Bigger on the inside: Building Research Data Services at the University of Virginia

Abstract

Every story has a beginning, where the narrator chooses to start, though this is rarely the genesis. This story begins with the launch of the University of Virginia (U.Va.) Library's new Research Data Services (RDS) unit in October 2013. Born from the conjoining of a data management team and a data analysis team, RDS expanded to encompass data discovery and acquisitions, research software support and new expertise in the use of restricted data. Our purpose is to respond to the challenges created by the growing ubiquity and scale of data by helping researchers acquire, analyze, manage and archive these resources. We have made serious strides towards becoming 'the face of data services at U.Va.'. This article tells a bit of our story so far, relays some early challenges and how we have responded to them, outlines several initial successes and summarizes a few lessons going forward.