Projects 2019

It's a new year, nearly (it is April after all), and it is at this time that my organisation tackles the annual "Performance Planning and Review" (PPR) cycle for the next 12 months.  This used to be one of the most valuable exercises that I complete in terms of setting the goals that I wanted to achieve over the next year.  Nowadays it has become a "pick-a-couple-of-your-bosses-goals-and-do-them-as-your-own" exercise.

So with this in mind, and knowing that I like personal goals and challenges, I have come up with my own set of planning for the year.  Of course I will still do those that I am required to do as part of the PPR process, but there are inevitably many more things that need to be accomplished during the year than the one or two selected from my supervisors list.

So what am I going to attempt to achieve in 2019?  The list that I have come up with is quite ambitious, and I know that I will likely not get everything done (I am in a team of two, with limited resources, and very limited time), but nevertheless this is what I am aiming to achieve.

The work of the my team continues to expand as the sector grows and evolves. While the focus for the team is the institutional repository (IR) and associated tasks such as internal and external assessments and open access, other priority areas such as research data management, digital collection management, digital curation and preservation, system and resource advocacy, and education and awareness are important and need to be addressed.

The following is an overview of the projects that my team is interested in completing during 2019. These are in no particular order and are outside of the normal day-to-day activities of the team.

Review of Research Guides

The research guides utilise the SpringShare LibGuides platform and the take-up of them has been phenomenal.  They are flexible, easy to use, and most importantly in this organisation, can be done without any assistance from IT or our web team.

However this has also provided problems.  The guides, which are created by various librarians, have blown out of control with much of this content poorly organised and overlapping, which leads to conflicting and out of date information.

In 2016 my team initiated an overhaul of the research guides to streamline the content to make it easier for users to find the information they required. This work stalled for various reasons. During 2019 it is proposed that this work recommence to ensure that all information is easy to find, easy to view, and up to date. At the same time, additional content reflecting the current research agenda can be created.

I should note that this project is not the responsibility of my team, however as no one else seems to be taking control of this, it falls to us to do.

Review of Library presence on staff intranet

The Research Support information on our staff intranet is intentionally minimal due to duplication with guide content. In the past linking from the intranet to the guides has been sufficient. However recent feedback from researchers is that guide content, which is not indexed by the corporate website, is not findable (unless through Google) and the existing information on the intranet is not sufficient to be returned in search results.

The content on the intranet for research support (research data management, open access, for example) needs to be expanded. Feedback from staff that manage this system suggest that the current layout of the Library Research pages is not appropriate for the type of information that needs to be added, suggesting a review of the pages is required.

This review will happen following the Research Guide review.

Digital collections

The digital collection space continues to grow.  We currently have three collections that have their own segment of work that is required.

This includes digitisation, cataloguing, auditing, software testing and configurations, and promotions.  I have recommended that we start an Archival Collections Working Group to facilitate this work, and to gather interested parties throughout the institution together to discuss future projects.

Audit of research drive content

Growth in our network drive dedicated to research data has increased exponentially and continues to grow, currently at 140TB! Old, archivable, duplicate or orphaned data needs to be identified to better manage the space. Current data custodians and status of existing project folders need to be ascertained, and personal data removed off research drive onto a more appropriate location. In light of recent internal audit recommendations, completing this work is even more pressing.

My team started to audit content on the research drive at the end of 2018. There is much legacy data for which there is minimal metadata and that is not being stored as per current practice.

Updating Research Data Management Plans, to date, has been ad hoc, so this is another aim of this project.

Research Data Management

Various RDM activities are required, including:

• Continue the review of the Research Data Management Plan that stalled in late 2018
• Review the Research Data Registry (currently an Access database)
• Review of the awareness/education channels of communication to researchers.

I have also recommended to my supervisor that we recommence the Research Data Working Group meetings (discontinued about 4 years ago) to re-engage the various stakeholders in the institution.

Self-Assessments

There are a number of self-assessments that should be undertaken during the year to assess the maturity of Library research services. It should be stressed that these are self-assessments and not all criteria will be able to be satisfactorily met due to the immaturity of the institutional commitment to research support. However, these will provide a gauge of what direction should be taken in the future.

Core Trust Seal (CTS)

The CTS measures the trustworthiness of a repository in both system architecture and institutional policies and workflows based on 16 criteria. Two systems are currently being used, which should be supported by two sets of institutional policy – the IR and the Digital Collections.

Research Infrastructure Self-Assessment (RISE)

RISE is the UK Digital Curation Centre’s capability model for research data management support services. Based on 21 capabilities across ten research data support areas, it is designed as a benchmarking tool to facilitate research data management service planning and development at an institutional level.

NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Levels of Digital Preservation is a tiered set of recommendations for how institutions begin to build their digital preservation strategies. It allows institutions to assess the level of preservation achieved for specific material in the areas of storage and geographic location, file fixity and data integrity, information security, metadata, and file formats.

IR software replacement

...And to finish it off, we have a project being completed this year to replace our IR software.  We are finally looking at moving from VITAL to ExLibris Esploro.  So stay tuned, more to come on this topic no doubt. 


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