University of Michigan professor Margaret Hedstrom will deliver the keynote address, “The Promise and Perils of Public Access to Data and Scholarship,” at Iowa State University’s Research Day on Thursday, March 28. 

“Who would deny that public access to data and scholarship is a critical need for an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy?” says Hedstrom.  “But meaningful use of data and scholarship by the public requires conscious investments in policies, infrastructure and practice to make the promise of public access a reality. “ 

Hedstrom will explore some of the unintended consequences of public access and propose concrete actions that researchers can take at the individual, group, disciplinary and institutional level to transform public access to meaningful use of data and scholarship.

Margaret Hedstrom is the Robert M Warner Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a faculty associate at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research and interim director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan.

She is an internationally recognized expert in digital preservation, archives, and electronic records management, and a recent recipient of a National Science Foundation grant that allowed her to develop the Sustainable Environment through Actionable Data (SEAD) project.

The author of numerous scholarly papers, Hedstrom was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board for Research Data and Information, and she chaired the Committee on Data Curation Workforce and Education Issues.

- UMSI News Service