Objective: This eScience in Action article describes the collaborative development process and outputs for a qualitative data curation curriculum initiative led by a library faculty (research data specialist) at an R1 research university.
Methods: The collaborative curriculum development activities described in this article took place between 2015-2020 and included 1) a college-wide “call out” meeting with graduate methods instructors and additional one-on-one conversations, 2) a year-long training series for disciplinary faculty teaching graduate-level qualitative research methods courses, 3) guest lectures and co-curricular workshops, and 4) the development of a credit-bearing graduate-level course.
Results: This practice-based article includes a reflection on the collaborative curriculum development process and impacts, including the development of networks between the Library and qualitative researchers across campus. The article provides a proof-of-concept example for developing relevant and trustworthy library data services for humanities and qualitative social-science researchers.
Conclusions: Curriculum development activities focused predominately upon researcher-centered perspectives and identified needs. However, changes in institutional expectations for library faculty (i.e. requirement to teach credit-bearing courses) played a major role in how the curriculum was implemented, its impact and continued sustainability of outputs going forward.
This paper describes the findings from a participatory prototype design project, where the authors worked with maternal and child health (MCH) researchers and stakeholders to develop a MCH metadata profile and sustainable curation workflow. This work led to the development of three prototypes: 1) a study catalogue hosted in Dataverse, 2) a metadata and research records repository hosted in REDCap and 3) a metadata harvesting tool/dashboard hosted within the Shiny RStudio environment. We present a brief overview of the methods used to develop the metadata profile, curation workflow and prototypes. Researchers and other stakeholders were participant-collaborators throughout the project. The participatory process involved a number of steps, including but not limited to: initial project design and grant writing; scoping and mapping existing practices, workflows and relevant metadata standards; creating the metadata profile; developing semi-automated and manual techniques to harvest and transform metadata; and end project sustainability/future planning. In this paper, we discuss the design process and project outcomes, limitations and benefits of the approach, and implications for researcher-oriented metadata and data curation initiatives.
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