Since mid-January, two new Research Data Service Assistants have joined the busy ‘virtual team’ working across divisions of Information Services to provide user support for RDM and Data Library enquiries and to quality assure DataShare submissions. You may have already come in contact with them, but a brief welcome is in order nonetheless.
Both new team members have a research background but surprisingly, from the same field and institution! Nevertheless they had not met until they arrived at our offices in Argyle House for their first day of work. Diarmuid joins us full-time, commuting daily from Glasgow, and Bob works half-time, taking advantage of a short walk from home.
Diarmuid McDonnell has taught a variety of research design, data management and analysis courses across a number of Scottish universities and levels. He is proficient in the use of Stata, SPSS and SAS for research and teaching purposes and is particularly experienced in the use of administrative data for social science research, which he used for his recently completed PhD thesis at Stirling University.
Bob Sanders recently completed his PhD at Stirling University looking at the relationship between dependency and care receipt in later life. He has extensive experience undertaking quantitative research, including the routine and advanced management and statistical analysis of large-scale longitudinal data. He is capable of conducting end-to-end data preparation, management and analysis using syntax-driven commands in Stata, with experience using other statistical software packages such as SPSS and Excel.
In addition to their repository and user support work for EDINA and Data Library, they have already made unique contributions to the service. Diarmuid has revised and taught our Data Handling in SPSS half-day workshop, as well as piloted an Introduction to Statistical Literacy workshop for Humanists. Bob has joined the Data Safe Haven development project, helping to work out operational processes and user documentation, as well as giving the online MANTRA course a thorough editing job.
Robin Rice
Data Librarian and Head, Research Data Support
EDINA and Data Library