inside zoological collections: perspectives of the academic (re)user
DESCRIPTION
Presented at The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections June 17- 22, 2013, Rapid City, South Dakota. Great effort has gone into digitizing and aggregating natural history collections, but what data from the collections are being reused and by whom? This panel presentation draws from interviews with 27 zoologists who reuse data from specimens other people collect. The zoologists were interviewed about their recent data reuse experiences, including their research questions and data discovery and selection processes. Findings from the interviews will be presented, including a discussion about the data’s contextual information that zoologists needed during reuse. This study is part of the Dissemination Information Packages for Information Reuse (DIPIR) project. DIPIR is three year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project that is examining data reuse in three academic disciplines – quantitative social science, zoology, and archaeology. One of the project’s major objectives is to understand how the context of data production that supports data reuse can best be curated and preserved.TRANSCRIPT
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Inside Zoological Collections: Perspectives of the Academic (Re)user
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, June 17- 22, 2013, Rapid City, South Dakota
Ixchel M. Faniel, Ph.D.
OCLC Research
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• Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project led by Drs. Ixchel Faniel (PI) & Elizabeth Yakel (co-PI)
• Studying the intersection between data reuse and digital preservation in three academic disciplines to identify how contextual information about the data that supports reuse can best be created and preserved.
• Focuses on research data produced and used by quantitative social scientists, archaeologists, and zoologists.
• The intended audiences of this project are researchers who use secondary data and the digital curators, digital repository managers, data center staff, and others who collect, manage, and store digital information. For more information, please visit http://www.dipir.org
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Research Motivations & Questions
1. What are the significant properties of quantitative social science, archaeological, and zoological data that facilitate reuse?
2. How can these significant properties be expressed as representation information to ensure the preservation of meaning and enable data reuse?
Faniel & Yakel 2011
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DIPIR Project
Nancy McGovern
ICPSR/MIT
Ixchel Faniel
OCLC Research
(PI)
Eric Kansa Open Context
William Fink UM Museum of
Zoology
Elizabeth Yakel University of
Michigan (Co-PI)
The Research Team
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Methods Overview
ICPSR Open Context UMMZ
Phase 1: Project Start up
Interviews Staff
10 Winter 2011
4 Winter 2011
10 Spring 2011
Phase 2: Collecting and analyzing user data
Interviews data consumers
44 Winter 2012
22 Winter 2012
27 Fall 2012
Survey data consumers
Over 1,600 Summer 2012
Web analyticsdata consumers
Server logsOngoing
Observations data consumers
10Ongoing
Phase 3: Mapping significant properties as representation information
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A Snapshot of the 27 Data Reusers
63%
96%93%
reuse data from colleagues
26%
reuse data from other repositories and websites
reuse data from museums and archives
37%
are systematists
study ecological trends
reuse data from journal articles
26%
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The Data Discovery Process
I knew from prior experience which museums had large collections of material from the part of the world I was
interested in (CAU19).
… we started from that [author] paper and then added to it from other people’s work…So mostly from…reading other people’s papers (CAU22).
I’m at the point now where people know that this is kind of one of those things that I do. And so, people say “Oh, I have this
dataset” or “I know someone who has this dataset...” (CAU11).
…that [aggregator repository] targets so many different collections that once you have access you know pretty much…You can identify very quickly what you need (CAU13).
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Data Selection Criteria
Data coverage Geographic precision
Matches another dataset
Availability of voucher specimen
Time period specimen collected
Condition of specimen
Sequence has been published
Results of pre-analysis
Identification or location errors
Relevant taxonomically
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Data selection based on research objectives
For things like measurement, you want a well-preserved specimen that’s relatively straight and intact. (CAU01)
…often when it doesn’t meet my needs the most obvious reasons would be there’s just not enough data
or it doesn’t cover…Like geographically it doesn’t cover the area I’m interested in well enough
(CAU03).
…that’s the first filter…looking for specific species. And then for me, yeah, it’s been mostly about the geographic precision of the data, to say whether or not I can use that record for something. (CAU26).
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Data selection based on other datasets
…we decide, okay, these georeferences have an error that is probably higher than, let’s say, five kilometers but our climate data is the resolution, the pixel size,…is may be 4.5 kilometers. So, anything that is above that size of pixel that we have, we actually cannot use. (CAU14)
I include it [the sequence] in my dataset, do the analyses I’m going to do and then based on the results of those analysis look to see how those data match with the
data that I’ve collected. (CAU05)
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Trusting the data
I can sort of qualitatively assess what the quality of taxonomicdata might be just by it being, having some mention of the museum record. I know [a] …museum worker who is often... I don't know about an expert in say, my group, but at least has access to the relevant literature to make good taxonomic decisions about those fishes from which they took the tissue. (CAU02)
I would go back to the literature to look at the paper it came from. I guess there is also to some degree the particular
researchers’ that actually produced that sequence; I might actually know their reputations or what they kind of work on
and trust it more or less. (CAU12)
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Trusting the data
A lot of times, it's just a matter of looking at what the Latin name is that they supply because I can't really make a decision based on the information that I'm given. If I had a picture, I could use that when I'm taking into account their ability to identify something. But the main way that I do it is by looking at the geography of where they claim a specimen is located. (CAU17)
Well, if there's a voucher specimen available then I can request that specimen from the museum where it's housed,
re-examine it, confirm or deny that it is that particular species. If the voucher's there and it's the right species, then I have to go with it. If the voucher is not there, and I really question the
identification…Because it's unreliable in my mind. (CAU20)
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Acknowledgements
• Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Elizabeth Yakel, Co-PI
• Partners: Nancy McGovern, Ph.D. (MIT), Eric Kansa, Ph.D. (Open Context), William Fink, Ph.D. (University of Michigan Museum of Zoology)
• OCLC Fellow: Julianna Barrera-Gomez
• Students: Adam Kriesberg, Morgan Daniels, Rebecca Frank, Jessica Schaengold, Gavin Strassel, Michele DeLia, Kathleen Fear, Mallory Hood, Molly Haig, Annelise Doll, Monique Lowe