Understanding the needs of both CESSDA service providers (SPs) and partners (i.e. future SPs) is essential for the success of CESSDA as a whole. Sustainable tools must be developed and made available for addressing these needs, as well as for facilitating and encouraging exchange between data archive services (DAS) at different maturity levels. The Resource Directory developed during the “CESSDA Widening Activities 2018” project is a tool that contributes to addressing partners’ and less mature CESSDA SPs’ needs.
The aim of the Resource Directory is to help disseminate existing resources within CESSDA and its SPs – that either help building a DAS or developing new services and features within existing DAS – among CESSDA partners and less mature CESSDA SPs. This contributes to the ultimate objectives of widening activities, which are to help the partners in building sustainable and mature data services and achieving CESSDA membership. Furthermore, the Resource Directory contributes to increasing CESSDA visibility in non-member countries.
The Resource Directory gathers resources together which are already available on different institutional websites. The resources are accessible via web links or DOIs; no resource is physically attached to the Directory. The Resource Directory is thus a central point of access to the resources that aid the building and development of mature DAS, and in achieving CESSDA membership. Information on relevant documents, trainings, tools and support services resulting from past and current CESSDA projects and activities at the SPs have been collected, selected and reviewed specifically for this purpose. The Resource Directory is therefore a curated inventory of these specific resources with aggregated listing of information.
The Resource Directory contains currently 189 resources (version 1.2) that support the development of a DAS. A wide range of resources is available in the Directory. In order to guide the users within the Directory, specific labels, descriptions and metadata were applied to index and define the resources. The labels and metadata can be used to select specific resources for a user-friendly search, allowing easy and rapid access to the resources of interest.
If a tool is already available, further developments of the Resource Directory are needed. The first one is to publish the Resource Directory online in a more user-friendly way and to make it available via the CESSDA website. Second, in order for the Resource Directory not to become obsolete, it needs maintenance. A proper maintenance means at the same time updating and completing its records to integrate the many resources available within CESSDA and its SPs, and enhancing the tool with, for example, an assessment of the quality of the resources (and not only the relevance).