We conducted a stakeholder needs study during three oceanographic meetings to determine potential enhancements the BCO-DMO repository could make to improve its service to the research community. For each question, participants were directed to use corresponding stickers to indicate their first, second and third choices in response to the following questions:

Accessing data: What file formats do you use?
Searching for data: What search facets (categories) are most important to you?
Data tools: What programming languages and tools do you use?
New requests: What new tools and features would be useful to you?

The poster was presented at:

The Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) Summer Workshop in Woods Hole, MA June 24-27 2019.
The Ocean Obs’19 Meeting in Honolulu, HI September 16-20 2019. Updates were made to the poster based on feedback received during the OCB meeting. The “Searching for data” section’s geospatial response option was split into geospatial by region and geospatial by point location. Additionally, the response option “Searching by Award number” was removed.
The Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, CA February 16-21 2020. Additional changes were made to the poster based on feedback received during the Ocean Obs’19 meeting. The option for xls/xlsx was added as a response choice to the “Accessing data” question.

Remarks on data acquisition:

Updates were made to the poster prior to the OceanObs’19 Meeting, based on feedback received during the OCB meeting. The “Searching for data” section’s “Geospatial” response option was split into “Geospatial by region” and “Geospatial by point location” options. The response option “Searching by Award number” was removed. An additional change was made to the poster based on feedback received during the OceanObs’19 meeting by adding a response choice for .xls/.xlsx file formats to the “Accessing data” question.

It should be noted that on occasion a sticker that was not mapped as the first, second, or third choice option was used erroneously. We noted these errors in a comments field. It was also noticed that some participants only provided us with their first choice answers.