I had meant to write these posts week by week, but 2018 has been a blur so far. We’re already on Week 4 of my RDM course, which is halfway through the online portion. During Week 3, we covered data standards, taxonomies, and ontologies; Week 4 is all about data security, storage, and preservation. At this point, I’m feeling fairly confident that I’ll be an RDM whiz by the end of this course.

Week 3’s information about standards and such was fairly easy for me to grasp; I’m all about people following a prescribed set of rules to make things easier for everyone. But Week 4 was more challenging. While I understand the critical importance of data security, it was a bit too technical to peak my natural interest. It took some additional effort to review the necessary modules on that topic, but I got through it with some new baseline knowledge.

This minor struggle with data security reminded me of a similar struggle last year with copyright law and policies. I had tried a few times to educate myself on copyright and fair use in the past, but felt so bored and overwhelmed by it all that I was never able to develop any expertise. Until a few medical school faculty began asking me copyright questions that I was unable to answer. That motivated me to really dig deep into copyright, because it’s important for me to be the best information resource that I can possibly be. By the time 2017 ended, I had compiled a 12-page copyright and fair use cheat sheet for faculty to reference and finally felt like a copyright expert.

With this experience in mind, I think I’m going to spend some extra time reviewing some of the additional, recommended resources from Week 4 about data security. My long-term goal with this course is to use the knowledge to launch a research data management service of some kind on my campus, and I will inevitably be asked about data security. When that happens, I want to have all the answers.

Image Credit – Blue Coat Photos/Flickr