As a starting date steward, I had the lovely opportunity to attend a meeting of the members of this community, which took place on September 10 at Charles University in the beautiful historical premises of Karolina.
I was looking forward to meeting colleagues from the Center for Open Science Support at Charles University and other faculties of Charles University and institutes of the Academy of Sciences, with whom I participated in the data steward course this spring.
The meeting proved an excellent opportunity to share experiences with colleagues in similar positions across different institutions and learn something new from a professional perspective.
I was very pleased to find that the data steward community is larger than I expected and, most importantly, that we are all in the same boat. For example, the primary question "Do you have data and could I see it?" more or less plagues all of us.
All the contributions were interesting and thought-provoking from my point of view and entertaining. I work in the humanities, where working with and understanding data has its own specificities, and I was often forced to think about how the methods and tools presented (e.g. electronic lab journals or versioning data via Git) could be used by our faculty.
I am looking forward to updating the General Guide for Beginning Data Stewards1 as I always look for ways to make working with data more accessible and easy for our faculty colleagues.
The presentation on working with the knowledge model editor in the Data Stewardship Wizard was perfect, as I have yet to gain personal experience with it. Therefore, it was great to have the opportunity to learn how to work with this editor. Or at least to know that it exists and what it is helpful for.
Thank you all for a great meeting and I look forward to meeting you next time!
1This guide will offer practical advice for new data stewards on how to get oriented, where to find information, what to prepare, how to map your institution and how to conduct interviews with scientists.
