I am Mego Franks, a senior library assistant at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and this was my first time attending the RDAP Summit. The theme of building on experience and centering communities was especially poignant for me, as I only work adjacent to and not directly with data services, and I work in a small library. I rely on cross-collaboration with other, more experienced groups and departments at my institution to get our researchers the knowledge and tools they need when our library doesn’t have the capacity to provide that level of service. Communities and relationship building are at the heart of what we do in libraries – and now I know that commitment extends to data services, too.

I started my inaugural RDAP experience with a pre-conference workshop, "Programming Logic for Non-Programmers", which helped me get into a more data-minded mood. The workshop helped me think about how my brain probably works differently than the brains of the researchers I am helping, and how I can "speak their language" and understand their thought processes better to figure out what they really need. This stood out to me because it is a very similar concept to a reference interview, something I do every day, to get to the real question being asked by a patron. I understand now that learning how data is described and accessed, even if I am not using it in my own work, helps me better understand what my patrons need. Working in a medical library, this concept is familiar to me in another way – I may not understand all the terminology being used by doctor or researcher patrons, but I can understand the logic behind it. 

I was already feeling inspired going into the conference proper after that pre-conference workshop; what came next was an awesome explosion of information and community, all from people with the same passion to make research data as accessible as possible. I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of topics that could be covered under the scope of research data access and preservation. I was happy to see a balance of technical subjects and more people-focused subjects. My goals going into this conference were to learn new skills and areas of education previously unknown to me. I did not expect to be able to contribute much as a "data-adjacent" person, but I found an incredibly engaging, thoughtful community at this conference who valued my input. This, above all else, was really the shining point of the conference theme. People who care about data need and want to build strong communities of practice, with viewpoints from librarians to researchers to data managers and beyond. Everyone can contribute in some way to research data access and preservation.

<<Previous Winner || Next Winner>>