Endangered Data Week Comes to MSU

When data and open information are under threat, who’ll come to knowledge’s aid? Spartans Will. MSU Library is pleased to partner with Endangered Data Week to offer an exciting week’s worth of programming all about endangered data. Our sessions will cover what types of data are imperiled and equip you with practical skills to join efforts to preserve and ensure access to data. Our broad range of sessions will cover everything from creating your own metadata schemas, building digital communities, working with census data, and letting your representatives know how you feel about the unprecedented removal of information from government websites.

Keep an eye on this space – more events may be added!

Events:

Census Data: Access, Importance, and the Future
Date & Local Time: 2017-04-17 12:00:00 PM
Location: Beaumont West Instruction Room (Main Library: 2 West)
Website:http://bookings.lib.msu.edu/event/3238139
Census data provides some of the best longitudinal demographic data available and is used by a wide range of disciplines and research. In this workshop you will learn about how census data is collected and structured, how to access it from a variety of sources, why the census is important and what changes may be coming for census data in current proposed legislation.

Letter Writing Event – Write and Bite Back
Date & Local Time: 2017-04-18 12:00:00 PM
Location: Michigan State University | LEADR – 112 Old Horticulture
Website:https://digitalhumanities.msu.edu/event/write-and-bite-back/
Spend your lunch break advocating for better data collection policies and for better access to government data!

A few recent topics to discuss:

• Environmental Protection Agency was allegedly ordered to remove climate change information from its website
• USDA removed animal welfare data from its website
• Senate and House of Representatives have both received proposed bills (S.103 and H.R.482) prohibiting funding from being used “to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.”
• Lack of mandatory reporting of hate crimes to the FBI
• Lack of a federal database of officer-involved shootings or citizens killed by police

Drop by LEADR (112 Old Hort) on Tuesday, April 18 any time between 12:00p and 1:30p to take part. We will provide lunch, space and materials to get in touch with your representatives in Congress, heads of federal departments, and local and state politicians to let them know that you value open government data!

You Can Dig the Same Hole Twice: The Development of a Metadata Scheme for Archaeological Archives
Date & Local Time: 2017-04-18 4:00:00 PM
Location: Michigan State University | REAL Classroom (Main Library: 3 West)
Website:http://bookings.lib.msu.edu/event/3238164
Speaker: Jon Frey, Associate Professor, Classical Studies Art History & Visual Culture
The “digital revolution” in archaeology has brought with it a number of exciting opportunities. From GPS to laser scanners and sophisticated databases, archaeologists can now utilize with relative ease a number of new data collection tools that promise to speed and simplify our research. A somewhat less glamorous but equally important advantage of the digital age concerns our ability to scan and share large quantities of paper-based legacy documents kept in archaeological archives around the world. This presentation reviews some of the challenges faced by a team of researchers here at MSU as they develop a new metadata scheme to as part of the digitization of an excavation archive at the Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia in Greece.

Crash Course in Research Data Management
Date & Local Time: 2017-04-19 9:30:00 AM
Location: Michigan State University | Library 3W
Website:http://bookings.lib.msu.edu/event/3266060
Speaker: Scout Calvert, Data Librarian, MSU Libraries
Have you ever lost a project file? Been unable to find the most recent version of a document? Suffered hard drive failure or had your laptop stolen? Been unable to open old files? Been told your data management plan wasn’t detailed enough? Forgotten which file was which? Even small research projects can generate enough data and digital material to become confusing and vulnerable to loss. Start your next project (or class) with a plan to keep your project organized and your data safe, from inception until you are ready to share, reuse, or revisit the project whether next month or years from now. This workshop will provide strategies and insights for managing your data for effective collaboration, to meet funder requirements, or to preserve it for reuse or sharing in the future. There will be bagels and coffee provided.

Overview of High Performance Computing for Data Analysis
Date & Local Time: 2017-04-19 12 noon – 1:00:00 PM
Location: Michigan State University | Library 3W
Website:http://bookings.lib.msu.edu/event/3266387
This talk describes High Performance Computing (HPC) for a non-expert audience, and how it differs from desktop and cloud computing. This event is part of the Endangered Data Week.

Internet Privacy 101
Date & Local Time: 2017-05-20 9:30:00 AM
Location: Michigan State University | Library Beaumont Instruction Room (2 West)
Website:http://bookings.lib.msu.edu/event/3265913
In light of recent legislation regarding how our browsing information may be collected by our internet service providers, there has been a lot of talk about internet privacy. If you’re hearing about VPNs, browser tracking, and more, but aren’t sure what concrete steps you can take, this workshop can help. For best results, bring your own laptop and/or phone so you can adjust settings on your own devices. There will be bagels and coffee provided.

These events are part of the National Endangered Data Week:

Endangered Data Week is a new, collaborative effort, coordinated across campuses, nonprofits, libraries, citizen science initiatives, and cultural heritage institutions, to shed light on public datasets that are in danger of being deleted, repressed, mishandled, or lost. The week’s events can promote care for endangered collections by: publicizing the availability of datasets; increasing critical engagement with them, including through visualization and analysis; and by encouraging political activism for open data policies and the fostering of data skills through workshops on curation, documentation and discovery, improved access, and preservation.