About Databrary

Databrary is a restricted access data library that is specialized for storing, streaming, and sharing video and audio recordings collected as research data or documentation. Databrary supports sharing of many types of research data and documentation beyond video and audio. Based at New York University, Databrary’s mission is to support data sharing among researchers in the behavioral, social, educational, developmental, neural, and computer sciences.

Databrary is also a resource for and a community of scientists who use video or audio in their research or teaching.

We encourage you to read Databrary’s Access Agreement and its three annexes. These documents, especially Annex III–Databrary Access Guide, provide extensive information about how Databrary is structured and how it should be used. You may also get guidance about working with a research ethics board or IRB or see how to incorporate data sharing using Databrary in a Data Management Plan for a grant proposal. Look up a term in the glossary if something doesn’t make sense, or contact us directly for one-on-one support.

The guide has separate sections specifically for institutions, researchers, and trainees or staff.

History

Karen Adolph and Rick Gilmore co-founded and co-direct Databrary. Databrary was built in 2013-2014 at New York University, and it went live to the research community in 2014. The system has had steady growth, as the following figure from the Databrary analytics site indicates:

Figure 1: Growth in researchers and institutions since Databrary’s inception. Source: https://databrary.github.io/analytics

Support

Databrary is grateful to have received financial and in-kind support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, The LEGO Foundation, the John S. Templeton Foundation, New York University, and the Pennsylvania State University.

Code base

Databrary’s code base is open source and is hosted on GitHub.

See the software page for more information about the specific technologies used.