Level up with Fall 2025 Digital Scholarship and Data Workshops

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 22, 2025) — This fall, take your digital or data-intensive scholarship to the next level with the help of University of Kentucky Libraries’ Digital Scholarship and Data Workshops and Events.

Offered by the digital scholarship and data librarians at UK Libraries’ newest space, The Stacks: Digital Scholarship Center, these workshops and events begin on Tuesday, Aug. 26, and last throughout the fall semester.

Highlights of the Fall 2025 schedule include:

• A spotlight workshop exploring pre-digital data practices using historical Kentucky weather ledgers;
• virtual workshops covering tools, resources and data management best practices; and
• recurring open office hours for thesis and dissertation planning and submission assistance.

Research data librarian Isaac Wink is also offering a short workshop series on programming with Python on the first three Tuesdays in September.

Kyle Bachman-Johnson, library specialist for UKnowledge (UK’s Institutional Repository) will hold two sets of open office hours monthly throughout the fall semester for all UK Libraries users planning on writing or submitting a thesis or dissertation.

These events are designed to help students, faculty and researchers improve and expand their capacities to use digital tools in their work and scholarship, with broad appeal to all data-intensive disciplines.

The workshops are free to attend and open to all UK students, faculty and staff. Registration is required to attend.

Workshops include:

• Software Sample: Free Software Licenses from UK
  2-3 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 26, on Zoom
  Don’t break the bank for expensive software! As a member of the UK community, you have free access to a wide range of popular software for academic use, including Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, EndNote, MATLAB and more. This online presentation from UK Libraries will explore how to access these and other programs for free by using the ITS Software Downloads Center and the UK Virtual Den, as well as how to sign up for academic licenses for other software directly. Register here.
   
• Navigating NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy at UK
  Noon-1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, on Zoom
  The NIH’s Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy, which went into effect in January 2023, has established new requirements for grant applicants to put forward a plan explaining how their research data will be made accessible to other researchers and the public. At this session, Research Data Librarian Isaac Wink will cover the major elements of the policy researchers need to know and provide guidance on writing successful data management and sharing plans. Specific topics will include: an overview of the DMS Policy and its requirements; resources for developing a DMS plan; suggestions for selecting a data repository and budgeting for data management and sharing; and perspectives on data management practices to ensure that scientific data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). Register here.
   
• Beyond Canvas: Power Up Your Course with CreateUK
  Session 1: 1-2 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8, on Zoom. Register here.
  Session 2: 1-2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, on Zoom. Register here.
  Whether you are teaching or learning online, in person, or a little of both, CreateUK is a web-hosting service managed by UK Libraries that can increase student engagement beyond Canvas. With built-in popular, open-source applications such as WordPress, Omeka, Scalar and many more, CreateUK offers faculty and students a platform to connect with course content and projects in new and meaningful ways. Join us to learn how to get started with your own CreateUK account. This workshop will be offered in two identical sessions.
   
• Beyond the Manuscript: Effective Data Sharing for Boosting Research Impact
  Noon-1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, on Zoom. Register here.
  The datasets you produce in your research aren’t just an add-on to your publications — they can be standalone research outputs that can be cited, reused and contribute to new findings. But not all shared data is good data, and datasets aren’t likely to be reused or cited if they’re disorganized, poorly described or hard to access. This session will cover everything you need to know about maximizing the citation and reuse of your data, including picking a data repository that tracks usage metrics, curating your data prior to sharing, and making it as simple as possible for others to find, access and cite your work.
   
• Data Rescue Workshop
  11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 8, at The Stacks Presentation Space. Register here.
  This hands-on event is designed to empower attendees with the skills to identify, capture, and preserve federal datasets that may be vulnerable to deletion or alteration. Bring your own device and come ready to collaborate, learn, and make a difference in safeguarding public data.
   
• Scary Stories in Excel
  Noon-1 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, on Zoom. Register here.
  Do you find Excel constantly not displaying your data correctly? Don’t worry; your computer isn’t haunted, but Excel isn’t always built to do exactly what you want. This workshop will cover some of the most common mistakes made with entering, organizing and cleaning data in Excel, showcase examples of these mistakes having big impacts in business and research and give you the understanding you need to guard against these haunted mistakes.
   
• Kentucky Data Spotlight: Data Collection and Documentation with Historical Weather Ledgers
  2-3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, at The Stacks Presentation Space. Register here.
  What did data look like before the digital age, and what can it teach us about data collection, organization and documentation for modern research? Join us to explore more than 100 years of Kentucky weather ledgers containing hand-collected records from the National Weather Service, focusing on periods of three historic floods in 1913, ’37 and ’78. Get your data fix with a side of local history as we answer questions like: How do teams of data collectors make sure they’re recording information in a consistent manner? How do individual data points get combined and transformed to produce meaningful summary results? How do long-term data collection projects change over time while still enabling comparison to the past?
   
• Who’s Counting? Locating and Using Gray Data in Health Sciences Research
  Noon-1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, on Zoom. Register here.
  Governments, nonprofits, and international nongovernmental organizations all collect and publish data that can be used for a variety of purposes in the health sciences, such as estimating disease prevalence across different regions or identifying potentially promising interventions for further study. But these “gray data” sources are often difficult to find and require researchers to understand their full context before analyzing them or bringing them together with other data sources. This session will cover some of the benefits of working with gray data, strategies for systematically locating data sources and data management workflows for accurately reporting findings.

Need more data? Visit the Research Workshops & Tutorials website to find all the opportunities to improve your research skills with UK Libraries, including the Fall 2025 Research Workshop Series presented by the Medical Center Library.

For questions, email TheStacks@uky.edu.