Following the formal launch of the Interest Group, prioritising of topics and formalising of tasks groups at VP16, we invite those of the community interested to work on professionalising data stewardship to work on some of the rotating themes from our master plan for the coming years:

• A business case for data stewardship
• Data stewardship terminology
• The integration of data stewardship across an organisation

These themes are the first of many, and are closely connected to other themes and challenges identified at P14 and P15 and prioritised at VP16 (see relevant links to additional information below) . We anticipate that drafting out the fundamentals of these themes will help the other task groups to progress as well (such as job profiles, training, career tracks, networking & knowledge exchange, and certification).

Between VP16 and VP17, some really nice progress has already been made, and we will use the VP17 “professionalising data stewardship” plenary session to work together (in a mini-hackathon-style) to use the expertise and experience of the RDA community to draft a first version of deliverables for a business case for data stewardship, data stewardship terminology and data stewardship organisational models.

The expected output will be first version of deliverables for 

• a business case for data stewardship
• data stewardship terminology
• data stewardship organisational models

We expect these first versions to be useful for the broader RDA community that struggles with professionalising data stewardship in their organisations, and therefore we think it is very useful to spend some dedicated time on these three themes.

Collaborative session notes  

We realise that the work currently done will greatly benefit from the active input of expertise and experience of the RDA community, from various disciplines and countries, and therefore we explicitly organise a hackathon-style meeting. 

(in minutes from the start)

0 – 20 min

• Introduction of the IG and its tasks groups
• Elevator pitches (max 4 minutes) of three fundamental themes for professionalising data stewardship (as first of many topics of the coming years)
  • a business case for data stewardship
  • data stewardship terminology
  • data stewardship models

20 – 80 min

• Interactive breakout sessions to progress the work on these three topics. This will include for example presenting a case study, plans for deliverables, mentimeter questions, padlet exercises etc.

• Meanwhile in the main room, there will be plenty of room for those new to the Interest Group to get introduced to the group’s work, and discuss the broader plan for the coming years.

80 – 90 min

• Future outlook/wrap up/closure

This Interest Group brings together those interested in professionalising data stewardship. More specifically, this session will be of interest to those who wish to actively engage with each other to contribute to current discussions, initiatives and projects that are tackling challenges in professionalising data stewardship.

They may be current or future data stewards, but we also actively reach out to people in the broader data professional community, including data librarians, data managers, data scientists, data archivists, IT staff, research support staff, policy makers, funders, and managers and executives.

This explicitly includes students and researchers, potentially being our future data stewards.