Real world scenarios: I want to use a secondary dataset!
I joined the Open Research team in October, after 15 years of working with museum and archival collections where assisting researchers with finding sources of information, planning research and projects, and helping others with these tasks was an everyday occurrence. This means I feel like I have ‘seen it all’ when it comes to good and bad research data planning.
To show what can happen when there hasn’t been any planning and to help you understand why a plan is important, I present this set of blog posts detailing some real-world scenarios I’ve witnessed.
Real-world cases: accessing and using secondary data
A museum or archive is a great source of secondary data, and not only for the humanities. Taking time to facilitate researchers and help them find what they needed is brilliant. However, most museums and archives are massively under resourced, and for me it was the same, often being the only person on the team.
In my last role I had to turn down a researcher every other month because they didn’t get in contact early enough when planning their field visits. This could be because they visited the archive only to discover it was closed due to annual leave. On two occasions the researchers had flown over five hours to visit the archive! Other times the researcher booked their flights before getting in touch to find out if an appointment was available when they wanted one. Those trying to book a reading room appointment early enough were able to reschedule their flights or replan their visits but often at an added cost. However, those who emailed with less than a week to go found there was nothing that could be done. Like those who turned up without prior notice, they had to find funding for a second trip.
You can avoid repeating this by considering how you will access your secondary datasets in advance. Contact the owners or keepers of these as you plan your research. Let them know of your work, what information you would like to see and when you hope to visit. This means they can help get you the best information for your research, and really help you get the most out of your research visits.
Keepers of secondary data want to help you. By getting in touch, well in advance, you give them the chance to do so. You never know, what you need might be digitally available meaning you can use that travel time and funding for something else. I would do things like share digitised resources, provide parking passes or give introductions.
Who knows what opportunities and benefits are available when you take actions to get access to the datasets at the planning stage. Don’t wait to discover what frustrations lie in wait when you don’t.