Apply for a Library Data Award 2022-2023

The University of Chicago Library is pleased to announce the opening of its Library Data Award to support student and faculty research. Expanding on UChicago librarians’ regular purchases of datasets and subscription databases (see the How to I find data or statistics? guide for examples), this award program invites UChicago students and faculty to directly request data that is needed for their research. The program further aligns data collection development with user needs. Read about data awarded to past recipients.

The award program will fund the Library’s purchase of eligible data for student and faculty research. Examples of data purchased or subscribed to in the past, include:

• International Census Data, such as for Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica
• Historical U.S. Census Data, for example Geolytic’s 1990 Census Boundaries
• Linguistic corpora, such as Global web-based English (GloWbE, 1,800,000 texts)
• Historical manuscripts, such as 19th-century petitions from Slavery and the Law, 1775-1867

Interested students and faculty are encouraged to reach out to the subject librarian that specializes in their area of study to discuss the data needed for their project before completing an application. Applicants may also contact the Ask a Librarian service to be connected to their subject librarian.

We are now accepting applications, which are reviewed on a rolling basis. This application cycle will close on February 1, 2023. Questions about the award details and the application can be sent to awardfordata@lib.uchicago.edu.

The Library Data Award program compliments other data support services offered at UChicago Library. For example, the Library also supports:

• Data Management Planning
• Preserving Research Data
• Text and Data Mining

Subject and data specialists are available for research consultations. Librarians can also help faculty integrate data into their classroom instruction, for example creating assignments with data from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Please reach out to the Ask a Librarian to be connected with a specialist.