Personas as a Policy Development Tool for Research Data

Megan N. O’Donnell@mega_no / mno@iastate.edu

Scholarly Communication and Sci-Tech Librarian

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The Cast & the ConversationData/Subject Librarian (me)

Digital Initiatives Archivist

Assoc. VP for Research

Liberal Arts & Sci. IT Director

Information Security Officer

Later folks!

I got this.

Focus: draft, modify, and harmonize campus documentation related to

research data.• How do we maximize our knowledge and experiences? • How do we address a wide variety of needs & situations?• How do we roll out changes in a positive way?

Enter the Research Persona• Personas are “Hypothetical archetypes”¹ based on

data.• Research Personas are based on combined experience and

knowledge.

• Enable group problem solving and the exploration of situations, motivations, problems, and solutions.

• Provide insights into different research practices and allow for policy “testing.”

• 6 Research Personas have been developed so far:• Aerospace engineering, art history, ecology, kinesiology,*

sociology, and medical physics.* ¹ Cooper, A. 1998. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. MacMillan Publishing* Developed by contributors not on the working group: Emma Molls (Iowa State) and Rachelle Ramer (Vassar).

Creators: NAME(s)

Content will be CC-BY when finalized

Research Data Persona

Dr. Cleonei Silva

Age: 54Status: Tenured professor Discipline: Art History Insitution: Land Grant UniversityTechnology profilecomfort level

Research & DataDr. Silva is a frequent travler and solo-researcher. Dr. Silva’s researches stained glass windows in Midwest churches and their lineage from stained glass in medieval European cathe- drals. This research is not grant-funded. Her research sourc- es consist of original photographs (digital, Polaroid, 35mm slide, and 3x5 color print), annotated photocopies from publications and archival materials, and scans of archival documents.Some of these files consist of original records generated by Dr. Silva (her photographs), others consist of documents copied from existing sources. She uses the photographs in her classes, but has no intention of sharing her remaining research material with other researchers.She stores her files in a combination of physical file cabinets, word documents, and jpgs saved on local network storage. Her files are organized by church and cross-referenced by themes, artists, and date of installation.

Goals* To publish a cumulative book, with photo reproductions, on

her research with a university press in the next 5 years.

* Complete moving and converting research materials to cloud-networked storage.

* Wants to make her research files easier to access and search to improve productivity.

Frustrations* Many images are in unstable formats (JPEG and polaroid).

* The documentation Dr. Silva is creating may be the only documentation in existance for some of the windows.

* If she forgets to record the location and date properly for an image, it can be very time-consuming to nearly impossible to identify the image later .

Data SharingLike her colleagues, Dr. Silva doesn’t consider her research materials data nor is it common in art history to share research materials broadly until after death or retirement.While she uses her images in face-to-face course lectures, Dr. Silva doesn’t provide students with copies though she has occasionally given her doctoral students a set of images if relevant to their dissertation research, with the caveat that they may not share the files further.Data PreservationDr. Silva has noticed that her polaroids are discoloring and action needs to taken soon before the images are too damaged to be accurate but is unsure where to seek help.She has also made back-up copies of most of her digital images and saved them both on her laptop and an external hard drive. Lastly, Dr. Silva has started saving copies on a cloud storage service but she has not yet transferred over all of her older images and files.Dr. Silva intends to donate her faculty papers, including her research materials, to the University Archives upon death, so the data will be available for reuse by others in the future.

coding skilldata complexity

Open research profileSkepticBeliever

Data sharer

Data hoarder 2016-00-00

data size Data Security

Since her research is on stained glass windows, there are no subject-related sensitivity concerns with Dr. Silva’s research. There may be conflict between artists’ intellectual proper- ty rights should she wish to publish images of some of the more recent stained glass windows or photos of windows that she did not take herself.

“This isn't data and I don't want to share it. Campus data policies don't apply to me."

DRAFT