[Rdap] Requesting your input on RDAP future visioning direction, survey feedback link at bottom of email

[Erica Mehan Johns]

Hello RDAP community,

Happy New Year! As we embark on 2018, the Future Vision Task Force (FVTF) of RDAP would like to communicate some of our findings. The FVTF was started in the 2016 to formalize the investigation into possible future directions of RDAP after several years of community discussion about where we - as a community - belong.


The purpose of this email is to briefly describe a general direction that the FVTF will be considering for recommendation, with a full report that will be distributed early February 2018, including a survey for community feedback.

In 2017, the RDAP community was surveyed twice: first to review our mission, community, and annual summit statements; second to garner feedback about the future direction of RDAP (see RDAP 2017 <https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2oVOvfoM2yDMG1Sb0p0eVBkaWc> presentation to learn more).  As the 2017/2018 FVTF began to sift through this feedback, the general sentiment was that the community is ready to grow and establish itself as an improved, more focused RDAP that offers a breadth of professional development opportunities. The more the FVTF dug into professional models or possible alignments, the more we realized that in order for RDAP to continue to mature and meet community needs, we may need to become our own professional organization.


Before we pursue this option fully, we want to touch base with you. Our concerns as we consider a shift of this magnitude is the commitment from the community to take RDAP to the next level and become *the* data librarian association of North America. We know this would be a learning process, but we feel that the community is up to the challenge...are we right?

We would like your feedback on the possibility of RDAP becoming an independent professional organization. This would entail the following:

RDAP becomes a professional organization

  *   Governance structure is formed (includes governance board, conference planning committee, marketing, sponsorship, education, etc.)

     *   Governance board = elected members

     *   Other committees = volunteer members

  *   RDAP works towards becoming a non-profit by 2020

  *   RDAP seeks a higher education institution host for the 2019 Summit to lower conference costs (that year only)

  *   Unite floating communities: Datacure forum + slack, regional data librarian conferences, Data Information Literacy Resources

  *   Align with Journal of eScience Librarianship (JeSLIB)<http://escholarship.umassmed.edu/jeslib/> for Annual Summit curated conference proceedings (maintain OSF conference repository)

  *   Website/CMS with archived webinars, trainings

The above isn’t very granular, but you can expect the fullest level of detail we are capable of providing by early February 2018. Please let us know if you are supportive or unsupportive of this possible general direction by January 16, 2018 (via this survey<https://cornell.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7V57x3Z8P4raoDP>) . Note that we are not committing to a particular direction at this time; this is one of several possible directions.


If you have never attended RDAP, please peruse our vision, mission, community, and Annual Summit statements<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SELh9qD9fBPM1jMeGMccoVClyvHDjcY_ZHjRa-89VgY/edit?usp=sharing> for more information.


All the best,

The Future Vision Task Force

Caitlin Bakker

Kristin Briney

Jake Carlson

Matthew Harp

Erica Johns

Andrew Johnson

Amy Koshoffer

Paula Lackie

Regina Raboin

Yasmeen Shorish

Steve Van Tuyl

Marina Zhang


Erica M. Johns

Research Data and Environmental Sciences Librarian
Liaison to BEE, EEB, FSAD, NTRES
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3068-3143

Albert R. Mann Library
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: (607) 255-0158
Email: emj73 at cornell.edu<mailto:emj73 at cornell.edu>

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