HR: 0800h
AN: ED31C-1218    [Abstracts]
TI: Partnerships As A Means To Make Data Accessible
AU: * Hall, M K
EM: hall@scieds.com
AF: Science Education Solutions, 4200 W. Jemez Rd, Suite 301, Los Alamos, NM 87544 United States
AU: Walker, C S
EM: swalker@osu.edu
AF: Oregon State University, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AB: The assumption by many data providers and potential users is that data should be easily accessible and interpretable by a wide audience. This is a high-minded goal that must take into account that baseline knowledge and needs of the audience are fundamental determinants of whether something is useful. A key step in making data accessible is clearly defining the target audiences and knowing their needs and abilities well. Large data providers that target narrow scientific communities are successful because they disseminate data to a core, well-understood audience. Serving even a small number of diverse audiences' can quickly overwhelm an organization's ability to perform its core mission. Increasing partnerships with projects or organizations better positioned to reach new audiences can lesson this burden and result in higher quality resources and services for the users. These partnerships could include third-party data disseminators that can add informational wrappers to data that expand understanding and use. Increasingly, university libraries are hiring Data Librarians to give faculty and students assistance in mining this type of information. Curriculum development teams skilled at giving context and meaning to datasets through inquiry-based investigations are another key partner. We will show how partnerships such as these could work using a curriculum development project as an example.
DE: 0530 Data presentation and visualization
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005