In 2017 we conducted a series of short interviews as part of the LEARN project. We asked several UCL researchers about data management and data sharing in their disciplines.

Dr Jenny Bunn is a lecturer in UCL Department of Information Studies; she is the Program Director for the MA/Diplomate/Certificate in Archive and Records Management. She previously worked as an archivist at the V&A Museum, The Royal Bank of Scotland Archives, Glasgow University Archives and The National Archives before moving to teaching and research at UCL.

Alongside Jenny’s insights as a researcher, her professional experience as an archivist also informs her approach to Research Data Management (RDM). She emphasised the importance for researchers to reflect on three questions: what data could potentially be useful for other researchers; where to share this data most effectively; and whether some data should not be kept. A central message of the interview was the need for researchers not to view RDM as ‘keeping everything’ but instead as viewing RDM as a key component of research integrity.

Watch Jenny’s 7-minute interview (opens a new window in Youtube).

A hard drive sitting on your bookshelf might be useful for storing your data, but it is not reliable or secure enough for long-term preservation (memory or USB sticks are even worst). For safer options to preserve data, see our guide on how to store & archive your research data (whether digital or not).

If you really need to use an external hard drive, here are a few emergency tips for taking care of your drive and make sure that you can still read the data in the coming years.

At the minimum you should: (more…)