UCLA Library dissolved its data consultation center and stopped offering data analysis services in August.
The university consolidated the Data Science Center into UCLA Library’s research services unit as part of a broader effort to restructure the department, a UCLA Library spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The move came after UCLA consolidated other campus units – including information technology services – in response to budget shortfalls.
UCLA Library said on its website that the consolidation efforts are part of the university’s 2023-28 strategic plan, which outlines five goals, including strengthening research and increasing institutional efficiency.
[Related: UCLA plans to consolidate some campus services to cut costs, increase ‘efficiency’]
The Data Science Center, located in Charles E. Young Research Library, provided consulting services and technology for students, faculty and researchers. It also housed the UCLA Dataverse, a data repository of UCLA research projects, and the Social Science Data Archive, a network of public data sets.
Tim Dennis, the former director of the Data Science Center, said it is unclear how the center’s work – particularly its data repositories and computing initiative – will continue under the research services department, which he said is focused more on helping with new research than on storing and archiving data. Dennis said he is still employed by UCLA Library but that his new title is yet to be determined.
The center no longer provides drone software kits, and UCLA Library disbanded the DataSquad – a team of undergraduates who worked on research projects – Dennis added.
“The scholarly communication aspect, where the library is responsible for capturing the scholarly record of the university – we’re the only ones that do that,” Dennis said. “That seems to be a gap that nobody else covers.”
Neha Shome, a fourth-year cognitive science student, said she visited the Data Science Center when she needed help collecting and analyzing data for an internship.
“It is very helpful for people that aren’t necessarily in data science but need to do some data science-related tasks and don’t really know where to start,” Shome said. “It’s easy to go into the library and get help on something.”
The restructuring aims to improve communications across specialized departments, the UCLA Library spokesperson said in the statement.
“We’re one of the few units that handles the full life cycle of data, from people collecting it or acquiring it to doing their analysis, all the way to having to publish,” Dennis said. “I don’t know how that’s going to be supported in this new unit because it’s a research unit, not an archiving unit.”
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