Working with data in any discipline is often an iterative process with several interrelated components. LITS has resources and services that you may find helpful throughout your work.
LITS can provide help discovering and accessing different types of data and datasets.
Learn software tools to help make sense of your data. LITS offers various modes of support in selecting and using tools to clean up and organize your data in preparation for analysis.
- Workshops and training, including:
- Peer-to-peer student workshops on general software use
- Course-integrated instruction or consultations for specific projects
- Software Carpentry credentialed instructors
- Online tutorials via LinkedIn Learning
- Ebooks and videos from Safari’s O’Reilly Books collection
- Software available on most campus computers, including quantitative and qualitative analysis programs:
- R & RStudio
- SPSS
- Stata
- Excel
- Matlab
- Mathematica
- NVivo (only on select computers)
- Limited help and workshops available for basic data cleanup & management with software such as Python, Unix, and Git through MHC’s involvement with the Carpentries program.
Data visualization is an important way to better understand your data and to effectively communicate it to others. LITS can provide basic support for use of tools like:
- Tableau
- Free, 12-month (renewable) licenses for Tableau are available to faculty and students under their academic program. Support for using Tableau is available from LITS.
- R/RStudio
- RStudio has data visualization packages available, such as ggplot2. Some limited support for R is available in LITS
- Excel
- Excel includes the ability to create charts and graphs from your spreadsheet and is available on all campus computers as part of the MicroSoft Office Suite. General Excel workshops are offered periodically.
- ArcGIS
- ArcGIS for geospatial analysis and mapping is installed on the computers in the Library 619 lab and the GPL in Clapp. If you are interested in learning to use the software suite ArcGIS you can train online at ESRI's Virtual Campus using the GPL facilities.
- Note: primary support for GIS comes from the GeoProcessing Lab (GPL)
Good data management is an important part of research. Managing and preserving your data protects your investment of time and resources while preserving your research contribution for you and others to use in the future. LITS can help you with key aspects of this process:
- Data management planning consultation
- LITS can help you craft a data management plan for your research data, whether grant-funded or not.
- (Note that the College’s Office of Sponsored Research is another resource for information about grant funding and application procedures.)
- DMPTool - we also offer and support the DMPTool which can help you through the process (choose Mount Holyoke College from the list of affiliated institutions and log in with your MHC ID.)
- LITS can help you craft a data management plan for your research data, whether grant-funded or not.
- Data storage options & consultation
- LITS offers a few options for data storage and is working to enhance options for larger or more complex data storage needs. The LITS Data Storage Consulting Team (lits-data-storage-consultants-g@mtholyoke.edu) would be happy to talk with you about possibilities.
- Data preservation
- You can preserve your data in the MHC Institutional Digital Archive. Contact Digital Assets & Preservation Services (daps-d@mtholyoke.edu) to learn more about this resource.
- MHC Data Science program
- Robust curricular and co-curricular opportunities to learn!
- Amazon Web Services Educate program
- Mount Holyoke is registered with AWS’s self-service “Educate” program. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate is an educational program designed to encourage learning about cloud computing systems and services by allowing students and faculty to use additional free credits with AWS for coursework.
- The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC)
- Through special arrangements and grant-funding, Mount Holyoke College has access to resources at the MGHPCC across the river in Holyoke, MA. The LITS Data Storage Consulting Team (lits-data-storage-consultants-g@mtholyoke.edu) can work with you to figure out how to connect.