcher use cases, a software evaluation matrix, and formal testing of a prototype of a data repository using several data sets of varied size and format. After testing the list of requirements against the system, the TDL Data Management Working Group agreed that Dataverse provides the best combination of system performance and robustness, user ease, platform scalability, and an active open source community that responds to the evolving needs of the user community. The group recommends that TDL, through its membership, adopt Dataverse to facilitate the discovery of research data and its associated metadata.
Once the recommendations are accepted, TDL will convene a Dataverse Implementation Working Group to establish a statewide repository for storing and providing access to accessing research data. This group will be tasked with providing recommendations on sustainable funding models; technical and metadata configuration; outreach, workflows and training programs; and policy and governance.
The final recommendations of the Working Group is available on the TDL website. The Texas Digital Library will use its next regularly scheduled TDL Forum conference call to allow member institutions to ask questions and discuss the recommendations of the Working Group. That call will be held on September 16 at 10:30 AM. Information about joining the TDL Forum is available at http://main-migrate.tdl.org/forum.
The TDL Data Management Working Group included representatives from member libraries of varying sizes, public and private, and research foci. Members of the group included: Bruce Herbert, PhD (Chair), Texas A&M Libraries; Martha Buckbee, UT Southwestern Medical Library; Jeremy Donald, Trinity University; Maria Esteva, PhD, Texas Advanced Computing Center; Colleen Lyon, UT Austin; Christie Peters and Santi Thompson, University of Houston Libraries; Kristi Park and Ryan Steans, Texas Digital Library.
Questions about the TDL Data Management Working Group report can be directed to info@tdl.org.