The deadline for eResearch Australasia submissions is this Friday and as usual I have left it to the last minute to start pulling something together. I've been to this conference every year since it started but I haven't delivered a presentation for a couple of years at least, focusing instead on posters and workshop contributions. The budget is pretty tight this year for conferences so only staff who are presenting are likely to be able to attend. This puts the pressure on (in a good way!).

I won't bore you with the page-and-a-half extended abstract but here's the gist (for now):

As awareness increases of the role that librarians can play in facilitating improved research data management, so does the need to provide university library staff with professional development opportunities. Cox et al (2012) argue that learning needs to be “exploratory, discursive and reflective, providing a space in which librarians can explore developments as they relate to their individual/team role” and that “hands-on practical activities with documents and tools in real or realistic scenarios are important” [1].

This presentation will describe the positive outcomes of incorporating a component of scenario-based learning into introductory research data management workshops for librarians at two Australian universities. An overview of the benefits of scenario-based learning will be provided, along with practical advice on how to develop scenarios and use them as part of an institutional staff development program.

(The article referred to here is: Cox, Andrew, Eddy Verbaan, and Barbara Sen. 2012. Upskilling Liaison Librarians for Research Data Management. Ariadne (70) (November). I highly recommend it if you haven't come across it already.)

I had been thinking that my new role in change management might be worth talking about but I haven't managed to find an 'angle' on that topic yet. Maybe it's too soon.

The eResearch conference is always attended by a lot of people with an interest in skills development, yet there is usually a real scarcity of training-related presentations; at most there may be one or two papers that touch on skills development, which is not a lot out of three days of discussions. There is always a very well-attended Birds-of-a-Feather session on training and education but it tends to be quite high-level, whereas this presentation (if it gets up) will be very very practical. I think it would be of interest to the other librarians there, but also anyone involved in other types of data management training too. Fingers crossed!

One of the things I've done today is write a short piece on data journals (reproduced in its entirety below) for our Information Services (INS) online newsletter, INSight. 

INSight is published monthly by our division's Communications team; all university staff receive it as an email as well as being able to access it via the web. As a channel, I've found it a really useful way to get important updates about data management out to a big chunk of the university community. Through the magic of web analytics, we know that INSight is opened by almost 50% of the people who receive it; this is far above the 'open rate' of around 20% for newsletters like this, which is a testament to our Comms team's expertise and hard work. (Be kind to your Comms people because they can do things that you might find difficult, like source professional images to accompany stories and write snappy headlines that make people actually want to read your stories about data management rather than poke their own eyes out.)

Research data advocacy is a never-ending task, so I always look for opportunities to get word out through as many channels as possible using the least amount of resources. This single piece of content has now been repurposed in at least four different ways. 

1. Initially I decided to send an email to the team leaders of two of our Academic Services Groups (Health and Sciences) within Library and Learning Services about the release of the new data journal from Nature.
2. I did this knowing that these team leaders regularly make written and verbal reports to meetings of the Group Boards (senior management of the faculties), and asked them to include this in their reports. On reflection, I realised that many researchers might be unaware of the emergence of data journals. I re-wrote my initial email to include more contextual information and links to key resources, such as a list of available data journals and an ANDS guide. 
3. By broadening the scope of the story in this way, it then become a piece suitable for inclusion in INSight for all university staff. 
4. And here it is again on this blog, for the small but passionate crowd interested in the point where data and libraries meet. 

Do you make the most of the content that you write by re-purposing it for different outlets and audiences? Are you aware of all the channels that are available in your organisation, and do you have good relationships with the editors/owners of those outlets? If not, I highly recommend this as a sanity-saving strategy.

Data journals represent an exciting new trend in scholarly publishing and provide an opportunity for researchers to formally publish (and potentially be rewarded) for their research data outputs. While traditional journals often include datasets only as supplementary materials, data journals focus on research datasets as important outputs that can be re-used and cited in their own right.

In 2012-2013, the Peer Review for Publication & Accreditation of Research Data in the Earth Sciences (PREPARDE) project collated a list of around thirty data journals across a range of disciplines, mostly in the sciences.

The most recent data journal to be launched comes from the well-known Nature Publishing Group. Scientific Data is an open-access, peer-reviewed outlet for articles that describe important scientific datasets. These articles, called data descriptors, are described as “a new category of publication designed to provide detailed descriptions of experimental, observational, computational or curated data." Scientific Data does not host the datasets, which must be submitted to an appropriate external repository. Approximately sixty data repositories in life sciences, biomedicine and environmental sciences are currently recommended and this is likely to expand in future. The FAQs provide more information about submission and peer review processes, publication charges, and licensing options.

Data journals have different policies and requirements for submission, review, and data hosting. INS can help researchers identify data journals that might be suitable, and can provide advice on institutional and discipline repository options. To find out more about data journals, contact the Library Specialists for your academic group.

The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) also has a useful Data Journals Guide for researchers and information managers.

This year I've signed up for #blogjune, an annual blogfest in which a group of librarians, mostly from New Zealand and Australia, commit to posting daily on their blogs. I was in two minds about signing up. June is going to be a very busy month at work and home-life has been tough this year too. What convinced me to say yes was reflecting on the positive experience I had earlier this year with NaPoWriMo.

One of the things I do outside of work is read and write poetry: NaPoWriMo is an annual event in which people try to write a poem a day for a month. Lots of people post their poems online, but many others (including me) just use it as an excuse to carve some writing time out and see what happens.

So, what did I learn from this experience that I can apply to #blogjune?

1. Here's your chance to focus on quantity over quality

From NaPoWriMo I learned the same thing I have learned repeatedly in every writing workshop I ever been to (but somehow it never really sinks in); sometimes you've got to write some crap, maybe lots of crap, in the process of writing something good.

The point is to silence that nasty little inner editor we all have and get something down. Of the eleven poems I wrote during April, nearly half are first drafts worth spending some more time on. My usual rate of productivity would be about a poem a year (in a good year!); to write four or five good first drafts within a month made me feel great.

For #blogjune, I fully expect to be unhappy with at least 50% of what I write and post. Posting something that doesn't meet my usual stupidly high standards will, I imagine, be both terrifying and liberating. We can all do with some help to learn how to say, it's not great but it's good enough.

2. You can't wait for 'inspiration' to strike

All of the poems I wrote in April came about in one of two ways:

• digging through old things I had written in workshops until I found something I wanted to noodle about with
• responding to writing prompts from an external source such as the NaPoWriMo blog and Oulipost, the Found Poetry Review's NaPoWriMo project.

None of the poems came about from sitting at my desk waiting for the Muses to hand something down from on high. And if this had been my strategy, I would not have made it past Day One.

I've tried to apply these lessons to #blogjune by pulling together a list that includes some older ideas that are worthy of another outing (e.g. conference presentations that I never had time to write up properly, projects I worked on a long time ago but have new things to say about). I also found a source of external prompts (there are loads of blogs telling you what to blog about - this is the one I used).

This way I know that I shouldn't have to sit down during #blogjune and look at an empty screen while wailing, 'But I have nothing to say!'

3. It's good to have a goal, but it's meant to be fun

I didn't do as well at NaPoWriMo as I wanted to. I started strong and then petered out before having another little burst of energy at the end. My natural inclination was to beat myself up about this but you know what I realised: nobody cares but me. Yes, it would have been great to have had twenty-eight poems instead of eleven, but eleven was still a big achievement and one I should have been proud of.

There are no sanctions for #blogjune 'failure'; if I don't hit that arbitrary goal of a post a day I'm going to try hard not to feel bad about it. I am pretty sure I don't have to give up my ALIA membership and become a real estate agent if I miss a post or two (or three or four...). Phew!