10 Years of Data: Celebrating The Impact of An Institutional Data Catalog

In 2015, a medical library at an academic medical center developed a data catalog to help researchers locate and share data for re-use and collaboration. Since then, the data catalog team has been helping researchers across the institution to share their data. The impact of the data catalog was measured and tracked to show how it has helped with data discovery and sharing over the years.

A REDCap form was created in 2019 and data from consults, outreach efforts, online analytics, etc are collected and tracked using this form. To determine the impact of the data catalog, the data from the REDCap form was analyzed, which is used to track the usage of the data catalog quarterly and annually. Using the form, number of views, number of users, number of datasets, number of outreaches, etc over the years were reviewed to measure impact of the data catalog. The data on the outreach efforts and consults are collected in a spreadsheet by the data catalog team, which collects information on the name of the researcher, the department of the researcher, the date of contact, and the purpose of contact. In addition, data from outreach efforts and consults were reviewed to track data discovery and sharing efforts with various departments or groups at the institution.

Using this data collected over the years, the data catalog team have expanded their services, updated their design, and perfected their metadata all to enhance user experience. With the help and support of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute over the past ten years, the data catalog helped several libraries across the United States to pilot or implement their software and processes at other institutions through a data discovery working group. In addition, the data catalog collaborated with institutional groups to help with data discovery and sharing.