1. Co-operation with scientists – road to RDM services in the University of Tartu Library
Liisi Lembinen
University of Tartu Library
COAR/SPARC, Porto, March, 2015

2. What am I going to talk about?
Why?
When?
What?
What is the value?
What else?
I will tell you today what and why we are doing what we are doing, how long it took us to set up the services, what is the value or what we have learned throughout the process and what are the remaining questions that we will be still working with.

3. Why we are doing this? We did not invent a wheel
Keeping up with the trends
OA pioneer in Estonia since 2009
Open Data only logical step
Already DSpace + OJS
Support university
goals – full cycle
of research
First of all, why our library decided to offer various services to help university scientists? We did not invent anything that other university libraries around the world are not doing already. We did not invent a wheel so to say. So one of the reason from the library point of view was that because many other university libraries are doing it and in order to even remotely matter and be part of the discussion, we also need to follow the trends in librarianship.
Second, UT library is the OA pioneer in Estonia. We started to celebrate the OA week in 2009 when we also went the ministry of education to introduce the principles of open access. Our OA week events have turned from „blonde girls in orange shirts event“ (as it was referred to at the beinning) to traditional and known event which people ask about even before we promote it.
So talking about open data was an only logical step to take from there. This theme has been our OA week topic past two years and will be also this year.
Third, library already offered services for researchers like publishing in an intsitutional repository at Dspace or open journal system.
Fourth, library’s main goal as for any university library is to support university’s long term goals and to offer support to full cycle of research. This is library advocacy 101.
Photo credit: Andres Tennus , University of Tartu

4. What we did in one year Scientists + library = governmental funding
DataCite → DOI →Estonian DataCite Consortium
Data repository
Data Librarians + services
Information literacy includes data
So what did we do in one year basically. In 2012 researchers from University of Tartu Natural History Museum turned to us and asked us based on our experience and work as I described previously to co-apply with them for governmental funding for joining DataCite and offering DOI number for research data. Our application was denied.
At the end of 2013, we applied again and received funding. So 2014 was a race for us from joining international organization DataCite with the goal to help researchers „find, access, and reuse data“. We set up data repository for the university use as well as ended up with Estonian DataCite Consortium which consists of four major universities in Estonia. For library, it was an interesting task because we were doing everything from joining the datacite until putting together consortium contract.
In addition, starting from last fall, we have two librarians who have been trained and keep training themselves in matter of research data. They are offering any kind of help and information when it comes to research data. We are in the process of establishing full assistance services for publishing (both articles and data) as well.
Due to the fact that our reference librarians are offering information literacy courses in the university as part of curriculum, starting from this spring research data topic is also part of the curriculum for students of all levels.
Our reference librarians are also in the process of developing MOOC that will partially include data topic as well.

5. What is the value? Scientists needed and found us not vice versa
Relatively short time
Data is already in curriculum
Motivation and competence of librarians
So what did we learn during the process and what is the value for us. Usually, it is said that it is hard to get researchers be interested in libraries and to look at the library as an equal partner. This was really a case for us where researchers found us and not another way around. In addition, they were natural scientits who are very digially orientated and due that connect less with the library. In past year, we have seen natural scientists in library who have not visited library for years. It seems to me that libraries in general like to think and analyze things and innovations do not come extremely quickly compared for business for example. We like to test and discuss, but I would say that we went from 0-lets say 70 in year. So the time frame that we were operating was quite short in the library world – at least in Estonia.
Because of the information literacy was part of the curriculum that students can receive real credit points, it was very easy for us to integrate research data to information literacy courses. I think that this is a big deal.
As a head of the library, I think that the last point is also important. The events that have happened around and in the library in past year and few months have raised the motivation, competence and even self-esteem of librarians. No more blonde girls in orange shirts, I think librarians involved in data topics feel important and that library has something to offer and what we do matters.

6. What else need to be solved?
1 academic library (4 universities) cooperation with funders + scientists
Data policy
Funding for data
Evaluation
We opened a door
What else is on the table:
Our library was in the middle of the entire process – we worked together with 4 universities and funders; however, as with open access, we have no managed to get other academic libraries interested or involved in research data promotion. We are still the only ones out there.
University as well as government is not in the position that various questions keep being raised on daily basis, which means policy is necessary: is it obligatory, recommended, mentioned or something else when it comes to publishing research data? Estonian Research Council has set up a work group that is suppose to come up with that policy. Ironically, library is not included in the workgroup (the university is).
Research groups are also asking, who is funding the work they need to do in order to make data available. Just this week on Monday morning, I visited with two scientists our vice rector of research and we discussed how long it will take to organize data, add metadata, do the quality control, upload and so on and who is going to pay for it. So we launched a one month pilot project when the researcher will start to do the work and it will culminate with the uploading in our repository and supplying with DOI numbers. This pilot project will also give information for funders how much work and how much will it cost.
Researcheres are saying that the work with data is a time-consuming work, but it does not count for anything when their work is evaluated. It is also a question for policy makers how to solve that within the unviersity, country or EU level.
So in conclusion, I can say as I started – we did not invent a wheel nor are we done yet, but we have at least opened a door.

7.
Thank you! Liisi Lembinen University of Tartu Library