Downstream Curation: Researchers and Data Management

Ernie Boyko, Carleton University

There have been several noble, if less than fruitful efforts in the first half of this decade to develop a plan to archive Canadian research data. These have largely been top-down consultations with laudable recommendations but no champion to take them forward. More recently, a small number of working groups have been formed. These consist of stakeholders from universities, institutes, libraries, granting agencies, and individual researchers who have come together to develop strategies for managing research data. Rather than top-down, these are more grass roots and have real deliverables in the form of workshops, surveys, toolkits and other resources for the management of research data. The presentation will examine two such initiatives. Research Data Canada’s Research Data Strategies Working Group’s members are bonded by a shared recognition of the pressing need to deal with Canadian data management issues. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Data Management Working Group was founded to assist members in collecting, organizing, preserving and providing permanent access to research data generated in their own institutions. We will discuss their strategies, progress to date and future endeavours, and give a prognosis for their success.

Michael Witt, Purdue University Libraries

With few precedents to follow, libraries and librarians who are beginning to explore their potential roles in data curation are grappling to relate their training and experience as librarians to the development and stewardship of data collections. In 2008, a group of librarians at Purdue University conducted an exercise to learn more about what data curation might mean to them in practical terms by identifying and engaging potential data contributors on campus. Subject-specialist librarians engaged six data creators from different disciplines, each in their own way, to solicit contributions from them. The librarians were asked to report back with a collection-level description of the dataset, their rationale for its selection, and a narrative of how they engaged and interacted with the data creator to answer questions such as, “How should the dataset be presented in the repository?” and “What policies are needed for its submission, use, and preservation?” The datasets were then ingested into a prototype data repository. This session will present the structure of the exercise along with vignettes to illustrate the challenges, issues, and insights of the librarians from their perspectives.

Nathan Sarr, University of Rochester Libraries

IR Plus is a new, open source platform for institutional repositories. Based on several years of user research, IR Plus was written to support faculty and grad students in the creation phases of their research, rather than just being a receptacle for finished work. For social scientists, the format-agnostic personal workspace supports storing and sharing large datasets, allowing them to collaborate with colleagues all over the world. When the work is ready for "publication" into the repository, a controlled but flexible approach to metadata allows easy addition of new types while keeping the overall metadata clean. Bringing the repository closer to social networking systems, users of the system can showcase and provide access to their work through Researcher Pages, which are easy to create and maintain. Users can now also feature "personal publications" on their Researcher Pages: material from the workspace that has not been added to any of the collections in the repository. While IR Plus was not created just for data users, we feel IASSIST members will find a number of its features interesting and useful, and it provides a study of a formal, institutional system edging into the world of social networking and collaboration.

This paper will discuss the findings of the RIN-funded Case Studies in Life Sciences project, undertaken by a team of social scientists and information specialists from the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) and from Information Services and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) at the University of Edinburgh. The aim of the project was to improve understanding of information use in the life sciences, and to provide a broader and deeper base of evidence to inform discussions about how information policy and practice can most effectively be supported and improved. Case studies were conducted across laboratories and research groups from 7 sub-disciplines of the life sciences and deployed a range of methodologies and tools including short-term ethnographic techniques and semi-structured instruments. Our key conclusion indicates that policies and strategies of research funders and information service providers must be informed by an understanding of the constraints and practices of different research communities. Only thus will they be effective in optimising use and exchange of information, and in ensuring that they are scientifically productive and cost-effective The full report ‘Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences’ is available at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/case-studies.