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Data users need relevant context and research expertise to effectively search for and identify relevant datasets. Leading data providers, such as the Inter‐university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), offer standardized metadata and search tools to support data search. Metadata standards emphasize the machine‐readability of data and its documentation. There are opportunities to enhance dataset search by improving users' ability to learn about, and make sense of, information about data. Prior research has shown that context and expertise are two main barriers users face in effectively searching for, evaluating, and deciding whether to reuse data. In this paper, we propose a novel chatbot‐based search system, DataChat, that leverages a graph database and a large language model to provide novel ways for users to interact with and search for research data. DataChat complements data archives' and institutional repositories' ongoing efforts to curate, preserve, and share research data for reuse by making it easier for users to explore and learn about available research data.
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Interdisciplinary Aspirations and Disciplinary Archives: Losing and finding John M. Weatherby's Soo data
As theorized in language documentation, archives serve to make research reproducible and to make primary data accessible for multiple audiences (Himmelmann 2006; Berez-Kroeker et al. 2018). Scholars in the emerging mid-20th-century field of African history emphasized these same priorities. Mid-century Africanist historians assembled large text collections but failed in a clearly stated disciplinary project to preserve them in accessible archives. This paper explores the relationship between institutional and social factors in data preservation through the story of audio recordings and field notes documenting Soo (Uganda: Kuliak/Nilo-Saharan) collected in the mid-20th century by Makerere University history PhD student John M. Weatherby. For decades, Weatherby struggled and failed to find an institutional home for his materials, which were nearly lost amid changing disciplinary trends. I encountered them only through informal social interactions in 2018 and have subsequently been depositing them in a language archive. The slide of Weatherby’s data into obscurity shows how archiving is inherently a disciplinary practice. Institutions intending to preserve data rose and fell with changing disciplinary paradigms, but Weatherby’s data were preserved through personal relationships. Despite a common emphasis on technical and institutional initiatives for archiving, the relational contexts of legacy materials are central to their preservation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1911571
- PAR ID:
- 10376437
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Language documentation and description
- Volume:
- 21
- ISSN:
- 2756-1224
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 101-139
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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