Presentation delivered by Stuart Macdonald at a DCC/JISC Managing Research Data workshop in Nottingham, 25 October 2012

1. JISC Managing Research Data:
Liaison Librarian Training
Stuart Macdonald
Anne Donnelly
Robin Rice
EDINA & Data Library, University of Edinburgh
Nottingham: 25 October 2012

2. Overview
The Context
The Collaboration
The Plan
The Topics
The (intended) Outcome
The Challenges

3. The Context
Information Services (IS) has committed to an
RDM Roadmap over an 18 month period (July
2012-Jan. 2014) via its annual planning rounds.
The Roadmap will help to engage academic
units and PIs in research data management and
provide services to implement the University’s
RDM Policy.
IS staff need training to build confidence in
engaging in RDM activity and support.

4. The Collaboration
The Roadmap is a
Liaison librarian
cross-divisional goal
training involves four
of IS.
librarians from
Supported by: various subject areas
◦ DCC Data librarians as
◦ EDINA & Data facilitators
Library Internal and
◦ User Services external guest
◦ Library & speakers
Collections
◦ IT Infrastructure

5. Liaison Librarians@Edinburgh
Work with academic staff to ensure that
the library is meeting teaching and
research needs by ensuring availability of
materials in their respective subject areas
Promote information literacy
Feedback specific needs of
colleges/schools into library planning
process

6. The Plan
Facilitated by ‘expert’ data librarians
Assigned work at own pace; group get-
togethers 5 times over period (2 hours)
Inspired by Data Intelligence 4 Librarians but
based on MANTRA learning units
Reflective writing to think as a researcher
Short talks followed by long discussions
Interactive group exercises based on UKDA
Train the Trainers materials

7. The Topics
Data management planning
Documenting & organising data
Data storage & security
Ethics & copyright
Data sharing

8. The (intended) Outcome
Librarians are in control of their own training
(planned collaboratively) and therefore are
committed to learning.
Reading at own pace, reflective writing,
selected software modules allow individuals to
achieve deeper understanding for given
research field.
Management commitment to roll out further
training based on results; but not for formal job
description changes.

9. The Challenges
If commitment is only lightweight - done as
other work allows, spread over 4 months, no
anticipation of job change - how effective will
(the learning) be?
How and by whom should further training be
done across IS and with researchers?
DCC/MRD: Awareness of other institutions’
progress may help learners take on board
importance of RDM.

10. Thanks!
MANTRA - http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/
Data Intelligence 4 Librarians -
http://dataintelligence.3tu.nl/en/home/
Edinburgh University Data Library –
www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library
Edinburgh University Data Management Policy -
http://tinyurl.com/6jnllft