If you work with researchers or stay up-to-date on “big data” or data science, you have probably heard of R. But what exactly is it, and why should librarians learn it? This webinar will help demystify this popular programming language and provide some real-world examples of how it can help librarians in their daily work. Whether it’s for assisting patrons with their research data or working with your own library data, R can be a useful skill to add to your librarian toolboxes. This webinar will provide an introduction to R, including how it can be used for data processing, visualization, and analysis of a variety of different types of data. We will also discuss some key terminology and concepts to get you started and provide you with resources for learning more about R.

The Presenter will be Lisa Federer, AHIP who currently serves as research data informationist at the National Institutes of Health Library, where she provides training and support in the management, organization, sharing, and reuse of biomedical research data. She is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and the editor of the forthcoming Medical Library Association Guide to Data Management for Librarians.

After the session, we have a few laptops with R installed so you can see what it looks like.