23 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 298 2019 different: less competitive and with strong connections throughout the university. In spring 2019, the UC Berkeley Libraries launched a Library Data Initiatives Plan. The plan will accelerate the library’s focus and resources on data literacy, data acquisition, and housing data in a local repository. “For the Library, one constant goal is to demystify data science for the campus community, building new pipelines into the field from all directions.”8 The University of Washington and the eScience Institute People come here [to the library] and are more likely to collaborate across disciplines than they might if they were all going to somebody’s particular department.9 —2017 Abt Associations Site Visit ARL staff spoke with Sarah Stone, executive director of the University of Washington’s eScience Institute—a campus unit that describes itself as UW’s “hub of data-intensive discovery on campus.”10 Jennifer Muilenburg, a visiting program officer at ARL, has worked closely with Stone for the past five years as a data librarian and member of the eScience Institute Steering Committee at UW. Stone describes the library’s role as central, and more aligned with the university’s formal educational programs than the informal opportunities created by the MSDSE. They spoke in similar terms to UC Berkeley about the new program’s non-competitiveness on campus, and its mission to integrate with all disciplines. These latter features are also characteristics of the library, which provide both physical space and expertise to the endeavor. Partnering with our libraries has been an important component of these efforts. For example, at UW several librarians who specialize in data management are data science fellows, and efforts toward a new institutional data repository, clarification of intellectual property rights concerning software and data, and a proposed Open
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