Faculty Bibliography

BACKGROUND:Better research data management (RDM) provides the means to analyze data in new ways, effectively build on another researcher's results, and reproduce the results of an experiment. Librarians are recognized by many as a potential resource for assisting researchers in this area, however this potential has not been fully realized in the biomedical research community. While librarians possess the broad skill set needed to support RDM, they often lack specific knowledge and time to develop an appropriate curriculum for their research community. The goal of this project was to develop and pilot educational modules for librarians to learn RDM and a curriculum for them to subsequently use to train their own research communities. MATERIALS AND METHODS/METHODS:We created online modules for librarians that address RDM best practices, resources and regulations, as well as the culture and practice of biomedical research. Data was collected from librarians through questions embedded in the online modules on their self-reported changes in understanding of and comfort level with RDM using a retrospective pre-post design. We also developed a Teaching Toolkit which consists of slides, a script, and an evaluation form for librarians to use to teach an introductory RDM class to researchers at their own institutions. Researchers' satisfaction with the class and intent to use the material they had learned was collected. Actual changes in RDM practices by researchers who attended was assessed with a follow-up survey administered seven months after the class. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS:The online curriculum increased librarians' self-reported understanding of and comfort level with RDM. The Teaching Toolkit, when employed by librarians to teach researchers in person, resulted in improved RDM practices. This two-tiered curriculum provides concise training and a ready-made curriculum that allows working librarians to quickly gain an understanding of RDM, and translate this knowledge to researchers through training at their own institutions.

Mobile devices are becoming profoundly important tools for finding and accessing information in medicine; however, accessing institution-licensed content on mobile devices can be problematic. An assessment was performed of selected library systems, publisher platforms, and licensed information resources for compatibility with several types of smartphones and tablets. The majority of products assessed had some form of mobile compatibility, but mobile compatibility varied among product categories and the form of mobile compatibility varied among products. This assessment reveals that users of academic health sciences libraries may have an incongruent user experience on mobile devices due to the diversity of digital platforms.

The scientific community's growing eagerness to make research data available to the public provides libraries — with our expertise in metadata and discovery — an interesting new opportunity. This paper details the in-house creation of a "data catalog" which describes datasets ranging from population-level studies like the US Census to small, specialized datasets created by researchers at our own institution. Based on Symfony2 and Solr, the data catalog provides a powerful search interface to help researchers locate the data that can help them, and an administrative interface so librarians can add, edit, and manage metadata elements at will. This paper will outline the successes, failures, and total redos that culminated in the current manifestation of our data catal

OBJECTIVE: The research obtained information to plan data-related products and services. METHODS: Biomedical researchers in an academic medical center were selected using purposive sampling and interviewed using open-ended questions based on a literature review. Interviews were conducted until saturation was achieved. RESULTS: Interview responses informed library planners about researchers' key data issues. CONCLUSIONS: This approach proved valuable for planning data management products and services and raising library visibility among clients in the research data realm.

INTRODUCTION This paper describes the development of the New York University Health Sciences Library's Faculty Bibliography. DESCRIPTION Since 2000, the NYU Health Sciences Library's Faculty Bibliography project has systematically tracked publications of the NYU School of Medicine faculty. The project has grown to a significant institutional service making prominent contributions to the School of Medicine's public web presence and to advanced productivity metrics. Migrating from Gopher to EndNote to MySQL, the Faculty Bibliography harvests data from multiple abstracting and indexing resources and uses sophisticated quality assurance methodologies. At present the Faculty Bibliography tracks over 228,000 publications of well over 13,000 faculty, including faculties of the NYU Colleges of Dentistry and Nursing. Both technical and social engineering aspects of the project's success are discussed; the project's role in deepening professional contact between the Library, clinical and research faculty, and School administration is stressed. NEXT STEPS The Library currently envisions broadening coverage to include faculty engaged in scientific and medical publishing from other schools and colleges at NYU. We also anticipate significant improvements in the project's methodology once the ORCID initiative takes root.