Welcome to the Statistical and Data Sources Library Research Guide. Please take a moment to peruse the guide in order to understand its organization and benefit from the linked items. The guide is a work in progress as it contains an incomplete but growing list of data and statistical sources, some subscribed but most freely available on the Internet. Once reviewed, and as time allows, links to additional sources will be added. This happens regularly, so check back often. Corrections, comments, and recommended additions are welcome. Please click the Guide Info and Terms tab for contact information.
Research Library Associations Endorse Open Data Accord
by Elliott Shore, Association of Research Libraries, April 29, 2016
The International Alliance of Research Library Associations (IARLA) —a global coalition of major research and academic library associations in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States —recognizes the importance of working towards a common vision for open data. We firmly believe that open data holds the key to addressing many societal challenges worldwide.
IARLA views the Science International accord on “Open Data in a Big Data World” as an important step towards creating and enabling this common vision of the importance of open data. In setting out principles for open data that are derived from emerging practices within the scientific community, the accord lends the voice of a key stakeholder to the case for open data and provides a practical road map for the implementation of open data at the global level.
We fully endorse the principles outlined in the accord. In particular we welcome the acknowledgment of the role that libraries can play in supporting open data. Indeed, libraries have a continuing role to collect, organize, and preserve knowledge, and to make it accessible. Within the open science environment these roles imply the provision of assistance and expert advice throughout the research life cycle, including facilitating the creation of data management plans, the use of metadata, and the curation and stewardship of data to make it available and visible over the long term. Libraries aim to create a supportive environment for scientists who wish to make their data open and for individuals who wish to discover, access, and reuse these data.
By signing this accord we declare our commitment to working with the scientific community in making publicly funded research data open by default. Data are the building blocks of knowledge. Therefore libraries, which exist to ensure access to knowledge, are key stakeholders in the open data environment. Libraries have a responsibility to make data discoverable, accessible, intelligible, assessable, and usable. It is of the utmost importance that the library community engage with the global scientific and research community on this issue in venues such as the Research Data Alliance. We look forward to engaging in the dialogue initiated by this accord and to working with the global community of stakeholders to implement the principles the accord promotes.
About the International Alliance of Research Library Associations
The International Alliance of Research Library Associations (IARLA) is a coalition of five of the world’s most prominent academic and research library organizations: Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Canadian Association of Research Libraries/ Association des Bibliothèques de Recherche du Canada (CARL/ABRC), Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER), and Research Libraries UK (RLUK). The alliance formed in 2016 to collaboratively address the most pressing issues of scholarly research information management in the digital, networked age.
Reproduced here from a widely distributed announcement of support for Open Data.
Sets out principles that define "openness" in relation to data and content
See a detailed definition of "open data" on this Wikipedia site.
Watch this YouTube video for an introduction to "Linked Data"
See a detailed definition of "microdata" on this Wikipedia site.
From the Office of Sponsored Programs, proposals submitted to NSF must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled "Data Management Plan" (DMP) . This document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results. Proposals that do not include a DMP will not be able to be submitted.
Article Abstract: This paper describes data literacy and emphasizes its importance. Data literacy is vital for researchers who need to become data literate science workers and also for (potential) data management professionals. It is important characteristic is a close connection and similarity to information literacy. To support this argument, a review of literature was undertaken on the importance of data, and the data-intensive paradigm of scientific research, researchers’ expected and real behaviour, the nature of research data management, the possible roles of the academic library, data quality and data citation, Besides describing the nature of data literacy and enumerating the related skills, the application of phenomenographic approaches to data literacy and its relationship to the digital humanities have been identified as subjects for further investigation. [NOTE: The article is available through subscription.]
Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a Web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.