Stepping up to the moment: collaborating on a data management and sharing workshop series

Abstract

Background: Many researchers benefit from training and assistance with their data management practices. The release of the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Nelson Memo and the National Institutes of Health’s new Data Management and Sharing Policy created opportunities for librarians to engage with researchers regarding their data workflows. Within this environment, we—an interdisciplinary team of librarians and informationists at the University of Michigan (U-M)—recognized an opportunity to develop a series of data workshops that we then taught during the summer of 2023.

Case Presentation: The series was primarily aimed at graduate students and early career researchers, with a focus on the disciplines served by the authors in the Health Sciences - Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (HS-STEM) unit of the U-M Library. We identified three topics to focus on: data management plans, organizing and managing data, and sharing data. Workshops on these topics were offered in June, July, and August 2023.

Conclusion: The number of registrants and attendees exceeded our expectations with 497 registrations across the three workshops (174/169/154, respectively), and 178 attendees (79/49/50, respectively). Registrants included faculty, staff, students, and more, and were primarily from the health sciences clinical and academic units. We received a total of 45 evaluations from the three workshops which were very positive. The slides and evaluation forms from each workshop are available through U-M’s institutional repository. We developed these workshops at an opportune time on campus and successfully reached many researchers.