Love Data Week

Seton Hall University Libraries’ fifth annual participation in the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) sponsored Love Data Week successfully concluded two weeks ago. This year’s theme was ‘data is for everyone.’

Business Librarian Chelsea Barrett and Data Services Specialist Samah Alshrief start a conservation about the role of data ethics in a modern world awash with data. They discuss the moral implications of handling and managing data with issues related to privacy, security, bias, and data reuse and scholarship integrity as well as the role of researchers to promote it with considered intentions, purposeful data collection, security, the impact of analysis, and raising general awareness of and training in data ethics.

Dr. Olga Komissarova, researcher and recent Seton Hall PhD graduate, gives an excellent introduction and overview of the concept of data lakes, central repositories of unprocessed data in various formats, and the use of unstructured data (documents, images, video) for business intelligence.

Dr. Anthony Loviscek, professor and chair of the Seton Hall Finance Department, discusses data in finance using a case study of Warren Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway, the idea of alpha (exceptional above average performance), and return to risk.

Assistant Dean for Special Collections and the Gallery Sarah Ponichtera and Gallery Director Jeanne Brasile outline the gallery’s efforts to create a public facing database of the unique treasures entrusted to Seton Hall’s guardianship, increasing the accessibility of this special resource for the Seton Hall community and beyond. It includes a demonstration of the visual and interactive story maps tool, highlighting the collection’s global scale.

Data Service Specialist Samah Alshrief gives an overview of the services provided to students and faculty by Seton Hall’s Data Services group. These services include quantitative and qualitative data analysis, data visualization, data storage, and data location and cleaning. She also gives brief introductions into the many powerful data related tools and software available to the entire Seton Hall community including Qualtrics, Policy Map, Atlas.ti, SPSS, Stata, R, Constellate, Power Bi, and Tableau.