Identifying new roles for academic libraries in supporting data-intensive research

Abstract

Reacting to the appearance of data-intensive research prompts academic libraries to become service providers for scholars, who work with research data. Although this is an imperative for libraries worldwide, due to the differences between countries and institutions, the level of readiness to engage in related activities differs from country to country. While some of the related tasks are fairly novel, others heavily build on librarians’ traditional, well-known skills. To identify these tasks, as well as making an inventory of the required skills and abilities, this paper, based on a non-exhaustive review of the recent literature, presents both theoretical and practical issues. It is demonstrated that the most obvious directions of the service development in academic libraries to support data-intensive science are research data management, data curation, data literacy education for users, and data literacy education for librarians.