CILIP Conference 2015 Day 1 Afternoon Breakout Session 1

Anne Donnelly and Cuna Ekmekcioglu Research Data Management (RDM) Masterclass Digital Futures and Technology

Similar challenges from the earlier session:

defining data and getting researchers to understand research data
changing researcher practice throughout the entire research lifecycle (and beyond)
understanding funder mandates
data management plans
data curation profiles

Data Curation Profiles Toolkit (Purdue University)

At Edinburgh they created their own DCP toolkit (Purdue kit was a bit too large and unwieldy). The DCP interview is a confidential conversation with the researcher about their 'data story'.

Data sharing is desirable but their are concerns e.g. commercial value, sensitivity of data, ownership.

RDM is a collaborative effort (libraries, researchers, eve search offices, senior managers, research support staff, IT staff). Library often takes the lead but aren't always best placed to understand the work done in schools or provide direct DCP/RDM support to researchers.

Mantra(http://data lib.edina.ac.uk/mantra) Research Data Management Training developed by Edinburgh.

Jon Bentley The challenges and opportunities of resource access management Digital Futures and Technology

Think about how you create a brilliant user experience.

Seamless user access: the expectation is Google. The reality is users are presenting with an array of barriers to get to their information. It's complex because there are so many agencies involved in making this happen.

Not sure seamless access is possible: perhaps more realistic to aim for consistent?

This talk covers the results of a survey conducted by OpenAthens.

A real mix of technologies in use. Most use 2 or 3 (one used 8!)

Agree that access is given the necessary priority but not clear where ownership of access management sits in the organisation.

Most agreed that they are behind the curve and there isn't sufficient IT support with other teams having to take on more IT responsibility.

97.6% said demand for off site access is growing driven by mobility, home working and collaboration. This leads to increased usage of licensed resources (augmenting not replacing on site or desktop access). Less pronounced benefits included increased engagement with users and better understanding of what users do with information. Big challenges include technical skills, limitations of current systems, user skills. Of less concern were complexity of user journey and security concerns.

Access management is a source of friction: tension with system limitations and access vs security. Complexity around language creates a barrier.

Biggest priority is to achieve the a seamless user journey. Seamless generally seen to mean that the effort librarians put in should be unseen so users don't have to put in much effort.

Summary

My biggest feeling about these sessions is I can't still believe these count as digital futures. It's at least 5 years since I started engaging with these in my professional role and 2.5 years since I left that role yet the conversation seems to have remained the same. More the digital yesterday and today than tomorrow? Perhaps this does suggest that research data management (RDM) and identity and access management (IAM) are indeed "wicked problems".