Information School News

Study on research data management in China Dr Andrew Cox The results of an international collaboration between Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi at the Information School and Yingshen Huang, from Peking University, have now been published in the prestigious Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (Early view). https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24413 The research, based on web site analysis, a survey and interviews, reveals that the support of research data management by Chinese university libraries remains in its infancy. The full reference is: Huang Y, Cox A & Sbaffi L (2020) Research data management policy and practice in Chinese university libraries. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24413

Yingshen Huang, a visiting scholar from the University of Peking, along with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi, presented their paper 'Research Data Management Policy and Practice in China' at the the 15th International Digital Curation Conference on the 17th February. The event, run in Dublin by the Digital Curation Centre in partnership with Digital Repository of Ireland, brought together the various stakeholders that play a role in ensuring digital objects are appropriately created, managed, preserved and shared. The conference - which consisted of workshops, a two day-long main conference and an unconference focussed on community - was held at Croke Park. Keynote Lecture 'Collecting and Curating the National Memory' by Dr Sandra Collins, Deputy Director of the National Library of Ireland. Keynote lecture 'The Internet of Things: Utopia or Dystopia?' by Francine Berman, Edward P Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer...

It is always exciting to see a former PhD student again and find out more about what they are doing now, so it was amazing to be able to visit Mexico City and say hello again to Gibrán Rivera Gonzalez who gained his PhD at the Information School in 2013. He is now a lecturer at Instituto Politécnico Nacional, one of the top universities in Mexico. The picture below is of a seminar I gave on the need for qualitative research in the age of big data and AI. Together we also went to the Entre Pares conference, in Pueblo, organised by CONRICYT (The National Consortium of Scientific and Technological Information Resources). The conference aims to promote scholarly communication in academic communities across Mexico. This year’s event had an impressive programme of presentations on a wide variety of information science topics. There was a track on Research Data Management, reflecting the increasing interest in this topic in the country. It was good to be able to share some UK experi...

Andrew Cox and a colleague at Sheffield Hallam have just had a book published by Facet publishing. This book is for librarians and other support professionals who are interested in learning more about RDM and developing Research Data Services in their own institution. It will also be of value to students on librarianship, archives, and information management courses studying topics such as RDM, digital curation, data literacies and open science. Find out more and buy the book here.

On Wednesday 3 December Dr Stephen Pinfield will present the keynote speech at the Academic and National Library Training Co-operative seminar in Dublin. His keynote is entitled 'Research Data Management in Practice: Roles and Skills for Libraries'.  The speech will refer to  the growing body of work produced by the University of Sheffield on research data management, including that by Andrew Cox, Eddy Verbaan, Jen Smith, Barbara Sen and Stephen himself.

On Tuesday 20 May, Dr Andrew Cox of the Information School chaired CILIP's Research Data Management Executive Briefing. Academic libraries play an increasingly important role in managing research data.  Due to differences in data between different disciplines and varied approach to data management, this is a complex area.  Collaboration between researchers, libraries, administrators and computing services will be required for effective research data management. A number of research data experts presented at the Executive Briefing and their presentations are available to download from the CILIP website .  

Over 200 information professionals registered for today's webinar entitled "What is Research Data Management and what is the Library's Role in Supporting it?" by Andrew Cox hosted in the UKSG webinar series. Free access to the slides and a recording of the webinar is now available from UKSG website.

Last week on the 2nd day of CILIP's annual Umbrella conference, Andrew Cox and Barbara Sen presented on Research data management for you . One of our successful PhD students, Eva Hornung, also presented in the same session (which focused on Future Skills and Future Roles ).

RDMRose 's Eddy Verbaan participated in the DigiCurv conference " Framing the digital curation curriculum " in Florence 6-7 May. The project poster explained the project and invited conference attendees to identify directions for the library curriculum on Research Data Management.

CILIP's MmIT group conference is in Sheffield today... #mmit2013 Several iSchool staff and students have been involved in its organisation... particularly Jen Smith, and current/prospective student helpers: Ben, Despina, Emily, Janine, Penny and Taghreed. 9:30 - registration and morning coffee - Richard Roberts Foyer 10:00 – Introduction and welcome – Chris Sexton, University of Sheffield, Leo Appleton, MmIT - Richard Roberts Auditorium 10:15 -11:00 – Keynote presentation by Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services “Searching in the cloud” - Richard Roberts Auditorium 11:00 -11.50 – Parallel workshops sessions 1 ·         Gurdish Sandu & Adjoa Boateng (University of East London) “The UEL Library: Entering the Cloud” - Room A84 ·         Lise Robinson (OCLC) “Something good is going to happen” : an overview of developing a cloud based solution” - Room A85 ·    ...

What is Research Data Management and why has it become a key agenda in HEIs? How do researchers themselves view data - what is research data? Which arguments for RDM do researchers find most convincing? What is the role of the library and other professional services in supporting RDM? How to support Research Data Management (RDM) has become a big issue in academic libraries. Many professionals will want to get up to speed on the topic. JISC has funded the Sheffield iSchool with the university libraries of Leeds, Sheffield and York to create a set of learning materials on RDM. Version 1 is now available. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/ research/projects/rdmrose This Open Educational Resource of learning materials can be used for self-supported CPD or reused under an attribution/sharealike licence for staff training within libraries or by other LIS educators. The project team would welcome your feedback and comments!