Blake McDowell, Summer 2015

Blake McDowell, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library & Archives, Summer 2015, IMLS

At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, I worked with Mila Pollock, the Executive Director of Library & Archives, on a data management survey project. This involved designed an interview template, contacting scientists who agreed to the interview, researching their lab's work before the interview, and finally transcribing the audio recordings of all the interviews. I conducted twelve interviews with ten different labs at CSHL across a range of disciplines and research techniques. Matt Covey, the Science Informationist at the Library, accompanied me on these interviews to assist in questioning. At the end of the internship, I submitted a written report on the data management practices of labs at CSHL with suggestions for going forward. I also worked with Tom Adams, Systems Administrator and Digital Projects Developer, to set up an analog video digitization workstation with equipment I sourced and brought to CSHL.