News Blog | University Library

I want to live in an open-source house

Perhaps the reality of inhabiting a structure for which the assembly of requires “minimal formal skill or training” would be less than ideal. Nonetheless, the WikiHouse project is one of my favorite examples of something made available under a creative commons license. Part of why I find this project so intriguing is its potential as a unique entry point for talking to people about open-access and the creative commons. The ubiquity of makerspaces are proof, people love this kind of stuff. Imagine teaching a classroom full of students about open access publications they can use for their research and digital media they are free to use in their projects, all while they sit on open-source stools. This scenario could demonstrate to students, in a very tangible way, the power of creating something and sharing it openly under a creative commons license. -TP

Historical Census Browser

My last post examined a tool for exploring current Census data and exporting it in an easy to use format. Now what about historical Census data? Not the data from a few decades ago – we’re talking about the really old stuff. Finding this type of historical Census data is notoriously difficult, more so than finding new data. Sifting through the Decennial Censuses that have been digitized is overwhelming for your average library user. Propriety services that offer access to some historical census data with added value, such as GeoLytics, are typically expensive and not always chronologically comprehensive. Fortunately for us, as is often the case, libraries fill the void between the unpolished raw data and the propriety systems that add costly value to this data.The University of Virginia Library’s Historical Census Browser offers a way to interact with data from the U.S. Decennial Census 1790 to 1960. The original source of the data is the U.S. Census Bureau and was then compiled in an electronic format by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), available here. The Historical Census Browser provides a nice way for your average library user to interact with this data. Users can build queries and generate tables to answer specific questions. The tool even provides a basic mapping function for one variable at the state level. Unfortunately, the tool does not provide a way to export the data. For users keen to manipulate this data, there is an extension for Google Chrome, DataMiner, which allows content to be scraped from web pages and converted into spreadsheets.It would be great to see more libraries offering services similar to the Historical Census Browswer, built on publicly-available data and shared widely. After all, if the data are freely available, why should libraries pay gobs of money for proprietary services that add minimal value?

IUPUI Faculty Pass OA Policy

We are pleased to announce another step forward for open access at IUPUI.Yesterday afternoon the IUPUI Faculty Council passed a campus-wide open access policy based on the Harvard opt-out model. This policy is an outcome of several years of persistent and creative work at IUPUI.The policy will be implemented by IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Scholarship with support from subject liaison librarians as well as all four of our campus libraries. IUPUI's campus includes 17 schools, including the second largest medical school in the United States. This policy will increase access to a wide-range of important scholarship authored on the IUPUI campus.The policy, which passed “unanimously,” is available from the IUPUI Faculty Council website in draft form as it was approved.

Nature Communications to become fully open access

A core multidisciplinary science journal, Nature Communications, is set to become fully open access on October 20, 2014.

Indianapolis to Host the 2nd Annual Digital Public Library of America Fest

In a collaborative application from the Indianapolis Public Library, the Indiana State Library, the IUPUI University Library, and the Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis has been selected to host the next DPLA Fest, April 17-18, 2015. DPLAfest 2015, a two-day public event set to coincide with DPLA’s second birthday, will bring together hundreds of people from DPLA’s large and growing community of librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, teachers and students, and members of the public for community-oriented public workshops, presentations, hackathons, engaging discussions with community leaders and practitioners, fun events, and more.

Census Data Made Easy

Finding government information can be challenging, even for those of us practiced in the task. Uncovering government data in a form that is easily usable can be even more difficult, graying the hair of many a social scientist.Investigative Reporters & Editors had built an interface (census.ire.org) that facilitates locating and downloading data from the U.S. Census. Along with connecting users to Census data, the site provides concise descriptions of the geographical units over which the Census is measured. The project is supported by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University Of Missouri School Of Journalism.

DPLA Presenter Update at Indiana Library Federation Annual Conference

Amy Rudersdorf, Assistant Director for Content at DPLA, will be presenting in Emily Gore’s stead at ILF in November 2014.

Be Heard: IUPUI Open Access Policy Information Sessions

IUPUI's Faculty Council is currently considering the adoption of a campus-wide, opt-out open access policy. I think that's great news! If you're reading this on a screen, you should think it's great news too. Why? Because this is IUPUI; we do great work here--really. In addition to the second largest medical school in the United States, the IUPUI campus includes a lot of scholars with a passion for civic participation and community engagement. Here's a chance for us to honor those values and to give access to IUPUI's research and scholarship to any reader on the Internet. The good news is that this can be done at no cost to authors and while respecting academic freedom. For the details, read the policy: https://openaccess.iupui.edu/If you're not familiar with the Harvard (2008) model open access policy, it's likely that you have some questions about how all this works. Such as: What about copyright? Will this hurt my favorite journal? Why not just use PubMed Central? (Tip: check the policy documentation--where the FAQs are succinctly answered.)

An interesting case statement from the Research Data Alliance: the BioSharing Registry

A working group of the Research Data Alliance has proposed a case statement to develop the BioSharing Repository into a registry. Admittedly, I wasn't clear about the distinction until I read through the report a couple of times. Now that I have a better understanding of what the working group is trying to accomplish, I am eager to see how this plays out and if it can adapted in other fields. Personally, I can attest to how hard it is to find relevant standards and repositories for a particular research project. There are simply too many to know and no good way to find the ones that you or your colleagues don't know.

Upcoming Data Visualization Workshop

On Tuesday, September 9th I will be teaching a workshop on data visualization for the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute, “Introduction to Data Visualization I: Visualization with Gephi.” For the uninitiated, Gephi is an open-source network visualization program. The tool is ideal for networks of any size. It offers a vast array of network analysis and visualization options, including geospatial layouts for data, statistical measures for social network analysis, and dynamic network visualization. Gephi handles a variety of data formats and allows the construction of datasets within the tool itself, perfect for those working with smaller amounts of data. Gephi runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.