1. Research and IR Cohabitating Chuck Humphrey University of Alberta IASSIST 2006

2. A Case Study With the blessing of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, a research team was organized in 2002 at the University of Alberta to study the national human resources picture of librarians in Canada. This national study became known as the 8 R’s recruitment, retirement, retention, rejuvenation, repatriation, re-accreditation, remuneration, and restructuring

3. Life Cycle of the 8R’s Project The project started with a mission, a blessing and a steering committee The committee developed a strategy for fund raising and a research agenda (minutes were kept of all meetings) Cup in hand, funds were recruited for start-up costs (one of the first donations was from the Association of New Brunswick Librarians)

4. Life Cycle of the 8R’s Project An application was prepared for the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council’s Initiative on the New Economy (literature search and Census statistics were gathered to support the application) Canadian Heritage funding for an proposal to study the workforce in the heritage sector: archives, museums and libraries (survey of personnel officers)

5. Life Cycle of the 8R’s Project An independent researcher was hired by the steering committee to conduct the survey Meanwhile, more funding raising allowed for a survey of library professionals and paraprofessionals Data were gathered (paper questionnaires used in the institutional survey; web survey used in the survey of individuals) Data files were prepared and analyzed Reports were written and the results disseminated

6. Life Cycle of the 8R’s Project Throughout the life cycle, a collection of digital objects resulted from the range of work involved in the project, including records documenting the governance of the project, bibliographic and background research, funding applications, research into sampling frames, questionnaires, data, reports and the project’s website. Most of these objects are in MS Word format but a variety of other digital formats exist, including HTML, PDF and SPSS.sav file types

7. Enter the IR Retrospectively, the data from the two surveys were documented using DDI While organizing the supporting information for these two data products, the decision was made to capture all of the digital objects from the project on the local institutional repository (D-space), initially to be used as an electronic book shelf Subsequent to this, ways have been sought to integrate metadata between the IR and DDI

8. Reflections Multiple streams flow throughout the life cycle of a research project, including fund raising, project governance & management, proposal writing, data collection, ethical approval, etc., each generating a collection of digital objects The digital objects from these streams often end up on a hard drive dead-ended unless intentionally collected and organized Documenting the functional streams of research and linking their outputs to the data enrich the context for secondary analysis purposes

9. Next Steps Best practices are being explored for linking information from sources on the IR with the data documentation in DDI format