MANTRA Research Data Management Training

Introduction

During autumn and winter 2012-13, data librarians at the University of Edinburgh (Robin Rice and Anne Donnelly) led a pilot course for four University academic service librarians on Research Data Management (RDM) covering five topics involving reading assigments from the MANTRA course, reflective writing, and 2-hour face-to-face training sessions, including group exercises from the UK Data Archive (UKDA). The course was deemed successful by participants and Information Services managers, and was delivered to all the University's academic service librarians.

Here we share our training for small groups of librarians anywhere who wish to gain confidence and understanding of research data management. The DIY Training Kit is designed to contain everything needed to complete a similar training course on your own (in small groups) and is based on open educational materials.

The materials have recently been enhanced with Data Curation Profiles and reflective questions based on the experience of academic librarians who have taken the course.

Users are welcome to apply their own creativity to reshape the course as they wish. For example, there are an abundance of group exercises available from the UKDA training resources pack, many of which are not included here. However, we acknowledge that the time commitment required for professional development activity such as this is significant for busy professionals, and many will appreciate the 'out-of-the-box' readiness of the training as we provide in the kit.

• Facilitators: Read this first - Training schedule (Word version; PDF version)
• Blog post by Lisa Haddow, University of Stirling, on her experience using the training kit with her librarian team

Independent study: Data Curation Profiles

In the University of Edinburgh pilot training, the evaluations indicated that overall the librarians considered what they were learning was of value to them. However, there was no ready way to apply their knowledge in their day to day work. In order to test their knowledge and also increase the confidence of the librarians to engage in discussions with researchers about data management, a post-training independent study was assigned, with the support of their line managers. Data Curation Profiles, hosted by the Distributed Data Curation Center at the Purdue University Libraries, were the chosen method for the independent study work.

Data Curation Profiles provide a complete framework for interviewing a researcher in any discipline about their research data and their data management practices. Register on the DCP Toolkit website, http://datacurationprofiles.org/, to download the user guide, interviewer’s manual, interview worksheet and template, as well as to access the user support forum.

• Data Curation Profile for Linguistics - Dr Bert Remijsen interviewed by Anne Donnelly, added September 2013
• First Data Curation Profile created in Edinburgh - blogpost by Anne Donnelly, published in Edinburgh Research Data Blog, September 2013
• Data Curation Profile for Interdisciplinary Social Sciences in Health - Dr Nick Jenkins interviewed by Rowena Stewart, added January 2014
• Data Curation Profile for Edinburgh College of Art (1 of 2) - Dr Angela McClanahan, School of Art, interviewed by Jane Furness, added February 2014
• Data Curation Profile for Edinburgh College of Art (2 of 2) - Ed Hollis, School of Design, interviewed by Jane Furness, added February 2014
• Data Curation Profile for History - Graham Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, added July 2014