This post is a spin-off of our Curators’ Corner series. Every so often we’ll feature a different DCN Advisory or Governance Board member. Get to know the colleagues at the DCN that help keep our operations going!
Tim McGeary, Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Technology, Duke University, DCN Advisory Board Chair, was interviewed by Mikala Narlock in July 2024.
Can you tell us a little more about your role?
In my position, I oversee Duke University Libraries’ (DUL) digital strategies– this includes implementing technologies that not only support DUL, but as much of the University mission and campus efforts as possible.
This role, while centered in technology, is primarily people-oriented. I give professional support to those who report to me, so that they, in turn, can empower and enable our colleagues that are doing such great work to continue succeeding.
In practice, this requires building collaborations and relationships with those across campus. The important thing for me to do is to establish those partnerships at an operational level, and then get out of the way. I also take a strong advocacy role: I deliver presentations on the work we’re doing to those across campus who may benefit from our support. To complement this, I also do a lot of listening to the needs of different schools, the challenges their faculty and researchers are facing, and look for opportunities for us to collaborate on solutions.
Essentially, I’m employing a systems thinking approach, which is what my background is in, to understand what makes Duke University’s mission most successful– and then make it happen.
How long have you and your institution been involved with the Data Curation Network?
Duke has been involved since 2018– we were in the first wave of new members, after the initial Alfred P. Sloan planning grant, and joined as co-PIs on the implementation grant. Joel Herndon, Director of the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences, and I saw this as an exciting opportunity to expand the work we were already starting to do at DUL. We wanted to share our work and the team we were building to help other institutions think about their own structures and processes
Why is the DCN important to you and your institution?
I believe the DCN is an avenue for ensuring the sustainability of the work we’re doing—in supporting researchers, and in particular research data, as data continues to grow in size and complexity.
It boils down to scaling up our capacity; we all kick in a little, but we get more in return. The DCN is greater than the sum of its parts, and we really benefit from that here at Duke. We support the network to build out expertise through collaboration and knowledge sharing– and our researchers benefit from the expertise at other institutions.
Duke University has been working to advance scientific integrity and responsible research, especially given federal funding practice and mandates, not to mention publisher expectations. We see the DCN as a great opportunity to demonstrate to Duke a return on investment that they made into the DUL team.
Duke recently hosted the 2024 All Hands Meeting, and I know you’ve attended several in the past. How have you seen them change over the years? How different was it as the host institution?
I have now attended three in-person All Hands Meeting: the first one in 2018, last year’s at Princeton, and of course this year at Duke. I also attended many of the virtual events (2020-2022), even if just for a few sessions.
When I think back to the original AHM, we were really just figuring it out. I remember this buzz, this excitement—we knew we had something good here, and we wanted to be sure we approached this sustainably to keep the energy and motivation going.
We did our best through the pandemic, and in some ways I think we even thrived during it. Because we’re a distributed human network anyway, it provided us the opportunity to really demonstrate our value, particularly when we were challenged most.
So, when it was time to return in person, there was a lot of excitement in the lead up to our All Hands at Princeton! That was a very engaging experience. We spent time thinking about DEIA in the DCN. We had the chance to bring different perspectives, and to understand the different contexts individuals bring, while intermingling with colleagues we don’t typically work with. I was impressed with the Princeton crew’s ability to shift to a hybrid event model with incredibly short notice, since there were weather issues that prohibited a large group of people from attending in person. But, for me, it was just one more example of the tenacity and flexibility of DCN as a human organization.
When the opportunity arose to host the 2024 All Hands Meeting (AHM), we jumped on it. I like to host events like this—it gives me a chance to support our partnerships, enable more Duke staff to participate, and show off the beautiful Duke Campus. We have a great set of facilities and the environment to hold meetings and collaborate. Plus, as a leader, I like to build partnerships, advocate, and even brag about the amazing work we’re doing here in DUL. Hosting AHM gave us an opportunity to do so to campus partners. So selfishly, Duke also really benefited from the experience. Plus, this was an opportunity to give back to the DCN community, to take pressure off the other partners who do so much. We are excited to share knowledge of our hosting experience and pass it forward to AHM 2025 planner.
As the Chair of the Advisory Board and AUL, it was honestly fun for me to set the platform for what we could do, and let the planning committee fill in the gaps, to lead. I also successfully advocated for a reception outside of the DCN budget to invite campus colleagues to interact with members of the DCN to see what we were doing. Now, we have new evangelists for what the DCN can do for faculty and researchers!
I know you’re also involved with HELIOS Open – can you tell us more about the project? How does this intersect with your work in the DCN?
I’m the institutional representative for Duke to the HELIOS Open project. In this role, I represent the university in the community meetings and working groups to consider what types of collaborations and opportunities there might be with the membership of HELIOS.
Of course, I continue advocating for open scholarship, specifically by looking for partnerships that can effect change in our research environments so that open scholarship becomes the norm and not the exception. One of my not-so-secret goals is to be sure the DCN is mentioned in every HELIOS Open meeting possible. I don’t have to be the one who says it – I might tee it up for someone else to say it – but I want the DCN to get airtime in the HELIOS meetings.
I will note that HELIOS is focused on policy and practice at the federal level and advocating for changes at that level, with a goal of working with publishers, societies, and vendors. There are opportunities here to make change across boundaries, across institutions, and then reflect on how we can make changes at our level. The DCN is like that, too: we collaborate, we amplify, we share our resources, and then we think about how we can improve our own work.
There are many other areas of overlap– including demonstrating the costs of data sharing– and it’s exciting to be actively involved with both communities.