Stats from the Stacks! Sarah Hunter digs into — and loves— all things data.

“Everything is data  — Text analysis is data analysis. Images can be data. Digital humanities are data. There's so much about data that can be utilized that I don't think everyone realizes.”

Data and Social Sciences Librarian Sarah Hunter has always enjoyed digging deeper. Whether it’s diving into political methodology or engrossing herself in a new data set, Sarah is passionate about considering all sides of a question. But her career hasn’t always centered on data; Sarah’s professional roots were planted in political science academia.

“I got my PhD in political science and international affairs from the University of Georgia in 2019. I had a few faculty jobs, teaching international relations and political methodology,” she says. “Political methodology has always been one of my favorite parts, especially the data analytics side of it. Just give me a data set and the software, and I am very happy.”

After a friend suggested she look into library work, Sarah discovered librarianship included everything she enjoyed about teaching without the sometimes more stressful aspects of academia. “I really enjoy one-on-one, ‘let me help you with a project’ kinds of work,” she notes. “When I was faculty, my favorite parts were helping students through projects. We’d both get excited and invested, especially when we played with data. Those were definitely my strengths and helped lead me to Smith.”

Since arriving at the Libraries, Sarah’s day-to-day never includes the same ask twice. From debugging internal code for the Libraries to tracking down sources for research papers, requests for data assistance span across disciplines and departments. “I find a lot of sources for political science, economics, and sociology papers, but I also answer random questions about data sources,” she says. “I’ve helped a student get the right kind of data for a project about NASA and satellite launches. I helped somebody write a program for finding certain types of verses in the Bible. I guide students when they say, ‘I have the data, but how do I use it?’”

The where, why, and how surrounding data is where Sarah’s expertise really shines. Finding data is one thing; being able to interpret it and use it is another. “While finding data is the number one thing I can help with, I can also connect students to resources for using the data,” she notes. “I have training in all sorts of data software, such as R, Python, and SQL, which covers basic aggregation up to machine learning and text analysis. So there's a huge array of what I can do.”

As Sarah enters her second semester at Smith, she also hopes to raise awareness around data resources, as well as continue to strengthen relationships with other data-centric departments on campus.

“Love Data Week is the big way we are getting the word out,” Sarah says. “I'd also like to start offering workshops and conversations around data, especially data literacy and something on the software side. I’ve developed really great relationships with the Spinelli Center for Quantitative Learning and with the Spatial Analysis Lab, so we all are able to know what each other is doing.”

As part of Love Data Week, we have to ask — What does Sarah love about data?

“What I love is that there's never a clear answer,” she says. “Data is so powerful, and you've got to be really careful with how you use it. You can never take an uncritical look at what the data’s telling you, because it can tell you multiple stories at one time. Understanding those layers is what’s really interesting.”

Have a data question for Sarah? Reach out to her or say hello to her during Love Data Week February 9-13!