Featured Workshops: Love Data Week

Love Data Week, February 14-18, 2022, is an international event designed to raise awareness about research data management, sharing, and preservation. To celebrate, HSLS will be hosting a variety of featured workshops*:

Preparing for the New NIH Data Management & Sharing Plan: Session 1 — Elements, Costs, & Tools

This session is designed to help researchers within the health sciences prepare for a new NIH policy going into effect on January 25, 2023. The policy will require NIH-funded researchers to prospectively submit a plan outlining how scientific data from their research will be managed and shared.

The first in a three-part series, this session will cover the plan’s elements and allowable costs, as well as tools to help with your own plan creation. Although the implementation of the new policy is a year away, this class series will familiarize grant applicants with the DMSP requirements, saving you future time and effort.

Publicly Available Social Justice Data

With thousands of federal, state, and local government sites that link the public to their data, it is easy to get lost trying to find data useful to your research unless you know where to go. This class is designed to introduce participants to commonly used measures of social justice through publicly available data sites.

This session will explore data sites that focus on social justice issues, such as income, education, pollution, housing, and healthy/risky behaviors. In addition, participants will learn how to follow the trail to the agency that gathered the data initially, to look for updates and explore for other valuable information.

Data Organization in Spreadsheets

People often organize spreadsheets in a visually appealing way—using color codes, notes referenced at the bottom, or multiple data points in a cell. However, such practices do not allow for efficient data analysis with tools such as R or Python. This hands-on class is designed to help researchers organize and structure data in spreadsheets in the way that computers require to interpret the data.

During this session, participants will learn some of the best practices for structuring data in a spreadsheet to facilitate future analysis and minimize time spent in data cleaning. Participants will also learn how to enable data validation rules in Excel, including how to limit entered data to a known list or a range of values or text lengths. Additionally, attendees will learn how to protect sheets to prevent data from being overwritten or modified.     

For Love Data Week updates, be sure to follow HSLS on Twitter (@HSLSPitt), Instagram (@HSLSPitt), and Facebook (@PittHSLS). Additional Love Data Week Pgh workshops are also being offered through a partnership with ULS Digital Scholarship Services and registration is open to all from the University of Pittsburgh. You can also quickly view all of HSLS’s Upcoming Classes and Events or sign up to receive the weekly Upcoming HSLS Classes and Workshops email for a wide variety of class topics.

If you are unable to attend, HSLS-scheduled sessions can also be repeated on request. Request a customized session of any HSLS workshop for your course, group, or department. Contact Ask a Librarian to find out more.

*HSLS classes are open to University of Pittsburgh faculty, staff, and students, as well as UPMC residents and fellows. A valid email address is required to register.

~Marissa Spade