January 2018

Purpose: As part of the UCLA campus effort to support research through data services and building upon Library Strategic Plan Goal Group 3, the Library will analyze its existing service offerings to identify data life-cycle service gaps. We will then articulate aspirational service goals that will better support researchers' efforts in creating, stewarding, safeguarding, and disseminating claims from their research data. The Task Force will work in two phases to: a) articulate a vision in the first half of 2018 and then b) design a plan to begin implementing the vision during the second half of 2018. Organizationally, we see the implementation of desired outcomes identified by this group will be carried out in a hub and spoke model with the Social Science Data Archive (Data Archive) as the hub and allied or related services or units as spokes. A report that outlines the Library’s vision for research data service, technology, and community will be presented to the Cabinet Sponsors by April 30, 2018.

Phase 1: Data Services Vision

The Task Force will:

Construct a service map of existing services that directly support research data needs.
From this map, the Task Force will:

Categorize these services using a level of service model to distinguish between informational and technical data services.
Evaluate other peer institutions for service categorizations and identify significant gaps at UCLA.
Articulate the points of interaction among services and articulate the referral flow among entities.

Create a cohesive vision for the Library’s research data technology infrastructure. This includes articulating the function, naming, and support for Data Den, Open Science Framework, and any future service platforms the Library intends to offer.
Analyze the below UCLA schools and departments in each division for inter and intra-divisional research data management differences and shared practices and suggest how the Library can meet these needs. As part of this work, identify and map to the schools/departments the most important discipline based data repositories and data standards, if extant.

Life Sciences: Psychology, Biological Sciences, Clinical Psychology
Physical Sciences: Chemistry & Biochemistry, Physics & Astronomy, Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
Social Sciences: Sociology, Political Science, History, Economics
Humanities: Cotsen Institute of Archeology, Center for Digital Humanities, Program in Digital Humanities, Classics
Schools: UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

Phase 2: Implementation

We acknowledge that service and skills gaps not reflected below can be discovered by the research and analysis done in Phase 1. However, at this moment we have identified the following areas to address in an implementation phase. These phases can be performed concurrently and iteratively.

Phase 2a: Staff Training, Workforce Expansion and Documentation

Build a community of data professionals within the Library who serve as curators and data management support specialists for research data needs.

Identify skills and responsibilities needed by individuals in these roles with a division of labor specified between technical data, software and informational skills.
Create an expert network where researchers can contact data professionals about Research Data Management needs, including data management planning, storage, analysis and workflows, data publishing and sharing, data curation and provenance, and selecting appropriate metadata schemas.
Design a skills development curriculum for library and information professionals at UCLA to learn data and software skills. This curriculum will include, but not be limited to Library Carpentry, Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, and 23 Research Data Things.

Identify knowledge and skills we either do not have on staff yet and that are not easily obtainable through reskilling. Articulate these needs as position requests.
Develop documentation to support the vision articulated in the first phase of the task force. Including,

Internal guide to services for Library internal use and dissemination
External guide to publish and advertise to UCLA campus audiences
Marketing plan for ensuring engagement with appropriate stakeholders, both initially and perennially

Phase 2b: Engagement and Outreach

Define Library services that include training and consulting with researchers on RDM across the research lifecycle that serves the needs of all campus constituencies, organized by audience/level and delivered via different modalities. The following levels are suggested for further refinement by the Task Force:

Introductory level

Teaching tools around re-using locally curated data sets
Instruction modules on topical elements of the data lifecycle: data literacy, data management best practices, data discovery, curation and preservation.

Intermediate level

Comprehensive training and service points for active researchers with publication goals
Curriculum for skills and tools instruction focused on proficiency-building for specific tools/programs and their applications to research needs
Researcher community development support including, “jam-session” styled gatherings for research communities, community-building activities around tools, methods, best practices, etc.

Advanced research data

Data consultancies and collaborations working with researchers on data
Develop library services required for the effective scholarly use of advanced technologies.
Data leadership: Promote, steward and publish open data that enable and support data-science research projects.

Work with campus partners to integrate the Library services into the research administration process and campus research support units.

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