Diversifying NSIDC’s Data Professionals

to Tackle an Evolving Cryospheric Data Landscape

Heidi McCann and Donna J. Scott https://nsidc.org

SciDataCon, September 12, 2016

Story telling, Oral History usually placed

within a context. Can be powerful when told

the right way even outside its environment

Users are Arctic community members, non-

Arctic Indigenous community members,

researchers, teachers and the general public

Data are sensitive and not necessarily free

and open. Some stories are esoteric in nature.

Communities

NSIDC’s satellite and in-situ data sets

Users are cryospheric researchers with expert knowledge of data

sets

Data are free and open to the public

Services to work with the data have evolved from code snippets to

GUI interfaces to help visualize the data

Users are cross-disciplinary researchers with intermediate to expert

knowledge of data sets

Services are free and open to the public

Story telling by NSIDC scientists began to help further explain the science

behind the data to global communities

Users range from novice to expert researchers

Information is free and open to the public

Citizen science (social) usually collected and analyzed by

the general public in collaboration with professional

scientists

Users range from policy makers to teachers and Arctic

community members, general public

Information is free and and usually open to the public.

There can be exceptions.

Social science that links transdisciplinary data to study

the long-term human Ecodynamics of the North

Atlantic

Users are archaeologists, anthropologists, teachers,

students

Data are open

Challenges

Supporting Community Evolution

Evolution from data to tools to

social science raise privacy,

confidentiality and intellectual

property questions that need to be

addressed if we want to improve

our data stewardship practices.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a data driven

organization, archiving and distributing snow and ice data that supports

research into the world’s frozen realms. From our historical catalog of

satellite and in-situ data to a catalog that now includes social science

data, we are evolving our support of unrestricted access to satellite

records to data that can be highly sensitive and deal with privileged

matters. This presentation will explore the challenges NSIDC has faced

in dealing with the evolving landscape of cryospheric data and services,

including the needs for diverse skillsets in our data professionals to

accommodate the growing data catalog. We will touch on the need for a

community understood definition of a data professional to enable future

data management support in building effective data teams.

Abstract

Data Professional vs. Data Scientist

Recently NSIDC formalized a Data Science Lead position. It was

challenged as being an inappropriate definition for NSIDC. The narrow

view point that a data scientist is one that works strictly to mine

information through statistics and analytics, combined with a community

definition that is not well understood led to a review and change to this

NSIDC position title.

Given the viewpoint of many at NSIDC, we wondered if having a Data

Science position narrowed the scope of our mission. Are we now moving

toward a shared understanding for data professional that can help us better

define what we do as data managers and stewards?

Data Professionals at NSIDC

Seamless Data Management

Restricted Data

Intellectual Property

Open Data

Evolving Landscape of Data and Services