by Sarah Bender
This February, the CMU community is offering more opportunities than ever before to get involved in the 2025 Love Data Week hosted by the University Libraries.
The week-long event, which kicks off on Monday, Feb. 10, is an annual celebration of all things data. This year’s theme is “Whose Data Is It, Anyway,” focusing on how data collected by groups like researchers, governments, or companies is owned, shared, and published. Ten different hands-on workshops, with in-person and virtual options, invite CMU students, staff, faculty, and friends to dive into topics like data visualization, cleaning untidy data, data for public policy, weather data sources, and more.
Each workshop earns participants a unique badge to certify their attendance and skill training. Those who collect three or more badges can register to earn a Love Data Week 2025 certification to recognize their growing data skill set.
“These are skills that are critical to so much important research across disciplines,” said Data Education Librarian Emma Slayton. “The Libraries is proud to recognize our community members who take the time to bring their understanding of the many ways we can and do use data to the next level.”
In addition to workshops, Libraries specialists will hold tabling sessions on Wednesday, February 12 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Sorrells Library, and February 12 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Hunt Library. Visitors can stop by to learn more about the different ways the Libraries can help with data curation, management, and sharing, and even ask questions about their own projects.
Attendees will also have a chance to engage with data visualization activities and presentations. Many of these will be interactive — students can win candy while using visualizations to share where they’re from and explore different ways to think about data.
Research Data Services Librarian Alfredo González-Espinoza and Chehak Arora, a Mellon College of Science masters student studying data analytics for science, are looking forward to the opportunity to present their recent project. This visualization uses metadata from thesis papers uploaded to Kilthub, CMU’s institutional repository, to represent the universe of graduate research at CMU in an interactive way.
“Imagine a star map, but instead of stars, you're looking at every graduate thesis in KiltHub. Each point represents a thesis, and the space between them shows how related their topics are — the closer together, the more similar their research themes,” González-Espinoza explained. “This creates a fascinating ‘galaxy’ of CMU graduate research.”
With the visualization, users can explore connections between different fields and find potential areas for new research. It can even be used to identify unique research opportunities for collaboration by highlighting gaps inside a field or across disciplines.
Other data-related offerings include GIS and Spatial Data Librarian Jessica Benner’s efforts to promote the use of maps in research, and Social Sciences Librarian Sarah Young’s work to offer support for advanced literature reviews. The CMU community can learn more about these projects through the Libraries’ GIS Services, the Evidence Synthesis Program, and workshops happening this week.
The Libraries Data Services and Publishing team offers support for coding, text and data mining, digital humanities, research data management, and more. Stop by a Love Data Week event or reach out to ask questions and get help with your projects.