Data Interview on “Messy Data”

Our latest Data Interview features our two Jisc sponsored Data Champions, Dr Jude Towers and Dr David Ellis. Jude is a Lecturer in Sociology and Quantitative Methods and David a Lecturer in Computational Social Science in our Psychology Department.

Jude and David recently presented at a Jisc event on ‘Stories from the Field: Data are Messy and that’s (kind of) ok’.

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5th Data Conversations – Stories from the Field

We recently held our fifth Data Conversations here at Lancaster University Library. These events bring researchers together and act as a forum to share their experiences of using and sharing data. The vibe’s informal and we provide our attendees with complementary coffee, cake and pizza…

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From Planning to Deployment: Digital Preservation and Organizational Change June 2017

We were very excited to be visiting the lovely city of York for the Digital Preservation’s event “From Planning to Deployment: Digital Preservation and Organizational Change”.  The day promised a mixture of case studies from organisations who have or are in the process of implementing a digital preservation programme and also a chance for Jisc to showcase some of the work they have been sponsoring as part of the Research Data Shared Services project (which we are a pilot institution for).

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Jisc Research Data Shared Services March 2017

Here at Lancaster University we are very excited to be part of a group of pilot institutions taking part in Jisc’s Research data shared services project.  This aims to provide a flexible range of services which suit the varied needs of institutions in the HE sector help achieve policy compliance for deposit, publication, discovery, storage and long term preservation of research data. It’s an ambitious project but one that there is an undoubted need for and we are trying to work with Jisc to help them achieve this goal.

Last week we were invited down to Jisc London HQ to learn about the progress of the project and – just as importantly – share our own thoughts and experiences on the process.

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Researchers: what do they really think?

Image: Flickr https://flic.kr/p/8WpM2U – Rul Fernandes CC BY 2.0

Well… it’s probably quite hard to get to the truth of the matter but here at Lancaster we are trying to find out what researchers really think.  This is crucial for developing and improving our services and vital for delivering the service our researchers want.

We are one of the organisations taking part in the JISC RDM Shared Services pilot and you can read their take on the work being done here.  With JISC’s help we undertook a researcher survey to find out a bit more about the kinds of research data which were being produced, how the data were (or weren’t) being managed and researcher attitudes towards their data.

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RDMF16 – Creating a Research Data Community

Are research institutions engaging their researchers with Research Data Management (RDM)? And if so, how are they doing it? In this post Hardy Schwamm (@hardyschwamm),  Research Data Manager, Lancaster University, and Rosie Higman (@RosieHLib), Research Data Advisor, University of Cambridge, and explore the work they are doing in their respective institutions.

Whilst funder policies were the initial catalyst for many RDM services at UK universities there are many reasons to engage with RDM, from increased impact to moving towards Open Research as the new normal. And a growing number of researchers are keen to get involved! These reasons also highlight the need for a democratic, researcher-led approach if the behavioural change necessary for RDM is to be achieved. Following initial discussions online and at the Research Data Network event in Cambridge on 6 September, we wanted to find out whether and how others are engaging researchers beyond iterating funder policies.

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