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/

Beyond tables and chairs: The Library as facilitating platform

April 20, 2018May 1, 2018 / Christian Lauersen / 2 Comments

Text of my talk at the LIBER LAG Conference in Vienna April 18 – 20 2018

Hi all, my name is Christian. I’m with The Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen and is head of Roskilde University Library, Faculty Library of Social Sciences and The Administrative Library. I’m really thrilled to be with you here in Vienna to talk about the library as a place.

I find it a bit ironic that I’m talking in a session called ‘Learning Centers’ when I, well hate is a strong word, but I really have some big issues about the term ‘learning center’ used in library context. To me libraries are very much about learning and about people meeting, collaboration and talking. The library is also about collections for sure but a collection in itself is not the goal, the goal is to support learning, education and research and libraries are great at that so let’s just call it a library.

This is a library architecture conference and I have heard many great talks on library architecture the last couple of days. but I am not gonna talk about library architecture. I am not gonna talk about buildings, refurbishment or where to pick the best tables and chairs. I am not gonna talk about the wonders of having a landmark architectural piece of eye candy of a library building. I am gonna talk about the library as a place for what is has always been about: Learning, education, research and enlightenment and how we can actively empower that through the library as a physical space. I will use our Data Lab at The Faculty Library as a case for this but it is important to say that the idea can be applied in many areas.

What makes a great place? And is a library without books still a library?

But first I like to ask you two questions.

Is a physical library without any physical books or journals still a library? Imagine your library and take away all the books and journals – is it still a library? Is it the books and journals that defines a building as a library. Or is it something else?

[this question gave spark to a lively discussion among the audience most pointing at, that the aim and value of a library building in 2018 were beyond the storage of a physical collection]

In a world that is becoming more and more digital this is not only a rhetorical or philosophical question. It is a crucial question – at least in Copenhagen. And actually also an essential question we should never stop asking ourselves – what is a library and what makes it significant and valuable. I don’t believe that a physical collection defines a library building, it is a big part of our legacy and identity as libraries but the scope and the meaning of the library has always been greater than a book collection.

Next question: What makes a great place? Try to think about a place that you were recently that just made you feel good and comfortable, that made you feel safe and welcome. That is a subjective feeling what defines what one find a great place but I find it really useful, whenever I’m in a place where I really feel good, where I feel that I belong, to think about what it is about that place that make me feel like that. And then I start thinking that about how to take some of that and maybe transfer it into the library space. Chances are that I’m not the only one who feel that way about that place.

[a lady among the audience shared a wonderful story about a pastry café she visited in Vienna the day before were the decor, the smell and the service just made her feel at home]

If we look at the library building historical it has been a place to storage and access information and knowledge bound to physical formats like books and journals. Many libraries don’t need that place for storage and access the same way anymore when our collections are highly digital so do we still need physical libraries? For sure we see students flocking to the library to work and study without using the core library services but does that require a library building? Couldn’t that just be any building on campus? A study hub or a campus learning common? Maybe a so called Learning Center? Personally I think that a library is not only defined by its collection – whether it be a physical or electronic collection. It is a very important part, but our main assignment in my opinion is to support research, education and learning, and it relies on other activities than just the collection. Libraries are a people business, not a book business.

In this talk I will, using Digital Social Science Lab at the Faculty Library of Social Sciences, try to demonstrate that a physical library building without books is still a very relevant library if we are true to the original purpose of a library and how an active facilitating use of the physical library room can create new forms of learning and a sense of belongingness among students. In this case the focus is on creating a platform for sharing knowledge and network within data handling and data analysis, digital methods and social sciences but I believe this way of active utilization of the library space can be applied to many areas.

We don’t have patent on these thoughts. Back in the late 1800s Justin Windsor, the first president of the American Library Association, pointed out that The Library both had to be “…a repository, a collection, but also a workshop, a place where you together could be informed and learn about the world“. I highly agree with Mr. Windsor.

Old white dude with some healthy perspectives on libraries

My context for talking about this is important and might differ from your context: At Copenhagen University Library we use around 10 million US dollars on electronic resources a year and a little over 300.000 US dollars on physical items. At the same time we remove physical collection from open stacks to remote stacks to make the handling of reservations faster and more efficient and to make more room for students in the open libraries. We are only a year or two away from having 100% bookless faculty libraries. We have been forced to ask ourselves what we should do to our open library spaces when the books are not there anymore. There are many answers to that. Digital Social Science Lab is one of the answers.

Case: Digital Social Science Lab

At The Faculty Library of Social Sciences, we opened Digital Social Science Lab on 18th of February 2016 as a reaction to some of the changes we saw around us. And I am not talking about the bookless libraries here. When the world changes, it often affects the institutions and people we serve and when they change, libraries should also take a good look at whether there is something they should change. What we were seeing was students and faculty members turning to other resources than books and journals when they wanted to get insights on the world and carry out studies and research. The started collecting digital data. Students and researchers of higher education has always used data in there work; Collecting rocks, doing interviews, observing human behavior is all collecting data. But we experienced that they also started to deal with other kinds of data; harvesting social media data and use open data sources like Airbnb location or digitalizes maps of Greenland. They also started asking us if we could help them, for instance visualization of data or analyzing of huge amounts of text. So we moved on that and created Digital Social Science Lab to support data literacy in social sciences.

To meet this change and development in higher education we established Digital Social Science Lab. DSSL is a physical space for education and instructions for data handling within social sciences, it’s software and hardware for harvesting, clearing, analyzing and visualizing various kinds of data, it’s a community but most of all it’s a reaction.

In DSSL we have initiated some activities in order to create a bridge between the students and the digital methods. The library teach and do workshops on various software and methods for handling and analyzing data within social sciences – for example Netvizz and TCAT for harvesting data, Open Refine for cleaning, NVivo, SPSS and Excel for analysis and Gephi for visualization. It is a very important part of DSSL, but that is not what is important in this context. What I want to focus on is the facilitating work we put into it our data lab: We are trying to create a platform for people to meet and learn from each other in relation to work with data, we are trying to create a community where the library serves as platform and the librarian as facilitator. Again, this is just context and is not really important to my actually points with this talk.

Digital Social Science Lab is a huge success, we do around 80 events on data wrangling a year and the space has been nominated to the University of Copenhagen’s Yearly Study Environmental Award. I give credit to these 4 things: The facilitation, peer-to-peer learning, belongingness and the space.

How to fail at fostering learning

I’ve seen many attempts at creating new spaces at libraries to facilitate learning; Fab Lab’s, Makers Spaces, Data Labs, Learning Commons. Some were great and some failed and I really love failures, we should embrace failures and learn from them. When we fail we take a room and fill it with some nice furniture and some state-of-the-art hardware and software and stand back, excitingly waiting for people to start learn something. What happens in those cases is that students come with there own lab-tops, sits down and stats working like they have always done.

The most valuable asset of any great library place is the library staff. We need to take ownership of the library space, we need to facilitate learning processes, we need to tell stories about the library and the learning that we want to support. Architects can do the buildings but it is our responsibility as library professionals to provide the content.

So one way we take ownership of the space and the learning we want to support is to facilitate education and events to support data literacy, we are not the experts, we set a scene where people meet and learn together. One of the specific activities we are doing is an event series we call Digital Methods Sessions. It is an event where we invite students in to present their work with digital methods and data management for their fellow students. We typically have three groups of 20 minutes’ duration for the purpose of inspiring there peer students and give insights on other methods than the traditional ones. Digital Methods Sessions is not about learning something hands-on, the purpose is to inspire and create networks and new relationships.

We do one or two session per semester and we simply use our campus network to get students to come and share there ideas: Talk to the students and researchers we know have an interest in digital methods to hear if they know anybody who would be interesting in presenting; make calls in the various Facebook-groups relevant for the faculty etc. The more sessions we do the easier it seems to get students to come and present there work. We always wrap a session up with some snacks and beverages to support the network part of the concept.

Another facilitating activity is Data Sprint’s. A data sprint is a time-limited research and coding workshop where people from different academic and non-academic communities convene physically on a set of data within a curtain topic. The two latest data sprint’s has been on crypto marked and just a month ago a all-day, week-long data sprint on fake news which we co-hosted with TANT-Lab, our sister data lab, from Aalborg University. The data sprint was open for everybody and it was extremely satisfying to see scholars from the different institutions work together with journalists and just regular people walking in from the street. The aim of data sprint’s like these are typical two-fold: 1) to raise awareness on how digital methods can be used on various subjects and a more concrete final result of working with the data. In this case the data sprint contributed to a global Field Guide to Fake News.

The last example on how the facilitating approach in the physical library space can be used is actually not an active move by the library – it’s more of a consequence of the work we do. We discovered that there was a lot of independent Stata workshops (Stata is a program for working statistical data) going on in Digital Social Science Lab. It was simply students who had been meeting each other at various DSSL events and now had started a study group sharing knowledge and collaborating on Stata. We building communities here, ladies and gentlemen. Creating spaces where we can meet, talk and share.

Peer-to-peer learning

Now I’m not a learning expect but I can see that something different is happening when we set the scene with peer-to-peer sessions instead of the regular instructor/expert-to-student setup.

First of all it gives us other opportunities to create different events and learning content than if we where to be the expert/teacher/instructor on every event. I only have a certain amount of library staff, resources and skills and we have no chance to cover the whole spectrum of relevant digital methods and tools. And sometimes a student simply looks different at a certain method or tool than a library worker be course they are more often to use it on tasks in their academic life and not only as an instructor.

Then there is the actually learning situation. What we are doing right now is a pretty traditional learning setup: I know something, I talk and you listen. Not much interaction going on. When we as library professionals teach we represent an institution and they come with some sought of authority. That is totally cool and I think and hope many students see the teaching librarian as someone who really want to make the students succeed which gives the librarian a pretty great role. But it’s different than a student who shares some knowledge and experience on a specific tool or method: The librarian is a professional and the student is a peer and I think that students who learn from other students are more likely to think “hey, if Joe from sociology can do this Gephi data visualization for his paper so can I”.

When we set up our facilitating events we want the participants to be as equal as possible, we want them to collaborate and to work together. We don’t want one person standing at a chalk board being the expert. We want them to talk to each other, learn from each other, challenge each other. Small thing, we always serves a glass of wine and some snacks at the end of our sessions because we want them to stay and talk and network. Peer-to-peer learning seems to be really great at that.

Belonging

I believe the facilitating platform also brings another really important need to the table: A Sense of Belongingness. It is a human need that has a great interest with me. We all need to belong to something; a family, a job, a football team, a nation. If you tell me you don’t need to belong I’ll say you either a psychopath or a liar. Students and researchers at institutions of higher education are no different from that. For many students the study is a huge part of their life and I think it’s crucial for there wellbeing and ability to perform that they feel that they belong. Same go with researchers and teachers. As an open space, not focused on administration or grades, I think the library can help students belong in many ways. The community we have created with DSSL is bridging students with digital tool but it also makes a number of students feel like they belong to something. They will connect with peer students and scholars, they will form study groups, they will help each other, inspire each other, challenge each other. They will feel that they belong. And they will do good. In general I like academic libraries to be more aware of the social role they can play on campus.

Could we do this without a physical room. Maybe digital or just outside the library, somewhere on campus. I don’t think so or at least I’m sure it would not have the same impact. One of the reasons this is working so well is that we are doing in A Library. Sometimes as library professionals we seem to forget it but libraries are one of the most solid and trustworthy brands in the world. Both public and academic libraries are viewed as open spaces for enlightenment, collaboration, knowledge and experiences. A place where everybody is welcome. We make communities smarter (courtesy to library hero Jan Holmquist for the saying) by bringing people together. That is the library in the mind of many people with or without a physical collection. It’s important we remember this when we create and talk about libraries now and in the future.

Also, this is a picture from a regular reading hall at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences and some of you might remember me saying that we didn’t have any books no more. But what is that? Library shelves filled with books. That is true, we still have a great amount of books in the library space but they are all dead books that can’t be found in no catalog or be checked out. They are there because the book might be the single most significant symbol of what we are all about: Enlightenment, knowledge, education, research and learning. Everybody likes to be surrounded by books, it makes you feel good. And also they have a very excellent effect on the acoustics in a room.

Why do they come?

Storytelling and alternatives to the traditional learning setup

Some final notes on working with the actual room. We wanted the room to tell a story, a story about learning, a story about being curious, a story about travelling. So we went hunting for that story and stopped by our neighbor in Copenhagen, The Botanical Garden, the library itself is placed in the old Botanical Laboratory and we thought it was great that we were creating a Data Lab in a Botanical Lab. And it was a kind of magical place, like being in a Wes Anderson movie or something. And it was about things growing and people getting experiences and getting wiser. In a bit of a spooky way but still. So we tapped into that and created a story though the décor.

On practical note we wanted it to an alternative to the traditional learning environment on campus. This is what 90% of the learning spaces on our campus looks like. They are build for one-way communication and not for collaboration. The physical setting of the room is hindering your ability to learn in certain ways. So we made everything on wheels and mobile so we could have a traditional lecture but quickly turn it into a workshop setting.

Digital Social Science Lab two hours before the opening

I hope you all got some inspiration on how to use the library space for community building through a facilitating approach and to return to my opening question, is a Library without books still a library? If you believe that a library is not only defined by it’s collection but by the way it succeed to support learning, education and research then a library without books is still a library. Remember; A Library is not a goal in itself, it’s a mean to contain those very things. When stuff around us changes, like physical books disappearing from the library, let’s take up an active approach to continuously support and create values for our communities.

Libraries are a people business, not a book business

Slides

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.

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

The Library Lab

libraries, learning and lego

data literacy