SHARD: Sending your research material into the future

It has been a very busy time for SHARD. We have been preparing content for the online course on the preservation of research data which will be going onto IHR's excellent History Spot website. Our course is aimed at researchers and we hope we demonstrate that we have listened well and come up with appropriate material. We did a lot of research ourselves through interviews, hearing about current practice, reviewing legacy data and also studying existing courses availiable. Not only that but Malcolm Ragget at LSE has come up with an eye catching leaflet about the preservation of research data. All the related projects funded by JISC (LSE, University of Cambridge and Bristol and us here in University of London) contributed to the content and we think it demonstrates some simple effective ways to keep your research data safe and sound.It has four bits of advice about keeping your research data over time: start thinking/planning early; explain it well; store it safely and share it. We have also drafted between us a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about preservation of research data betwen the three JISC projects. These will go live sometime soon. That's it for now.