Follow the Cincinnati Business Beat with the Business Courier!

Did you know that UC Library has a subscription to the Cincinnati Business Courier Online? The Business Courier is a weekly newspaper that covers Cincinnati business news. It also covers politics and the local economy. The weekly journal is read by more than 50,000 business professionals. The Courier also produces special reports on topics and trends of interest to the business community, including the annual compilation of Top 25 Lists called the Book of Lists. 

The business courier is also a helpful research tool. It can be difficult to find information on smaller local privately owned companies. However, many times these companies are mentioned in news articles, top 25 lists, and executive’s profiles. It can also be searched to find out local industry trends and the local laws and regulations that are impacting business. Try searching for local companies like Skyline or Rhinegeist and see what you can find compared to other company databases! 

UC affiliates can access the full online version of the Cincinnati business courier through the library website. To find out more on how to access and search the Business Courier as well as where to find the Book of Lists check out this research guide. 

Do You Miss Statista?

Last Fall, UC Libraries made the tough decision to break up with our Statista subscription.  The decision came down to two reasons: 

  1. Statista’s price rose over 200% in the past two years
  2. More importantly, Statista’s data is accessible from other vendors and resources.  The Statista  platform serves as a portal to finding statistics. Basically, subscribers pay for ease of access to a  lot of statistics. Most of these statistics come from government resources, industry associations, and other vendors of statistical information.  

A few examples:  

  1. Data Planet
    Touted as the “largest repository of standardized and structured statistical data”. It has 13.5 billion datasets, pulls from over 90 data providers and covers 16 major subject categories. It also provides users with tutorials on how to analyze data and incorporate it into their research. 
  2. US Census
    One of the largest producers of social and economic data and statistics. The economic census includes Trade, Manufacturing, Construction, Financial, Insurance and Real Estate statistics. 
  3. FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
    Economic data out of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank including inflation rate, consumer price index, unemployment rate, and more. FRED also provides a lot of teaching resources for economic data.  
  4. Market Research Reports from IBIS, Mintel, Euromonitor and many more!
    UC Libraries subscribes to many market research databases.  These reports provide domestic and international industry level data as well as consumer demographics and statistics. 

These databases and resources are accessible through UC Libraries and UC’s research guides. These resources are being updated these through the Summer, so please check back to see what’s new. 

If you are looking for something specific, please think of Maggie Patel (UC’s Business and Data Analytics Librarian) as your statistical matchmaker and she will work with you to find the appropriate resource.  You may contact her through email.

Please don’t despair if you loved Statista, there are plenty of other statistical databases in the sea.  You will improve your research skills and discover new statistical resources. Fall in love again with something new! 

UC’s Digital Scholarship Center presents “Digital Integrator and Transdisciplinary Research Partner”

This Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Spring 2021 Digital Scholarship Section featured “Digital Integrator & Transdisciplinary Research Partner,” a virtual panel highlighting the University of Cincinnati’s Digital Scholarship Center’s (DSC) unique model and work with research teams focused on misinformation and missing information.

The DSC partnered with UC Libraries’ Research and Data Services Team and the Department of Journalism to research Twitter’s impact on misinformation, false information and conspiracy theories about coronavirus. Using machine learning and linguistic analysis, the team also partnered with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to understand the role of missing information in electronic health records as it relates to social determinants of health. During the presentation, the panel discussed the unique organization of the DSC and its partnerships on campus and how health information professionals and the DSC work together on research projects involving social media, social justice and social determinants of health. The recording and slides are available online.

cover slide for presentation Continue reading

Research and Teaching Spotlight: Carla Cesare, Amy Miller and Patrick Owen

by Lauren Wahman

UCBA Library’s Faculty Lightning Talks showcase faculty research and share different aspects of the research process. This year, we’re revisiting UCBA presenters, Carla Cesare, Amy Miller, and Patrick Owen, for an update on their research projects.  

Carla Cesare | Art & Visual Communication
Networks of Design: Women at Work 

Amy Miller & Patrick Owen | Biology
Multifaceted Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Integrative Biology Using the Rusty Crayfish 

Find out about Carla and Amy and Patrick’s research project updates via Sway or use the visual link: 


screenshot of Sway post graphic

Love Data Week, Feb 8-12, 2021.

Love Data Week 2021

Love Data Week 2021

Love Data Week takes place the week of Valentine’s Day. Created to raise awareness of research data management, sharing, reuse, and preservation of data, it has been promoted by library and data professionals since 2016 in both online and in-person events.  You can see some of the events taking place around the world at the International Love Data Week 2021 schedule.

One of the ways we at RDS/UCL celebrate is to participate in the Adopt a Dataset program that ICPSR hosts every year.  ICPSR choses to highlight interesting data sets from their collection for individuals to explore to learn more about data. Once a dataset is chosen, you may fill out the Dataset adoption form and have your name added to the wall of adopters.  Adopters are encouraged to delve into the data by reading about the research, look at the variables, try out the analysis tools online, and read related publications.

ICPSR is a member consortium that UC belongs to that provides access to datasets from over 15,000 studies, over 5.6 million variables, which have had over 95,000 publications that cited those studies. It also provides curated data repository services for researchers, including secure data enclaves, which fulfill finding requirements for data management plans. Although most studies are quantitative in the social and behavioral sciences, there are also themed collections in the arts, humanities, and some health sciences. Teaching resources, online analysis tools, and pre-made exercise modules also are available to members.

There are a wide variety of datasets to choose from this year, ranging from education, to social media, social justice, to health. I chose to adopt one on music, Study of Jazz Artists, 2001 (ICPSR 35593). I started out by looking at the description of the study and how it was conducted. I then jumped into browsing the variables, one of the tabs found on the data set page. One of the great features of ICPSR is that you can search by variable if you are looking for specific studies to replicate or want to see if your own survey questions fit what others have asked in the past.

One variable jumped out at me – Q32- Age Began Playing First Instrument. My own children play instruments and I always wonder if we’ve started them at the right age or not. Looking at the result for this variable, I can see the unweighted results, including summary statistics and a variables chart. The median age was 9, the mode was 10, the maximum was 35, and the minimum was 1! I guess there’s still hope if you’re in your 30s to pick up an instrument to become a professional jazz musician!   The sweet spot to start your child appears to be the 8-10 year old range.

If you have questions about Love Data Week,  ICPSR, Data, Data Management Plans, Cleaning, Storing, Finding, or Using Data, contact us at Research and Data Services here at UC Libraries. We would love to help you with your projects, offer a workshop to your department or class, or discuss your data needs.

UC Data Day Wrap-up

On Oct 23rd UC Libraries and IT@UC partnered for the 5th UC Data Day.  This year’s all virtual event featured, two power sessions, a Keynote by Glenn Ricart of US Ignite, and an interactive panel session of multidisciplinary faculty.

The event started with the first power session by George Turner, Indiana University’s (IU) Chief Systems Architect with IU’s Pervasive Technologies Institute (PTI).  Mr. Turner led participants through an introduction to high performance computing and demonstrated how to access the UC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) system.

Erin McCabe, Digital Scholarship Fellow with UC Libraries Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) led the second session on text mining and natural language processing.  Both sessions had a hands-on component with participants accessing the ARC system as well as engaging with the DSC platform for text mining.

Glenn Ricart of US Ignite gave a keynote address steeped in his own personal data that highlighted how much data one individual creates and how this data is being used to make policy decisions, drive business and help us image the future.  He also discussed the problems of our dependence on data and possible pitfalls and wrongdoings.

The closing session of the day was the interactive panel moderated by Michael Dunaway, PhD (UC Executive Director of the Digital Futures Resilience Program).  Dr. Dunaway started us off by asking two questions:

  • How is ubiquitous data changing your work as a Researcher, Educator, and/or Clinician, and its contribution to society?
  • How is ubiquitous data changing society and shaping our sense of community?

Six faculty from very different disciplines who use data in very different ways shared their perspectives on the keynote and the state of data literacy education at UC.  Glenn Ricart also participated in the discussion and affirmed the conclusions that was best stated by Whitney Gaskins (CEAS Assistant Dean and Assistant Professor- Office of Inclusive Excellence & Community Engagement) when she said “We need to educate students to be more numbers literate.”  Dr. Achala Vagal (MD, Radiology) expressed that the amount of data will only continue to grow per the example of medical imaging data and its storage needs.  Zvi Biener, PhD (Associate Professor Philosophy| History | Judaic Studies department, and the Center for Public Engagement with Science) highlighted how the approach to evaluating data changed with Newton, and we have to continue to question if we are truly gaining knowledge from all the data generated.  Both Prashant Khare (Asst. Professor, CEAS Aerospace Eng & Eng Mechanics, Chair, Advanced Research Computing (ARC) center) and Sam Anand (Professor, CEAS ME, Director – Siemens PLM Simulation Technology Center) discussed the need for jobs to adapt to the data rich environment and that if we are educating our students to be more numbers literate, they will cope better in the future work environment.  The panelists, Glenn Ricart and Michael Dunaway guided us through the changing and complex data rich world we now find ourselves and left us much to think about as to how our institute and community can face the challenges and ultimately benefit from this new environment.

Videos from the day are available on the STRC youtube page, as well as archived in a Data Day collection 2020 in UC’s institutional repository Scholar@UC.  We invite you to review the sessions and continue the dialogue at AskData@uc.edu or attend an upcoming Data and Computational Science series event.

Format of Library Resource URLs for Off Campus Use

UC faculty and researchers, are you creating your syllabi and course materials? As you prepare for fall semester and are either adding or updating links to articles, e-books and other library resources, changes to the UC VPN in March 2020 means that Off Campus Access for library resources has changed. Use the following tools to affix the library’s proxy link to the permanent URL for resources to ensure seamless use both on and off-campus. This will also provide accessibility options for students and help alleviate some copyright concerns.

Helpful Resources

As always, contact your subject liaison for assistance or reach the libraries via the contact page.

Offering Workshops on the Publishing Life Cycle of Data

In partnership with the Faculty Enrichment Center, UC Libraries RDS and IT@UC Advance Research Computing are pleased to offer the next three sessions in our DCSS series focused on the Publishing Life Cycle of Data.  Visit the Faculty One Stop Professional Development site for more information and to register for any of these events.

Next up in the series:

July 13, 2-3 p.m. Getting Published – A Journal Editors’ Panel  will feature UC faculty and staff who serve as editors on journals discussing how to identify the right journal, avoid predatory journals and how to make the biggest impact with your research and scholarship by publishing more than just the article including data publishing and taking an active role in the publishing workflow.  Jeff Blevins, Theresa Culley, Steve Lang and Victoria Carr are the featured editors. Visit the Faculty One Stop Professional Development to register for this event.

Jeff Blevins, Theresa Culley, Steve Lang and Victoria Carr

Jeff Blevins, Theresa Culley, Steve Lang and Victoria Carr

Save the dates for these upcoming events as registration information will be available soon:

July 27, 2-3 p.m. “Understanding Open Access and Open Data” will feature Claudio Aspesi, Senior Research consultant and advisor to SPARC, coauthor of “The Changing Academic Publishing Industry – Implications for Academic Institutions.”

August 10, 2-3 p.m. “Publishing Data in Repositories” – more details to come.

 

Faculty Research Lightning Talks: Meet Linda Wunderley

The UCBA Library’s 3rd Annual Faculty Research Lightning Talks on March 10, 2020 featured four presenters and their discipline-based research projects via short, 15 minute presentations. In our  Meet the Presenters series, each presenter shares some insights into their research project.

Linda Wunderley | Assistant Professor, Adjunct | Business & Economics
Presentation: The Real Truth About What Determines Our Professional Performance

Linda Wunderley presents her research.

Linda Wunderley discusses her research.

Research Project
Today’s frenetic pace of market change and stressful organizational environments have the business world struggling with not only redesigning their professional development efforts to address this new normal, but also attempting to understand why past practices have repeatedly proven so ineffective! At the same time, Neuroscience research may have uncovered a critical correlation (between an individual’s significant life experiences and their repetitive thoughts, feelings and behavior) which could provide the very insight and direction needed for a professional development reinvention. But empirical data specific to the business world is needed. This research study is attempting to provide that data.

collage of famous people in a powerpoint slide

A slide from Linda Wunderley’s The Real Truth About What Determines Our Professional Performance presentation. Source: Linda Wunderley

What excites you most about your research?
Top management across the U.S. today, as well as the likes of Deloitte and McKinsey, report little or no behavior change on the part of the ‘trained’ or the ‘coached.’ But the need for improved soft skills such as better communication, persuasion, team building and creativity is huge and growing. This research could provide the empirical data for a potential sea change in our approach to such Professional Development.

What are your next steps with your research?
Continue to recruit participants to increase sample size.

Past Publication

Wunderley, L. J., Reddy, W.B. & Dember, W.N. (2006). Optimism and Pessimism in Business LeadersJournal of Applied Social Psychology. 28 (9) 751-760.

Additional Resources
* Library copy currently unavailable to request at this time

  • *Dweck, C. S. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random Books.
  • Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2017). The Talent Delusion: Why Data, Not Intuition, Is the Key to Unlocking Human Potential. Great Britain: Piatkus
  • Felitti, V. J. et.al. (1998). Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventative Medicine. 14, 4, 245-258.
  • Kellerman, B. (2012). The End of Leadership. New York: HarperCollins.
  • *Lipton, B. (2005). The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House Publishers.
  • Merzenich, M. (2013). Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life.

San Francisco: Parnassus Publishing.

 

By Lauren Wahman

Digital Scholarship Center Receives Grant to Develop Text Mining and Summarization Methods to Aid in COVID-19 Research

The Digital Scholarship Center’s James Lee, PhD, and Danny Wu, PhD, MSI, Department of Biomedical Informatics, are one of 11 recipients of the College of Medicine’s Special Coronavirus (COVID-19) Research Pilot Grant Program. An opportunity open to all UC colleges in the Academic Health Center, the program was established to rapidly support the development of innovative studies that will contribute significantly to knowledge of COVID-19 in hopes to have significant impact on treatment, diagnosis and management of the infection or its prevention. With financial support from the UC Office of Research directed by Dr. Pat Limbach, and the College of Medicine Office of Research, the Special Coronavirus (COVID-19) Research Pilot Grant Program awarded a total of $425,000 to recipients.

The Digital Scholarship Center’s proposal, “Using Intelligent Text Mining and Summarization Methods to Address COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge,” received a grant totaling $25,000 to develop a text mining pipeline and web-based intelligent query system to extract and summarize relevant COVID-19 related literature. The long-term research objective of the project is to create a usable and generalizable information resource to search scientific literature and generate knowledge through human-centered AI approaches.

“We anticipate the project to have important impacts within our research group, the university and the research community as a whole,” said James Lee, associate vice provost for digital scholarship, associate dean of libraries and director of the Digital Scholarship Center. “In building the intelligent query system, a broader impact will be made in the greater research community as we will develop a tool that can take any Coronavirus related question and summarize the literature.”

The intelligent query system will be evaluated on its usability and released to all researchers at the university as a self-service tool to support their COVID-19 research projects. Therefore, the system will likely have a great impact on the research productivity at the university, especially when many COVID-19 related grants have been or will be released in the next few months. “We anticipate that the intelligent query system could be a valuable tool to help understand and defeat this novel Coronavirus,” said Lee.

The Digital Scholarship Center is a catalyst for collaborative, trans-disciplinary forms of research and teaching, bringing together humanistic methods with technical innovations. For more information, visit their website https://dsc.uc.edu/.