DREAM Lab

The Data, Research, Exploration, Access & Methods (DREAM) Lab, formerly known as the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory, is a Library initiative to help UCSB scholars learn new skills, access specialized computational resources, and build data collections. Established in 2016 and led by Jon Jablonski and the “DREAM Team,” the DREAM Lab especially seeks to serve campus communities that have traditionally lacked access to computational resources.

The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory at UCSB Library is now DREAM Lab. Our mission hasn’t changed: We support data-intensive research, experimentation and learning with new technologies, and access to advanced computational methods for students, faculty, and staff across the campus. Our new name reflects the fact that data, research, experimentation, accessibility, and methodological rigor are the foundations of everything we do.

The UCSB Library Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory is UCSB's home for data-centric research support. The Collaboratory team offers expert guidance on access to the Library's data collections and supports software tools to analyze and visualize quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data. 

The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory offers custom-designed workshops for selected courses and tools as well as a variety of Software and Data Carpentry Workshops. Fall 2021 workshops are listed below.

In a room at the UC Santa Barbara Library, Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy and her students prepare for revolution. They wield no weapons, only words. They seek not to overthrow a government, but to disrupt the multibillion-dollar academic publishing industry.

The Twitter hashtag #NoDAPL has inspired a timely UCSB undergraduate research project.

Environmentalists and social activists are using the hashtag to indicate their disapproval of the Dakota Access pipeline, a controversial underground oil pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois.

Fifty years ago, the UCSB Library created a separate unit to collect maps and aerial photographs. In 1979, the Map Room was renamed the Map & Imagery Laboratory (MIL) in order to acknowledge its role in supporting research and teaching on campus.  In the time since, MIL has evolved into one of the largest unique collections of cartographic materials in the nation. In particular, our collection of historic aerial photographs presents an unparalleled view of landscape change in California and beyond.