For the second half of the academic year, Digital Library services will be live streaming our Digital Scholar Series. Starting off with five sessions in the month of August. Presenters from DLS will showcase some of the practices and tools to improve your Digital Scholarship.

These sessions are open to all postgraduate researchers and staff working within any field of study. The topics covered deal with the management of digital materials for teaching, learning and research (what some call data), touching on digital topics throughout the research lifecycle. These sessions are aimed at making working with data more efficient so as to give you less hassle and more time to focus on your research, teaching and learning.

All sessions will start at 12 pm with the topics and dates listed below. They will be hosted on MS Teams. After registering for the event, you will have the event details forwarded to your calendar. The sessions will last 45 minutes with an extra 15 minutes for any questions or discussions. The DLS team will be present to moderate the chat and to help answer questions as they arise.

Sessions:

Collecting and Capturing your Research Efficiently

• Tue 2020-08-11, 12:00 PM
• Taking the right steps at the start of a research project can make all subsequent work much easier. How you collect and capture the information that you need to do your research (your data) is one such step. This session looks at ways to organize what you collect and how to best capture it. We cover subjects from using forms for data capture, to file naming and recognizing the value of metadata. After this session, you may well see the world in rows and columns.
• Register here: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/event/6886332

Working Collaboratively on Research Projects

• Thu 2020-08-13, 12:00 PM
• Research projects don't have to be a lonely process, frequently many different researchers work together towards generating new knowledge. Making sure that the right information is used by everyone and making sure it stays original and current is a challenge. We look at a few relevant, collaborative spaces online that can help you work together. After this session, you will never look at files attached to emails the same way.
• Register here: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/event/6886333

Creating Data Management Plans with UCT DMP

• Tue 2020-08-18, 12:00 PM
• If you “fail to plan you plan to fail” is the age-old phrase. And that is where Data Management Plans come in. Rather than just another box to tick in your MoU, a DMP asks you a number of useful questions to help figure out how you will work with, and manage, your data throughout your research project. You might not have all the answers, and some questions will be tough, but taking the time to try to answer them can save you from moments of failure in the future. This session takes you through UCT DMP, an online tool that guides you through answering such questions. After this session, you will no longer fear the DMP.
• Register here: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/event/6886334

Sharing and Publishing Research Openly with ZivaHub

• Thu 2020-08-20, 12:00 PM
• Research outputs become more valuable once they are shared, allowing others to use them to glean information and build knowledge. In today's academic landscape you can get credit for publishing the data you produce and share, leading to new opportunities for study. But to do so, your data must be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). We look at what this means and tour through UCT's data repository ZivaHub to find out how you can share and publish your data. After this session, DOIs might be your new best friends.
• Register here: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/event/6886337

Navigating Research Data Management

• Tue 2020-08-25, 12:00 PM
• We tend to need good information to get to knowledge, and in order to find that information, we need to work through a lot of data. Learn how to manage your data and all the little things you can do along your research journey that can make you more efficient at extracting information. RDM is not just another acronym, it can change the way you do research. Learn about the basics of research data management and what tools and processes can help you be a more efficient researcher. After this session, all your data will be at your fingertips.
• Register here: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/event/6877786