Data is inarguably an integral part of our lives, influencing decision-making processes across all disciplines. February 12 -16, SMU Libraries will join the global community in celebrating International Love Data Week, an initiative that emphasizes the importance of data in research, education, and innovation.
This year’s theme – “My Kind of Data” – underscores the importance of embracing data literacy in higher education and recognizing the role that data plays in advancing research and scholarship. Love Data Week presents all of us, students, faculty, and staff, with an opportunity to explore and appreciate the impact of data literacy in shaping our academic and social pursuits now and beyond.
As part of this celebration, SMU Libraries is organizing events that highlight the complex nature of data application across various domains and teach skills useful for working with research data. On Wednesday, February 8th, SMU Libraries is hosting Mark Stewart and Canserina Kunia, experts from ESRI (the global industry leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) products), who will be conducting a workshop on Business and GIS as a prelude to Love Data Week. Come learn about modern GIS capabilities and practices and how businesses are leveraging location intelligence to enable better decision-making. Lunch is provided, so register soon to claim your spot.
Other events include a “data drop-in” where you can bring your data questions and have an expert work with you on your data problem, and a workshop on research data management. You are also invited to join us as we learn Python Basics on JSTOR’s text analysis platform, Constellate. The JSTOR team will lead a webinar series February 12-16, in which participants can get started writing Python code and will be introduced to Jupyter Notebooks. For those who can’t attend these events, we have an introductory data research guide, a 15-minute Canvas tutorial for self-guided learning, and more workshops year-round.
Join us as we celebrate Love Data Week, embrace data literacy, and reflect on how the transformative power of data can be used to create a better world for all.
This post was written by Sylvia Jones, Research Librarian for Spatial and Data Literacy and the Assistant Project Director for the Initiative for Spatial Literacy. Sylvia is our expert in GIS and research data management and the research librarian for sciences and engineering.