DaMaRO (Data Management Rollout in Oxford) Project - update

DaMaRO Project -- Update

*Background*

The DaMaRO (Data Management Rollout in Oxford) Project is enhancing and tying together the various research data management tools, processes, and training developed at the University of Oxford. The project's aim is to build a unified infrastructure that will enable researchers to comply with the new research data management policy that the University is drafting. It's a joint endeavour between Oxford University Computing Services and the Bodleian Libraries, which will also draw upon the experiences and expertise of the University's academic divisions. 
Further information can be found on the project website and blog.

*Recent Progress*

The full DaMaRO team is now in place: James Wilson (Project Manager), Asif Akram (Developer), and Meriel Patrick (Analyst and Training Officer) started work on the project in April, after the conclusion of the VIDaaS Project. More recently, developer Bhavana Ananda has joined the team, fresh from her work on DataFlow.

A key DaMaRO Project task is the development of a DataFinder tool. This will draw together metadata about datasets hosted around the University of Oxford and beyond, thus providing researchers with a straightforward way of discovering new data that may be of interest. The tool is designed to function hierarchically, meaning that institutional instances of DataFinder will ultimately be able to be combined into a national or international version. The past few months have been spent laying the groundwork, and we now have a technical architecture in place. The project will be adopting an agile development approach, and the first sprint is about to begin.

On the training front, we've been surveying the materials that already exist, with a view to seeing how they can be adapted and expanded to provide a suite of data management training resources for Oxford. We hope to produce information for use in induction sessions, customizable materials for a face-to-face course, and additional online guidance. 
Some exciting opportunities have also recently opened up for collaboration with a similar project based at the University of Southampton.

The first meeting of the DaMaRO Project's Advisory Group took place in late March. This provided a chance for some important input from researchers, research administrators, and other interested parties -- representatives of the groups the DaMaRO Project's work is designed to benefit. The people we're working with include the team behind the online research management platform ColWiz -- over the coming months, we hope to investigate the possibility of harvesting information about research data from Web 2.0 services such as this one.

Finally, the DaMaRO team will be participating in a workshop on Digital Infrastructure to Support Research, to be held at the University of Oxford on July 13th.