When Is Research Data No Longer Useful?

I've been fortunate to be in an academic library considered by many to be one of the more advanced in research data management planning.  Certainly in confronting ever changing guidelines the  funding requirements around data sharing, data preservation and the submission of data management plans at universities across North America, academic library institutions clamouring to  understand the needs, in addition to attaining a fuller understanding of their users’ research data management practices and attitudes.  Certainly, much has been written about the work being done here and here.  My friend and colleague Eugene Barsky, for example, has researched and published much in the area of data management.   RDM is such a new area that it sometimes feels very much like the early days of the Wild West.  Where to begin?  It seems like everything we collect becomes data; sorting and organizing it all is an challenge unto itself.

On the surface, it's messy, but underneath it, it's even more complicated as not all of can or should be archived.   Since federal granting agencies in Canada are now advocating for "open science" whereby future researchers can access and reuse such research data, we often assume all data is important, all data is equal.  But just because it's data, doesn't mean it's useable, let alone preservable.  University of Alberta librarians Janice Kung and Sandy Campbell's What Not to Keep: Not All Data Have Future Research Value offers a remarkably cogent and sensible examination into what faculty, clinicians and graduate students from the health and medical sciences deem as research data and while what types of data should not be kept by libraries and archives for the purpose of reuse.  There are eight themes identified here:

Bad or Junk Data - Data that has missing values, malformed records, or stored in problematic file formats has no research value and are therefore unusable.

Cannot be used by others - When datasets become too specific to be combined with other datasets - or cannot be used by other researchers that require knowledge of that particular context or subject - it prevents researchers from manipulating them in a meaningful way and hence,

Easily Replicable - Cost effectiveness of regenerating data on demand - for example, citation analysis data - can make data preservation impractical.

Without good metadata - Since descriptive metadata must accompany research data to ensure future use and interpretation, the ability to reuse datasets can be hindered by suboptimal metadata.

Data without cultural or historical value - Since server space and administrative costs are finite, not all data are valued equally and it's necessary to evaluate the feasibility of archiving everything.  Data covering short periods of time, small samples, or have no cultural/historical content would have less value than longitudinal, large, and cultural based studies in such instances might need to be "weeded."

Pilot or test data - Data derived from instrument testing or trial runs have little future research value since they are used for testing the data collection methods to ensure quality control.  Sometimes there are many iterations of data generated in developing a method that such "raw data" is not required for validation

Proprietary data - Often researchers do not have ownership rights to data but work with such data released to them under contract by companies or organizations for a specific project only.

Confidential data - When research involving human subjects is being conducted, ethics agreements define when data must be destroyed and researchers must abide by these restrictions.

Of course, the study is not exhaustive by any means as it offers only a viewpoint of the health sciences.  But what about other subject domains?  For a more comprehensive contribution to the establishment of more detailed library and archival best practices, policies, and procedures, we need to further examine the digital humanities, for instance.   This is a good, early start.  But more is to come.  Stay tuned.

Pokémon Go Drags Augmented Reality to Coolness (Finally)

Pokémon is back, and it's taken a flailing technology and made it relevant and even cool again, too. Augmented reality—the ability to witness an altered version of our world via a smartphone display -- was written off by most. It had gone the way of the QR codes. Faded and irrelevant. Pokémon Go has consumed the public’s consciousness and, in a single weekend, thrown augmented reality into the mainstream. It’s fun and so people actually use it, and that’s critical because augmented reality is suddenly something the whole world can experience in an accessible and interactive manner.

But times have changed (or returned, in this case) as the Nintendo-owned franchise, which exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, is again taking the world by storm — this time through Pokémon Go, its biggest entry into the mobile space, now available for a free download on Android and iOS. It’s so popular that it’s now overtaken Twitter based on daily active users on Android.  It's amazing to see how people are clamoring to download and use this app, even if it's before it's official release in their country.

What is exactly Pokémon Go?  It's an AR game that utilizes a phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when in the game Pokémon will "appear" (on the phone's screen) in order to "go" and catch it. By moving around, various types of Pokémon appears, but depending on when and where an individual is situated. The idea is to encourage people to travel around the real world to catch Pokémon in the game.

Augmented reality in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Recognition Wall

In many ways, augmented reality has arrived, albeit much later than we have expected. Three years ago, I experimented with the technology and at that time it was Layar that was the most popular app. In the "Virtual Museum," augmented reality became a useful tool for highlighting the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s history as the Main Library using UBC Library’s digital collections. Patrons using their smartphones or iPads could view the current Wall of Recognition and see the wall "come alive" with archival images and videos of students and alumni talking about their experiences in the building - past and present.   Back then, the technology was still in its infancy.  It was a novelty.  Pokémon Go has really opened up the game.  What are the opportunities for AR in libraries and education?   There's great potential to use the technology now that people are looking up instead of down and will eventually grow to love the neat applications of AR.

Use of Smartphones by Art and Design Students for Accessing Library Services and Learning

In Use of smartphones by art and design students for accessing library services and learning in the journal Library Hi-Tech, a research study in which I co-published with Patrick Lo, Dickson Chiu, Man-hon Leung, and Kevin Ho, our study explored the use of smartphones for accessing library services and learning by art and design students at the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI).

In the design and research methodology, we employed the questionnaire survey to examine how students used apps and the Web on mobile devices in finding information for the purpose of academic learning, social networking, and collaborative learning.

Our survey results showed that while the HKDI students were all smartphone owners and active users of such mobile communication devices, only a minority of them “frequently” use these mobile devices for formal learning purposes.  Students demonstrated a keen preference to use search engines, social communications, and other diverse use of smartphones. Except for research and image/audio-visual needs, the majority of the needs and usage behaviour of these students is similar to mainstream university students.  Therefore, our results recommends greater opportunities for libraries to develop services and facilities that could better fulfill students’ information needs, and to improve the outreach outside the library.

So why is this research of value to the library and information science literature?  This is probably the first study of its kind to explore how art and design students use smartphones for learning needs. In particular, with recent capability of smartphones and mobile Internet speeds being comparable to desktops, it is vital to re-examine the rapidly changing environment and their effects on the needs of the library's users.  I encourage you to take a read and explore the discussion and data from our research and see if it corroborates with your particular library context.  Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any comments, feedback, or question to share with us.