Re: [rda-libresearchdata] San Diego Proposal

12 Dec 2014

As a recent joiner of this RDA Interest Group, I was pleased to receive the
message from Wolfram this morning about a session proposal for the San
Diego RDA Plenary. I am very supportive of a theme addressing data policies
but would like to share an emerging topic that possibly could be
incorporated in this proposal or may be best held until the next Plenary.
Let me describe the topic and see how others feel it would be best handled.
Over the past few months, I have been involved in several conversations
with librarians from across North America asking how to organise research
data management services in academic libraries. These discussions have been
independent of one another and have been with librarians in large, medium,
and small institutions. The most recent conversation was on Tuesday of this
week with four librarians from the same institution. They make up a working
group tasked with implementing RDM services in their Library.
This topic seems to be on the minds of many librarians as they look to
develop RDM services. The underlying question has been: Are libraries
organised to support research data management services? I too have had to
grapple with this question over the past couple of years and wrote a blog
entry

with a summary of issues that I encountered. The foremost difficulty is
that libraries are organised vertically, while research data management
services involve horizontal activities across the organisation. As a
consequence, several factors must be addressed by those implementing a new
RDM service.
As I write this message, I'm coming to the conclusion that the topic is
large enough that it probably warrants a separate session. Maybe it would
be best to hold this idea until the next Plenary. But the topic is very
hot at the moment.
Thanks, Chuck

  • Kathleen Shearer's picture

    Author: Kathleen Shearer

    Date: 12 Dec, 2014

    Hi Chuck,
    I think this is a really important topic for many. In previous RDA BoF sessions, we have shared at a very high-level some services and organizational models for RDM in libraries.
    I don't know what others think, but to me this would a great topic for a spin-off Working Group. If there is support for this, we could look at organizing a smaller group during RDA to discuss further.
    All the best, Kathleen

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