Electronic Data Center

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Begining June 1, 2013 DiSC will merge with three other units to form the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship

We are excited to announce the formation of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS). The ECDS brings together four units currently housed in the Robert W. Woodruff Library: the Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC), the Electronic Data Center, the Lewis H. Beck Center for Electronic Collections and the Emory Center for Interactive Teaching (ECIT). These units have each collaborated with Emory scholars who wish to incorporate technology into their teaching and research. The formation of the ECDS will break down barriers between these functions and simplify the process of establishing partnerships with scholars.

Beginning on June 1, 2013, the ECDS will be led by two co-directors, a senior faculty member and an operations director who will report directly to Rich Mendola, enterprise chief information officer and senior vice provost of library services and digital scholarship. Allen Tullos, professor of history, will serve as the Center’s first faculty co-director. As senior editor and co-founder of the peer-reviewed, multimedia journal Southern Spaces, Professor Tullos has a long history with digital scholarship and a keen sense of the benefits and challenges of incorporating technology into research, publication, and teaching. Partnering with Tullos, Wayne Morse will be interim co-director of the ECDS. Morse has been the director of ECIT for sixteen years and has an impressive record of working closely with Emory students and faculty. Under their joint direction, the ECDS will enhance the resources currently available to scholars at Emory and facilitate digital projects.

One of the goals of the ECDS is to physically locate its entire staff in one place in the Woodruff Library. A re-imagining and reconfiguration of the space currently occupied by the Research Commons on the third floor will take place in the next few months. Additionally, the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE) will be brought into this space—though not into the reporting structure of the ECDS. Gathering all of this talent and expertise into close proximity will enable greater coordination of efforts and encourage stronger partnerships across the ECDS and the University. The creation of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship will eliminate no personnel, resources, or services. On the contrary, the ECDS will likely add staff to increase its capacity for innovative work.

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Submitting a grant proposal to the NSF, NIH, or NEH? If you apply for funding from government agencies, you may be required to include a data management plan (DMP) in your application. Preparation of your plan is made easier through use of the online DMPTool, which walks you through each component of the plan.

Join us for a workshop on the DMPTool next Tuesday, October 9, in Woodruff Library Room 312 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. We will cover the basics of using the tool, review some sample data management plans, and step through the process of crafting your own plan to accompany a grant proposal.

Register for the workshop.

Need further assistance in preparing a DMP or general guidance on how to manage research data? Contact the Research Data Management group at dataplans@emory.edu.

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Although journal articles are often the most visible products of research studies, the data underlying those articles are in themselves important sources of information.  The careful documentation, preservation, and sharing of research data not only prevents unnecessary duplication of research efforts, but also may lead to new discoveries. That data, however, is difficult to share if it exists only on an external hard drive in a desk drawer.

To promote the preservation and sharing of data, many major funding agencies, including the NSF, NIH, and NEH, now require a data management plan(DMP) as a component of grant proposals. In a DMP, researchers can formulate strategies for storing their data while their study is in progress, preserving their data long-term for the scholarly record, sharing their data with others, and describing or documenting their data to make them computer-readable and meaningful in the future.

To assist Emory researchers with the preparation of DMPs, the Research Data Management group at Robert W. Woodruff Library now offers use of the DMPTool. This free online tool, which is a service of the University of California Curation Center and the California Digital Library, allows Emory researchers to create, save, and revisit their DMPs by logging in with their Emory network ID and password. The DMPTool also provides helpful information and links for each component of the plan.

Need further assistance in preparing a DMP or general guidance on how to manage research data? Contact the Research Data Management group at dataplans@emory.edu.