The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) will serve as a second-time host to a National Digital Stewardship Resident (NDSR) in 2016–2017. ARL is one of five organizations in the Baltimore-Washington area that will host a recent master’s degree program graduate to complete a one-year project in digital preservation. The NDSR program, a partnership between the Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, offers recent graduates in specialized fields—library science, information science, museum studies, archival studies, and related technology—the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience in digital preservation. The Association of Research Libraries is proud to host Megan Potterbusch (MLIS Simmons College, 2016) this year to complete a collaborative project with the George Washington (GW) University, the GW Libraries, and the Center for Open Science (COS).
Each of the five residents in the current NDSR cohort will undertake a yearlong project under the mentorship of their host institution. Potterbusch will work with a research unit at GW to use the Open Science Framework, developed by COS, to manage the unit’s data and workflow. Along with data services librarian Mandy Gooch and subject librarians at GW, Potterbusch will collaborate on data curation and documentation. Potterbusch and her collaborators will also work on passing research objects to the GW repository and the associated metadata to SHARE, a partnership between ARL and COS that is building a free, open, data set about research and scholarly activities across their life cycle. Her deliverable will be a replicable process for embedding data curation into the scholarly workflow using entirely open source tools and infrastructure.
“Partnering with the team at George Washington University and the Center for Open Science on this important project is central to the work of the Association,” said ARL executive director Elliott Shore. “We found in Megan a candidate with experience in open repositories and with the research community, and who has a demonstrable commitment to open science.” Megan has worked in the library of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Geneva Henry, dean of libraries and academic innovation at GW, said, “GW is committed to wide collaboration to ensure that data, which is often complex, is properly managed throughout the research life cycle. This opportunity to work with Megan, ARL, and COS brings expertise to our team to truly move us forward toward this strategic goal.”
“The combination of storing, curating, and sharing researcher workflow on the OSF and disseminating an enhanced description of that research’s life cycle via SHARE has the potential to greatly increase research efficiency, quality, and accessibility,” said Jeffrey Spies, COS’s chief technology officer and a co-lead on SHARE. “The NDSR program allows for the first concerted effort to explore and demonstrate the vital role the library will play in this process. Megan, GW and the GW Libraries, and ARL are ideal partners, and we’re excited to be working with them.”
Courtney Soderberg, statistical and methodological consultant at COS, will be giving a three-hour workshop on the Open Science Framework for the GW community on Tuesday, September 27, 3:00–6:00 p.m. EDT, in Gelman Library. Potterbusch begins her NDSR appointment on Monday, October 3.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
About Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology startup founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF), COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.
About the George Washington University
In the heart of our nation’s capital with additional programs in Virginia, the George Washington University (GW) was created by an Act of Congress in 1821. Today, GW is the largest institution of higher education in the District of Columbia. The university offers comprehensive programs of undergraduate and graduate liberal arts study, as well as degree programs in medicine, public health, law, engineering, education, business, and international affairs. Each year, GW enrolls a diverse population of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from across the country and around the world. GW is on the web at gwu.edu.
