A sea change in higher education is shaping the way many libraries deliver instruction to their students and faculty. Years of technological innovation and changes in the way that people discover and use information has made online instruction an essential part of a library's teaching and learning program. In order to evaluate our library's online instruction program and to determine its future goals, we analyzed the technology, pedagogical models, organizational structures, administrative supports, and partnerships we would need in order to succeed. Our findings may be useful for libraries reassessing their own online instruction programs.

Research data management (RDM) has become a professional imperative for Canada's academic librarians. Recent policy considerations by our national research funding agencies that address the ability of Canadian universities to effectively manage the massive amounts of research data they now create has helped library and university administrators recognize this gap in the research enterprise and identify RDM as a solution. RDM is not new to libraries, though. Rather, it draws on existing and evolving organizational functions in order to improve data collection, access, use, and preservation. A successful research data management service requires the skills and knowledge found in a library's research liaisons, collections experts, policy analysts, IT experts, archivists and preservationists. Like the library, research data management is not singular but multi-faceted. It requires collaboration, technology and policy analysis skills, and project management acumen. This paper examines research data management as a vital information, technical, and policy service in academic libraries today. It situates RDM not only as actions and services but also as a suite of responsibilities that require a high level of planning, collaboration, and judgment, thereby binding people to practice. It shows how RDM aligns with the skill sets and competencies of librarianship and illustrates how RDM spans the library's organizational structure and intersects with campus stakeholders allied in the research enterprise.

Librarians and researchers have long used citation management systems as research tools to help scholars organize their work, improve workflows, and ultimately save time. For many years, RefWorks has been the dominant citation management tool in many parts of Canada: the maturity of the product and its integration with many scholarly databases reassures users that it works well with these resources. However, a number of competitors now offer citation management systems that are as strong as RefWorks but offer different features to the user, therefore warranting a comparison with this leading tool. This paper reviews RefWorks, Zotero, WizFolio, and Mendeley, which are all popular citation management systems that either have a long history of use or are now gaining traction in Canadian academic circles. To compare these tools, we examined their import capabilities as well as their organizing, searching, annotating, and sharing functions. This review will interest both librarians and researchers who are considering alternative citation management systems at either the personal or organizational level.

As the world struggled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers worked around the clock to understand what was going on, medically, socially, and economically. At the same time, usual research processes were disrupted: campuses were closed and normal government data collection and dissemination went haywire. Data professionals in academic libraries sprang into action to help. They shared resources, developed workshops, helped find alternative methods of carrying out research, and found ways of coping with the influx of COVID-related data. Social crises are fought on the front lines by medical professionals and service providers, but they are also fought with research, with information, with data. Libraries are at the nexus of information and communication and library professionals were able to play an important supporting role in helping researchers combat the effects of the pandemic.

Water science data are a valuable asset that both underpins the original research project and bolsters new research questions, particularly in view of the increasingly complex water issues facing Canada and the world. Whilst there is general support for making data more broadly accessible, and a number of water science journals and funding agencies have adopted policies that require researchers to share data in accordance with the findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR) principles, there are still questions about effective management of data to protect their usefulness over time. Incorporating data management practices and standards at the outset of a water science research project will enable researchers to efficiently locate, analyse and use data throughout the project lifecycle, and will ensure the data maintain their value after the project has ended. Here, some common misconceptions about data management are highlighted, along with insights and practical advice to assist established and early career water science researchers as they integrate data management best practices and tools into their research. Freely available tools and training opportunities made available in Canada through Global Water Futures, The Gordon Foundation DataStream, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada Portage Network, Compute Canada, and university libraries, among others are compiled. These include webinars, training videos, and individual support for the water science community that together enable researchers to protect their data assets and meet the expectations of journals and funders. The perspectives shared here have been developed as part of the Global Water Futures programme's efforts to improve data management and promote the use of common data practices and standards in the context of water science in Canada. Ten best practices are proposed that may be broadly applicable to other disciplines in the natural sciences and can be adopted and adapted globally.