Framing the Curriculum of DLI Training and Data Services: Part 2

This session will focus on the baseline of skills that Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) Contacts should have and the corresponding training to achieve these skills. Introducing newcomers to the language of statistics and data is one of the important tasks of the orientation. Acquiring a technical language often poses a barrier to newcomers. To overcome this hurdle, newcomers must grasp both the meaning of new concepts and its abbreviated language of acronyms. Should we expect the orientation to offer all of the baseline skills or is other instruction needed? Do different local environments result in varying uses of DLI resources? Are the same skills needed among differing environments? How much attention should be paid during the orientation to different models of data service? For example, should the implications of buying services from elsewhere (e.g., Sherlock, IDLS, CHASS, Queen’s, etc.) be covered? What kind of distinctions need to be made for the levels of support for instructional and research uses of data? What about the reference uses of data, that is, using data to answer reference questions? Are there additional skills required of those supporting DLI data for research and reference uses? If there are, what are they and how should they be introduced?