RDDC Services

Mission

The Research Data and Design Commons advances the full research lifecycle by offering spaces and technologies supported by expert staff who provide guidance in data discovery, analysis, visualization and communication. The Research Data and Design Commons staff empower UD researchers to approach technologically focused work with confidence and creativity. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical research practices and a commitment to open and reproducible scholarship, we cultivate a vibrant, innovative and impactful research community.

Expertise

Staff of the Research Data and Design Commons specialize in technology-based research support. We provide comprehensive guidance across the research process, with particular strengths in the following areas:

  • Research Organization and Project Management
  • Data Management Planning
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Visualization
  • Graphic Design (for publications and research posters)
  • Photography (high-resolution and specialized lensing)
  • Data curation, preservation, and sharing
  • Research Podcasts
  • Video production
  • Web presence (personal websites and research communication)

Consultations

Research Data and Design Commons staff are available for consultations on many research, data and design topics. These personalized information sessions are tailored to your project at your current step. Our staff will converse with you via email to gain a general understanding of your current situation, then set up a virtual or in-person consultation to support your specific research needs. Consultations can cover topics within our range of expertise, and we will work with you to identify the best solutions for your individual project. Consultations generally last about an hour, with options for follow-up consultations as needed. 

In addition to our own experts, our staff maintains partnerships across campus and catalogues resources available to UD Researchers. If we are unable to support your particular research need, there are a wide variety of specialists we can consult through our network of Research Data and Design Center partners. 

Consultations can be made directly with a specialist in that area of knowledge. If you are unsure of your overall need, you can request support by submitting a question or topic request and we can connect you with someone who can assist.

Teaching

The Research Data and Design Commons is a part of the overall instructional support program through Teaching and Learning Services offered by the UD Library, Museums and Press. While we can support faculty, staff and senior researchers in many ways, our focus is on supporting student researchers. If you’d like your students to learn more about data literacy, management, analysis or visualization over the course of the project, then we can contribute to your curricular instruction or if you plan to have them produce a research poster, podcast or video, we can consult with them as a group, or individually, to help them learn design and storytelling principles. 

Check out Course and Teaching Support for more information.

Creative Media Assignment Support

The UD Library, Museums and Press also offers support for creative media assignments, which allow students to demonstrate learning in real-world contexts by creating video, audio and graphic design projects. We help faculty design assignments, provide student-facing resources for the creation process and offer limited librarian-led instruction. 

Check out the “creative media assignment support (add url)” page for more information.

Resources

Getting Started

The UD Library Museums and Press maintains many research guides to assist with getting projects started. These guides have on-demand information and curated lists of resources to help direct you step by step through project basics. These research guides may help you get started with the creation process for videos, podcasts and posters or give resources and explanations on a variety of topics to help get you started with data management, analysis or visualization. These research guides may provide a good starting point, but please feel free to reach out to our experts if you have questions.

Check out Start a Project for more information on our research guides.

Research Data Services

Research Data Services are provided by the Research Data and Design Commons, in partnership with the Research Data Steering Group (RDGS), a committee of UD staff from across campus with expertise in data that spans the research data lifecycle. Through our connections, we can support researchers with most data-related tasks and have developed many collaborative workflows to ensure robust support when working with research data.

To learn more, check out Research Data Services to learn more about their specialized services. 

Institutional Repositories

The Research Data and Design Commons staff manage two institutional repositories for archiving and sharing research outputs–UDSpace and UD Dataverse. Our team can help you work through communications and sharing best practices to make your research more findable and accessible.

UDSpace – This repository is for sharing research outputs, such as manuscripts, preprints, supplemental materials and open-access articles.

“UD Dataverse (add URL)” – This repository is for research data archiving and sharing. This repository can take large datasets that are well described and ready for use.

Poster Printing and other Large-Format Printing Services

The Research Data and Design Commons provides large-format printing services. These are primarily geared toward the printing of research posters, but we are also able to accommodate the printing of banners and signs. Additionally, we can provide support for designing, formatting and storytelling for research posters.

Check out Large Formate Poster Printing for more information.

Space and Technology

Hang Out in the Commons

The Research Data and Design Commons is a place that can support your research needs. We take the “Commons” part of our name seriously and welcome you to think of this space as a place you can come to work on all parts of your research. We have open table spaces throughout the commons and our Creative Technologies Instruction Room is open for use, as long as class hasn’t reserved it. We also have many reservable spaces, including five Data and Design studios and six high-powered workstations in our Data Analysis and Visualization Lab.

Check out Spaces for more information.

Computers and Technology

Technology is expensive, so we have invested in extra computing resources for your research. Our six high-powered workstations in the Data Analysis and Visualization Lab have enhanced computer hardware and are a significant step up in power compared to most consumer laptops. Our Data and Design Studios host a suite of various equipment ready for research support, including a high-powered computer for data analysis and visualization work, several mac studios with peripheral equipment for media creation, hardware and software for legacy media conversion and scanning, and backdrops and lighting for video and photography. Our Creative Technologies Instruction Room also has 18 Mac Studio computers dedicated to instruction and media production.

Software

The Research Data and Design Commons provides access to software on our computers and in our spaces that may be expensive to procure or too resource-intensive to use on a personal machine. Our software suite includes Adobe Creative Cloud (which includes Photoshop, Illustrator and Premier Pro), NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis Software, Matlab, Stata and SPSS. We also have some free software set up and ready to go for complex data processing, models and simulations.

Check out Software for more information.

Equipment

how did we forget this section?

Check out Equipment for more information.