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Social Science Services

The Social Sciences Librarians possess a diverse and interdisciplinary set of skills and specialties and work together to support scholarship, teaching, and learning in the social sciences.

Services

The GIS and Data Librarian is available for both research consultations and course visits and can provide assistance with:

  • Identifying opportunities and sources for learning GIS
  • Choosing between software packages and troubleshooting issues
  • Finding and navigating GIS and tabular data sources
  • Understanding and using census data and other government data sources
  • Project planning and advice for workflows and methodologies
  • Data extraction, processing, and analysis

Email socscilibrarians@brown.edu or contact the GIS and Data Librarian directly.

Software

Support is available for the following software packages:

  • ESRI: ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS StoryMaps
  • FOSS GIS: QGIS, GRASS, GeoDa
  • Relational and spatial databases: SQLIte / Spatialite, PostgreSQL / PostGIS, MS Access
  • Scripting: SQL, Python (for well-structured and semi-structured data)
  • Statistics (basic support only): Python, R, STATA
  • Other: OpenRefine, Excel, LaTeX

Visit the GIS resource guide for information about GIS software packages and data sources.