Data Services in Academic Libraries – What Strange Beast Is This?

Limitations to success in academic data reference support

“…One respondent said, “I just don’t have enough time to keep up professionally.” Just as colleagues and administrators underestimate the amount of time it takes to answer data reference questions, they also can underestimate the ongoing amount of time and energy it will take for a data librarian to continue their own learning. These results illustrate trends from the literature, where authors note that while some LIS programs are offering data librarianship courses, most people are not formally trained in data reference work specifically, which means that individuals have to keep current on their own (Geraci et al, 2012; Kellam and Peter, 2011; McCaffrey and Giesbrecht, 2016; Swygart-Hobaugh, 2017). To fill this gap, a number of authors have described their own methods for maintaining skills, including team-teaching and division cross-training (Hoffman, 2015; Kellam and Peter, 2011).…”

Library consultations and a global pandemic: An analysis of consultation difficulty during COVID-19 across multiple factors

“…One notable variable explored in the current study is the relationship between the reported difficulty of a patron interaction and the involvement of a specialized team of reference professionals, particularly those in research data services and special collections units. Dedicated support in libraries for data analysis, visualization, and management has grown considerably in recent years, making research data services an emerging area of academic librarianship extensively explored in the literature ( Corrall et al, 2013 ; Koltay, 2017 ; Pryor et al, 2013 ; Si et al, 2015 ; Swygart-Hobaugh, 2017 ; Tenopir et al, 2012 ; Tenopir et al, 2014 ). Less well examined is the difficulty or complexity of these increasingly frequent research data transactions.…”