I'm Tim Dennis. I've spent 26 years in the UC system building research data infrastructure that keeps running after the grant ends, after the staff turns over, after the priorities shift.
I run the UCLA Library Data Science Center. This is where I write about what that work actually takes.
Recent writing
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Building Programs That Outlast Their Founders
Most library programs die when the person who built them leaves. The ones that survive are not better — they are differently structured. Here is what that structure looks like.
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What Research Data Infrastructure Requires from Library Leadership
Research data infrastructure is not an IT problem. It is a scholarly stewardship problem — and libraries are uniquely positioned to lead it, but only if we're willing to be more than service providers.
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From Teaching Workshops to Building Research Infrastructure
How eight years of work at UCLA evolved from teaching data skills to building the systems that make open, sustainable research possible.
Notes
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A working list of learn-by-doing open source resources
Gathering the interactive, guided, and gamified resources for learning open source and DevOps skills — the kind that teach by doing, like swirl did for R. A starting list to bring to the UC OSPO education group.
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Three pieces I bookmarked this year that keep pointing at the same thing: a lot of the software running the world rests on one or two people, and almost no one funds them.
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First pilots have taught — here's what came back
First results from the external community pilots of our open science curriculum for librarians: lessons run long, funder policies move fast, and line-level feedback is gold.