Introducing Undergraduates to Research Datasets

This spring semester at Willamette University we had our first course on campus integrate research dataset deposits in an Environmental Science senior thesis class. To help with this process, the library worked with the faculty member to create a metadata template for a README file, provided instructions to the students on how to fill out the README file, and then created a customized submission process for the new collection in our Academic Commons (DSpace institutional repository) specifically for Student Research Datasets. In our session we will go over, the creation of the template file and instructions, the creation of the customized workflow, and describe how we will manage permissions on the datasets. We will also summarize how this first semester with undergraduate student researchers went, the issues we encountered (e.g. quantitative and qualitative datasets), and how they were resolved.