Recently, a delegation of 5 librarians visited Library Research Support in Argyle House on 30 July. Led by Emi Ishita, a Professor in the iSchool and working with the Library on their Data-Driven Innovation Initiative, staff from Kyushu and Chiba Universities and the University of the Ryukyus came for a day of discussion, and a pleasant lunch at the nearby Edinburgh College of Art café.

Prof Ishita enjoys an Irn-Bru – Photo credit: Robin Rice

Questions the delegation had were shared in advance, and assigned to members of the team to respond to, in a round table format. These covered research data services and personnel (skills), service operation and collaboration, service evaluation, user reactions, and data publication and licence support in data repositories as well as repository certification. Other questions were around Open Access promotion and educational activities, as well as REF 2029 and Transformative Agreements.

The librarians from Japan were well informed about our research data management and open access services. Something that they were particularly keen to discuss was the way we conduct outreach with researchers, such as going to academic departments and training postgraduate students on data management planning. They are grappling with the perception of libraries in Japan as more of a physical space where researchers choose to come study; less as a proactive service that helps researchers learn and develop new academic skills, particularly related to Research Data Management (RDM).The delegation had also visited University of Vienna and Leeds University on the same trip. Future collaboration around training of librarians in the Kyushu Department of Library Science (iSchool) is being planned with Prof Ishita.

Robin Rice
Data Librarian and Head of Research Data Support
Library and University Collections