For the past few years during the week of Valentine’s Day, data specialists have been coordinating the social media event Love Data Week. During this week, people are encouraged to use a “lovedata” hashtag (this year it’s #lovedata19) to tag their posts related to data management, data curation, preservation, and sharing of research datasets, as well as success stories resulting from sharing data. Love Data Week is also a chance for institutions to showcase the work they do on a daily basis to manage, analyze, catalog and preserve data.

At Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center we work to meet researchers’ data needs in a wide variety of ways. Through GalterGuides you can find direct links to Data Policies from Funding Agencies and best practices for Data Organization and Documentation. Galter librarians offer classes on Best Practices for Data Management and Data Sharing, and we partner with NUIT Research Computing and NUCATS to offer the popular Computational Skills for Informatics series. Most recently we have been thrilled to launch the DataLab, a new resource through which librarians offer data clinic consultations, links to important data policies and resources, and sponsored events promoting best practices in open science, open data, and reproducibility. Through the DataLab you can also learn about Northwestern’s innovations in data preservation through its participation in the new CTSA program National Center for Data to Health (CD2H). With our CD2H partnership we are working to reinvent our existing repository DigitalHub, which holds all types of research outputs, including datasets, as a next-generation institutional repository.

Our partners at the Evanston-based Northwestern Libraries offer a plethora of data services as well, including help creating data management plans and assistance with deposits to their institutional repository, Arch. For Love Data Week, NUIT and Northwestern Libraries have planned events and contests to celebrate the importance of well-managed data. If you’re in Evanston this week, check out the Workshops and Talks on subjects such as data storage options and leveraging US Census data. Test your skills in the online Data Scavenger Hunt, or enter the more challenging data contest by using data to tell a story about the city of Evanston for a chance to win $500! The events and contests are open to students on all Northwestern campuses.

Also watch Twitter for #lovedata19, as librarians from the Chicago and Evanston campuses will be tweeting about handy data management tips, data sharing success stories, and any and all things data. Love data this week and every week! And if your data needs some TLC, remember that resources for help are only a click away.