Developing Library Research Data Services at the University of Sunshine Coast
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Research Data Librarians3 / 13
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InformationCategory of beingCoordinate systemPresentation of a groupService (economics)
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Staff (military)Data managementBitStudent's t-testStaff (military)Moment (mathematics)JSON
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Integrated development environmentFocus (optics)Order (biology)Product (business)Focus (optics)1 (number)AreaComputer animation
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Data managementData storage deviceSpacetimeData managementBitProjective planeCentralizer and normalizerTrajectoryData storage deviceMultiplication signSpacetimeXMLComputer animation
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Library (computing)Repository (publishing)Service (economics)Office suiteFaculty (division)Data managementInformationTelecommunicationSpreadsheetLibrary (computing)BitFaculty (division)Universe (mathematics)Group actionCoordinate systemMoment (mathematics)Projective planeTable (information)QuicksortAreaPlanningSystem administratorPoint (geometry)Data conversionStress (mechanics)Graph coloringKey (cryptography)Service (economics)Office suiteRepository (publishing)SpectroscopyLevel (video gaming)Electronic program guideXML
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Data managementData managementLevel (video gaming)Procedural programmingUniverse (mathematics)Materialization (paranormal)Centralizer and normalizerPlanningProcess (computing)Data storage deviceWordStudent's t-testMultiplication signSpacetimeOffice suite1 (number)Projective planeEndliche ModelltheorieDemosceneComputer animation
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Service (economics)Data managementInformationMathematicsComputer programmingLibrary (computing)BitFaculty (division)Forcing (mathematics)Group actionPhysical systemProjective planeTerm (mathematics)DataflowAreaProcess (computing)Connectivity (graph theory)Presentation of a groupBoss CorporationShared memoryData storage deviceRoundness (object)Student's t-testSound effectEndliche ModelltheorieDegree (graph theory)Multiplication signSpacetimeService (economics)Office suiteWhiteboardXMLProgram flowchart
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DatabaseData managementDatabaseData managementLibrary (computing)MereologyCentralizer and normalizerPlanningBoss CorporationData storage deviceDisk read-and-write headElectronic program guideSpacetimeXML
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Library (computing)Data managementData structureData managementStudent's t-testComputer fileMultiplication signPhysical systemComputer animation
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Data managementIntegrated development environmentTerm (mathematics)Data exchangeProcess (computing)Data storage deviceMetadataPasswordPlanning
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Data managementData conversionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)XMLProgram flowchart
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
Welcome to the Sunshine Coast and my name is Beth Crota and I'm the information and research services coordinator up here which means I basically manage the reference librarians and as you will hear when we go along we're a fairly small bunch of human beings up here. So the subtitle of my presentation was From Little Things, Big Things but we haven't
00:23
quite grown all that much yet. So a little bit about us as an institution. We're 18 years old this year and I've been here for about seven years and my standard joke is that we behave like a human being of that particular age.
00:44
So an 18 year old is how our institution works. We're kind of trying to be grown up but we're still trying to be a bit rebellious as well and that has a lot of implications about the way we manage a lot of things here.
01:00
We're small. We've only got around 9,600 students at the moment, 299 academic staff and we expect our academics to be at least a little bit research active. And even though we're young we are highly centralised, a little bit hierarchical and
01:24
that actually has been a real bonus for our discussions about research data management. I've listed our kind of big research areas, the ones that are more data productive and this is kind of in order of how they're arriving at the institution.
01:40
So the latest big thing to hit us is engineering with a sustainability focus and all of this is starting to present us with research data and it's starting to present us with a diversity of research data that institutionally I don't think we'd realised was going to happen to us.
02:01
So here's our history of research data management. In 2010 there was just nothing and there was probably not a really strong concept of the push for research here, although there was a lot happening. In 2011 a new PBC research was appointed. Wonderfully and coincidentally it was about the same time as our Seeding the Commons
02:23
project happened. He has really pushed research so we're on a very steep trajectory about what's happening. So by 2014 after we'd had our Seeding the Commons we've now got a bit of research data management happening and wonderfully our IT people organised some central storage
02:45
space for us as well. A little bit on our Seeding the Commons. We were very small. I ended up working with Seeding the Commons because the person who was going to lead the project decided to have a baby or two. I worked very closely with our repository coordinator, sort of pushed into a role that
03:04
we didn't really expect. So we started the Seeding the Commons by having a high level steering group which included the director of information services, the director of IT services and the director of research. We also included two senior researchers and the repository coordinator and myself.
03:22
So we were very structured in the way we did it. Under the steering committee we had a working party and I've just colour coordinated this so you can see we had the brown people from the library, we had somebody from IT, we had two people from the Office of Research, we had some people from faculty research
03:41
administration and we've got researchers. I think one of the best things in our original planning was that we had ethics people on our initial working party because it gave us who weren't involved with ethics so much a conception of what was going to be involved in research data management.
04:06
And it also opened some doors for us. We had some engagement and we started doing some public communication. I gave some talks. At this point we created a lib guide so we had a lib guide going on fairly early about research data management.
04:21
Because I was their boss and because I talk a lot, the faculty librarians heard a lot about research data and because we had someone from IT on our working party they started to prick their ears up that something was in the wind. It was really useful for us that conversations were starting to be had right the way across
04:41
the university in all these different areas. There wasn't a huge amount of traction and some of our key research areas just didn't want to be involved so this was a bit of a challenge for us. I'll go back to our wonderful new PVC research. Suddenly we were starting to get new researchers to come in. I call this great moments in research data management history at USC.
05:02
We were sitting around at a table and someone said there was a researcher coming with micro spectroscopy. Suddenly we realized that there were going to be people arriving here with big data as opposed to a few Excel spreadsheets. IT and the university realized that we really needed to do something about research data management.
05:22
So we pushed through some policies. We've now got a research academic policy which fortunately happened at around the same time as our Seeding the Commons project. We've got procedures that sit under that and this is at a university level and it came out of the office of the PVC research. So we've got research data and materials procedures.
05:41
We have a research data and materials management plan that feeds into that. When our central storage was put in place there are restricted folders for researchers on that central store and they have to apply for that through IT. So currently anyone who is undertaking research activity here can request central storage
06:03
space that includes HDR students. When they apply for space they are asked to submit a research data management plan and what's been heartening I suppose is the best word is that the research, the HDR students have been the ones most willing to actually go through with that process.
06:25
This little model kind of says how it's functioning. Our process has developed good relationships between the library and the office of research and IT services in terms of research data management. We've progressively engaged faculty a little bit more.
06:42
I think the disengaged area probably is still a lot of the researchers aren't quite sure what this is all about although they've been very keen to put stuff on our central store. We have some areas who still aren't engaging with that. One of our challenges is the jigsaw piece in black which is the external forces.
07:04
Because we're small we have a lot of industry relationship and that always poses a challenge for where the data is going to sit and what they're going to be doing with their data and who's going to have access to their data. One of our problems with data sharing is we haven't got an outward facing space for
07:25
data sharing. Our central store is very locked down which has been great for some of the researchers because that's what they wanted. What's been great for us has been the, as other people have said, the changes to the ARC and Public Library of Science guidelines.
07:41
So there's a lot of activity at the beginning of this year and I had another round of presentations to research groups to talk about how they could start thinking about complying with the ARC and PLOS. I've got to say also that until last year there'd be no great engagement between IT and the needs of researchers.
08:01
So one of the kind of sub benefits of this whole research data management process was the employment of an IT research infrastructure person. So our researchers have now got somebody to contact in IT specifically to talk about not only research data management but all of their research IT needs.
08:24
So there's been a lot of flow on effects from our research data management project from our seat in the Commons. We started talking to HDR students. I think this has been really important because in some of their discipline areas such as health appropriate data management is mandated and it's been good that their supervisors
08:46
have been supportive of us in these discussions. And we hope also, and I say this every time I talk to HDR students, to ask them to take the information that they've got from our talks to take it back to their supervisors and discuss it.
09:02
And for the first time this year we've actually got a component in their research essentials program that is about research data management. I know this session was about the library but we are a little bit of a we where the library, the Office of Research and IT services have worked very closely in research data
09:23
management and to a degree it's helped us work together right the way across the board as well. Most of the education here has fallen to the library and it's probably because I'm their boss so I've got them working for me but we've now developed a system
09:42
where our faculty librarians try to meet every new researcher who comes on campus and that's researchers and HDR students. And that's new and the faculty librarians have found all of this business about research data management challenging but they've embraced it.
10:01
And before I gave the talk I asked a couple of them what they did in terms of research data management. So first of all was our social sciences librarian who said aha sometimes I forget so she thought her boss was coming after her and then she started talking about what she does and she talks about EndNote and databases and she talks about our library
10:27
guard about research data management is pointed out and she talks about the central storage space and how to get access to it and she talks about the research data management plan. So as as I think it was Katina said there's a lot for them to cover and they've
10:44
got a lot going on in their heads. But very much aware that it's part of their role. And then this was the science librarian what was great was kind of got quite indignant that I was asking him and then he told me what he talked about. And it was about EndNote and systematic reviews and he talked to his researchers
11:05
and students about being systematic and backup and about file structures and keeping things in appropriate folders naming and being systematic. At the end of it when he said I don't get time to talk about research data management. Well what he talks to them about is research data management.
11:24
And that was great. So finally what about the researchers themselves. Well central storage has been a godsend for us because it has instant engagement. But we've still got researchers who don't trust anyone with their data except
11:42
an external USB drive with a password. Many of them are still hanging on to their data and they don't necessarily particularly want to complete a research data management plan. I forgot to say earlier we don't have a metadata store and I think a metadata store is really valuable in trying to sell research data management.
12:00
Finally given that we've got this researcher in front of us I'm going to end with an anecdote. We've got a researcher who is doing pretty spectacular international environment research. He uses and produces data and he was on our first steering committee when we were talking about what we're going to do for the long term. And he said he had been involved in the past in trying to construct an international
12:22
data exchange. It didn't work. Earlier this year he came and he said he wanted to do something with his data and could we help him. He just wanted it in open access. He was far too busy to have to deal with it at all. So he just wanted to get it. As soon as we mention things like processes and paperwork,
12:41
he said he was far too busy to bother. Because this is the kind of paperwork that they get confronted with when they want to actually look at research data management. So I went away from his conversation with a challenge that if they want to go out about making a difference to the world,
13:01
we have to try and make it as easy as possible for them so that all the paperwork about research data management doesn't actually stop them doing it and it facilitates research data management rather than causing another great problem for them. Which seems to be a big challenge here.
13:22
So that's my challenge to you.