Tidbits, 22 January 2010

Because I scanted you on tidbits for quite some time, have a second tidbits post in a single week!

• A little library advocacy: Five library resources you should be using.
• Otherwise-closed data tend to open up in direct proportion to the perceived importance of the problem: GlaxoSmithKline opens up data on anti-malaria compounds. Now let's make this the default stance, shall we?
• Undergraduate science librarian Bonnie Swoger talks Science Online 2010 and data.
• Also on the Science Online 2010 roundup, the amazing Kevin Smith of Duke makes trenchant observations about copyright anxiety and it's retardant effect on research, among other trenchant observations. I cringe, regularly, at copyright ignorance I run into.
• John Timmer of Ars Technica (another Science Online 2010 attendee, incidentally) talks about why some code has to be open, as well as data, if we are to maintain "reproducibility" as a criterion for good science.
• Mark Liberman of Language Log announces the Digging into Data grant he will be working on, indexing substantial amounts of recorded English-language audio for use in dialect analysis.

Finally, I want to call out the excellent Data Dimensions: Disciplinary Differences report from Key Perspectives. "Data management differs by discipline" is a skeletal truism; Key Perspectives puts some meat on the bones.

It also contains throwaway gems like "It is worth noting that researchers expected their own institutions to be able to provide affordable managed storage, technical support and a preservation facility â but few institutions appear to be able to offer such services at this point." (p. 10)

Incidentally, authors, this institutional-repository administrator's answer to the question "Will institutional repository administrators in a university setting be willing or able to comprehend the details of data formats and metadata schemas across a whole range of disciplines?" (p. 3) is an emphatic "You bet! Bring it on!" Metadata is my business. I'm less bad at it than you might think.