Panel: Latin America, Spain, and Portugal Data Organizations and Resources: An Evolving Discussion

Stuart Macdonald will report on progress of the IASSIST Engaging Spanish Speakers Action Group that he co-chairs with Luis Martinez Uribe including the organization of a series of webinars, the preparation of an IASSIST session and the translation of main IASSIST landing pages. We will then hear about practice in action in Latin America. Patricia Bermúdez Arboleda will discuss the explosion of research in Latin America and the Andean Region. In particular, for the Latin-American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador, the challenge is assumed through the institutional project of the Andean Virtual Academic Centre, FLACSO ANDES. The present work explores the creation process of the virtual center as well as the concrete situations that are being experienced during its implementation, appropriation and use. Paola Bongiovani will discuss research data access and management initiatives in Argentina. The Database National Systems initiative by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (MINCyT) includes the National System of Biological Data, the National System of Sea Data, the National System of Digital Repositories, and the National System of Climate Data. Research data access and management legislation was promoted by MINCyT and it is now being discussed by Argentinean Congress. The National Council of Scientific and Technological Research is developing the Interactive Platform for Social Sciences Research to create an appropriate environment for data sharing, to allow interdisciplinary approaches and to contribute to the understating of complex problems. National University of Rosario is conducting a study to learn researchers' needs regarding repository services for data management and access. This will be followed by presentations of 3 librarians who will provide information you can take back to your institutions to help answer questions. An overview of the data produced at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as well as the resources compiled by librarians at the IDB's Felipe Herrera Library will be provided by IDB's Alyson Williams and Aída Villanueva. Todd Hines will conclude with an overview of the major Latin American finance data resources available to non-commercial users.