A Library Data Lab is for people, not machines

July 20, 2018 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

In a short while I will leave the well-known world of academic libraries to take on the position as director of libraries and citizen services in Roskilde Municipality. I’m looking very much forward to work with public libraries but I will also miss working with education and research, students and researches in universities. Looking back, one of the things that I am utterly proud of is the making of Digital Social Science Lab that we opened in February 2016 at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences in Copenhagen. To give a proper farewell and hat tip to something that I have invested much energy, time and passions in, I have translated an article I wrote a while back for Danish LIS journal REVY together with DSSL partner in crime, Mads Korsgaard. Links to other writings on Digital Social Science Lab at the bottom of this post.

A Tuesday evening 25 students has showed up to Digital Methods Sessions in Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) in the basement of the Faculty Library of Social Sciences. Digital Methods Session is a recurring event where students share their experiences about their work on digital data handling and analysis methods in small TED Talk-like presentations. Rasmus, studying sociology at the University of Copenhagen, tells about how he has collected 2.5 million blog posts and online articles in his master thesis about the crypto market (the deep and dark web of drugs and weapons) to perform a topic modeling on the incredibly large amount of data. Through topic modeling, he has managed to extract the most commonly used concepts, analyze how they relate to each other, and demonstrate how the discourse online follows concrete events in the “physical” world. Finally, he demonstrates how he has conducted data visualization that illustrates the online debate about the crypto market and its evolution over time. Rasmus’ method differs from the classical social science empirical collection through, for example, questionnaires and interviews, and it is a good example that research, education and learning have changed in line with technological developments. In DSSL, we are not trying to tell students and researchers that one method is better than the other, but we want to show them that there are options for exploring the world around us than just a few years ago. Functioning as an open platform for working on digital methods DSSL is thus a response to the significant changes in our technological capabilities to become wiser on the world. Students and employees of today’s education and research institutions use new resources, methods, skills and tools in their work, and libraries can not afford to ignore this if they continue to create value.

Student presentation at a Digital Methods Session

The library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow

One can respond to this development in many ways, and DSSL is just one of those. One of the core thoughts behind DSSL is the facilitating aspect, where the library, like Digital Methods Sessions, facilitates students, researchers and other stakeholders to meet and work together, exchange ideas and learn from each other. Another example of facilitation could be the so-called data sprints, where students and researchers meet and jointly work, play and explore larger datasets in the framework offered by DSSL. The facilitating approach is a strong strategy for the academic library, which takes advantage of its position as an open and interdisciplinary platform, but also recognizes that it is an area where the library’s competence and resources do not have the power to independently lift the task with optimal effect. In addition, the library, under the auspices of DSSL, also offers courses in various programs and tools for data handling and analysis. The ambition is to offer something in all aspects of the workflow with data: Harvesting (eg Netvizz), cleaning (eg Open Refine), analysis (eg NVivo or SPSS) and visualization (eg Gephi)

Visualization of the data workflow we are covering in DSSL

An alternative to the classic learning situation

When thinking about a data lab, one would typically imagine a space filled with computers, but the first thing that strikes one when entering DSSL is that here has been made some quite different choices compared to the traditional data room. Rather than being a local stationary computer, DSSL appears as a small-futuristic botanical landscape with rolling cushions and plants in all shades – as a blend between a Starbucks-style café environment and a Silicon Valley-inspired innovation lab. This has been a very conscious choice, based on the experience that today’s students almost always work from their own laptops and that these machines are gradually powerful enough to settle the vast majority of social science projects. The focus has therefore been on creating a facilitating framework for student learning processes rather than filling up the room with hardware. However, DSSL contains 4 stationary workstations located under a palm tree in the corner of the room if you need additional processor power for a project. In order to create a functional and aesthetically inspiring physical framework, we engaged production designer Helle Egsgaard to create a unique design and narrative of the room and it’s interior. The Faculty Library of Social Sciences is located in a building on the corner of the Botanical Garden, which previously housed the old Botanical Laboratory. This became a continuous inspiration element in the design process, and the botanical themes of DSSL are therefore a tribute to the history of the site in the meeting of the organic plants and the more sterile work with data. The purpose of the alternative arrangement has been to create a form of “otherspace” with surroundings that invite creative thinking and innovative knowledge production.

Data sprint on fake news in DSSL

Conceptually, a lab is a place that differs from the living room – it is a place where you go to experiment, to try out new combinations and to “invent” new products and processes. The idea of DSSL has thus also been to offer an alternative to the lecture hall, which is the most common learning room at most educational institutions. The lecture hall as a venue is suitable for many things, but the physical space framework limits certain social learning processes, and the students usually operate as passive recipients of knowledge. The idea of DSSL, on the other hand, has been to create a physical framework for the students to be active knowledge producers. The room is therefore designed to be dynamic and all furniture is on wheels so that the room can easily be changed depending on the learning process to be supported at a given time. For example, you can quickly go from a lecture situation to group work with laptops and data visualization on the room’s three projectors. Still looking for the limits for DSSL The library is working to fill the frameworks with a lot of relevant content and create an engaging environment around DSSL, and this is where the two main elements come into play: In part, as mentioned, the library constantly develops and offers different courses on digital methods and data handling, and partly focus on the facilitating element, where the DSSL platform functions as an open-source hub that can connect committed students and researchers across institutions and support externally driven events. The interest in the project has been high from the outset, and DSSL has set up more than 80 different workshops, courses and events before the end of its first year of living and the development has been steady ever since.

There is now doubt in my mind that Digital Social Science Lab is creating significant value to learning, education and research. Key to success? The focus on people instead of machines

Cheers

Christian

Links to other writings on DSSL:

The facilitating approach: https://christianlauersen.net/2018/04/20/beyond-tables-and-chairs/

Curation of open data sources: https://christianlauersen.net/2016/08/25/libraries-curating-open-data-sources/

The DSSL Declaration: https://christianlauersen.net/2016/01/27/digital-social-science-lab-declaration/

Thoughts on the DSSL decor: https://christianlauersen.net/2015/11/23/to-work-with-data-is-to-travel/

On where it all started: https://christianlauersen.net/2015/03/14/bringing-technology-and-academia-together-the-making-of-digital-social-science-lab/

The Library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow

December 12, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

Text of my presentation at the Library Connect webinar “Research data literacy and the library” December 8^th 2016. Other presenters was Sarah Wright from Cornell University and Anita de Waard from Elsevier.

Hi all. Land line phones is like a vintage thing around here so I’m calling in from Copenhagen on a cell phone and I hope you will all be able to hear me clearly. I’m gonna be talking about how Copenhagen University Library is supporting data literacy among students and researchers. We started early 2016 by opening 3 physical data lab in 3 different faculty libraries. In my talk I will mainly focus on one of the data labs, Digital Social Science Lab, at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences.

But first I like to ask and answer the question “Why supporting data literacy at all?”. Basically what we are doing in at Copenhagen University Library is a reaction to some of the changes we have seen in higher education in recent years. I like to give you an example on those changes. When I did my master thesis back in 2007 I did interviews with relevant people to collect information and data on my field of interest; I had recorded the interviews, transcribed them and analyze what was said in them. That was my data and the way of handling it. Today students and researchers has other opportunities to explore the world. In Digital Social Science Lab we recently had a master student presenting how he harvested 2.5 million online articles on the crypto marked, analyzed them with a machine learning method called topic modeling and in the end visualized the huge amount of data in one single slide. There is only 9 years between the two papers but they hold a huge difference in the way scholars work. Both methods are valid today and we are not trying to say, that one way is better than the other – we are simply trying to show students and researcher that there are other opportunities today.

The amount of open data available to use in research and studies has exploded. It’s so massive it’s beyond our imagination. It’s good, it gives us new doors to open in order to explore the world, but to get the keys to those doors, to get a benefit of this development, academia need the tools, methods and skills to master it – otherwise the doors are closed. And that’s what we are trying to support in our data lab’s.

In general, I strongly believe, that when higher education and research are changing, libraries should look at themselves and see if it should take some sought of action – a library of status quo is not a good library – and our 3 data lab’s is a direct reaction to the changes we have seen at our University.

The 3 data lab’s is located at the Faculty Libraries at Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural- and Health Science. They don’t function as isolated islands but as a connected network where we coordinate events, staff training, license agreements and so on.

I will now move on to talk specific about one of the data labs and how it works. Digital Social Science Lab is an open platform for education and events on digital methods. It’s relevant hardware and software for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data and it’s a flexible and dynamic physical learning environment.

One of the key elements in Digital Social Science Lab is events and instructions on different tools and methods for data handling to empower academia with data literacy. The library has its own regular courses but what you see on the slide is a faculty member from sociology who is doing a talk on how he uses network analysis tools on various data sets. So in this case the library is not the expert, we facilitate that data savvy folks meet, talk and learn from each other. I get back to that in a second.

On our own part of training and instructions we are trying to cover the whole workflow of working with data: From harvesting, to cleaning, to analyzing and visualizing data. We try to capture both introduction and advanced level on all tools and we have chosen both very advanced and powerful programs like NVivo which takes time to master, and more intuitive and easy programs like TCAT and Netvizz to make sure people new to data handling, is not scared off. The list of software and programs are dynamic and we add new ones to the list over time.

Besides our own instructional program, we facilitated peer-to-peer sessions in the data lab. We have a series of events called Digital Methods Session where students come and present their work and experiences using digital methods in studies to fellow students. We also do data sprints where people bring datasets and collaborate on analyzing them. We find the facilitating approached really really strong because the library can’t cover everything and because we this way help building a community for data literacy where we bring people together interdisciplinary across the whole university. That’s really valuable for academia; we are not only providing skills, we are also building a network.

We discussed how important the physical space was in the beginning of the process. You could argue that the training could take place anywhere but we ended up using a fair amount of energy and resource on the physical lab. We believe that the physical setup surrounding us highly effects our ability to learn and collaborated. So we decided to build a data lab for people and not for machines – there is only 4 workstations in the lab and that’s actually enough because students bring their own laptop’s and they are often powerful enough to handle the amount of data we work with. Everything is on wheels in the lab and can be moved around to fit different settings for learning. We have worked together with a production designer to create a visual story of the lab and we choose a botanical theme, both because the library is located in the old botanical laboratory but also because botanical researchers has always been really keen on exploring the world and collect and preserve data in form of plants and we thought that story would fit god to a library data lab.

With the physical setup of the data lab we also want to create an alternative to the traditional learning setting on campus. The traditional learning situation in higher education is rows of people who are listening to a lecture. We’re created a dynamic and flexible space where stuff can be moved around to fit different kind of scenarios and that have had a huge attraction on students and faculty members.

An important part of Digital Social Science Lab is the network and community we’re created around the lab. We both have internal and external partners who we collaborate with on events, workshops and sharing of ideas. We want to break down the silos between academic institutions because we think that scholars across intuitions and disciplines can learn a lot from each other.

If I should point to one key to success and impact in this area, it’s coffee. We have used a year of coffee drinking with students, faculty members and management. We have been presenting the basic idea of Digital Social Science Lab and gotten a lot of feedback. With the countless coffee appointments we have both created a solid base of knowledge on how to do this, but also a network and an ownership on the things we have been doing. People wanted to use Digital Social Science Lab before we even opened it.

I thought it might be interesting for you to hear a little about some of the challenges in the process of making Digital Social Science Lab. Two questions we have heard a lot doing the coffee drinking with students and faculty members is:

“Is this really a library task?”

And

“If you do this, is it on the benefit of something else?”

Man people have a fairly traditional idea of what a library is, and they are luckily very happy about the core services of the academic library. But the library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow, so we need to be a head of the changes that takes place in research and higher education and also be clear about this to the academic community.

Skill development had been going great but had the potential to be some sought of an obstacle. Some of the programs we work with is a bit aside from the regular library tasks and skills, so we have used a fair amount of time looking at the different programs and making skill development plans for each of them. The most important asset of Digital Social Science Lab is not the hardware or software but the people who connects the dots and it’s crucial that they got the right training and skills to carry out the job.

When you do something radical new I think it’s important that you think about how you talk about it to stakeholders and users. So we have used some time developing our story and get answers to “what we are doing” and “why it is important”. That has been really helpful in all the coffee drinking. We have been able to clearly explain what we plan to do and why.

That also has something to do with how the library position itself in the academic environment. We are moving into new land here and it’s been important for us, that no teachers has been thinking “what on earth are the library doing – it’s my job to teach SPSS”

What we’re learned doing the process is, that it’s absolutely not enough just to fill a room with hardware and software for working with data. It takes skills and facilitation from the library to bridge students and researchers with data literacy.

Skill development is crucial to support data literacy and it needs lots of planning and time.

The facilitating role for the library, bringing people together and building a community around data literacy, is a very strong position to take

In that sense network is key. Get on with the coffee drinking.

And then we found that the support of data literacy doesn’t fit all subjects the same way. We had a huge impact with this in Humanities and social Sciences but we are not having the same breakthrough with natural- and health science. That might has something to do with local context but we also find it hard to make a fit and find the right role for the library because the community of natural and health scholars has been working with data for a long time.

That’s it. Thanks for listening.

Libraries curating open data sources

August 25, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / 3 Comments

One of our main steppingstones in the creation of Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL ) was coffee. We made countless of coffee dates with various people around the Faculty of Social Sciences, Copenhagen University to talk about how they thought the faculty library’s upcoming data lab could be of value to them.

Over the coffee we heard a repeating need (especially from students) for access to data to play and work with. Often they got to know about a program for cleaning, analyzing, visualizing or in anyway handling data but needed some data to try it out on.It’s a very reasonable need: It’s hard to paint a picture if you have the brush but no colors to paint with.

We talked about that and came to the conclusion, that this need was pretty easy to solve: Libraries has been connecting the academic community to content for ages but instead of books or journals on various subjects, these students needed to be connected to some open data. There is plenty of good open data to go around it you know where to look so we decided to make a curated list of open data sources for them.

The list of open data sources has two purposes:

It connects students (and researchers for that matter) that has just explored a new tool for data handling and need some data to try it out on, with a curated list of open datasets of various kind. For many of these it’s not important what the data is about – they need some content so they can work with the tool and get better.
We decided also to focus on open datasets relevant to social sciences, so it also gives students and faculty members a door to valuable resources within their discipline.

The list contains both national and international datasets.

Link to the goodies: Digital Social Science Lab’s list op Open Data Sources

Happy data experimentation!

Christian

Libraries Opening Paths to Knowledge: The Data Literacy case

June 27, 2016June 27, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

I’m attending the LIBER Conference 2016 on June 29 – Juli 1st in Helsinki, Finland, with a Poster Presentation together with data literacy partner in crime and name brother, Christian B. Knudsen.

The theme of this years conference is Libraries Opening Paths to Knowledge. I really like this framing because it implies that the path to knowledge for the ones we serve, the academic community, does not only lies in the collection of the library and the navigation of this, but also in the surrounding world. As LIBER writes on the conference website:

Ensuring access to knowledge has always been at the heart of the mission of research libraries. In the digital age, and with the growth of Open Science, this implies not only preserving and providing access to content but also opening up new pathways to interacting with and creating knowledge.

The theme are focusing on the following 4 implications on this matter:

1) Content and Processes

Working ever more closely with researchers throughout the research life cycle to encourage and help them to open up their research process and to make both their outputs and methodologies available during and beyond the life of a research project, libraries are moving from curation to creation and workflows.

2) Services

Engaging in user-led development of services, and a trend towards the creation of shared services as well as developing new methods and opportunities for user engagement.

3) Legal & Ethical

Keeping abreast of emerging legislative developments and considering how to act responsibly to address ethical issues in making data open. Opening up new pathways to knowledge and knowledge creation can also have legal and ethical implications related to copyright and data protection.

4) Space & Experimentation

Rethinking library spaces (physical and virtual) to open up opportunities for experimentation and the visualization of data, and leveraging e-infrastructure to support collaboration and sharing across borders and disciplines.

We are travelling to Helsinki with a poster presentation that have a leg in 1), 2) and 4). The poster is called “Connecting academia with data litearcy: The development of three data labs at Copenhagen University Library” and it looks like this:

The poster is the story about how the Copenhagen University Library, is crossing our Rubicon to expand the scope of the academic library from:

providing access to a (library) collection + supporting information literacy to navigate in this, to also:
point the academic community to the possibilities which is made possible with the rapid expansion and access to open data + tools, methods and skills to work with them to get wiser on the World that we are living in

In short: The building blocks for gaining new knowledge has changed. You don’t always need to actually look physical at the world to explore things. One could also set up an API track filter to harvest the Twitter hashtag for Brexit to explore what when down on Twitter when UK left the European Union. Research, education and learning has changed. And when those changes the Academic Library should take a long thorough look in the mirror to see if it’s need to change it’s setup. And I guess we should.

The development is very well illustrated by the story of when I did my master thesis in 2017 contrary to when Rasmus, a random dude studying sociology at University of Copenhagen, did his bachelor project:

Me (20o7): Did 5 interviews with a university director, a library director, two librarians and a governmental dude, to explore the function of the University Library in post modernity. Got 8 hours of interview on tape, transcript them all (took sooooo long), did word count in Word and then started analyzing different discourses from that.

Rasmus (2016): Scraped 2,4 millions posts from online forums about the shady cryptomarket to show how the political discourse has declined over time in this domain – using algorithmic topic modeling to analyze the giant corpus of text.

Our point is not that Rasmus’ works is better than mine was in 2007 – it’s still a valid method. Our point is that students and faculty members of today and the future got different opportunities and as a library we want to connect them with those opportunities.

Yours truly with the Liber 2016 poster

Below the Why, the What, the How + some more of Copenhagen University Library’s support of data literacy through three Data Labs.

Why?
Acacemic libraries have been supporting information literacy in academia for many years, but new technological possibilities requires a new skill set – data literacy. Today harvesting gigabytes of data from social media platforms, embedded sensors or open data repositories is no longer the exclusive domain of professors. First-year students have access to almost unlimited amounts of data, and the possibilities for vizualising this data, actually the necessity of visualizing huge datasets are unprecedented.

What?
To meet this inherent demand for data literacy, Copenhagen University Library has established three Data Labs at the faculty libraries for Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural & Health Sciences. The Data Labs are open platforms for supporting data literacy within studies and research through tutorials, workshops, and events on digital methods in the diverse subjects.

How?
The Data Labs connects academia with digital methods and skills with events and workshops and by connecting the different scholarly subjects with relevant software and hardware. We are trying to capture the whole data workflow from harvesting (e.g. NVivo, TCAT and Netvizz), cleaning (SPSS and OpenRefine), Analyzing (NVivo, Stata, SAS, SPSS and Excel) and Visualizing (Gephi). The Labs also provide relevant hardware like 3D scanners and powerful workstations.

Skills
The concept is both to provide access to establish a user driven community in the Data Labs but also to support digital methods through own library instructions. Data sciences is a faily new concept in academic libraries, and the skill set needed is not nescesarily present in the current staff. A key to success in establishing the datalabs has therefore been development of new competencies and skills in programming, data abstraction and visualization. No single information specialist is expected to be able to perform scientifically valid statistical analyses or visualizations of data. But a basic level of skills, adequate for harvesting simple data, cleaning, processing and graphing them is required.

On this matter also read: Librarians as Data Scientist, really?

Outreach
Connecting with the scholarly environment has had mixed results. Some subjects have eagerly grasped the opportunity to use the physical facilities for their own purposes. Other subjects has viewed the initiative with some skepticism. Especially the natural sciences has questioned the qualifications of the library in regards to data sciences. The initiative have however been uniformly well received – the need for improving the data literacy of students is universally recognized.

The Data Lab as Space
Different approaches has been taken in the physical setup. The Digital Social Science Lab has worked specifically with the decoration of the lab and has created a mobile and aesthetic learning environment which functions as an alternative to the traditional lecture hall or class room and also provides ‘otherspaces’ like a tent with a turn table. The other Data Labs has taken a more traditional approach with basic furnishing. The impression so far is, that students respond better to unconventional interior design.

On this matter also read: To work with data is to travel: The decor story of Digital Social Science Lab

Case: The data lab as network hub: creating a digital social scientific community
Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) at Faculty Library of Social Sciences is not only a physical space but also a conceptual platform, which acts as a network hub – connecting students and researchers interested in digital methods across subjects and institutions. The Library takes a facilitating role in that process by creating a social environment around DSSL, where digital skills can be distributed between peers. “Digital Methods Session” is a series of student-2-student-based events, where students can share their experiences with digital methods and tools and inspire and enlighten each other. Here you can e.g. meet sociology student Rasmus, who scraped 2,4 millions posts from online forums about the shady cryptomarket to show how the political discourse has declined over time in this domain – using algorithmic topic modeling to analyze the giant corpus of text. The interdisciplinarity of these sessions are a really important aspect in order to create a unique learning context with a broad range of perspectives, and to give the students a possibility to network with likeminded people with DSSL as the facilitating platform.

See you in Helsinki!

Cheers

Christian

Exploring the data journey in social sciences

May 19, 2016May 23, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / 3 Comments

In Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences we support education, research and learning within social sciences by connecting students and faculty members with digital tools and methods through different kinds of events, workshops, lectures and projects.

Some instructions we handle our self and some we facilitate.

For the part we have in-house skills + software and hardware to carry out we have developed a data workflow. We like not only to focus on one thing, e.g. harvesting or cleaning, but to see the work with data in academia as a journey or a process where the different parts of handling and analyzing data is connected (actually the physical setup and decor of the lab also is grounded in the concept of traveling – I wrote about it here: https://christianlauersen.net/2015/11/23/to-work-with-data-is-to-travel/)

In order to communicate that + the types of software and hardware DSSL offers we have made this visualization:

My question to fellow data librarians, schorlary communication people and students + academics of the world is:

1) Does this visualization make sense?

2) Is there software and/or steps in the data workflow that should be added to the list?

The list has come to life after tons of coffee talks with students and faculty members who has shared there input to the concept of DSSL and the content we should work on.

Looking forward to your feedback

Cheers

Christian

Towards Rubicon: The Academic Library and the importance of making a choice

March 8, 2016March 14, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / 3 Comments

On the 18th of February 2016 we opened Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences / Copenhagen University Library.

DSSL is an open platform for events focusing on digital tools and methods for data handling and data analysis within social sciences. The aim is to support data literacy in academia. DSSL is equipped with powerful iMac’s and PC workstations, 3 projectors, a big mobile touchscreen and software for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data. We have skills to support various digital tools and is also highly active on facilitating peer to peer workshops and data sprints. The physical DSSL space is constructed as a dynamic, functional and mobile inspiring learning space and is available for everybody who wish an alternative to the traditional lecture hall situation.

For the opening we did a bubbles and data jam opening reception and at my opening speak I told a story about Caesar, a river and about making a choice. It’s a story that draws several lines to the state of The Academic Library in these years.

19th-century illustration, “Caesar crossing the Rubicon.” Romans under Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River from Gaul into Italy in 49 B.C. Caesar, in breaking Roman law by leading his army back across the river towards Rome, uttered “alea iacta est” (“the die is cast).

Crossing the River

The calendar says the 10th of January in the year 49 BC. We are in the Italian city, Ravenna, the General and Governor of Gaul, Julius Caesar, has a problem. The Senate in Rome has given him an ultimatum: Either he’ll give up his province and his army or he will be declared an enemy of the State. Like any man of power, Caesar is not very pleased about this. Caesar seems not to care: he eats dinner with friends and go see the circus. But at nighttime he leads a single legion into the dark towards the River of Rubicon. Rubicon is the boarder river between his North Italian province and the State of Rome. Caesar reaches Rubicon in the early morning and looks out on the water. He has to make a choice: If he don’t passes the river but returns to his province of Gaul, trying to maintain status quo, he will over time be marginalized in the Roman Empire and be defeated by the powers that is gathering around him. If he crosses the river there is no turning back. He will put himself in great danger but will remain the initiative on his own hands.

As many of you may know, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and he succeeded with his mission.

With the opening of Digital Social Science Lab we, like many other academic libraries in these years, crossed a river too. We decided to look further than our own collection and be an active part in creating a sustainable platform for data, tools and skills in research and education. But there is an important difference from this and the choice Caesar made; This is not about survival or the remaining of power. The Digital Social Science Lab is about creating value to the academic community of researcher, teachers and students at the Faculty of Social Sciences and University of Copenhagen. That is why we are crossing the river.

Three top photos: The opening of Digital Social Science Lab
Bottom photo: The Digital Social Science Lab in panorama

The Academic Library on the move

Why did Caesar cross Rubicon? Basically because his surroundings was changing and so he acted on that. He made a choice. The conditions for academia is changing too: We are pacing from The Gutenberg Paradigm to The Web Paradigm and the building blocks for research, studies, education and learning is not only to be find in books and journals. There are everywhere, we call them ‘data’ and there is many set’s of methods and tools to navigated in this. When the conditions for academia changes it should lead to action – or at least consideration – from libraries. Libraries are not closed circuits, they are – or should – be well integrated value-adding units in the academic community.A library data service of any form is a reaction to these changes, a choice from the library to move from status quo and into a new field of academic support and collaboration. I salute this strongly. That said there is no doubt in my mind that the access to relevant academic literature and the support of information literacy is the key stones in an academic library and will be in the (close) future also. But that’s not a reason to stay put and not to move when the surroundings are changing.

Thinking about it’s not that big a leap: The Academic Library has always been build up around a collection and the ability to navigate in that collection. In the past this ability highly was the librarians privileged but later the profession developed to a higher focus on the support of information literacy – we don’t catch fish for them, we teach them how to catch their own fish. Data, in it’s essence, is just another collection. It might not be the library’s collection but researchers, scholars and students uses it in there work. It’s often a messy and dirty collection but there are lot’s of tools and methods to clean up, structure, analyze and visualize. It’s in this field of data, tools/methods and academia that I believe the academic library is a strong platform – either as an expect on specific tools and methods or as a facilitator and incubator.

I can’t speak for other Universities but in Copenhagen, there is no central platform to lift the demand of data literacy in academia and the beauty of the academic library is, that is for everybody across departments, subjects, levels of education and research. That’s a position that is very strong when it comes to supporting a field that is highly cross-disciplinary.

Alea iacta est

When Caesar decided to cross Rubicon he said the famous words “alea iacta est” (“the dice is cast”). For us, the dice was cast with the opening of Digital Social Science Lab. We have made a choice to cross the river and boy is this exciting times. We might fail big time but I still believe that’s better than staying on the safe shore and see a great opportunity sail by.

I’m hoping that many libraries will stare unto the river and eventually cross it too. And remember, it’s not about survival – it’s about creating value.

Cheers

Christian

Why, what and how? The Digital Social Science Lab Declaration

January 27, 2016February 1, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / 1 Comment

We are creating a data lab at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences at Copenhagen University Library. It’s called Digital Social Science Lab.

Digital Social Science Lab is an open platform and a physical learning environment for connecting academia to digital tools through education and events focusing on digital methods and data literacy within social sciences.

In order to communicate the meaning, vision and value of Digital Social Science Lab we have worked out a declaration which pinpoints the why’s, what’s and how’s of the lab. It goes like this:

The Digital Social Science Lab Declaration

In a time where human behaviour increasingly takes place in the digital domain, contemporary research calls for an interaction between traditional academia and modern digital technologies.
Therefore, Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) is intended as an open platform for education and events focusing on digital methods in social sciences.
Equipped with powerful iMacs and PC-workstations, 3 projectors and software for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data, DSSL is ready for the exploration of the world of digital methods.
But in DSSL we don’t just want you to be a passive receiver of knowledge – we want you be an active knowledge creator!
Therefore, the space is designed as an dynamic and aesthetically inspiring learning environment – ready to fuel your creativity and launch experimentation leading to scientific innovation.
The lab is also intended as an offer for all staff members, who wish an alternative to the traditional lecture hall situation.
Moreover, we want to facilitate the sharing of skills, knowledge and perspectives across subjects, professions and institutions.
So we hereby invite everybody from students to researchers to participate in co-creating the DSSL-environment. Don’t hesitate to take initiative and get in touch with us, if you want to get involved.

The DSSL Declaration will be used to communicate the message and meaning to faculty members and students – hopefully they will connect with it.

Cheers,

Christian

The Library Lab

libraries, learning and lego

data lab