This presentation by Fabian Cremer was given at the Scholarly Communication and Research Infrastructures Steering Committee Workshop. The workshop title was Libraries and Research Data Management – What Works?

1. working with researchers
on data management and workflows for archiving and sharing of data
or
from the everyday life of an embedded data manager
Fabian Cremer
LIBER 43rd Annual Conference | July 2nd 2014

2. idea
2Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |
Planning /
Funding
Data
Collection
Documen-
tation
Analysis /
Processing
Publication
/ Sharing
RDM plan
for proposal
Repository
Data Centre
continuous RDM support
apply for
RDM project
structuring /
backup
tools /
infrastructure
ingest /
policies
standards /
monitoring
• fill the gap and get RDM in the project phase
• get RDM costs funded together with the project
• transfer experiences and developments to institutional RDM support
. o O

3. settings
Collaborative Research
Centre 990
 large: 100+ researchers
 PhDs & Postdocs
 „very“ interdisciplinary &
international
 intensive data production
 support for RDM
Digital Humanities
Research Collaboration
 small: 6 researchers
 senior academics
 humanities &
social sciences
 mainly data reuse
 infrastructure for RDM
Max Planck Institute for
the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity
 single - medium projects
 mostly PhDs
 neighbouring disciplines
(social/cultural)
 private datasets
 workflows for RDM
Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 | 3
Ecological and
Socioeconomic
Functions of Tropical
Lowland Rainforest
Transformation
Systems
(Sumatra, Indonesia)

4. the researchers‘ dark side
4
• untrained
• busy
• focused
• pressured
• bad conscience
• unconcerned
• lazy
• blinkered
• selfish
• indifferent
(in their own words)

5. bridge heads
5
• being integral part of project
• offering something that makes their workaday life easier
• rising awareness for duties with providing ways to fulfill them
• adapting general procedures to the individual situation
***
Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |

6. shipwrecks
6
• not fitting into the researcher’s workflow
• having no backup from above or no explicit authority
• waiting for the researchers to come to you
• transfer RDM material without adaption
X
Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |

7. field of work
• provide a virtual server for a subproject application
• write an Excel script for transformation of table data
• moderate the development of a data sharing agreement
• design a digital field report
• classify the confidentiality level of a dataset
• modelling a ERM for a subproject‘s database
• search a suitable data centre for a certain dataset
• evaluate software for image tagging and annotation
• interview a researcher on her/his research
• …
7
• set up a database and research infrastructure
• individual data management plans for the researchers
• ...
[ ]
Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |

8. mind & skills
8
what I found useful to have as an embedded data manager
• RDM Basics
• rudimental IT, advanced Excel
• requirement analysis
• data structuring & modelling
• concepts of metadata
• asking, interviewing, moderating
• searching, investigating
• “competence network”
• combination of expert knowledge and a service mindset
• understanding for scientific work and its conditions

Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |

9. mind & skills
9
what I found really useful as an embedded data manager
• be fearless

@ jungle rubber plantation
Jambi province, Sumatra, Indonesia

10. links
10
contact
fabian.cremer@sub-uni-goettingen.de
cremer@mmg.mpg.de
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Göttingen State and University Library
Research and Development Department
http://www.rdd.sub.uni-goettingen.de
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
http://www.mmg.mpg.de
Digital Humanities Research Collaboration
http://www.gcdh.de/en/projects/dh
Collaborative Research Centre 990: Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical
Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)
http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/310995.html
Fabian Cremer | working with researchers on data management | LIBER Conference | July 2nd 2014 | CC-BY 4.0 |