I decided at the last minute to have a day off today. My partner has been away for a lot of this year and will probably be going away again soon, so we decided to spend the day together. We began by having lunch at Swampdog, a newish fish and chip shop with a focus on sustainable local fish. We then went for a little stroll down to South Bank, the site of the former World Expo in 1988 and now a public parklands. We saw this fine water dragon hanging out near one of the ponds there.

From South Bank we crossed over the river on the Goodwill Bridge to the QUT Gardens Point campus and walked around the edge of the City Botanic Gardens. Although the gardens themselves are lovely, the mangrove swamp (if you are into that sort of thing, which we are) is always a real highlight. In the photo below you can see the Kangaroo Point Cliffs on the other side of the river There used to be a lovely boardwalk through the mangroves here but it was damaged in the 2011 floods and was quietly demolished last year without any community consultation. Apparently the $1.8M to save it was too much, though somehow $72M was able to found to fix the Riverwalk which was also damaged. Hurumph.

In the gardens we spotted a enormously fat kookaburra, which was being buzzed by an aggressive mynah and was down foraging on the ground, which we hadn't seen before. We have lots of kookaburras around our home, but this one seemed quite unperturbed about having humans quite close by trying to take photos of it.

From the gardens, we walked around part of Eagle St Pier, from where you get a good view of the iconic Story Bridge. I never realised until now (thanks, Wikipedia!) that this is the longest cantilevered bridge in Australia. At that point I was getting a bit tired as my plantar fasciitis is still not letting me walk too far, so we jumped on the CityCat and headed back to South Bank, and from there got the train home. It was a really lovely day, and not at all wintery, but that is Brisvegas for you!

I have a few books currently on my professional to-read list that I thought I would share during #blogjune. It would be even better if I could write some actual reviews of these books, but in the meantime...

Corti, Louise, Veerle Van den Eynden, Libby Bishop, and Matthew Woollard. 2014. Managing and Sharing Research Data: A Guide to Good Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd.

The UK Data Archive is one of the best resources around for data management advice and training materials. I visit their site often for inspiration, not just in terms of content but also in terms of how they communicate. Their Managing and Sharing Data: Best Practice for Researchers is one of the most comprehensive and well-written guides targeted at researchers that you will find. It is also definitely the most attractive and leaves most data management related documents, LibGuides and websites looking pretty shabby in comparison. 

I have high hopes for this new book, based on the quality of previous things produced by these authors. If the new book is similar to other products associated with the UK Data Archive, it should have a strong focus on the social sciences, which provides a nice antidote to the usual bias towards the hard sciences. I'm also expecting it to have a strong UK and European focus. In practice, this means that not all of the advice may be relevant to the Australian context, particularly in terms of research funder policy and legal and regulatory aspects (e.g. copyright legislation). At well over 200 pages though, this book must be much more than simply an expansion of the previously published guide for researchers, so hopefully there will be some interesting comparisons and contrasts for those of us in Australasia. 

There is also a great-looking companion website to the book hosted by the UK Data Archive. A comprehensive list of links is provided to learning activites, templates and data collections, broken down by the relevant chapter in the book. I can see myself spending quite a bit of time not only with this book, but also exploring the related resources.

The best thing about working in research data management is that you get to meet and work with amazing researchers.

This might seem really obvious but it's amazing how much of the focus in this area sometimes seems to be on the technology (data capture solutions, repositories, metadata stores) and on data and metadata as bits of content that need to be managed, rather than people! Yes, well-managed research data helps with compliance and research impact, but one of the most important reasons to do it is because it can make a research team's day-to-day life easier and make their conduct of research - in an office, in a lab, or in the field - more efficient and effective.

This afternoon I am going with a colleague to do some data planning with a research group in Griffith's Centre for Health Practice Innovation. The research team, led by Professor Wendy Moyle, is doing amazing research funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council. They are investigating the use of therapeutic robots in the care of older people and people with dementia. The robot being used in this clinical trial is called PARO and it takes the form of a baby harp seal!

The PARO robotic seal.
Credit: tsukabajin on Flickr. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

A previous study led by Prof Moyle looked at the impact of PARO on people living in residential care, and found that participants in the PARO group had higher quality of life scores and lower anxiety scores at the end of a five week trial than those in the control group. Prof Moyle describes the need for further research on the Journal of Dementia Care website:

Our work suggests that PARO has the potential to positively influence the lives of people with dementia, but further research is required to understand its effect. We need to know whether the benefits are seen when PARO is trialled with more people and the ideal length of time that people with dementia should spend with PARO. Given the high cost of purchasing ($AU5,000) and maintaining these robots, which currently have to be returned to Japan for maintenance, we also need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. It is imperative that residential aged care facilities do not purchase robots without understanding how to use them, which residents are most likely to benefit and the best strategies for introducing and removing robots from residents.

Here's a video about Prof Moyle and her work:

Prof Moyle's team have some serious data management challenges. They are looking to recruit hundreds of participants and will be generating a large volume of data in the form of sensor data from wearable devices as well as observational videos. Each video file could be 2-3GB and will need to be high-resolution to facilitate automated data analysis. The data collection process will take place off-campus and there will be a need to transfer data from SD cards in video cameras to secure university storage systems. Collaborators in the research come from different organisations, and will need secure access from their own organisations in order to perform the required analysis. Given the nature of the research and its participants, ethical concerns are also paramount.

This example is not unusual. As digital data collection methods improve and collaboration becomes the norm, research data management becomes ever more complex. I feel very privileged to be able to partner with researchers and to use my information management skills and knowledge to contribute in a small way to such amazing work.