The New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum Pilot at the University of Manitoba: A Canadian Experience

Canada’s federal funding agencies are following the directions of funding agencies in the United States and United Kingdom, and will soon require a data management plan in grant applications. The University of Manitoba Libraries in Canada has started planning and implementing research data services, and education is seen as a key component. In June 2014, the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum (NECDMC) (Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Medical School 2014) was piloted and used to provide data management training for a group of subject librarians at the University of Manitoba Libraries, in combination with information about data-related policies of the Canadian funding agencies and the University of Manitoba. The seven NECDMC modules were delivered in a seminar style, with emphasis on group discussions and Canadian content. The benefits of NECDMC – adaptability and flexible framework – should be weighed against the challenges experienced in the pilot, mainly the significant amount of time needed to create local content and complement the existing curriculum. Overall, the pilot showed that NECDMC is a good, thorough introduction to data management, and that it is possible to adapt NECDMC to the local and Canadian settings in an effective way.