November 17, 2020 – The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) is pleased to have presented Eugene Barsky, Head, Research Commons, University of British Columbia Library, with the CARL Award of Merit during its Fall General Meeting. The CARL Award of Merit is awarded to an individual who has made an outstanding local, regional, or national contribution within an area of research librarianship and whose contribution has had broad and beneficial impact within the CARL community.
Mr. Barsky receives the Award of Merit in recognition of his contributions and impact in advancing research data management (RDM) in Canada and internationally.
“For at least a decade, Eugene has been dedicated to furthering the use and management of Research data at UBC and in Canada. From his position first as UBC’s first and only data librarian, he led UBC’s Research Data Management Task Force, helping to establish UBC’s initial programmatic efforts in RDM. Now as head of UBC Library’s Research Commons, he will be joining a new campus-wide committee of experts to help create and advance UBC’s research data infrastructure,” stated Susan Parker, University Librarian, UBC.
“He has been teaching the RDM course at the UBC iSchool since 2014 and has been mentoring the new generation of RDM librarians in Canada. Many Portage current employees and RDM librarians in Canada were Eugene’s students and were mentored to provide innovative and collaborative RDM Services in Canada,” added Aleteia Greenwood, Associate University Librarian, Research Services, UBC.
Mr. Barsky also served as Chair of the Portage Data Discovery Expert Group (2015-2020), acting as a catalyst for the development and delivery of a wide range of essential supports, services and national platforms, including the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), Dataverse North, and Geodisy. As an original member of the Portage Data Management Planning Expert Group, he worked with a team at the University of Alberta to release the first iteration of the DMP Assistant. Countless researchers, post secondary institutions, and organizations across Canada continue to benefit greatly from these platforms and services.
He co-authored the first RDM survey for researchers in Canada in 2015, an impactful dataset that has been used many times for comparative analysis of RDM maturity in Canada and abroad. He also initiated the work to embed FRDR’s research data feed into the OpenAIRE project and served on CARL’s Open Repositories Working Group, working to integrate Canadian open research data into other platforms for enhanced discovery.
Outside of CARL-Portage, Mr. Barsky has contributed to CASRAI and RDC initiatives. As a member of Research Data Canada’s National Data Services Framework Working Group, he has helped to organize all three National Data Summits.
“Eugene is very highly regarded amongst colleagues both within and beyond the Library world as a champion of all things related to research data management,” notes James Doiron, Research Data Management Services Coordinator, University of Alberta Library, and Academic Director, University of Alberta Research Data Centre.
CARL would like to congratulate Eugene Barsky on this very well-deserved award.
