102 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
services in this area if they wish to remain relevant to the needs of researchers at their institution, particularly in the
sciences (who have increasingly turned away from libraries’ traditional services).
Just as librarians have organized and made literature available, so we should do for research data so it will not be lost.
We should continue to develop subject, IT, and preservation technologies and expertise.
Libraries are well positioned to provide support and education to faculty and students on data management planning,
metadata creation, partners on research projects to provide the data management support. Development of a repository
will require collaboration with other campus partners.
Libraries have always been stewards of information in various formats and this is another realm that we could play a role
in organizing, preserving, and providing access to information.
Libraries will and should increasingly play a support role in that area because of their expertise in organizing and
providing access to information. Universities and funding agencies must realize though, that not unlike long-term
preservation of books and other publications, this will require major ongoing investments, whoever will be doing it.
Libraries will continue to become more engaged earlier in the research process and apply library science and archival
principles to research data and the full research data lifecycle. In the future, we will acquire, describe, preserve, and
facilitate access to data like we’ve done for centuries for paper. Datasets will be a part of our collections and nothing
special.
Research data management is an integral part of the role libraries play in supporting their research community. The
skills supplied by librarians are very similar to those required by RDM, and so libraries and librarians have the potential
to advance the cause of RDM at their universities in the future. Librarians also occupy a unique niche within universities
that enable them to serve a broad clientele without undue regard to the interests of finance or compliance.
Research libraries have assisted faculty with data in print, microfilm, and digital. This is part of reference, curation,
collection development, and other core library work. New work will continue to extend from this work and should
leverage that work for greater benefits and broader impacts made possible in the digital age. RDM activities and
leveraging that work for additional benefits also offers new opportunities for collaboration with librarians and other
researchers.
The library, as a neutral unit on campus, can provide service via the subject specialists that can help researchers archive,
manage, and share data.
This will vary greatly from one institution to another, but in general, all research libraries will continue to gain knowledge
of research data solutions (tools, repositories, etc.) that they and others offer, and connect researchers with these
solutions.
Two main roles, which leverage our natural competencies. One is metadata creation and quality assurance. The other
is our ability to preserve objects over long time periods, whether books or digital files. Everything else flows from these
two roles, which are not duplicated elsewhere on campus.
Until now, we have only bought data sets and sent people to the appropriate departments for help. In the future, we
will consult with our researchers about how best to shepherd their data through the data lifecycle.
We expect RDM and data curation to be seen as increasingly important. Collaboration around shared data curation
services will be key to driving this forward. Libraries are one of many stakeholder groups that are critical to the success
of data curation efforts.
We see it is a critical to growing the stewardship role that the library has for scholarship and research.
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