3 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 298 — 2019 Introduction Judy Ruttenberg, Director, Scholars and Scholarship, Association of Research Libraries Data analytics and data science programs in research universities in Canada and the United States have grown dramatically over the past decade. An intrinsically interdisciplinary endeavor—drawing from statistics, computer science, engineering, and more—data science education has followed multiple trajectories. Projections of labor market demand for data manipulation skills, growing acceptance of open science and data sharing, the reproducibility “crisis,” and the promise of unlocking new scientific discoveries through analyzing massive amounts of data have all fueled enthusiasm for data science education. Funding models for new centers and institutes have multiplied, too—from large, personal, philanthropic donations (University of Virginia), to federal investment (Pan-Canadian AI Strategy and the Big Data to Knowledge, or BD2K, initiative), to private foundations (Gordon and Betty Moore and Alfred P. Sloan) that have invested in creating data science “environments” in three large US research universities. This issue of Research Library Issues looks at the critical role and participation of libraries and librarians in supporting the data science revolution. Catherine Murray-Rust, with Ameet Doshi, Jay Forrest, Ximin Mi, and Alison Valk, demonstrates a pathway to data science through teaching core data-literacy skills to students. This is part of a broader library strategy at Georgia Tech to identify service gaps across the university that align with the library’s mission, and work with faculty and students to fill those gaps. But the library’s data-literacy program is doing much more than that. Through their offerings, including education on basic statistical packages and web scraping tools, the library is providing an informal opportunity for students in non-STEM fields to gain proficiency with these methods for their intellectual, professional, or vocational pursuits.