What is "Data"? Collaborations Between Special Collections and Research Data Services

Abstract

The Dallas Death Map Project originated from a collection of death information built by a Special Collections Archivist at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) who compiled the data using death certificates, newspaper articles and obituaries, and other historical resources. Through a collaboration with this archivist and UTA’s Data Visualization Librarian, this record was visualized as a publicly-accessible, browsable map that can help researchers answer questions about historical disease, death, and Dallas. The Dallas Death Map provides an interactive display of deaths from 1915-1920.

What is also noteworthy is that this collaboration between Special Collections and Research Data Services departments yielded important insights, including communication between two people in different fields who draw from different bodies of knowledge. In this poster, we describe challenges encountered when developing the project. We describe the way we, as data librarians, improved our communication because people who do not primarily work with data think of their data differently than do those who work with data day in and day out. We also learned that in order to effectively collaborate with non-data colleagues, we had to change the way we thought and talked about data and set project expectations. All of the connections possible through the map itself (including research) were predicated on successful connections and collaboration between colleagues with different levels of data experience. This poster shares insights about this process in the hopes of helping other librarians who collaborate across departments and disciplines.