Across the diverse fields served by the Health Sciences Library System, one thing is universal: good science depends on good data. Whether you are embarking on your first research project or have dozens of completed studies under your belt, the HSLS Data Services team is here to help you improve the efficiency and reliability of your data-handling workflows at every step in the research process. We offer consultations, classes, and customized trainings on data topics including:
- Organizing and describing files and data—always an important practice, but especially critical at a time when many researchers are working in multiple locations, on distributed teams, or on multiple computers and file servers. These workshops are also recommended for new graduate students to set themselves up with good habits from the beginning.
- Writing a data management plan for funders and publishers, including pre- and post-submission review using DMPTool.
- Storing data safely for the long term in ways that won’t render files inaccessible or obsolete.
- Sharing data and code in a recommended research repository and/or via the Pitt Data Catalog to increase research reproducibility.
- Locating and citing data for re-use.
- Using LabArchives, an electronic research notebook.
- Helping researchers locate Pitt resources for bioinformatics data analysis.
- Version control (tracking changes to files) with Git and GitHub.
- Annotating research code, including both analysis code and original software tools.
- Principles of research programming, concentrating on Python (through Jupyter Notebook), R, and the command line.
If you have a data need that isn’t listed above, please contact us at HSLSDATA@pitt.edu. We are available for one-on-one consultations as well as customized workshops for classes, labs, and research groups—see our class catalog for previously taught topics, but don’t hesitate to request something new. We will be teaching via Zoom throughout the fall semester.
~Helenmary Sheridan