Publication Date
2017
Journal or Book Title
Journal of eScience Librarianship
Abstract
Objectives: To meet the changing needs of our campuses, librarians responsible for research data services are often tasked with starting new endeavors with new populations without much support. This paper reports on a collaborative effort to build a community of practice of librarians tasked with addressing the research data needs of their campuses, describes how this effort was evaluated, and presents future opportunities.
Methods: In March of 2015, three librarians found themselves in a situation of serendipitous professional development: one was seeking to provide a new method of mentorship, and two more were working on an event, hoping to broadcast it to a wider community. From these two disparate goals, the Research Data Management (RDM) Roundtables were created. The RDM Roundtables planning committee developed a low-cost professional development day divided into two parts: a morning session that detailed an idea or solution relevant to our practice, and an afternoon roundtable discussion on practical aspects of research data services. Evaluations from these events were coded in NVivo and we report on the common themes.
Results: Participants returned sixty-one evaluations from four events. Five themes emerged from the evaluations: learning, sharing, format, networking, and empathy.
Conclusion: The events provide a valuable professional development experience for attendees, and the authors hope that by providing a description of the events’ development, others will establish their own local communities of practice.
DOI
10.7191/jeslib.2017.1111
Volume
6
Issue
2
License
UMass Amherst Open Access Policy
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Funder
The Research Data Management Roundtables have been funded partially by: National Library of Medicine under contract HHS-N-276-2011-00010-C with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester; and National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Cooperative Agreement Number UG4LM012347 with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.
Recommended Citation
Atwood, Thea; Condon, Patricia; Goldman, Julie; Hohenstein, Tom; Mills, Carolyn V.; and Painter, Zachary W., "Grassroots Professional Development via the New England Research Data Management Roundtables" (2017). Journal of eScience Librarianship. 68.
10.7191/jeslib.2017.1111
Appendix A. Questions used to guide the RDM Roundtable Discussions
1111_Appendix_B.pdf (285 kB)