There has been a lot of blogging over the last year about the Duke Digital Repository’s development and implementation, about its growth as a platform and a program, and about the creation of new positions to support research data management and curation. My fellow digital content analyst also recently posted about how we four new hires have been creating and refining our research data curation workflow since beginning our positions at Duke this past January. It’s obviously been (and continues to be) a very busy time here for the repository team at Duke Libraries, including both seasoned and new staff alike.
Besides the research data workflows between our two departments, what other things have the data management consultants and the digital content analysts been doing? In short, we’ve been busy!
In addition to envisioning stakeholder needs (which is an exercise we continuously do), we’ve received and ingested several data collections this year, which has given us an opportunity to also learn from experience. We have been tracking and documenting the types of data we’re receiving, the various needs that these types of data and depositors have, how we approach these needs (including investigating and implementing any additional tools that may help us better address these), how our repository displays the data and associated metadata, and the time spent on our management and curation tasks. Some of these are in the form of spreadsheets, others as draft policies that will first be reviewed by the library’s research data working group and then by a program committee, and others simply as brain dumps for things that require a further, more structured investigation by developers, the metadata architect, subject librarians, and other stakeholders. These documents live in either our shared online folder or our shared Box account, and, if a wider Duke library and/or public audience are required, are moved to our departments’ content collaboration software platforms (currently Confluence/Jira and Basecamp). The collaborative environments of these platforms support the dynamic nature of our work, particularly as our program takes form.
We also value the importance of face-to-face discussions, so we hold weekly meetings to talk through all of this work (we prefer outside when the weather is nice, and because squirrels are awesome).
One of the most exciting, and at times challenging, aspects of where we are is that we are essentially starting from the ground up and therefore able to develop procedures and features (and re-develop, and on and on again) until we find fits that best accommodate our users and their data. We rely heavily on each other’s knowledge about the research data field, and we also engage in periodic environmental scans of other institutions that offer data management and curation services.
When we began in January, we all considered the first 6-9 months as a “pilot phase”, though this description may not be accurate. In the minds of the data management consultants and the digital content analysts, we’re here and ready. Will we run into situations that require an adjustment to our procedures? Absolutely. It’s the nature of our work. Do we want feedback from the Duke community about how our services are (or are not) meeting their needs? Without a doubt. And will the DDR team continue to identify and implement features to better meet end-user needs? Certainly. We fully expect to adjust and readjust our tools and services, with the overall goal of fulfilling future needs before they’re even evident to our users. So, as always, keep watching to see how we grow!