The University Library offers data fluency and visualization support services to students, faculty and staff.
Carol Hansen Karsch, the library's Data and Statistical Support Specialist, can provide assistance throughout the various phases of quantitative research and GIS mapping projects.
Ms. Karsch has worked extensively with the Economics Department, helping students on their capstone and econometrics projects, and co-authoring a guide for using the Stata programming language to do research.
She has helped Sociology students acquire data from sources such as ICPSR and extract the observations pertinent to their survey analysis.
Help with Geographic Information System (GIS) projects is a growing area of support.
If data has a spatial component, GIS software often provides a means for finding relationships in data that might not be readily apparent in a table of numbers.
In conjunction with the library's departmental liaisons, Ms. Karsch can assist members of the W&L community locate sources of data. Once a source has been identified, she can provide on-going support with:
using documentation to verify the usefulness of data for a specific project,
acquiring data from the internet, government agencies, ICPSR, etc.,
importing data into Stata, SPSS, Excel or ArcGIS,
converting data from one format to another, e.g., SPSS to Stata,
manipulating file(s) in preparation for analysis,
mapping data with a spatial component in ArcGIS, and
preparing maps, tables, graphs and charts.
Ms. Karsch's role is to assist with the technical aspects of a quantitative or GIS project so researchers can focus on their topic and not get bogged down in software and/or programming issues.
When questions arise related to which statistical tests to employ, students are directed to discuss such matters with their professors.
