9:00 - 10:30 AM Zoom (link in Sciences Council calendar listing, or contact chair)
Present: E Smith (Chair), M Sholinbeck (Recorder), D Jan (Facilitator), S Teplitzky, K Greenland, A Sackmann, H Muhr, L Ngo, S Powell, B Miller
Guest: Chris Hoffmann, Associate Director, Research IT
Minutes:
Announcements - All (5 min)
ES: Many thanks to the new Sciences Council chair and committee representatives for 2020-22.
Sciences Council chair: Susan Powell
PSC representative: Kristen Greenland
CSC EPS representative: Anna Sackmann
WAG representative: Becky Miller
Thanks as well to the outgoing representatives for their service.
MS: If anyone contacts you about a book they have checked out, and they are leaving town for an extended period or forever, have them contact privdesk@library.berkeley.edu
SP: Access to Royal Geographical Society, New York Academy of Sciences, and Royal Anthropological Institute Wiley Digital Collections were recently enabled and will be available through the A-Z List soon.
AS: She is on the Box transition team - refer folks to her if they come to you with Box questions
RIT computing services, new and in development - C. Hoffman (30 mins)
Chris provided a brief presentation on what's going on in Research IT
New RDM Service Lead starting June 1
They are in the midst of planning for upcoming year: What resources needed? What programs to embark on?
Overview: Research Data Management (partners w/ Library)-consultations across campus on data broadly defined. Gets folks to the right experts. Identifies gaps in campus service landscape for potential investment. SRDC (Secure Research Data & Computing) came from this. ~40% of RDM consultations involve sensitive data, and it's growing. Brought this to campus, which led to a plan for a platform, etc. Phased launch: First customer this month: Human Rights Center (Law school). SRDC supports remote work, so it can work during closure. Hope to have their equipment up during summer to start up; will move equipment to Data Center in Jan.
Berkeley Research Computing is another area, consisting of: (a) High Performance Computing cluster (Savio), plus they run some other clusters; managed by LBL (b) Virtual desktop (AEOD)- high demand for this. Significant ramp up in folks wanting to use this during closure, such as folks who used to rely on lab computers. (c) Cloud computing (Amazon, Google, etc) - a small but growing area.
Consulting is their "bread & butter" - involvement is in the entire arc of research projects, and what's needed for researcher's success.
Work a lot with students to be able to build up their consulting capacity.
They have spent a lot of energy building partnerships across campus: network of experts: D-Lab, VCR, Privacy Officer, Library, …
Developing a website: a researcher-facing resource to direct folks to the appropriate place for their needs.
Major initiatives for next year:
SRDC (continuing) - probably the biggest effort
New service lead June 1. Will help in partnerships and collaborations around data across campus
Data Science Program, AI, etc - all growing, along with concerns for privacy, GDPR, etc.
Box license changing; no longer a place for "unlimited" storage. Some research groups are storing >2 petabytes there. 3-yr timeline to reduce from 3.6 PB to 1.2 TB. Meanwhile researchers are creating larger and larger data files. We don't have a great answer yet; ongoing issue. Problem across institutions. Google may end up doing this as well, making Drive not an option for many folks. [Note: future Box limit will be 50GB/person]
Chris said he's happy to come back to Council, maybe after the new service lead arrives after June 1
RefWorks status discussion - M. Sholinbeck (10 min)
For background: Most recent payment quite substantial (paid 3/2020; pays for access till June 2021). It's paid from dilis fund. RefWorks' Cite-in-Microsoft-Word tool does not work in the campus licensed version of Word that UCB folks have access to through Software Central. Neither Microsoft nor ProQuest will/can fix this. UCSF just canceled their RefWorks license partly for this reason.
Mendeley has a similar limitation; hasn't been resolved either, so Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) is also being reconsidered.
We may need a broader discussion of citation mgmt. software needs and desires across campus
EPS is considering surveying students
BM: It appears that not too many Mendeley users need the extra storage offered by MIE, but more appear to be taking advantage of the ability to create more and bigger groups with MIE. Suggests that features that facilitate collaboration are valued.
DJ: EndNote changing significantly and folks who have seen it don't love it
MS: Action item: will send info to other councils; will try to find out how many folks use the free Word; Will ask Mark about timeline for big serial cancellations
Remote reference and instruction: What's worked, what hasn't? - All (15 min)
AS: RCR trainings have gone well on Zoom. Students use chat - maybe more conversation than in a classroom; breakout rooms have worked well also. But: must make sure students are given enough warning they are about to be put into a breakout room.
Good to have a helper when doing Zoom sessions, especially for larger audiences
Use waiting room (which you can customize) can help during office hours where folks may be waiting
Around the table (5 min.)