Faculty Success with Tom Gleeson: Data sets deliver solutions

UVic Libraries is pleased to celebrate faculty success with a series of interviews featuring researchers and their recent collaborative projects.

Professor Tom Gleeson of UVic Engineering is a global expert on hydrology and groundwater sustainability.

He has worked with UVic librarians to create data management plans to ensure that data sets produced by his research projects are open, accessible, and reusable by other researchers, now and in the future. Tom believes that open access to research data is important to address environmental sustainability. It also provides higher visibility for his research that can lead to new partnerships and connections.

UVic Libraries is pleased to support research contributions to the global knowledge that can help to tackle large-scale problems like access to clean water.

What is your favorite place in UVic Libraries and why?

I have a favourite carrel on the 3rd floor that looks east to Mount Baker. It has been my favourite since my undergrad days nearly 25 years ago. I have fond memories of long nights of studying, with a winter storm hallowing outside the building but being inside, protected with a great place to study and learn. And now, I retreat to this carrel whenever I want to do so real undistracted deep work – I love the quiet and focus of this place.

What is your favorite LC subclass (the first two letters at the beginning of a call number range) and why?

I’m a sucker for QE, the geology subclass and GE, environmental science. Many of my interests fall into these categories, but to be honest, what I really love is just cruising the stacks in these general areas. I feel like this is an important and largely forgotten skill in students who rarely gravitate towards physical books.

I always find interesting and useful things I wasn’t necessarily searching for so for me this is a great way of encouraging lateral thinking outside of my box.

What is the most exciting or interesting experience that you’ve ever had in a library or archive?

From decades ago: old jazz records from the basement. More recently: workshops in the Digital Scholarship Commons. I appreciate that this space has been set up to organically evolve with the needs of users – a great model for UVic services.

Celebrate the success of UVic faculty: read more.