The following is a guest post by 2016-2017 NAL Fellow Jennifer Proctor:
On my trip to this year’s International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC), held in Edinburgh, Scotland, I had the opportunity to attend some excellent presentations. I particularly enjoyed “Rich Information Hides in Missing Data” by Dr. Maria Wolters, which discussed the value of looking for patterns in the absence of data. For instance, these patterns can help us understand why patients with medical reporting technology would stop using it at regular intervals. I was also fascinated by Alice Daish’s presentation, “Data-Driven Museums,” which looked at data use and data advocacy at the British Museum.
There were also some excellent posters, including the winner for best poster – “A Research Software Management Toolbox for Data Management Specialists” by Fernando Rios of Johns Hopkins University – which provided a useful flowchart of advice for research librarians advising on software reuse, citation, preservation, and metadata.
In addition, I was able to learn a lot about the curation, management, and reuse of scientific datasets at several presentations about current implementations and future directions for the FAIR principles – that is, Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability.