Category Archives: Profiles

Data Sharing and Equity: Sabrina McCutchan, Data Architect

This post is part of the Research Data Curation Team’s ‘Researcher Highlight’ series.

Equity in Collaboration

The landscape of research and data is enterprising, expansive and diverse. This dynamic is notably visible in the work done at Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI). Collaboration with international partners inherently comes with many challenges. In a conversation with the Duke Research Data Curation team, Sabrina McCutchan of the Research Design and Analysis Core (RDAC) at DGHI shares her thoughts on why data sharing and access is critical to global health research.

Questions of equity must be addressed when discussing research data and scholarship on a global scale. For the DGHI data equity is a priority. International research partners deserve equal access to primary data to better understand what’s happening in their communities, contribute to policy initiatives that support their populations, and support their own professional advancement by publishing in research and medical journals.

 “We work with so many different countries, people groups, and populations around the world that often themselves don’t have access to the same infrastructure, technologies or training in data. It can be challenging to collect quality primary data on their own, but  becomes a little easier in partnership with a big research institution like Duke.”

Collaborations like the Adolescent Mental Health in Africa Network Initiative (AMANI) demonstrate the significance of data sharing. AMANI is led by Dr. Dorothy Dow of DGHI, Dr. Lukoye Atwoli of Moi University School of Medicine, and Dr. Sylvia Kaaya of Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) and involves participating researchers from academic and medical institutions in South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Why Share Data?

As a Data Architect, Sabrina is available to support DGHI in achieving their data sharing goals. She takes a holistic approach to identifying areas where the team needs data support. Considering at each stage of the project lifecycle how system design and data architecture will influence how data can be shared. This may entail drafting informed consent documents, developing strategies for de-identification, curating and managing data, or discovering solutions for data storage and publishing. For instance, in collaboration with CDVS Research Data Management Consultants, Sabrina has helped AMANI create a Dataverse to enable sharing restricted access health data for international junior researchers. Data from one of DGHI’s studies are also available in the Duke Research Data Repository.

“All of these components are interconnected to each other. You really need to think about what are going to be the impacts of a decision made early in the process of gathering data for this study further downstream when we’re analyzing that data and publishing findings from it.”

Reproducibility is another reason that sharing and publishing data is important to Sabrina. DGHI wants to increase data availability in accordance with FAIR principles so other researchers can independently verify, reproduce, and iterate on their work. This supports peers and contributes to the advancement of the field. Publishing data in an open repository can also increase their reach and impact. DGHI is also currently examining how to incorporate the CARE principles and other frameworks for ethical data sharing within their international collaborations.

Global collaborations in research are vital in these times. Sabrina advises that it’s important for researchers, especially Principal Investigators, to think holistically about research projects. For example, thinking about data sharing at the very beginning of the project and writing consent forms that support what they hope to do with the data. Equitable practices paired with data sharing create opportunities for greater discovery and progress in research.

 

Congratulations and farewell to Mike Adamo

This week, Digitization Specialist Mike Adamo will move on from Duke Libraries after 14 years to assume a new position as Digital Imaging Coordinator at the Libraries of Virginia Tech University. Mike has contributed so much to our Digital Collections program during his tenure, providing years of uncompromising still imaging services, stewardship in times of change for the Digital Production Center, as well as leadership of and then years of service on our Digital Collections Implementation Team. He has also been the lead digitization specialist on some of our most well known digital collections like the Hugh Mangum photographs, James Karales photographs and William Gedney collection.

In addition, Mike has been a principal figure on our Multispectral Imaging Team and has been invaluable to our development of this service for the library. He established the setup and led all MSI imaging sessions; collaborated cross-departmentally with other members on the MSI Team to vet requests and develop workflows; and worked with vendors and other MSI practitioners to develop best practices, documentation, and a preservation plan and service model for MSI services at Duke Libraries. He’s also provided maintenance for our MSI equipment, researching options for additional equipment as our program grew.

Side by side comparison of a papyri item under natural light and the same item after multispectral imaging and processing.

We are grateful to Mike for his years of dedication to the job at to the field of cultural heritage digitization as well as for the instrumental role he’s played in developing MSI Services at DUL. We offer a huge thank you to Mike for his work and wish him well in his future position!

Post contributed by Giao Luong Baker and Erin Hammeke

Highlighting Duke Scholars Alongside Their Research

2018 has featured several monumental changes in the library’s technology platforms. One of the most impactful shifts this year was revitalizing DukeSpace, our DSpace-based institutional repository (IR) software, home to over 16,000 open-access articles, theses, and dissertations from Duke scholars.

Back in March, we celebrated a successful multi-version upgrade for DSpace, and along with it, a major upgrade to the integral Symplectic Elements Research Information Management platform.  On the heels of that project, we decided to capitalize on the project team’s momentum and invest two more months of focused attention (four “sprints” in developer-speak).

The goals for that period? First, tie up the loose ends from the upgrade. Then, seize some clear opportunities to build upon our freshly-rearchitected metadata, creating innovative features in the UI to benefit scholars. By scholars, we mean — in part — the global audience of researchers openly discovering and using the articles in DukeSpace. But we especially mean the scholars at Duke who created them in the first place.

We are excited to share the results of our work with the Duke community and beyond. Here are the noteworthy additions:

Scholars@Duke Author Profiles

Item pages now display a brief embedded profile for each Duke author, featuring their preferred name, a photo, position title, and brief description of their research interests. This information comes from the scholars themselves, who manage their profiles via Scholars@Duke (powered by the open-source VIVO platform).

Scholars@Duke & DukeSpace
A brief author profile in a DukeSpace item  leads to the full profile in Scholars@Duke.

Scholars@Duke provides a handy SEO-friendly profile page (example) for each scholar. It aggregates their full list of publications, courses taught, news articles in which they’re mentioned, and much more. It also has useful APIs for building widgets to dynamically repurpose the data for display elsewhere. Departments throughout Duke (example) use these APIs to display current faculty information on their web sites without requiring anyone to manually duplicate or update it. And now, the library does, too.

Scholars@Duke profile in DukeSpace
Scholars’ own descriptions of their research interests entice a visitor to learn more about their work.

Featuring researchers in this manner adds several other benefits, including:

  • Uses a scholar’s own preferred current version of their name and title; that may not be identical to what is stored in the item’s author metadata.
  • Puts users one click away from the author’s full profile at Scholars@Duke, where one can discover the entirety of the author’s publications, open-access or not.
  • Helps search engines make stronger semantic connections between an author’s profile information and their works available online.
  • Introduces a unique value-add feature for our open-access copy of an article that’s unlikely to ever be possible to replicate for the published version on the academic journal’s website.
  • Makes the DukeSpace item pages look better, warmer, and more inviting.
Scholars@Duke multiple author profiles in DukeSpace
Profiles for multi-author articles

With this feature, we are truly pushing beyond the boundaries of what an institutional repository traditionally does. And likewise, we feel we’re raising the bar for how academic research libraries can showcase the members of their communities alongside their collected works.

Other New Features

Beyond these new author profiles, we managed to fit in a few more enhancements around citations, the homepage, and site navigation. Here’s a quick rundown:

Citations

We now present an easily copyable citation, composed from the various metadata available for each item. This includes the item’s permalink.

DukeSpace citation for a dissertation
DukeSpace citation for a dissertation

In cases when there’s a published version of an article available, we direct users to review and use that citation instead.

DukeSpace citation with DOI
DukeSpace article with a DOI for a published version.

 

Item pages also now display a “Citation Stats” badge in the sidebar, powered by Digital Science’s Dimensions tool.  Click it to explore other scholarly work that has cited the current item.

Homepage

Finally, we topped off this project phase by redesigning DukeSpace’s homepage. Notable among the changes: a clearer indication of the number of items (broken down by type), a dynamic list of trending items, and streamlined menu navigation in the sidebar.

 

Final Thoughts

Duke Libraries’ current strategic plan emphasizes the mission-critical importance of our open-access publishing and repository efforts, and also demands that we “highlight and promote the scholarly activities of our faculty, students, and staff.”  This two-month DukeSpace enhancements project was a great opportunity for us to think outside the box about our technology platforms, and consider how those goals relate.


Many thanks to several people whose work enabled these features to come to life, especially Maggie Dickson, Hugh Cayless, Paolo Mangiafico, and the Scholars@Duke team.

Getting to Know Us Even Better

Last Fall, this blog featured brief profiles of all your favorite Duke Library Information Technology Services staff, including our digitization specialists.   This week on the blog we thought we would shine the spotlight even closer on our still image digitization expert, Mike and learn more about his unique contribution to Duke University Libraries.

Mike Adamo, Still Image Digitization Specialist

 

Favorite thing about your job:

While there are a number of things I enjoy about my job I would have to say that working on the Digital Collections Implementation Team consistently rises to the top.  We are a small agile group that is tasked with publishing a wide variety of digital content created within the library and without for publication on the Library’s Digital Collections website.  Each member of the team has a different vantage point when working with digital collections but we have the same goal in mind.  We all strive to publish high quality digital collections in an efficient, consistent and innovative way.  Everyone on the team is constantly trying to expand our capabilities whether it be an enhancement to the interface, normalization of metadata, adding new digitization equipment, streamlining the proposal process or the overarching goal to fold all of our workflows and systems together.  It is rewarding to be on such an innovative, hardworking team.

What is the most noteworthy/most exciting/biggest change in your 10 years at Duke:

I would say that the Digital Production Center is always changing.  The DPC has been in 4 different locations. I think we have had over 10 department heads all with different priorities, communication styles and approaches to the work.  Our department has been under Conservation and IT (twice).  We have a steady flow of students to keep us on our toes.

Favorite collection/project you have worked on:

I’ve had a few favorite collections over the years but the one that rise to the top is the Jane Goodall Archive.  The Goodall Research papers was an interesting project to work on because it is such a large collection and it spanned many years.  The logistics of pulling this off were pretty complex with a lot of moving parts.  The highlight was that I (along with other members of the team) got to meet Jane Goodall.  She has an open, quiet strength and was very friendly.  Who knows if I’ll ever meet another legend in my lifetime?

Most challenging aspect of your work:

Just like many of us in the Library, the demands on my time are spread across many areas.  Our main focus in the DPC is to “create(s) digital captures of unique, valuable, or compelling primary resources for the purpose of preservation, access, and publication.”  This involves analyzing collections for digitization, developing project plans, consulting Conservation, providing supporting documentation for each project, training and monitoring students, color calibrating and profiling the environment, digitization of collections, quality control of collections, moving and posting of thousands upon thousands of images.  To make it more fun, we always have multiple projects going at one time.

 But just like most of us in the Library, in addition to my main job I have where many hats.  Some of them are: Normalization and ingest of legacy collections into the repository; test and make recommendations for new technology for use in the DPC and elsewhere in the Library; maintain existing technology; troubleshoot our own equipment and work with our vendors to resolve mechanical, software and enterprise issues; consult with faculty and staff in the Library and across campus on their digitization projects; train Library staff on digital imaging standards and equipment; monitor and maintain 7 servers used for production and storage of archival digital images; and field all manner of random questions related to still image capture.  So, balancing all of these things is probably the most challenging thing about my job.  I think many, if not all of us, in the Library deal with this and do a pretty good job of keeping up with everything.

Favorite image:

This is not on Duke Digital Collections, but we digitized it and it was displayed at the Nasher Museum.  For me, this picture personifies the severity of the struggle and sacrifice that is the Civil Rights Movement.

James Karales, Passive resistance training, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 1960. Atlanta, Georgia. Gelatin silver print, 8.5 x 13 inches. The Duke University Special Collections Library.
James Karales, Passive resistance training, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 1960. Atlanta, Georgia. Gelatin silver print, 8.5 x 13 inches. The Duke University Special Collections Library. Screenshot from Nasher Museum of Art webpage.

Bento is Coming!

A unified search results page, commonly referred to as the “Bento Box” approach, has been an increasingly popular method to display search results on library websites. This method helps users gain quick access to a limited result set across a variety of information scopes while providing links to the various silos for the full results. NCSU’s QuickSearch implementation has been in place since 2005 and has been extremely influential on the approach taken by other institutions.

Way back in December of 2012, the DUL began investigating and planning for implementing a Bento search results layout on our website. Extensive testing revealed that users favor searching from a single box — as is their typical experience conducting web searches via Google and the like. Like many libraries, we’ve been using Summon as a unified discovery layer for articles, books, and other resources for a few years, providing an ‘All’ tab on our homepage as the entry point. Summon aggregates these various sources into a common index, presented in a single stream on search results pages. Our users often find this presentation overwhelming or confusing and prefer other search tools. As such, we’ve demoted the our ‘All’ search on our homepage — although users can set it as the default thanks to the very slick Default Scope search tool built by Sean Aery (with inspiration from the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries website):

Default Search Tool

The library’s Web Experience Team (WebX) proposed the Bento project in September of 2013. Some justifications for the proposal were as follows:

Bento boxing helps solve these problems:

  • We won’t have to choose which silo should be our default search scope (in our homepage or masthead)
  • Synthesizing relevance ranking across very different resources is extremely challenging, e.g., articles get in the way of books if you’re just looking for books (and vice-versa).
  • We need to move from “full collection discovery to full library discovery” – in the same search, users discover expertise, guides/experts, other library provisions alongside items from the collections. 1
  • “A single search box communicates confidence to users that our search tools can meet their information needs from a single point of entry.” 2

Citations:

  1. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog by Lorcan Dempsey.
  2. How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box by Cory Lown, Tito Sierra, and Josh Boyer

Sean also developed this mockup of what Bento results could look like on our website and we’ve been using it as the model for our project going forward:

Bento Mockup

For the past month our Bento project team has been actively developing our own implementation. We have had the great luxury of building upon work that was already done by brilliant developers at our sister institutions (NCSU and UNC) — and particular thanks goes out to Tim Shearer at UNC Libraries who provided us with the code that they are using on their Bento results page, which in turn was heavily influenced by the work done at NCSU Libraries.

Our approach includes using results from Summon, Endeca, Springshare, and Google. We’re building this as a Drupal module which will make it easy to integrate into our site. We’re also hosting the code on GitHub so others can gain from what we’ve learned — and to help make our future enhancements to the module even easier to implement.

Our plan is to roll out Bento search in August, so stay tuned for the official launch announcement!

 


PS — as the 4th of July holiday is right around the corner, here are some interesting items from our digital collections related to independence day: