Over the past 18 months, I have been the co-chair of a working group examining the impacts of Research Data Management (RDM) requirements on existing institutional policies and procedures as part of the University of Calgary’s RDM Strategy and in part, to determine how to implement the Tri-Agency data deposit requirement.  Most of the work in universities towards implementing these requirements is being done by librarians, digital repository specialists, and research offices.  While the work may not directly involve or affect archivists, it raises some interesting questions and observations between the intersection of archival and library work within universities, both directly related to the Tri-Agency RDM Policy and digital repositories in general.

In 2021, the Tri-Agency released the Research Data Management Policy, which, among other things, required universities to implement an institutional RDM strategy and for grant recipients to “deposit into a digital repository all digital research data, metadata and code that directly support the research conclusions in journal publications and pre-prints.”  Though this requirement is not yet in effect, the Tri-Agency is actively seeking feedback on its implementation, with the assumption that researchers would be required to retain their data that directly supports their findings for ten years.

It is key to note that the Tri-Agency feedback is on the retention period for researchers and not for the repositories themselves.  There is currently no guidance on how long repositories will be expected to retain deposited data.  This matters as not all repositories may be set up to be able to support indefinite retention, nor will all be able to act as a digital preservation system.  Further, permanent retention is often more associated with archives and special collections where accepting records into the collection includes an appraisal of the historical and archival value of the records, and their value for future research.

There are questions as to whether repositories will need to perform appraisal on any data for permanent preservation – something that may be more traditionally done by archivists.  There is also the question of how that data is to be best preserved for the long term and made accessible.  Indefinite retention of all deposited data will inevitably be a massive amount of data that needs to be preserved.  Who is to make the call as to what data will be relevant to future researchers and what won’t be?  This is an area that will likely need to involve the cooperation of librarians, archivists, and researchers themselves.

One example at the University of Calgary where digital repositories have shifted the responsibility over preservation is in our theses collection.  Like most universities, we keep a copy of every master’s and Ph.D. thesis written by University of Calgary students.  Prior to 2012, when electronic submission was made compulsory, the University Archives was the official repository for the collection, though additional copies of some theses were also bound and put into the circulating library collection.  After 2012, theses were submitted to the digital repository, but the archives still accessioned these and accompanying paperwork.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, the submission of theses and all associated documentation switched entirely to a digital format through PRISM, the university’s institutional repository.  Since then, the digital repository team has taken over the collection, preservation, and access of deposited thesis.

Fortunately, both the digital repository team and the University Archives are units within the larger Libraries and Cultural Resources, and I have a very good working relationship with them, including jointly working on a project to digitize all our legacy physical theses to improve access.  However, despite this, there is still a difference in how the archives went about preservation compared to the digital repository.  Newly deposited theses don’t carry an accession number, but rather a DOI, as this is the library standard.  While the digitized legacy theses do have the accession number in the metadata, the addition of a DOI and how they are displayed in the repository de-emphasizes that the physical original is still preserved by the archives. 

The Tri-Agency Policy is clear that it only applies to “digital data, metadata, and code.”  There are likely many reasons for this, among them that most data are created digitally, and to help with difficulties around compliance and enforcement.  However, not all research data are created digitally even now, and while the policy may not force researchers to deposit this data, the policy itself will result in greater awareness in the value of data deposit.  Those researchers with physical data that approach university repositories are very likely to be redirected to the archives. 

This should serve as a reminder that archives already hold a vast amount of research data, though we often don’t refer to it as such, or possibly even consider it as such.  Research data creation is not new and has always been done alongside research.  This is not to say that archives have – or should – retain things like patient records, lab results, or ledgers of numbers, but research data takes many forms. There are many examples from the collections of the University of Calgary Archives, but I will highlight two.  The first is the more than 20,000 images – primarily slides and prints – that we hold in the Peter L. Shinnie fonds.  Dr. Shinnie was a well-known archaeologist who did field work at many sites in Africa, particularly his work at the ancient city of Meroë, on the banks of the Nile in modern Sudan.  The images he took document in great detail his excavations, the artifacts unearthed, and the site itself as it appeared in the 1960s and 1970s.  These images have been used by modern archaeologists who continue to dig at the site and continue to research many of the artifacts found by Dr. Shinnie. 

A second example is the Dr. Eung-Do Cook fonds.  Dr. Cook was a linguist who studied First Nations languages, particularly those inAlberta and British Columbia.  As part of his work, he created thousands of index cardscontaining words in a variety of languages as well as made physical recordings of Indigenous speakers of these languages.  This is important raw data to help preserve and expand knowledge of these languages.   

The attention being paid to research data management is an opportunity for archivists to champion their collections, demonstrate value in that archives have always preserved and made accessible these types of data, and advocate for resources to continue to preserve them.  The experience archivists have in working with data, even if we may not realize it, is also vital to ensuring the goals of the Tri-Agency Policy that data are deposited and made accessible to the fullest extent possible.

Curtis Frederick is the University Records Archivist at the University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections, a position he has held since 2020. He is also the subject archivist for the political, labour, education, and communications and media archives. He has a Master of Information and a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto.