This post was written by Jenna Courtade, Research Data Management Librarian at University of Miami Libraries as part of her Data Services Continuing Professional Education (DSCPE) capstone which focused on improving RDAP's own data management. 

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My name is Jenna Courtade, and I am the Research Data Management Librarian at the University of Miami Libraries. I entered into this new role in February 2025. Prior to this position, I worked as a visiting archivist at the University of Miami’s Architecture Archives. While I continue to find many commonalities between archiving and research data management, it would be a lie to say this transition has not been an adjustment for me. Thankfully I was able to find many wonderful resources to support my continuing education goals during this transition, such as the Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA) and the RDAP Summit hosted in March 2025. During the RDAP Summit, I attended a few presentations by people sharing their experiences with something called Data Services Continuing Professional Education (DSCPE). I wrote down this acronym and promised myself I would look into the program. 

I learned that DSCPE is a twelve-week intensive online program designed to equip early- to mid-career librarians with the skills required to deliver essential data services. The program consists of live lectures, online learning modules, and a capstone project in collaboration with a mentor. This was exactly what I needed, so I applied and was accepted into the 2025 DSCPE cohort. A few weeks later, I received my capstone mentor match. Imagine my excitement when I was paired with the very organization that introduced me to the DSCPE program in the first place: RDAP!

Over the twelve weeks, I worked with the members of RDAP’s Executive Board to complete my fifty-hour capstone project. Specifically, I was mentored by President Ali Krzton, President-Elect Abigail Goben, and Secretary Megan O’Donnell. I feel so lucky that I was matched with RDAP and these three wonderful people because not only have I learned about RDAP as an organization, but I have also been able to shadow Ali, Abigail, and Megan at their home institutions (Auburn University, University of Illinois Chicago, and Iowa State University). Their mentorship has allowed me the opportunity to sit in on RDAP Leadership meetings, attend data management consultations and data working group meetings, use DMP Tool for a data management plan review, and learn more about data curation workflows.

In addition to this educational job-shadowing, I have worked closely with Megan on a specific project: improving data management within RDAP itself. I was tasked with helping to reorganize files, folders, and project spaces in use by RDAP for nearly a decade. RDAP's primary challenge is growth and turnover; the organization is entirely volunteer run, and committee membership and leadership frequently changes. The Executive Board also experiences regular turn-over, as the President-Elect/President/Past-President is a three-year commitment and the Treasurer and Secretary each have a two-year term. Another challenge is the sheer amount of people creating and accessing RDAP’s files. Currently, there are eighty-one people who have access to the RDAP “home” drive which is used by the committees. These issues have led to uncoordinated and inconsistent (but not necessarily bad) file management. At the end of this project, I provided a summary of the enhancements made to internal data assets and to create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document providing guidance on file naming and organization. The remainder of this post will provide a deeper look into my experience with this aspect of the capstone. 

RDAP uses Google Drive’s shared drive feature for file storage and collaboration. I worked in the “home” drive, which has files shared among RDAP committees, working groups, and taskforces. Within this drive, I primarily cleaned up folder and file names, established naming conventions, and created README files which documented the naming conventions in use. I worked on five of the home drive’s ten parent folders. For each one, I first familiarized myself with the file and folder structure. I opened every file individually to understand its contents. When dates were important, I looked into the file metadata to determine when the file was created or last modified. In the end, I investigated and renamed or rearranged over 150 files within these five folders. I will provide an example of my process using the “RDAP_Bylaws” folder. The top-level folder originally had a sub-folder list like this:

After opening and investigating the files in each folder, it was clear to me that “Bylaws_PastVersions” contained previous versions of the bylaws as well as proposed amendments from multiple years. The other sub-folders also contained materials that could be considered “past versions.” I recommended that we rename the folders and move the files in “Bylaws_PastVersions” into the folders matching the year when they were created. If the original file name contained a date, I confirmed that the file contents matched that date. If the original file name did not include date information, I used the file metadata or the file contents to figure it out. Then, I met with Megan to discuss my suggestions and make adjustments to the plan until we were both satisfied with the changes. In this case, the word “amendments” could be removed from the folder names, as all bylaw changes are done through amendments. The final organizational scheme makes it easy to tell at a glance which years have bylaw changes:

My cleanup work had me constantly thinking about the sustainability of my suggested changes. In my short time as a research data management librarian, I have realized that half the battle in teaching data management best practices and principles is helping researchers establish good habits. With this in mind, I tried to write an SOP that was not overly complicated, demanding, or lengthy. My completed SOP was three pages long and contained three main sections: Preliminary Information, Procedure, and Revision History. 

In the Preliminary Information section, I described the purpose of the SOP; outlined relevant roles and responsibilities as they relate to file naming; and included relevant references and related documents. While describing the roles and responsibilities, I decided to specify that the Secretary would be in charge of maintaining this document in the future. I discovered that this was relevant to the Secretary’s work while browsing the “RDAP_Position_Descriptions” folder, and Megan confirmed this. 

In the Procedure section, I outlined the conventions for file and folder naming as well as how to create standardized README files. I centered the naming conventions around file naming best practices such as adopting the ISO 8601 date and time format. I initially wanted to suggest recording dates at the beginning of the file name, but after considering “good enough” data management, I decided that this was not necessary. Instead I wrote, “Be consistent with where you decide to put the date in the file name, whether at the end or the beginning,” as consistency is more important than requiring the date to be in a specific position in the file name. 

The Revision History section will allow for tracking of changes in the future. While the title page of the SOP will show the version and date last updated at a glance, the Revision History section will allow more room to explain what changes were made, and by whom. Finally, a link to the SOP was added to the onboarding documentation for new committee chairs and to the “how to” overview document within the RDAP home drive.

This capstone has been immensely helpful for me as a new data librarian. Although I have recommended that researchers write an SOP for their labs in the past, I did not have my own experience with the process until this project. I learned that it is more complicated to write a short and succinct SOP than I initially thought. The project as a whole also made me think more about the difficult realities of data management. Even RDAP, a community of knowledgeable research data professionals, has struggled to keep its own files organized and understandable, and forming habits is hard due to regular turnover. The hope is that new documentation, in the form of the SOP and README files, will help whomever comes next.

While writing the SOP for RDAP, I decided to practice “good enough” by asking myself what was minimally required and what could be left to the discretion of RDAP’s volunteers. I hope that taking this “good enough” approach to data management will make it easier to follow the naming conventions in the future. 

Overall, I had a wonderful twelve weeks in the DSCPE program and with my RDAP mentors. I have learned much about the reality of research data management, and I am excited to incorporate this knowledge into my future teaching and research consultations. I also had a fantastic experience with everyone on the RDAP Executive Board and on the Leadership team. I hope to stay involved with RDAP in the future by joining a committee. To any new data librarians looking for additional professional development opportunities, I highly recommend checking out DSCPE!