Building professional development opportunities in data services for academic librarians

Abstract

Research data management represents a significant professional development area for academic librarians – significant for its growing importance to the profession, since researchers are increasingly expected to comply with research data management requirements, and for the extent of competence needed by librarians to support researchers in research data management practices and plans. This article recounts how the Association of College and Research Libraries is fostering professional development opportunities in research data management. The authors describe two key endeavors: (1) the development and deployment of a needs assessment survey, which allowed insight into the types of librarians expressing the most need; and (2) planning and implementation of a pre-conference workshop for ACRL 2015, intended to prototype a future professional development offering. The article concludes by discussing additional assessment that was done following the workshop and how the pre-conference laid the foundation for proposing a “roadshow” for research data management, similar to what the Association of College and Research Libraries sponsors for scholarly communication.

“How Do I Do That?” A Literature Review of Research Data Management Skill Gaps of Canadian Health Sciences Information Professionals

“…Conrad, Shorish, Whitmire, and Hswe [3] support professional development workshops held by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) [46]. These workshops, called "roadshows," travel to institutions, organizations, and conferences to teach skills in a specific area.…”

“…These workshops, called "roadshows," travel to institutions, organizations, and conferences to teach skills in a specific area. One roadshow focuses on data management: "Building Your Research Data Management Toolkit: Integrating RDM into Your Liaison Work," which has its roots in a 2015 ACRL preconference workshop [3]. Read describes success in hosting library workshops for clinical researchers at New York University's Health Sciences Library [47].…”

“…Though researchers are the ones creating data, they may not be the best managers of data. Conrad, Shorish, Whitmire, and Hswe claim "[m]ost researchers have not been formally trained to manage their own data" [3]. Who should manage research data, if not researchers?…”

“…Librarians have a long history of organizing and managing digital resources, making RDM a natural fit. Conrad, et al recognize the link between curation of digital library resources and research data as they write: "[m]anagement of content and data aligns logically with digital curation practices" [3].…”

Research Data: Management and Opening. Polish and European Perspectives

“…Some studies have already confirmed low level of comfort and expert self-assessment with the life cycle of research data -and RDM-related topics (see e.g. Burgi et al, 2017;Conrad et al, 2017). Furthermore, one of OCLC's research reports highlighted the efficacy of education services in promoting RDM recognition with curation and expertise as the most important (Bryant et al, 2017).…”