Category Archives: About the Library

Visit Our New and Improved Library Databases Page

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At MSK Library, we strive to continuously improve the experience of our users as they interact with our resources. With this goal in mind, we wanted to share some improvements to our databases page.

  • While our old page was a simple alphabetical list of all our databases, our new and improved page features a subject search, which allows users to narrow their database search by topics and disciplines of interest to them (e.g., Clinical Trials, Genetics, Dermatology).
  • Know what database you’re looking for? Use the handy Search box to search by database name.
  • You can now use the “share” icon to copy database URLs. 
  • If you’re not sure where to start, we now offer a “Popular Databases” section, which highlights our most heavily used databases.

If you prefer, you can still simply browse our databases list from A-Z.

We hope our new databases page will improve the workflows of MSK researchers and make their lives easier!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to AskUs.

Three Questions – Anthony Dellureficio

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Get to know Anthony Dellureficio, Associate Librarian, Data Management Services. 

What areas can you help MSK users with? 

Data Management Services is a new offering from the MSK Library. I’m eager to help MSK users with their data needs at all points in the research process from funding to publication and beyond. I’m available for consultation with individuals or entire labs for a wide range of support including: writing data management plans, understanding the data sharing/availability requirements of funders and publishers, providing best practices guidance (file naming/organization, format selection, storage, backup, documentation, version control, etc.), finding existing datasets, citing data for publication, and encouraging data reuse by making your data more discoverable while still providing appropriate protections for the data creators. Being that this is a new program, I’m also really interested in learning about any specific data needs or concerns of our community. Please reach out to me if you’d like to discuss! 

What projects have you been working on recently? 

We’ve recently launched a new library resource, the MSK Data Catalog. The catalog is a searchable and browsable collection of rich metadata records acting as a way-finder designed to enhance discoverability and maximize the usefulness of datasets related to MSK research. We hope this catalog will be a valuable resource to help researchers identify data that may inform their projects, connect them with data authors and experts, and promote greater exposure and reuse of their datasets! If you’d like to learn about this project, check out our announcement as well as the about page of the catalog

What is your favorite meal? And if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? 

I love to travel and I love to explore new cuisines, so these two questions go hand-in-hand for me. Most recently I’ve visited Morocco, Scotland, Sicily, and the tiny Mediterranean island of Pantelleria… and I ate delicious food everywhere I went. High on my list for future cultural and culinary travel are India and Portugal. I also really hope to be able to visit Venezuela someday. And of course, I always want to get back to my home-away-from-home in the Veneto region of Italy.

Welcome to the MSK Data Catalog!

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To support our researchers’ scholarly activities, I am delighted to announce the launch of the MSK Data Catalog.  Our instance of the Catalog is part of the Data Catalog Collaboration Project (DCCP) and was developed to help researchers identify data resources that may inform their project or research question, and to connect them with other data authors and experts. For data creators, it promotes greater exposure and reuse of their datasets while providing appropriate protections and access control. 

MSK_Data_Catalog

MSK Data Catalog: https://datacatalog.mskcc.org

Datasets play a critical role in the research landscape as we see a growing number of funders, government agencies, and publishers requiring that non-traditional outputs like datasets be made available to support better reproducibility and replicability in research.  Examples include Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health, PLoS, and Springer Nature – all require that datasets are made publicly accessible immediately upon publication of the research paper.

We hope that the depth and breadth of datasets included in this resource will be largely driven by our research community, but we also plan to proactively seek published works from January 2018 onward that include dataset availability information.

Don’t hesitate to contact Anthony Dellureficio, Associate Librarian, Data Management or me to learn more about this new resource.  You can also review information about the Catalog or suggest datasets for inclusion.  Please consider working with us to include your publication’s dataset record!

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services