June 16 Professional Development Discussion with Prof. Grace Liu

In light of the data-driven decision making in universities and in light of the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP)’s “Nelson Memo” [whitehouse.gov] expanding public access to federally-funded research through open research and data, academic and research librarians are increasingly being asked to engage with data. We will start our conversation with Prof. Liu about her current project, “National Forum on Building Capacity of Academic Librarians in Understanding Quantitative Data, Data Quality Problems, and Evaluating Data Quality” [sites.google.com] which aims to “help raise academic librarians’ awareness of data quality problems, fill our knowledge gaps, and build our capacity and confidence in teaching data evaluation, critical thinking about data, and data literacy. As a long-term impact, the project will demonstrate the library’s impact on cultivating data-literate citizens, improving the quality and integrity of scholarly output, reducing the social and economic costs caused by data quality issues, and improving the quality of data-driven decision-making.”