This has been a big week for me in this course. Not only did I complete the module’s work before I left the office on Friday for the first time, I also took some major steps in my Capstone Project.

The end result of the course is the Capstone Project – some kind of first step or new step towards RDM services at your institution. In my case, it’s a first step, since we don’t currently have any RDM services available on my campus. The project needs to be clearly defined by the end of March, because in April, my class will gather in Bethesda, Maryland to share our progress on our Capstone Projects (which I am ridiculously excited about). The goal is to have made some amount of progress in the project by April, and to have it fully completed by the end of August.

Like I said, my campus doesn’t provide any RDM services so I’m essentially starting from scratch as far as designing and providing those services to researchers. I decided that my Capstone Project would be a needs assessment of current RDM practices and attitudes on campus. Now it so happens that recently, our library helped hire an RDM librarian for the “Technology Incubator” at our institution (they work with local groups and businesses). I reached out to her and asked if she would be interested in collaborating on the needs assessment, since the information collected would be relevant to her work as well – and she agreed!

We spent the last week and half designing a high-level survey that would gauge how researchers on our campus engage in RDM, where they struggle, and what kind of assistance they would like to receive. My collaborator was able to obtain the support of the Associate Vice President for Health Sciences Research, who is very interested in establishing RDM services on campus. He will be able to distribute our survey to every researcher on campus via listserv, with a note endorsing the survey and encouraging participation.

We reached the final feedback stage on the survey at the end of this week, and hope to be ready to submit our IRB Exemption Application by the end of next week. I can’t wait to send out the survey and start analyzing the results – I’m really hoping that there’s a strong interest in RDM support from the library among researchers on campus, and that I can use the survey results to design the best possible RDM services for them.