Announcing the FAIR Data Stewardship Listserv
Today 09 September 2021, the GO FAIR US office is announcing the FAIR Data Stewardship listserv, fair-data-stewardship@mit.edu. Subscribe to the listserv at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/fair-data-stewardship.
The idea for this listserv emerged out of the FAIR Data Stewardship interest group meeting hosted in late March, 2021, by Katie Knight and Chris Erdmann.
One of the pillars to emerge from discussions at this meeting was the decision to host an open email list about Data Stewardship. Inpsiration for the list initially stems from stories such as Katie’s where she found it difficult to find an open list where nuanced questions around topics such as metadata practices, can be asked or found via community discussion. An example Katie used was the Autocat listserv where cataloging experts share best practices around cataloging material. Having a virtual community, like Autocat, full of individuals with deep and broad domain knowledge available to ask for expertise, professional advice (anecdotal or otherwise), training events or webinars, and so on was essential, especially since at that time Katie worked as the sole metadata librarian at her institution and had no in-person colleagues to engage in these discussions with. Even monitoring such a listserv was educational, as she was able to follow certain discussion threads and learn by proxy.
The Data Stewardship listserv aims to facilitate informal communication between anyone interested in Data Stewardship, regardless of affiliation or professional title. We hope that a forum that can be archived, open, and available to all will be a welcome addition to the growing Data Stewardship community, and compliment other ongoing efforts. Our goal is to create another channel for individuals – new to the profession or seasoned – to pose questions to one another and engage in conversations about any Data Stewardship topic that happens to emerge.
Membership is open to all, and we hope this will be another means to connect Data Stewards of all kinds to help foster discussion, knowledge, and professional connections.
