Data Management for Librarians

Citation

Charlotte Holden (2015), "Data Management for Librarians", Library Management, Vol. 36 No. 6/7, pp. 537-538. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-06-2015-0048

The book is aimed at providing guidance to academic research librarians to provide data management services to their institutions staff and researchers. It encourages stakeholders across academia to participate in ensuring data is successfully managed within an institution.

The driver for motivating participants and librarians to cultivate an effective data management service they state is the National Science Foundation’s requirements that all grant applications include a data management plan. It would therefore indicate that perhaps this book of particular relevance therefore for those seeking funding in US Scientific Research Community and related institutions.

They argue that that core to the discipline is the increasing digital form of research data and its proliferation. While researchers are adept at producing the data they need, guidelines to preserve and organise information to assist their work are required. Krier and Strasser do provide some insight to the questions as to how information professions aid this currently.

It is advised that building an institutional repository is fundamental to libraries providing effective data management. I would argue that while this is hardly a new concept recommended in both academic and corporate settings; it is helpfully enforced by Krier and Strasser in the book. They provide a list of useful resources on this topic as further reading.

Although stating it several times as a fact through the first few chapters the book provides little to specifically analyse how information professionals provide value to their organisation.

There is a notable absence of interesting case studies and examples, which would highlight the points they make with regard to information management plans and service provision. Without which the book while informative make it less effective as a resource for data management practitioners.

There are helpful and fairly detailed chapters on metadata and data governance which are the strongest sections of the book.

It may have benefited the book for the authors to have addressed more applicable disciplines than solely academia, as information professionals are present in a multitude of sectors.

The book is a helpful introduction to data management for academic libraries and is well researched. There is however a lot of very general information and an experienced librarian would find the book rather lacking in colour in terms of examples of successful practice. A researcher embarking on a first project would certainly find the book useful to give context to the data management subject and hopefully be prompted to engage with the library for further training and information relevant to their work.