Author: Rachel MacGregor

Digital Archivist at Lancaster University. Interested in data discovery, archives, open data and lots of other things.

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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Acting On Change: Pericles/DPC Conference and DPA Awards London 2016

DPA Awards 2016 nominees and judges (Image @SueCorrigall licence OGL)
DPA Awards 2016 nominees and judges (Image @SueCorrigall licence OGL)

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Pericles/DPC Conference: Acting on Change at the Wellcome Institute in London.  The theme of the conference was moving forward with digital preservation; in other words taking steps beyond just the technical tools and looking outward instead of inward.  There were excellent keynotes and panel sessions and useful and thought-provoking workshops.  PERICLES (Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information through the Content Lifecycle) is a EU funded four year project which seeks to address the issues of managing digital preservation in an ever changing world.

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Research Data Alliance UK Workshop, Birmingham 2016

I attended the first Research Data Alliance workshop held in sunny Birmingham which was designed to bring together practitioners from across the UK to find out more about the work of the RDA.  It was also a chance to see how we might be able to contribute and benefit from what the organisation has to offer.  Despite already being a member of the RDA Interest Groups for Archives and Records Professionals, I confess to having been more of a casual observer than an active participant.  So it was a brilliant opportunity to find out more about exactly what the Research Data Alliance is, how it works and what it hopes to achieve.

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DCDC16 Salford, UK

Salford Quays (image copyright David Dixon http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2685268) CC BY-SA 2.0
Salford Quays (image copyright David Dixon http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2685268) CC BY-SA 2.0

It would seem it never rains but it pours with conferences and hot on the heels of iPres 2016 in Bern which I blogged about earlier came DCDC16: Discovering Collections: Discovering Communities which is organised jointly by the UK National Archives and Research Libraries UK.  The theme this year was “From potential to impact” and certainly through the conference we heard quite a lot about academic impact especially in the context of the Research Excellence Framework.

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iPres 2016 – International Digital Preservation Conference Bern, Switzerland

I was extremely lucky to attend iPres 2016 the International Digital Preservation conference this year held in the beautiful Swiss capital city Bern.
Bern and a view of the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau
Bern and a view of the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau

The conference attracts some of the leading practitioners in the field so it’s a real privilege to be able to hear from and speak to people who are leading in research and development – creating tools, developing workflows and undertaking research into all aspects of digital management and preservation.

It will take a while to digest everything – there was so much to learn! – but I thought I would gather together some “highlights” of the session while still fresh in my mind.
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Welcome to the north!

I was delighted recently to welcome colleagues from across the UK to Lancaster University for an Archivematica UK User group meeting.  It was the hottest day of September here in Lancaster and while the campus did look lovely I did recommend our wonderful campus ice cream shop* to help cool down.

campus
Lancaster University campus (photograph Rachel MacGregor)

Archivematica UK User Group is an informal group made up of people considering, testing or using Archivematica, a digital preservation system.  Those who attended are at all different stages of development and have a wide range of collections that they manage.  What unites us all is a desire to tackle digital preservation as best they can with the resources they have available and to share experiences with others in the digital preservation community.

What Archivematica is: an open-source digital preservation system.

What Archivematica is not: a magic bullet that will solve all your digital preservation needs.

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The long tail

Source: http://negativespace.co/photos/coding/ CC0
Source: http://negativespace.co/photos/coding/ (CC0)

 

We have been doing some thinking around how to improve the research data management services we offer here at Lancaster.  We’re keen to move away from the idea of the role of research data management as purely for compliance purposes – we want to really push the idea of open data and data reuse and develop the idea that the research data produced by the university are valuable assets. We know that researchers at the university are working on interesting, valuable and important work.  Look at Derek Gatherer’s work on the Zika virus or Maggie Mort’s project looking at disaster planning and children and a host of other more specialized datasets supporting research right across the sciences and the humanities.  Each dataset will have its own context, background and requirements for it to be properly interpreted and understood.

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