I have just completed running the MANTRA course for librarians http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/libtraining.html with my team of 8 subject librarians at Stirling University.  A member of the Research Office attended one session and the team manager for Library Content Manager also attended some of the sessions.

We started the librarians training kit on 29 May 2013 and our last session was in December, so the course has actually changed (and improved) whilst we were undertaking it.

I think we found it beneficial to set time aside as a team to look at this issue and take our time over it!  We enjoyed lots of lively discussions.  I am Chair of Stirling’s RDM Task Force and knew that we, as librarians, would be expected to have the skills to help researchers manage their research data.  It was great to know that there was already a training package in existence for librarians.

Everybody really liked the panda film in the last section.  They suggested using that style more often.  Some of my staff thought the videos were too long or too slow.

As the facilitator I found that the instructions were sometimes not clear but by the end I figured out that I just needed to look at the manual.  I think it was really useful at the beginning to have real researchers talking about the issues.

I feel more confident that my team are no longer fearful of RDM enquiries.

Thank you for a fantastic resource and I will continue recommending it to researchers.

Lisa Haddow

Team Manager:  Library Liaison and Development

University of Stirling