Program at a Glance

Robert H. McDonald is dean of university libraries and professor of library administration at the University of Colorado Boulder. McDonald’s research centers on digital libraries and large-scale humanities cyberinfrastructure, encompassing large data analysis, storage, and preservation. His additional interests include integration of learning ecosystems, lean and agile frameworks in technology management, data preservation, and data cyberinfrastructure.

McDonald has served on the HathiTrust Program Steering Committee, as chair of the Digital Preservation Network Heavy Users Committee, and as general co-chair for the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in 2013 and 2017. He holds a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Music from the University of Georgia.

Research information management systems rely on researchers to contribute to their own research identity data and to data about their colleagues. This panel will focus on research problems and practical challenges relating to the sustainability and quality of RIMS. Stvilia will describe a general activity theoretical framework that can be used to conceptualize researchers’ participation in RIMS. Wu will present on the activities where researchers use RIMS, their motivations for those activities, and their priorities. Lee will share results of analysis of researchers’ use of research identity metadata in ResearchGate, including the relationship between metadata use and participation levels.

The Science of Team Science studies how investigators assemble into collaborative networks and develops methods for supporting effective team-based research. Expert finder systems provide a rich source of data about both individual scientists and connections between scientists, such as co-authoring publications, citing each other’s research, or working together in the same organization. In this panel, we show how we can use these data to build cross-disciplinary teams, facilitate innovation, and measure the impact of interventions designed to encourage team science.

This session focuses on building initial and ongoing support from sponsors and users of an EFS. Agnoli will emphasize the need for industry engagement and stakeholder buy in at the highest levels of the state education system and at individual universities. He will talk about the importance of insuring the robustness and relevance of the data and the value of a network of university liaisons who know how to leverage the power of the tool. Henriques will discuss how to keep an economic development EFS relevant and encourage its use by the business community. Moericke will discuss common objectives of institutions investing in EFS and address challenges in keeping users engaged and maintaining the data supply chain. He will also provide insight into how to measure return on investment.

On the surface, libraries and RIM systems seem like a natural match: Much of the content in RIM systems has to do with publications, libraries’ bread and butter. And librarians see themselves as connectors, whether it’s connecting researchers with information they need or bringing together various campus groups. So how different are the skills needed to use the metadata in a RIM system to promote the institution and help it improve? We’ll begin with observations drawn from experience with RIM systems and their stakeholders. With that background, three librarians from universities with different goals and expectations for their RIM systems will address how they and their colleagues are (and are not) engaged as stakeholders.